A New Wave of Windy City Artists
Forget Kanye, forget Twista, Do or Die, Lupe Fiasco, who are the other Chicago artists that we haven’t heard of yet?Mikkey, he’s under No.I.D., you have Swing – he’s gutter, Twone Gabz, you know Chicago, one thing we don’t have is a lot of whack rappers.
Chicago is becoming a hip-hop hot spot
It’s not a hot spot, it’s lukewarm. It’ll never be a hot spot for a long time to come, it’ll never be like the south.
Why?
You want the real answer to that?
Yes
In actuality, Chicago artists don’t work together. As long as Twista and Common have been out, you’ve never heard them do a song together. Me and Lupe Fiasco never did a song together. I call him, he doesn’t respond which is cool, I aint tripping on it. But we as Chicago artists, we always look at it like we’re gonna make it on our own. We don’t realize that the only you can be successful is through movement, an the only way to have a movement is to unify. Until we learn from others, we’ll never have that. Kanye is the only one I can say has truly done something for Chicago artists in the effort to unify us. Whether he’s done enough or not, I don’t know...I'd say he has, but he truly helped.
Do you think it had something to do with not being in the spotlight at the same time, because Kanye only started working with Common after he blew up, you know..
Common only started working Kanye after he blew up..
Well, that’s right
But remember those were your words [Laughs]
I was listening to a freestyle battle between Kanye and Common, and I wondered to myself: "why didn't these two do song together before now?"
Because it wasn't important to one of them. To one of them, it was not important because the other one didn't benefit from it
Right. If rap wasn’t successful, what would you be doing right now?
I’d be teaching. A lot of people don’t know my story, I actually dropped out of high school. I’m from the hood, I didn’t have a father, but I wanted something more when I got to the point where it didn’t matter if I lived or if I died, I decided that to try means nothing.
I mean, it’s probably a good thing that you didn’t try to ride that coattail. It’s interesting that you relied on your talent rather than on your story.
Well, I don’t need to rely on my story because I’m talented. But J Records also said, “Come on we need a story to market, we need to sell you, we can’t just sell music. That’s old.”
The Definition of Real
How many artists have a Grammy before they have an album?Well, the hood aint buying Grammys. That’s not credibility. It’s so funny, I mean what if you had Curtis Mayfield saying “Stevie Wonder aint real, that n***a is talking about ribbons in the sky, I’m talking about pusherman.” Imagine how ignorant it would sound if Smokey Robinson was like, “Man, Marvin Gaye doesn’t even write his own s**t, yo I wrote 50 songs for The Temptations, I’m real.” And imagine if The Temptations had like big spinning chains. Imagine how ignorant that would look, but that’s exactly what we’re doing today.” I heard someone say “Kanye aint hood.” How isn’t Kanye hood, I grew up with this dude. Is it because he’s got ideas, he’s articulate, he’s creative. See, we’re are so programmed that if you aint dumb, it ain’t plausible.
Finally, what should we expect from Blue Collar?
What you should expect is a classic album, we’re going back to the art of storytelling, hot rhymes, concepts, and entertainment. This is not a compilation with all little other artists to make me sound like I could rap better than I can. You’re gonna get what you came for: great production, and a lot of Rhymefest. I’m really excited about it. And everybody out there, feel free to hit me up on myspace.com/rhymefest. As long as you have something interesting to say, I usually reply everybody.
Thanks for the interview ‘Fest
Thanks, pick up Plugg City on mixunit.com. Peeaace!
