Something from Nothing: The Art of Rap Page #3

Quagmire. You like...

"What the f*** is he

talking about?" You know.

And then busy bee'll

get up on there

and just be like,

you know, "I'm in your city."

What's your favorite jeans?"

You know.

"Is it levi?" You know,

and just tear it down.

Right.

If you were gonna

personally train a rapper to be great,

you met a new cat,

what would

be the first lesson you'd give 'em?

The first thing

I would try to teach them,

the very first thing

would be originality.

You know what I'm saying?

I think that

is so important, because it's like,

it's... whenever you're

following a trend,

trends come and go.

True.

So when that trend is gone,

you're gone.

You're basing your career

on a bangin' beat...

Mm-Hmm.

And a catchy hook.

So you know

what you just did?

What'd you do?

You just made

your producer a star.

Rakim'll say

The rakim'll say

Follow the leader,

rakim'll say

Follow the leader,

rakim'll say

Follow the leader,

rakim'll say

Just when things seem the same

And the whole scene

is lame

I come and reign

with the unexplained

For the brains

till things change

They strain

the sling slang

I'm trained

to bring game

History that I arranged

Been regained

by king james

Go to practice

with tactics

When a track hits,

theatrics

Women that look

like actresses

Status of cleopatras

Stacks of mathematics

To feed your asiatics

As I find out what

the facts is for geographics

The way

you influenced me was...

I guess you said it.

You took the box out.

Like I... one of

my favorite lyrics

is when you say,

"I'll take you on a walk through hell,

freeze your dome

and watch your eyeballs swell."

That's all like...

"Guide you

out of triple-stage darkness."

It's like who's...

Who's writing this sh*t?

Like, what is... what is

he talking about?

It's not like,

"I'm on the street. I see a car. I see..."

This is like,

"I'm taking you

into a whole 'nother

world of thought."

Exactly.

That I said

I gotta try to do, too.

To try to explain that,

I came up listening...

You know, my mother played

a lot of jazz music.

A lot of it didn't

have no words on it,

but you could see

what was going on,

and it put you in a mood,

put you right

where it wanted to.

So my thing was

if they can do that

with an instrumental...

Mm-Hmm.

I should be able

to take somebody

somewhere with...

With words, man.

So I just always

tried to, you know,

take people somewhere

and make 'em see,

you know,

what I was doing, man,

and a lot of that

come from brothers

like slick rick, too,

you know what I mean?

When... when slick

told a story,

you know,

you was right there.

Yeah, if... if he was

talking about running through, uh, the park,

you know,

you smelled the grass.

Like, you know,

um, yesterday was...

Was my wife's

birthday, man.

You know,

I'm in the crib,

I got the serato rocking

and playing joints,

and I'm playing old joints.

A lot of them songs

that was made,

when you hear 'em, man,

you know, if...

If you was five years old,

it'd take you back

to when you was

five years old, man.

You could smell the chicken

cooking in the kitchen,

know what I mean?

You could smell mom's perfume,

you know what I mean?

Hey, you could smell

pop's car, like yo.

Those songs

are so classic, man,

and... and it does

something to our psyche, you know what I mean?

When I started writing,

I tried to...

I tried to reach that knowing,

you know what I mean?

Like if I do what

I'm supposed to do on this record,

maybe one day,

you know, somebody'll feel the same way,

you know, I feel about...

Like when I hear, um,

sexual healing

or... or when you hear,

uh, let's stay together, al green.

I read before

that you said that you would break

the... the music

down into like... in musical segments.

Exactly.

Could you elaborate

on that?

I try to start off

with 16 dots on a paper.

What?

I start off with

Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.

If it's a 16-bar rhyme,

at least I know, you know,

what I'm dealing with.

My thing was,

if four bars was this long...

My thing was,

I got, you know...

I see like a graph

in between them four bars,

and within that, I could

place so many words and so many syllables

and so many words,

and at times, you know,

if the beat was perfect,

I can take it to the point

where there's... there's

no other words you could put in that four bars.

Even though

you explained it, niggas can't do it.

No time to sip mos

with hostess

Never mind what

the total gross is

I rip shows,

stay focused

And split cheese

with soldiers

While you hit trees

and coast

I spit flows

that be ferocious

And with these explosives

I split seas for moses

Shine permanently

Only my mind's

concerning me

Fire burns

in me eternally

Time's eternity

Followers

that turn on me

Be in

a mental infirmary

Determinedly

advance technology

Better than germany

You know what I mean?

What's up? You say

you want to be down?

Ease back,

a motherf***er get beat down

Out my face,

fool, I'm the illest

Bulletproof, I die harder

than bruce willis

Got my crew in effect,

I bought 'em new jags.

So much cash, gotta

keep it in hefty bags.

All I think about

is keys and gs

Imagine that,

me working

At mickey-ds

Aw, sh*t.

that's a joke

'Cause I'm never

gonna be broke

When I die, it'll be

bullets and gun smoke

You don't like

my lifestyle, f*** you

I love this one.

So you saying...

When you want to write

the best lyrics,

you physically

make yourself hungry.

That's just the way I do.

Or work out physically.

That's another one, too.

Right. Right.

Box, you know.

I come back

with my blood up,

like I'm ready

to get into a fight,

and my mind is racing.

Only instead of thinking

about physically fighting,

I focus

on fighting mentally,

because hip-hop, you know,

you have to fight

with your mind.

Battles don't just come

with, "I'm gonna see you in the street."

Right.

It's...

I'm gonna take you

apart first. Check it.

They said that the success

of my music was theoretic

But my revenge

is sweet enough to murder diabetics

Eugenics, proctor & gamble

credit racial science

Couldn't produce

a more aggressive intellectual giant

Nephilim, bury 'em,

with the bullets left in 'em

My heart is blacker

than the children of thomas jefferson

Blacker than back

in the days of the tar and feathering

A cancerous endocrine

The eagle that's american

The hatchet and the sticks,

the fascist emblem

You could call it

conspiracy theory

I don't give

a motherfuck

You could get

your mother f***ed

"National security's"

a code word for coverup

Hold that down,

I look at character

Never let

the color get to ya

I got white

revolutionaries

Like muslims

in chechnya

Percussion thumping

like the russian mafia over ya

But even they know

what it's like

When you fighting

for svoboda

So whether slavic

or islamic

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