Shawn Setaro
[Columbus, Ohio underground veteran Blueprint recently sat down with hip-hop personality Shawn Setaro on his popular “The Cipher” podcast. Listen to the full interview and check out five gems Printmatic dropped during the Q&A.]
On KRS-One:
“KRS epitomizes what being honest is about, and also what it means to evolve. I look at KRS-One as the first evolving intellectual black hip-hop artist.”
On the media:
“There were many points in my career where I didn’t want to do press because I never wanted to be the guy who disappeared from the press and fell out of the public eye. If I don’t do the interviews, then they can never take the interviews away from me.”
On why he wants to be thought of as a musician rather than a rapper:
“Hip-hop is just the medium through which we express our stories. So you should always strive to be the best musician, not necessarily the best rapper, and you’ll always be okay.”
On his first visit to New York City in 2000 for the Rocksteady battle:
“It was my first time in New York, and I couldn’t believe that there were so many wack rappers there. When you’re young and you’re from Ohio, you think that when you go to New York and you experience hip-hop, everybody’s gonna sound like Biggie or Nas or Big Daddy Kane. And then when they don’t, you just get pissed off.”
On the cost of being a great freestyler:
“When you’re freestyling, you never really shut off your mind. Every time you look around, you’re thinking of word combinations, you’re seeing the wordplay in everything around you all the time. You could be sitting down reading a book, but you’ve also got another conversation in your mind going on that is essentially you freestyling about things, looking for the angles all the time.”
To hear the whole interview, click here or listen below.
