S. Samuel
David Banner recently talked about his absence from the hip-hop spotlight and denied any claims of falling out of the scene or off the public's radar.
Banner says he is financially stable based off television and movie work he has done as of late.
“I haven’t been gone, I’ve made more money than I’ve ever made in my life but the thing is, I’m above y’all’s heads,” Banner said in an interview. “It ain’t the fact that I’m gone. Look at the Gatorade commercials, look at Motorola commercials, look at movies, turn on your TV, when you hear music, you hear me. I want the kids to know that. You don’t have to be in front of the camera acting like a monkey. It’s so much money everywhere in the music industry, I ain’t going nowhere. Look at me, does it look like I’m broke? Look at this body. Does it look like I’ve missed any meal? I am great.” (Gyant Unplugged TV)
Last May, Banner said the rap industry has been ailing and why all regions should take responsibility.
“People don’t even mix and master records anymore,” Banner said in a blog post. “They don’t care about the quality of music anymore and it’s turning it into sh*t and it’s our fault. All these blog sites and magazines are doing the same thing with the bullsh*t politics. The media ain’t sh*t, they only care about screwing each other. It ain’t about how good you can rap anymore. Dope beats? What happened to that? Now it’s all about what features a rapper is going to have or who he’s having sex with. But we allowed it to happen and it’s our fault. Don’t blame it on no regions or anybody. Blame it on yourself for not liking better music, the magazines and blogs need to put out better information.” (VIBE)
Chicago rapper Rhymefest also recently said the rap game had drastically changed.
“One thing I didn’t realize is that Hip-Hop doesn’t exist anymore,” he declared in an interview. “C’mon, think about the 4 elements: graffiti, breaking, deejaying, and emceeing. Emcees don’t exist. That’s somebody who gets on the stage, doesn’t have to rap, but can hype up the crowd while the DJ is playing. He has all the chants, all that sh*t. Everybody now is “listen to me, listen to my raps.” No one can hype up a crowd no more like that. Emcees are dead…So Hip-Hop as we knew is like jazz at this point. I can’t really get mad. It exists on a scale so small you might as well call it dead. But even from Disco we got techno, Bass music. From Hip-Hop we got Soulja Boy, Drake; the hybrid singing rap. We got to call it something else because it ain’t Hip-Hop. It’s not bad; it’s evolved into something else.” (All Hip Hop)
Aside from rap, Banner spoke with SOHH earlier this year about launching an NBA Play-Offs Gatorade commercial.
“It’s not an alternate sound,” Banner told SOHH about his soul-inspired commercial score. “I’ve always used live guitars, I’ve always used soul music. And that’s what I want people to know about our generation, period. Even though we’re gonna be talking about evolution, I want to talk about our generation still having soul, that there’s people still influenced by our mothers and our fathers — the truth is, Gatorade is evolving as a product and that’s something that is very important and was important to them…They wanted to make a statement and this does.” (SOHH)
Check out David Banner’s interview below:
GYant Unplugged with Kenya Moore and D. Banner, Live From the Red Carpet of the movie premiere ‘The Confidant’ from Gyant UnpluggedTV on Vimeo.
