S. Samuel
OutKast's Andre 3000 recently spoke on the status of hip-hop and dismissed the idea of the genre being negatively impacted by the new wave of emcees.
In addition to speaking on today’s rap game, Dre pointed out current emcees’ chance to “tell it like it is.”
“Ain’t nobody rapping no more, everybody singing,” he said in an interview. “I’m just going to be honest with you: I listen to old music. I don’t even listen to rap that much, and not in a Kanye [West]-I don’t listen to rap no more-kind of way, but I listen to what I’m working on and old, old rap…Nothing is wrong with rap at all. And the reason why I say that is because at any given time, you got to love rap because the only thing rap has ever said to people is “we gon’ tell how it is.” That’s the only thing that they’ve ever said. They didn’t say, “We gon’ sell a million records.” They didn’t say, “We gon’ get these endorsement deals”- none of that. Rap was always “I’m just gon’ tell it like it is…So my message to all the kids doing it is do it [now] because this is the only chance you’re going to get to do it…because you going to start getting older and you going to start editing yourself.” (Vibe)
Ja Rule previously said hip-hop was in a state of emergency around late April.
“We fighting against other genres,” Rule declared in an interview. “We fightin’ against motherf*ckin’ rock. We fightin’ against pop. We fightin’ against these other genres of music. We need to be together as a whole and not separating ourselves between West and East and South. I think New York is making a strong comeback right now. I think we doin’ our thing, we got Maino, we got Red Cafe. I think New York is making a surgence. I got my acts outta New York, I’m coming with a crazy album right now. But you know as a whole, it’s not about New York…it’s about hip-hop. We all in this together. So when I think about it, that’s really my feelings on the situation.” (57th Ave)
Murder Inc. head Irv Gotti recently described the shady business practices of record labels.
“See, the music business is d*ck riders for the better part,” Gotti said in an interview. “I understand that it’s logic, I accept it but they’re d*ck riders. So they want a Dream beat right now or they want a Polow Da Don or whatever like that. They d*ck riders. And I know and I can say that with the utmost confidence because they d*ck rode me for a large time and I wacked ’em in the head. Murder Inc. got all the hits, everyone’s calling me. The illest sh*t I ever did was I made someone pay me $50,000 just to get on the phone. I was an a**hole at the highest level. I said, ‘Yo listen man, send me $50k and I’ll get on the phone, if not f*ck outta here yo,’ I was an a**hole at the highest, yo, a quarter, you heard me, $250,000, I ain’t stutter,’ click. He sent that paper.” (MTV)
Big Boi, who previously called out Jive Records for their OutKast delays, recently spoke on making peace with the label.
“The push backs have just really been trying to get the situation together with the record label, and trying to learn a new system,” Boi said in an interview. “There are some talks going on right now. I can’t really release it right now. Probably within the next week or so, there will be a big announcement coming out and the album will be out this summer, believe it, it’s done, it’s it in the can and I’m very happy with it. We got to clearing it up. It was just a new system and releasing new music in a new system that hasn’t really been apart of our careers. It’s been a change but I think we’ve reached some type of median right now which is going to lead to that big announcement that is going to come up in the next week or so. I’m just very happy about the situation right now. I can’t wait to let the world know when it’s coming out.” (Word of South)
