From Gangsta to Godly: T-Bone
I saw in one of your interviews you said you don’t rap about the problem you rap about the solution. How do you deal with situations when you run into people that believe in other solutions or other methods?
There are gonna always be false prophets, false religions and false Gods. When I speak, I tell so many people a man with an experience is never at the mercy of a man with an opinion. You can have all the opinions, but I’m a man with experience and I’ve experienced God for myself. I see what God has done in my life. I’ve experienced having fifteen gang members come into my house and beat me to the point where I was left for dead, but God still saved me through the whole thing. I’ve experienced being in Compton, Ca where five guys walked up to me with shotguns and AK’s and were ready to murder me. I got on my knees, I lifted up my hands fearless, and I said ‘God I thank you that today is my graduation day and I thank you that today I’ll be in paradise with you.’ The bible says demons flee when they hear the name of Jesus, when I began to worship God I’m here to let you know all five of those guys dropped their guns and took off running. That’s a powerful God, you cannot argue with me and tell me my God is not real. I’m not a man with an opinion I’m a man with experience. I’ve been broke, down, busted, disgusted, and seen him flip my whole situation around so all I can do is share what God has done for me. I’ve been with Muslims, five per centers and all those guys. One time one of the leaders in Oakland from one of the five per center churches was saying I was preaching a false God and a false doctrine. I was like man let me just pray for you and he didn’t want to let me pray then he finally agreed to let me pray for him. I grabbed his hand and started to pray over him and when we were done he had tears and he raised his hands and said thank you Jesus (then he caught himself) and said thank you Allah. He freaked out. So all I can do is talk about what I’ve experienced and people can’t argue with me because I’ve experienced it first hand.
Do you still encounter any of your former gang members and what happens when you run into them?
Most of them are saved now. A couple of them are pastors and the other ones that still remained in the same thing were the ones that laughed at me and mocked me when I got saved. They’re the same ones who come to me and ask for me to pray for them when they are going through stuff and ask me for advice. When people see you make a complete change and see you’re real about it they respect that and that something the streets respect too. That’s all I’ve experienced.
You’re one of the best rappers I’ve heard as far as freestyling and flowing. When did you find that you could flow that way?
I’ve been rhyming since I was eight years old and I just turned thirty. I started off regular hip hop on the corner after school making fun of girls and freestyling about whatever I saw, but when I saw that people liked what I did it was something that I wanted to take serious and do for a living and that’s when I started getting into the writing and being creative. When I was around sixteen I said I wanted to do something different and that’s when I started incorporating the tongue twisting and the Spanish. So I just started trying to do stuff to be different because I didn’t want to be a carbon copy of what everybody else was doing. I was hanging out with Beyonce and her family for the weekend and we went in the studio and I was telling them to this day I don’t really feel that I’m a great rapper. I get so many compliments, but its just a young kid who took something he could half way do and said let me try to add a couple more things and said God here is my talent. To me I’m in awe of where God has taken me, then to be able to work with legends you grew up listening to like KRS and be able to pray and minister with them its been an amazing experience to do movies and all that. God has blown my mind and I just want to give back to him.
The skills speak for themselves and I’d pay more attention to what you are talking about simply from the way its coming off because the style is fresh. If you were just talking with no style it would be wack.
That’s the whole thing that has frustrated me for years. People always ask me who do you listen to T-bone and they are always expecting me to come back with this Christian rapper or that Christian rapper, but for me its sad because there is no one for me to listen too. A lot of the gospel stuff that’s out there is at such a terrible level that it is unlistenable to me. It’s like taking a Picasso painting and throwing all types of paint on top of it and ruining the whole painting. But now I think that people are starting to step up and rappers are coming with some half decent stuff. It’s amazing for me as one of the pioneers to see how far the genre has come. I remember back in the days it was four or five of us the FFC, the Dynamic Twins, Freedom of Soul and a few other people and they didn’t even call it gospel hip hop there was no name. You would go to the stores and you couldn’t even find the records and now you walk into a store and we have our own section. Its amazing and it’s a blessing but I feel a lot of these guys don’t even know their history or who paved the way. We opened up a lot of doors so that today people can be booked at conferences, festivals and churches and be able to walk in and do a great concert. There was a time when I would do concerts where people would look at me crazy because I was doing this hip hop stuff and the pastor would stop me in the middle of the service and tell me to get out of the church because this ain’t from God. Those were the times where we were paving the way for these guys because it wasn’t accepted back in the day. So for me it was important to make a song about our history on my latest record because I feel like a lot of these kids don’t know or respect the elders of the game and realize the history of it.
It’s almost like if you listen to Christian hip hop you can’t listen to secular hip hop and vice versa. Why do you think it comes off that way instead of just being straight hip hop?
I think from the Christian point of view looking at what’s out there how much secular hip hop is going to feed your soul some good stuff. The bottom line is most hip hop is negative so as Christians I wouldn’t want my kids to listen to them either. There is some stuff that’s positive, but for the most part a lot of it is pretty negative. From a secular point of view I think the reason why most people are going to put up their guard is because its impossible for unspiritual people to understand spiritual things. You also gotta know that in the secular world there are a lot of people who aren’t brought up believing Jesus is lord, so they automatically put their guard up because they don’t believe in what they are saying. I feel the biggest case is that a lot of people hear Christian rap and say that’s gonna be corny and what’s frustrated me for so long is that it has been corny. I don’t even label myself a gospel or Christian rapper no more, I’m a rapper period. When you put that name on you, you limit yourself. A rapper is a person who tells his story and where he comes from and that’s all I’m doing.
I understand Lil Zane is getting back into Christian Rap.
I was actually able to lead him to the lord on set of the movie. I pray with him and I tell everyone to continue to pray for him. I didn’t even know when I met him that he started off as a gospel rapper. He went to a real big rapper, and I won’t say his name, and the guy told him if you want to make some real money you have to talk about getting high and being a playa and that’s the Lil Zane we know. That’s who he became. We talk all the time and he really wants to make a change in his life.
How was the whole experience working on The Fighting Temptations?
It was one of the greatest experiences of my life. Who wouldn’t want to work with Cuba Gooding Jr, The Ojays, Beyonce, Angie Stone, Montell Jordan, Lil Zane, Shirley Caesar, we are talking about legends and some of the greatest actors. God blew me away because when God gives you something nobody can take it away. The script wasn’t written for me it was written for Nelly, but Nelly couldn’t work it out. Then they actually had LL Cool J come out and audition, Busta Rhymes, Petey Pablo, Keith Murray so I didn’t beat out some lightweights. It was amazing the way the lord allowed me to take that part. I remembered the last day came and the director Jonathan Lynn came out and said it’s a wrap guys its sad, we’ve been together for three months and everybody started hugging each other. I had to leave and go to my dressing room because I cried. I was so broken hearted that I was going to have to leave my family because after three months of being together you become family. You’re constantly around each other. I know what Angie Stone, Beyonce, and Rue Mcclanahan look like with no makeup on and I’ve seen them not looking glamorous. So that last day was pretty tough on me and the thing that I love was just that I was able to get a whole bunch of friends out of it. We’ve all stayed in touch, I was just with The Ojays and I just went with Beyonce and her whole family to church this past Sunday and went to lunch.
