Katharine Hepburn - "If you obey all the rules you miss all the fun."

my wonky computer lost a bunch of work i made. here's what I saved from today:

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REBEL INS THE INSPECTAH DECK IS THE MOTHERFUCKING TRUTH! READ WHY HERE:

8 Diagrams is finally out. How do you feel about that?

We should have released five albums by now, but you know, it’s all good to still be loved and appreciated and anticipated like that. That’s the best feeling about this whole thing for me right now.

Five years is a long time to go without releasing an album. Was there too much of a layover between Iron Flag and 8 Diagrams?

For me and in my opinion, I would say yeah. But you know, I’m not the one who runs things. I just played my part as an MC on this one.

Did playing your part as an MC include giving RZA your creative input and making suggestions?

I played my part as an MC. This was a vision that RZA had, like 36 Chambers was a vision that he had. We had the faith in him to basically do what he does to the extent of how he does it. Pretty much, that’s what he did. My input wasn’t asked of me. Creatively, that’s really, like, out the window on this album. This was like you had Beethoven and niggas who played guitars and shit. There’s only room for one conductor, man.

It doesn’t seem as though every Clan member has that same faith in RZA that you have. Why do you think that is?

It’s not that everybody doesn’t have the faith. We know RZA away from music, so I know what he’s capable of on and off the field. It’s never a question of faith or anything like that. It’s just more a question of decision-making now that we’re grown. It’s about making the right decision and smart decisions because bad choices can kill you nowadays.


We’ve been a group that’s been under fire for a long time as well. We’re loved and hated. We’re loved for the same reasons we’re hated. So I look at this album, after a layoff of five years, as showing your faith. It’s like the dude you grew up with and moved away from you. You haven’t seen him in five years and when you first see him, it’s going to tell how he’s been living for the past five years. If his face is dirty, you’re going to be looking at him like, ‘What have you been doing all this time?’ I’m not saying we’re like that, but in this real glossy, glossy, glossy industry, it’s like we’re a piece of coal right now. And it’s good and bad. We’re the diamond in its rawest form but the people are misled and blinded by that shine. It just makes it hard, man.

Doing what we do, we have to overpower and redirect dudes’ mindstates, man, whether it’s the fans or the next generation or even just the music industry, which we helped shape to what it is now. It’s taking that motto and that mindset and bringing it back to where that is. There’s so much talent on the street and there’s so much good shit that you will never hear because of these big robots, these robotic dudes who are sucking up everything and making it hard for the independents. It hurts me a lot because there’s a lot riding on this. It’s bigger than us. It’s a hip-hop population that’s buying this album. We know. There’s a generation or population that’s rooting for us. It’s almost like being in a stadium at the Super Bowl and you have your home fans and the stadium is loud and everything. On the first play, you don’t want to throw an interception or turn the ball over because that’s how you lose. That’s how I’m looking at it and I could be wrong, but for this album, man, I think RZA in his creative genius, he took it to a level where he saw himself at. This is a vision that he had, unlike with 36 Chambers, where I saw that vision.

This album, I didn’t really see that vision because I’m still stuck on the core fans who got us to this point. I’m not really interested to cater to the new fans we met in Hollywood and all this, that and the third. If you wanna take it back and you wanna redirect the mindset, you have to do what you originally did because these fans are lost. This music and this generation is lost. If that’s the aim, then you gotta really come hard, man, because this generation’s teenagers are smarter than my generation’s teenagers. 16 year-olds today know what I knew at 22. We told them to stick together and that “clan” means “family”. We gave them guidelines all day with Supreme Clientele and The Purple Tape, Cuban Linx and everything that we’ve done, man.

So to really be at this level and the core is hyped about this album and it’s about a Beatles song. It’s not really about us. It’s about the Beatles. I don’t know, man. Maybe I ain’t seeing it, but it is what it is. I played my part as an MC. I really didn’t have any creative input. I didn’t have any direction to the album. I came in here as Inspectah Deck from Wu-Tang Clan. But if you want to hear creative input and ideas from Deck, you have to catch the Resident Patient album or catch the Part 2 that I’m doing now that’s dropping after this. That’s how I have to get my shit off. I’m one of the most underrated dudes of all-time, if you ask me. Not because I didn’t sell a million records. I didn’t have proper promotion for a lot of my shit, so you know, it is what it is. But that’s my opinion on that album. It’s not my lyrical best because I had to deal with what was put in front of me. I wasn’t really inspired by a lot of the tracks. And I can say that because this is nothing that I haven’t said to RZA already.

You don’t think you killed “Unpredictable”?

Yeah, but that wasn’t how the beat originally sounded and a few other elements…I’m not here to bicker or punch holes in my product. I’m just telling you what’s real with me and I’m not biting my tongue and I’m not trying to front on y’all. I support Wu-Tang 100%. This album was not my greatest and I don’t think it’s our greatest because of the direction that we went. But on the other hand, that’s RZA. He had that vision and he had that vision with 36 Chambers and we’re here now because of that. So maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this will be the album that the world was waiting for to come from the Clan and this will restore our history and restore our legacy and put it on top. Maybe that’s that album. I don’t think so.


Could 8 Diagrams be one of those albums that take awhile to sink in before fans see the greatness in it?

Maybe. It’s definitely going to take them some time to do whatever they’re going to do; if they’re going to get used to it or if they’re going to get familiar with it or if they’re going to hate on it, it’s all in a matter of time. For me, personally, and like I said, I’m only speaking for me, I’ve been born and raised on this Wu-Tang shit before Wu-Tang. In the womb, I was born with this shit. When it comes down to this, I know how to do that. I can’t give y’all my best if I’m not feeling a certain level. If you hear certain tracks and you wonder why Deck is not on this or why Deck isn’t on that, it’s not about that. Me, myself, I can’t perform and just act like I’m feeling this shit just to rhyme on it and just to get the job done and just to get the check. I could never do that. You might get the money but your name is on it and it’s unsatisfactory. Now my name would have to live with that mark on it.

You mentioned how your verse on “Unpredictable” was done over a different beat than the one that made 8 Diagrams. Is it hard as an MC to bring your best over a beat that you know isn’t good enough to go on the album?

It’s tough when you don’t know that’s going to happen. It’s tough when you write to something and you say the rhyme to something and then you come back and it’s something totally different. Yeah, that’s tough even though it’s happened in the past. Some of it has been successful, some of it hasn’t. But I’m not here to nitpick about this whole album. I’m just telling you my personal feelings. I didn’t like it. I like Ghost’s album better than the Wu-Tang album and I can say that because I’m fucking Wu-Tang. I’m keeping it real with the fans. When you see me on the street, I’m not concerned with being no rapper like that. I want to be bigger and more legendary than my solo career has allowed me to be and I know I can be. It takes the right positioning. If the Wu-Tang album has some sort of success, that would be a springboard for me to resurrect my solo career, man, which has been in the dungeons for a few years. I can’t capitalize off of that.

My babies can’t look forward to uncertainty, man, so I need to be sure. And I’m unsure. If you ask me, this is one of the first times that I’ve ever been questioning my own shit. But I’m only being aware of the times and looking at the times and the situation at where we’re at in hip-hop now .Are the people going to accept Wu-Tang trying to be as big or bigger than the Beatles or is Hollywood going to accept Wu-Tang or are we going to be looked at as rock stars? Those are not my dreams or goals so that is unimportant to me. I don’t worry about being looked at as a rock star. Listen, I did a song with Blondie and in two days, got a phone call and performed on The American Music Awards with her for “Who’s Gonna Cry” with me, U-God and Mobb Deep. I don’t have no problem doing that and I go wherever my music takes me.

But the album sounds slow, man. The album is slow. Everything is dragged out. There’s two head-nodding, Wu-Tang, side-splittin’, karate-choppin’ shit. For the die-hard fans that loved us from day one, I feel bad for them. That’s who I’m really speaking for. I’m not talking about the new fans we’re trying to make right now. Maybe fucking Tom Brady will show up to the concert because we did the Wu-Tang/Beatles shit. (laughs) I’m not concerned with that shit.

The backpack generation has been forgotten about. I’m concerned with getting them and the skateboarders, like the Lupe Fiasco’s of the world. Let’s give the young generation something to really , really hold onto, some knowledge, which it’s always gonna be. But the radio don’t play our shit. Is going this route going to guarantee that the radio will play our shit 60 times a day like the rest of that bullshit? Who knows, man? I don’t think so. I’m thinking after five years out the game, Wu-Tang needs to come back on a fucking tank like the A-Team. That’s how I’m thinking we have to come in the game and seize it from the rest of these clowns. We’re coming in kind of passive to me. We’re coming in like, ‘Hey, how are you doing? It’s okay with your bullshit. We’re just going to go over here and do our thing.’ You know what I mean? We have a responsibility to the hip-hop nation who are relying on us to change things once again like we did when we first came in. And it’s bigger than us, man. The responsibility lies on our shoulders and we’re the only ones who have been accepted to do it.

Will the hardcore Wu-Tang fans be unsatisfied with 8 Diagrams?


That’s my thoughts. That’s the thing I think about. Damn, the hardcore fans who got W tattoos on their neck or the GZA logo or the Deck logo or the Meth logo and whether they’re in France, Belgium, Puerto Rico or Chicago, or the ones with Wu-Tang Clan logos on their car or they kept their shirt from 1992 in crisp condition. Those dudes, and females too, what about them? They’re the ones that ain’t buying that bullshit. Now if we give them something worth buying, maybe some artists will go platinum again, like the Talib Kweli’s of the world and the Boot Camp’s of the world who should be going platinum because they’re doing hip-hop, not this fashion show, car show shit that everybody is turning to. But in all respect, man, hip-hop is growing at a rate that nobody’s going to stop. Its influence is here everyday in the commercials. You can sell Honey Nut Cheerios rhyming. Cadillac commercials have beats that could be on niggas’ albums. It’s real.

Will Smith was concerned in I, Robot that the robots were taking over. It’s going to get to the point where hardcore rappers are extinct because they don’t need hardcore rappers. They’re trying to ban all of that. They’re trying to ban the truth. They’re trying to ban all the reality and all the harshness. They’re trying to get everybody to fantasize about this life that isn’t there like Bentley’s and mansions and Rolex’s. But that ain’t there. Only one in a million gets that.

How do you feel when artists who make that kind of music cite Wu-Tang as one of their influences?


I give the real dudes love. I give the ‘90s generation, no matter where you was from, East, West, South, Midwest, West, it don’t matter because everybody was cracking at one time. I’m not hating on the rap generation. I’m talking about these clown overnight-sensation shit that dominates the radio and dominates the video and they’re selling ringtones all day. It’s like, ‘Yo, man, this shit is ridiculously done.’ It’s blaxploitation in a different way.

Soulja Boy is an example of someone who posted a song online, quickly got a record deal and an album in stores and is now a Grammy-nominated artist. Are you surprised at how quickly artists can obtain success today?

Come on, man. That’s what I’m talking about. And it ain’t knocking son’s hustle, because he might be a legitimate dude who came from where we came from and worked his way up. It’s not to knock his hustle, but it’s looking at the industry and the fans and we have to look at each other, like ‘How does this shit happen, yo?’ How does a nigga come out of nowhere and get it to pop off where a nigga can be putting in work for years and has been getting respect and has been getting love and is not wack, how does he not achieve those numbers within the years that he’s put in when compared to the overnight wonder?

It’s like, that’s the problem right there. The problem is the fans. It’s the motherfuckers walking in the stores and spending that $10, $20. It’s not the rapper no more. You can make whatever kind of music you want to make, man. It’s whatever out there, but it’s the consumer. Hip-hop is outselling country right now. It’s like, ‘Damn, man, hip-hop is powerful!’ That’s why everybody from the government to the churches are trying to get their hands on hip-hop. Everybody’s trying to get their hands on hip-hop.

I’m always going to have a job doing what I do, but they’re not interested in the Wu-Tang’s of the world because we’re the ones that have the true message and we’re the ones that are trying to wake the people up. We’ll party and dance with you but the moral of the story with us is to wake up your mind, man, and they don’t need revolutionary groups anymore. They don’t want you to be somebody that stands for something anymore. It’s like, ‘Fuck that, you’re wearing this because we paid for this wardrobe and we paid for this stylist and that’s it. You do whatever the fuck we tell you to. We’re spending this money on you.’ They’re recouping and they’re giving you advances to keep you blinded.

We’re in the middle of all that right now and we’re dropping an album in the midst of all of that. This is just the first floor of a 100-story building. We’re dropping in the midst of all this chaos and we’re still trying to maintain our integrity to the ones that got us there. This shit is real to me. I got kids. I have to feed my family off of this shit because I’m not getting a 9-5.

With the changing industry, how does Inspectah Deck and Wu-Tang move forward?

What I did with the Resident Patient that I have on Traffic Entertainment, I went straight to the internet and Part 2 will be available on the internet. That might be sent straight from my house. I might be licking the envelopes. That might be my job for a year. You can order that shit from me. That’s how that goes. I’ll put it up on MySpace and all those friend sites and do it like that. If you sell 50,000, you’re still making half a mill. I’ll go straight to the fans and eliminate the middle man, straight American Gangster style! (laughs) You know what I mean?

How’s Resident Patient Part 2 coming?

Resident Patient 2 is coming nice, man. I got outside production. I got different people coming in, not to mention that I’m doing production myself. It’s all ground-level entertainment. It’s Urban Icon Records. I’m doing what I’m doing. I have a few groups in the making right now, but they’re not ready. They’re in training, so in the future you’ll hear that. After Resident Patient 2, you’ll hear The Rebellion, which is still going to be my final album. It’s still going to be RZA-produced. It’s still going to have the Wu-Tang elements. What I’m dealing with is from my level of it. RZA will tell you all day, some brothers are more famous than others, but when it comes to the Clan as a whole, we’re all looked at as a whole. So I’m not just saying it for me and looking out for me, to the die-hard fans, I care about y’all and it makes me wonder, ‘Damn, are we taking care of them and are we taking care of the ones who we know are going to spend their $10 for the CD and once they buy it are they just going to put it on the shelf next to the other 12 that they got? Will they even listen to it?’ They might leave it in the wrapper and shit. I’m thinking about y’all. I’m thinking about this generation that’s coming up, who’s buying these young dudes. It’s like, ‘Yo, man, you’re not going to have nothing.’

Some of the songs that were made 10 years ago, it hits you now like how corny it is. If you pull out any Wu-Tang shit, it’s going to hit you in a different way. It doesn’t sound like nothing else. Just the awkwardness of it is going to hit your. I’m concerned with that. I could be paranoid. I smoke a lot. I might be paranoid. I might be thinking, ‘It’s all a dream.’ I put my faith in son to do that. It was never a question of faith. It was more or less, ‘What are you going to do, man? I hear you talking, but what are you going to do?’ It’s always like that. ‘I’m with you 100%, but what’s popping though?’

Will The Rebellion really be your last album?

Yeah. The Rebellion is going to be my last album, man. The Resident Patient was more of a mix album. The Movement was on Koch. That was an underrated album that didn’t get promoted, but it still sold. I feel okay, man. I can still keep my lights on and do what I need to do, so it’s all going to be good with me. I just hope that this one is the album that niggas want. After five years in the game and after hearing a whole bunch of redundant shit over and over, is this the album that they want to hear? Me being the Inspectah, I’m just skeptical, man.

You mentioned you had some groups in the works. A few years ago, there was talk of you, GZA and Masta Killa forming a group. How come that never happened?

We were going to do an album together, but we can’t do it without the rest of the crew like that. It’s not like we could just branch off and do that. I would rather do it with three people I don’t know, because when it comes to us, our power comes when we all align. And we know that, so we were like, ‘Fuck it, man, I ain’t gonna do that.’ We all came to the decision like, ‘You know what? You do your album and I’ll jump on that.’ We all jumped on each other’s albums instead and we did what we needed to do. I think if we would have put that three out, I think it would have sold. I think people would have wanted another joint with Meth on it or they would have been calling for a Meth, Ghost and Rae album. We brought that all to the table at one time. At different times, people were with it. Mentally, it just died off and we all did our thing anyway.

Is your group House Gang still together?

Yeah, House Gang is still a group. They branched off and they have another group under them called Loose Linx. I’m still into that and I’m still doing production with Urban Icon Records. Everything is grinding out and it’s moving slow, but it’s moving. That’s the whole thing. You can look forward to that shit in the new year. I guarantee you’re going to hear The Rebellion and Resident Patient Part 2 and I might throw in a bonus mixtape with 30 freestyles. You can definitely look forward to that shit on the internet only. I don’t know if you’ll even be able to buy my next shit in stores. That’s how I’m going to do it.

You’ve proven you have skill in producing. Will you be dropping more beats in the future?

Yeah. I just got me a whole little rig now, so I’m set up to do a lot more production than I’ve ever done. Just being on the run and trying to do the album together and being an MC, it’s hard to do both at one time. I was never highly skilled at it. I used to watch RZA, 4th Disciple and Tru Master and I got better at it. I’m definitely doing another album with my own production on it. You’ll be hearing from me soon. I never really had a whole lot of tracks to give away to a whole lot of people. I kept it in the family.

Getting back to 8 Diagrams, “My Heart Gently Weeps” was publicized like crazy. Was “My Heart Gently Weeps” the wrong single to promote?

To me, as a b-boy, hip-hop, early ‘90s, born and raised, I think it’s the wrong move. It’s feeding the people what they want and remembering who you are. But other than that, I understand it from a business standpoint. If I’m the one spending hundreds of thousands of dollars and major money is on this, then I can see where you’re trying to make a direct impact, like you can put this song out and it’s going to strike enough new people where we can possibly have outstanding first-week sales. I understand what that translates to.

But those outstanding first-week sales are not the real fans, man. You know? Those are the new fans we got based on doing a song with the Beatles. After that song, what do you do then? You have to take care of the core. I always say that, man. That’s why kings get thrown off the fucking thrones, man, because of the people revolting, man. I guess that’s why I’m the Rebel, man. I always feel a certain way.

“Life Changes” is an emotional tribute song to Ol’ Dirty Bastard. Was that a hard song for you to record?

For me, it was because I was looking at it like, ‘Man, this shit can be me.’ Dirty is me. Dirty passing is me passing in a way. Part of this whole crew died. The persona, the mystique behind Wu-Tang, a lot of shit died with Dirty. I’m Inspectah. I see that. I see that mentally, way off in the distance, off the fucking planet somewhere. I can’t explain it to you, man. That’s how it is. It’s like, the whole downfall that we’ve been having since then has been happening because there was no unity between us, no communication and there was a lot going on. Everybody just got separated and went out and did their own thing. The devil took one of us.

I thought that that would bring us together and make everything tighter, which it has. It’s brought us together, but it’s like, I look at it like, ‘Why wait to have a party on a fucking birthday?’ We have to always be like that because it can happen to any one of us again and I don’t want it to be me and I don’t want it to be no one else. So I’m just like, ‘Yo, we need to get our shit together and if we’re going to record an album, let’s do it for real because the people are depending on this shit more than we think.’ And I will continue to say that, man.

The people need what we have to say. They need to hear it because they’re tired of the other shit. There are only so many cars you can buy, and mansions and guns. There’s only so much. There’s only so much. There’s only so many people you can kill in one rhyme. Some people are killing four people a verse. It’s getting redundant, man. (laughs) It’s real. That’s why I laugh, because I know that the people want the shit that Wu-Tang comes with, like the “Rainy Dayz”, the “Incarcerated Scarface”’s, the “Better Tomorrow”’s, the “Ice Cream”s and the “Ice Water”. They want Cappadonna’s “The Pillage” and “Rec Room”. They want the “Triumph”’s. I can go on for days. They want “Shame On A Nigga”. They want that. They don’t want to hear the motherfucker who just got his deal yesterday and in his first video, he has the Bentley and the jewelry. I don’t want to see that no more.

How do you think 8 Diagrams would be different if Dirty had a say in it?

It would just have some life to it because I know Dirty would feel the same way I’m feeling. This shit is boring! This shit is putting me to sleep. Dirt Dog never bit his tongue. That’s one thing about me. I won’t bite my tongue, but a lot of times, I might not say nothing. This isn’t moving me like that. I just don’t like it. That’s all that means. It doesn’t mean it can’t be successful. So the fans understand directly what I’m saying, I have faith in RZA to do what he do, so I come in and play my part as an MC. But as far as my personal opinion, which relates to me and only me, I don’t feel that this is our greatest shit or the shit that niggas want to hear at this stage in the game from us. I feel like we have to give them a newer, better album such as the new Ghost album. I’m not saying that’s the truth either. I’m just saying that his album sounds like what a Wu-Tang album should sound like, but it’s him by himself. So he’s going to do well because he kept with the formula. That’s what I’m saying. I don’t hear no Beatles shit on there. He’s signed to one of the biggest machines out there. If they have faith in that sound, I’m pretty sure that the fans would have faith in that sound as well.

In your verse on “Life Changes”, you say you should have helped ODB when he was in trouble but that you were selfish. That’s an extremely heavy burden to bear.

That’s why you hear me talking the way I’m talking right now because this rap shit really doesn’t mean nothing to me like that, man. Life means more. And I’m like, ‘Damn, man, maybe if we could have really reached out more’ because I knew what he was doing and he knew what I was doing. I smoke. I smoke a lot of weed. Sometimes you need that person to come to you and as much as you may hate it, like, ‘Get away from me, stop telling me that,’ sometimes you need that person to get on your nerves like, ‘Put that shit down. You don’t need that.’

I feel like we need to be there for each other despite the fact that we’re grown men and we have different lives. But the lives that we have now, we built our lives on each other. The life I have now with my two kids and my cars, I built that on the backs of my brothers as well as myself. That’s my life. We need to be more in-tune like that and I think that’s what shows on the album, man. That’s just my opinion. I’m not trying to discourage nobody from going to get it. Go get it and support a nigga and help a nigga keep his lights on. I don’t have no hits on the chart. I keep it funky. I keep it funky with y’all all the time.

Wu-Tang is my biggest success story and if they fail, I fail. And I can’t tolerate failure at this stage of my life. I’ll ride with you, man, but I’m so skeptical that I have three eyes open on everything. I’m not getting caught up by little write-ups in Rolling Stone or DJs that say this is the greatest. Nah. I’ll see what it translates to when we compare the numbers to the other artists who the fans say they’re tired of. If you’re turned of all that commercial, Bentley-talking bullshit and you have an alternative now and you don’t support that, then you’re full of shit. You don’t want nothing new. You’re satisfied and you’re content with that stupidity. So don’t come at me sideways when you see me in the street and ask me why I don’t do that because I don’t shuck and jive. I don’t do the Hollywood Shuffle. If you’re looking for a motherfucker to have his shirt off in the video with his chest wet, you’re looking at the wrong dude, man.

There are only a handful, if that many, of artists today with that kind of perspective on music.

You know what it is for me, man? It made my career. It kept my career at a certain level. Me being the Rebel that I am, I could have sold millions. I could have done the shit that you see everybody else doing, but I just never allowed myself to be outside of myself. I grew up listening to the Curtis Mayfield’s, the Marvin Gaye’s and the Willie Hutchinson’s. Listening to that music kept me in a certain mindframe. I watched a lot of blaxploitation movies like Hell up in Harlem. You can name it. The style that I developed came from the ‘709s. You had to be cool. That’s what I do for dudes. I’ll take you on a walk to the corner store. Let’s go for a walk to the corner store and from the house to the store, somebody done got shot, the fire truck and ambulance came, there’s a car crash, somebody got robbed, a baby was born and somebody graduated, all within the hour. That’s what I bring to the table and anybody that knows about Uncontrolled Substance, The Movement, Resident Patient and even Part 2, that’s what you’re going to get from me. You mighty get a couple of dance tracks and club joints and some female joints because you have to mix it up, but for the most part, I give you tales from the ‘hood for real.

A lot of fans say you consistently outshine other Clan members on songs. How does it feel hearing that?

That sucks. That sucks, man. That sucks to hear everyday that you’re the illest and that you’re the fucking illest and it doesn’t translate to record sales or the numbers. It don’t translate to that. So what is it? I don’t make songs? I figured it out. I don’t have the right kind of promotion or the right push. I don’t have the right people. So when I do this next solo album, man, I’m doing it straight to the fucking internet. You buy it right from me and you can feel good knowing that Deck mailed it to you. Yeah, Deck has your credit card information and I mailed it to you personally. It feels good knowing that. I’m going to autograph each and every one of those shits. I’m going to do stuff that heads don’t do nowadays. I’m going to show you that I’m on your level and that I’m not no superstar. It feels good doing that. Fuck a label and a marketing team. You don’t need that shit. There’s 10 billion people on the internet daily. If you can get 1% of that, you can feed your family for years.

Are you more accessible to fans today through MySpace and other online outlets?

Yeah. Now I understand the business part of it. I’ve been working on my businesses and doing what I do on the low. I don’t have any hits on the low and you haven’t seen any Deck albums out there. I have a lot of things going on. But for the most part, it’s hard to live with hearing that you have so much potential and that you’re the illest and it never translates. You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to put my shit into a book. A poetry book with all my rhymes of shit that you haven’t heard. I have rhyme books that my mom done found in her old crib. I have mad poetry and I’m going to put it in a book so people can really see what I’m talking about.

I’m going to call it something controversial too. Motherfuckers are running with this “Greatest Lyricist of All-Time” and I want to challenge that. Being the Greatest Lyricist of All-Time doesn’t mean the one who sold the most records. It’s the one whose lyrics are just that outstanding. I think I would qualify for something like that. The best lyricist of all time, you can definitely put me and GZA in that category and a lot of people I know in that category.

Does not getting recognition from the industry and major labels ever discourage you?

It’s discouraging at times but I do what I do. You know what it is? They want me to take my shirt off and wet my chest and pour honey on myself and do other stupid shit for the camera. If I turned into an image of another artist, maybe they would move a different way. Maybe I should get a bunch of girls around me and act like I’m a pimp. I’m going to be me. In a video, the other guys are my actual homies. It’s big business and it’s bigger than that. I’m just talking about Inspectah Deck on the ground level. On a bigger level and with big business, for me to have a successful album, and I know that I can go platinum at any time, I would have to go relocate. I could get with any team moving and any label situation and go function, man. I know I can. Would I do it? I probably wouldn’t because that’s betrayal to everything that I stand for.

Inspectah Deck on G-Unit, the fans wouldn’t respect that. It would probably be a good move on my part because G-Unit has a good percentage of the units being moved in hip-hop right now, but if Wu-Tang got with G-Unit, the fans would be like, ‘Fuck that!’ A good situation for me would be to have an ill RZA-produced album with all the Clan members as well as outside members as well as production from outside producers. That would fucking be a hit for Inspectah Deck with some push to it. It would sell like it was supposed to sell, not what we’re hoping it could sell.

Looking at some songs, like “9 Milli Brothers”, sometimes your voice doesn’t sound like it normally does. Is that from recording with a cold or is it a more serious problem?

It’s happened a few times; recording a verse with a cold. On this album, I recorded “Stick Me For My Riches” with a cold. I had a cold and I wanted to come back. I just said, “You know what? Leave the verse and I’ll come back.” I went overseas and went over there and we fucked around and the deadline came and I never got to change my verse. So the verse with the cold is on the fucking album and I’m insulted by it. Other people are telling me that it doesn’t sound that bad, but to me, it distinctively doesn’t sound like me and it makes my rhyme sound kind of wack. I take pride in my shit and I can say when I’m not feeling it. To me, I know it’s a tight verse. The next thing you know, that’s how it is on the album though. People can hear it and be like, ‘Who’s that?’ ‘Oh, that’s Inspectah Deck.’ ‘Oh, that’s the song he was talking about!’

Raekwon is working on a new album, Shaolin vs. Wu-Tang. Will you be a part of that project?

I am part of that, man. Word. That’s going to save my ass. I’m definitely a part of that. I would love to do an album like a chaser. This is an album that the artists wanted to do as opposed to, ‘Okay, this is an album that the producer wanted to do.’ I think that would be good for hip-hop and I don’t think that would be any disrespect towards RZA. It would be like the artists put out their own album because that’s what they wanted to do. Now let the fans choose. The only difference is that it might cost them $20. But controversy sells and I think the fans would love that.

If you consider Shaolin vs. Wu-Tang a chaser to 8 Diagrams, would the album drop fairly soon?

It could come as early as next year, man. It could come as early as January or February. To me, it depends on who’s really riding with it. It depends on who’s really riding with it. I’m about it. I’m about whatever is going to take my career further. I’m not here on no personal feelings shit. I’m with whatever is going to take my career further. I’m going to keep doing what I do successfully and I’m with that. Why not put out an album like Shaolin vs. Wu-Tang? That was one of the most famous movies that we got a lot of our skits from and a lot of our personas from. Shaolin vs. Wu-Tang, that’s where Wu-Tang was born. The artist versus the producer makes it good for rap.


Do you think everybody in the Clan will be on board?

I think so. I think so. I think when they listen to this album and they see where RZA was coming from and then they listen to Shaolin vs. Wu-Tang and we get the Havoc’s and the Q-Tip’s and all the ill producers out there, I think the fans would love to hear that. I think the fans would love to hear Meth, Rae and Ghost killing it off an Alchemist track. Hell yeah! (laughs) You know what I mean!

Over the years, have a lot of big-name producers expressed an interest in wanting to work with Wu-Tang?

Of course, man. Of course. There’s a long line of people who want to get involved in that.

Before you have to leave, can you take us through your writing process and how your verses come together?

I guess life, man. There’s no real structured formula to it. I might think of a phrase in my head. For example, I was thinking of a rhyme and I just caught the phrase, “Martin got shot in the face on the balcony in front of Jesse, they were probably smokin’ weed.” To me, that sounds like a line that Ghost would open up with, so I wrote it down. From there on, the next time I see the paper and I come back, or even right now when I’m talking, I might hang up the phone with you and come with the other part. That’s a dart. Most of the time for me, it starts with a line. The whole line sets off what you’re going to talk about.

Where do you do your best writing?

Shit, I do my shit everywhere, man. I used to keep the notebook on me. I used to roll around with the notebook on me, but now I got one of the voice recorders on the phone, so every now and then I stop and I say some stupid shit. I’ll write some shit in my house at 4 in the morning, smoking a blunt, watching YouTube and fucking around. The next thing you know, I’m coming with some shit when the house is quiet and the kids are asleep.

What’s your focus going to be for the next few months?

These two albums and my label. I’m working on these groups and Urban Icon Records. You’re going to see The Rebellion come out on that and Resident Patient Part 2 on the internet. I’m also looking at doing outside production. I can’t be jumping offstage no more. I’m getting into CEO mode right now.


What do you want to say to all the Wu-Tang fans out there?

Don’t let this interview persuade you with the album. But I can’t sit here and say the album is outstanding and that it is going to blow your mind. I’m not with the fraudulent shit. Expect me to be real, whether you like it or not. That’s all I can say to y’all.

www.hiphopgame.com

~~~

JOKES. BAD JOKES, LOL:

By Arthur Spiegelman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - "Don't Tase Me, Bro," a phrase that swept the nation after a U.S. college student used it seeking to stop campus police from throwing him out of a speech by Sen. John Kerry, was named Wednesday as the most memorable quote of 2007.

Fred R. Shapiro, the editor of the Yale Book of Quotations, said the plea made by University of Florida student Andrew Meyer on September 17, accompanied by Meyer's screams as he was tased, beat out the racial slur that cost shock jock Don Imus his job and the Iranian president's declaration that his country does not have homosexuals.

Shapiro said Meyer's quote was a symbol of pop culture success. Within two days it was one of the most popular phrases on Google and one of the most viewed videos. It also showed up on ringtones and T-shirts.

Second on Shapiro's list was this tortuous answer by Lauren Upton, the South Carolina contestant in the Miss Teen America contest in August:

"I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because some people out there in our nation don't have maps and I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and Iraq and everywhere like such as and I believe that they should our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S. or should help South Africa and should help Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future for us."

Upton had been asked why one-fifth of Americans are unable to locate the United States on a map and later apologized for her answer not making a lot of sense.

Third was Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's October comment at Columbia University in New York, "In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country."

Shock jock Don Imus comments about the Rutgers University women's basketball team: "That's some nappy-headed hos there," was fourth.

Imus created a national outcry and lost his job at CBS radio in April, but returned to the airwaves in December with Citadel Broadcasting.

Other phrases on the list:

5. "I don't recall." -- Former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' repeated response to questioning at a congressional hearing about the firing of U.S. attorneys.

6. "There's only three things he (Republican presidential candidate and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani) mentions in a sentence: a noun and a verb and 9/11." -- Sen. Joseph Biden, speaking at a Democratic presidential debate.

7. "I'm not going to get into a name-calling match with somebody (Vice President Dick Cheney) who has a 9 percent approval rating." -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat.

8. "(I have) a wide stance when going to the bathroom." -- Idaho Republican Sen. Larry Craig's explanation of why his foot touched that of an undercover policeman in a men's room.

9. "I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a storybook, man." -- Biden describing rival Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

10. "I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history." -- Former President Jimmy Carter in an interview in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette newspaper.

(Editing by Jill Serjeant and Eric Beech)

~~~



In Iowa last Tuesday, a man--a good friend and a brilliant professor named Kembrew McLeod, actually--dressed up as a robot--yes, a robot--to heckle Bill Clinton on, of all things, the infamous 1992 Sister Souljah incident.

You may remember that one: at a crucial moment in his presidential campaign, Clinton seized on a decontextualized quote by the rapper about the Los Angeles riots to reassure white voters that he was solidly on their team. (Then he went on Arsenio Hall to play a disastrous sax solo.)

So against the round booing of 400 FOBs--none of whom, it may be safely presumed, had ever been forcibly detained like Wen Ho Lee--my-friend-the-robot dropped a club promoter's amount worth of flyers that detailed Clinton's disservices to racial justice while, at the top of his lungs, demanding on behalf of all robots that the Great Triangulator apologize to Souljah.

It's true that a lot has changed since then. A rap group even won an Academy Award. And I'm still not sure why my man needed to be in a robot suit. But he had a point.

The resentments that made it possible for Bill Clinton to summon race, class, and generational divides to scold youths of color into behaving properly towards nice middle-of-the-road voters haven't disappeared. Think of how the Don Imus firing turned into a referendum on rap earlier this year. (And think of how much money Imus received to return to the airwaves.) Think of the 50 noose incidents in the two months since the march on Jena in September.

The culture wars have never really ended.

Recently, two more robots--these of the neocon variety--raised the specter of the unfinished culture wars: Shelby Steele, the biracial Hoover Fellow who emerged during the late 80s to decry Black militancy and absolve white guilt, and Andrew Sullivan, the gay white libertarian whose support for Charles Murray's crackpot, eugenics-inspired The Bell Curve became one of biggest battles of the era. Steele's thin book, A Bound Man, and Sullivan's cover story in The Atlantic take as their subject the un-Clinton, Barack Obama.

At the peak of the culture wars, Obama was a pro-multiculti student-activist. His biography, Dreams From My Father, is an artifact of a time when publishers were going bonkers for memoirs of young people of color. Still, Steele--whose Black conservatism once made him a bonus-point star in the diversity quest--finds Obama attractive, potentially an "antidote to corrosive racial politics" and "a living rebuke to both racism and racialism, to both segregation and identity politics". But because Obama won't challenge Black victimhood or absolve white guilt, Steele argues, he is bound to lose.

Actually, Obama has his own version of real talk--defending the power of rap artists while lecturing them on their moral values, for instance. And he has made peace with aging civil rights leaders not just by necessity, but because he agrees with much of their agenda. Perhaps the prospect of Obama ending the culture war with a progressive racial justice platform supported by whites is what really concerns Steele. Obama might actually become a more effective Black president than Bill Clinton ever was.

In truth, Steele is fighting old battles. He uses his Obama book to restate his thesis about declining black responsibility and take swipes at Cornel West. For him, all Black interaction with whites is conditioned by a desire to "bargain" or "challenge", to be Oprah or Jesse, Martin Luther King, Jr. or Malcolm X. Whites, in turn, are primarily motivated by gratitude or guilt. These are tediously familiar arguments to anyone who suffered them through the mid-90s (when some conservatives declared themselves multiculturalists after all, and some white liberals starting cashing in on Steele's steez: yup, love and theft).

But if Kanye West can call Bush on his racism and still become one of the nation's best-loved musicians, haven't things changed? Here is a generational difference Steele--who has interesting things to say about Louis Armstrong and Sidney Poitier (while ignoring Paul Robeson)--cannot bring himself to consider, for it would admit not only that his old war is a losing cause, but that Obama and the hip-hop generation will be the ones to hammer that last nail in the coffin.

Oddly, the end of the culture war is a prospect that Sullivan--up until now no kumbaya guy on "identity politics"--is not only willing to consider, but ready to embrace. Obama is the real Third Way, the light out of the Baby Boomers' rancor and hypocrisy. He is even ready to forgive Obama's "urban liberalism". The symbol of one who stands between Christian and Muslim, black and white is too big to pass up. He is "the bridge to the 21st Century that Bill Clinton told us about."

But though the culture war has been fought around symbols, it has borne its own strange fruit: an unremittingly harsh view of the rapidly emerging, thoroughly browning post-Boomer generation. The culture wars, in fact, sacrificed a generation under the guise of legislative wars on drugs, gangs, and youth. Abandonment and containment have been the dominant themes of the post-Boomers.

So we now live in a country where racial and economic segregation of students and teachers approach pre-Brown vs. Board of Education levels. Campuses allegedly overrun by tenured radicals remain ivory towers where 80% of faculty are white. Young women and men of color are being disappeared into prisons at historically high rates. Black and Latino poverty rates remain twice that of whites.

Perhaps Sullivan's and other conservatives' battle fatigue may actually be the key to a progressive turn. He notes that, of all the Democratic candidates, Obama attracts the most support from Republicans. Could it be that they too are tired of the nonsense? And it has been a conservative Supreme Court that has undone the excesses of allegedly "centrist" lawmaking that
criminalized vast numbers of youths of color--striking down anti-loitering ordinances and the death penalty for those under 18, and rolling back the effects of mandatory minimums.

But although Obama has gestured toward a platform that takes up some of these problems, the larger discussion remains off the table for most candidates and reporters. Clearly, it takes a certain kind of robot to see that the end of the culture wars will have to come through addressing the schisms of race, class, and generation.


Jeff Chang is the author of the award-winning Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of The Hip-Hop Generation, and covered Barack Obama for Vibe Magazine. His next book is on the selling of American multiculturalism.
www.cantstopwontstop.com

~~~

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=15116190&blogID=337038264

Many people have long believed the first Hip Hop cop came out of New York City and recently arrived on the scene sometime after 9-11.Much of this is centered on the Hip Hop's infamous Hip Hop task force whose existence was initially denied by law enforcement but later discovered to be run by former NYPD detective Derek Parker. Things really hit the fan so to speak when it was discovered that this NYPD task force had amassed a 500 page dossier that detailed the comings and goings and other sensitive detail of some of Hip Hop's biggest stars. Parker and his task force have since been the subject of several high profile news stories, a documentary and a book he authored.

However, long before Parker and the Hip Hop Task Force came along I was aware of another Hip Hop cop whose name was shrouded in mystery but he was known among law enforcement as the go to guy when it came to dealing with gangster rap. His name is Ron Stallworth and he came straight outta Salt Lake City, Utah. In my mind he is Hip Hop's first cop and he is the author of 4 books including; 1)Gangster Rap: Music, Culture & Politics, 2)Significant Developments in Gangster Rap Music Since the Rodney King Uprising, 3)Bringin' The Noise--Gangster Rap/Reality Rap in the Dynamics of Black Revolution, and 4)Real Niggas: Gang Bangin' To The Gangsta Boogie in AmeriKKKa.

If that's not enough Stallworth has testified before Congress and the Senate Judiciary Committee where he submitted some very compelling papers. Currently he is retired but still lectures to law enforcement communities around the country about Hip Hop.

A Brief History of Blacks Being Surveilled

Now before we move on lets look at rappers being watched by the police and put things in some sort of historical perspective. This means that we have to go back to dates and times that predate Hip Hop.

Organized and institutionalized surveillance of the Black community, Black organizations and Black men in particular has been around ever since we were dragged here from the shores of Africa in chains and made slaves. Whether it was the threat and fear of revolting slaves on the plantation or freedom fighters like Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King, the Black Panthers or Malcolm X revolting against the system in more contemporary times, Black folks who chose to stand up and take on 'the system' have always been watched by those in power.

As KRS-One eloquently put it in his song 'Sound of the Police', once upon a time we had overseers watching the Black slaves on the plantation. Today that overseer has turned into the officer who is now charged with watching over Black folks in the hood.

For those who think this is exaggeration, all you have to do is look to the 'hey day' of the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements in the 60s and 70s where you'll find the enactment of the FBI concocted a program called COINTEL-Pro.Then FBI director J Edgar Hoover felt that many of the freedom fighting organizations like SNCC, The SCLC, the Black Muslims and the Black Panthers were a threat to national security and thus needed to be infiltrated and monitored In fact at one point some of these groups were labeled terrorists.

The leaders of these groups sparked a deep seeded fear in Hoover who stated that it was important that the US government contain militant groups and watch out for the rise of a Black messiah. The FBI used all sorts of tactics to disrupt the unity and organizing efforts these groups attempted to forge. The FBI became really concerned when these groups and leaders reached out and attempted to form bridges with urban street gangs or in the case of King and Malcolm X attempted to reach out and identify with freedom fighters on the international stage.

The Cointel-pro program was supposedly dismantled in the 70s as the Black Panthers and other Black Power organizations were dismantled, neutralized or outright destroyed but many believed surveillance of Black leaders and groups still continued in some form or fashion-under another name.

With respect to Hip Hop, law enforcement definitely had its scope locked on folks because Hip Hop emerged from gang culture. Under the guise of restoring 'law and order' and maintaining public safety many of the large street gangs coast to coast that came up in the aftermath of the Panthers demise found themselves at war with law enforcement. In New York City gangs like the Black Spades where a young Hip Hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa served as a war lord were definitely being watched.

Bam confirmed this in a recent interview when he noted that back in the pioneering days as gang culture was giving way to Hip Hop; the NYPD had a ruthless anti-gang squad called the Purple Hearts who would routinely come out and harass and shoot gang members. He noted things really got out of hand when some of those gangs including his Black Spades surrounded the police station and physically confronted police to protest the brutality. Bam also noted that although the gangs were essentially outlaws, they were still influenced by the Black Panthers and that willingness to stand up for Black Power was reflected in the rebellious spirit of the gangs. So in a nutshell if Cointel-pro was designed to destroy the Panthers it didn't succeed in killing the spirit.

In the early 70s the Black Spades under the leadership of a politicized Bambaataa began to change their ways and became the Organization. The Organization later morphed into the Mighty Zulu Nation with the emergence of Hip Hop culture as a backdrop. The Zulus who took their name from the South African tribe that fought against Dutch Rule in South Africa, went on to become Hip Hop's earliest and now oldest organization. Although it took a long time and many meetings, Bam's goal was to get some of the rough and rugged gang members to turn a new leaf and start cleaning up the projects and become a international organization. With all this in mind, it would be naïve to think that law enforcement surveillance suddenly stopped because people were not actively gang banging.

If anything more surveillance was likely to befall groups like Zulu Nation because they were politicizing the gangs. Many speculate it was this sort of politicizing activity that led to the assassination of former Black Panther leader Fred Hampton in Chicago who was trying to link the Black Panthers with Chicago street gangs like the Black Stone Rangers and the Black Disciples. We now know that he and the panthers in Chicago were constantly being watched.

If we chronicle some of the biggest street movements within Hip Hop you'll find that it wasn't too far removed from the street gangs. You can look at the new era of Hip Hop ushered in by acts like Eric B and Rakim when they dropped their Paid in Full Album and see right there on the back of their album cover the notorious Fort Greene Crew which included legendary stick up kids like the original 50 Cent. You don't think the police weren't keeping an eye and ear out on those guys?

If we fast forward into the so called Golden era of Hip Hop in the late 80s and early 90s when groups like Public Enemy, X-Clan and Brand Nubian hit the scene when can again see that important connection to the streets, gangs and organizing. And yes, there is no doubt that these groups were being watched. It may have come in the form of the 98 Posse and Nation of Islam with groups like Public Enemy, the 5% Nation with groups like Brand Nubian or Poor Righteous Teachers or Blackwatch with X-Clan. On the west coast you had groups like N.W.A. and Ice T who helped introduce the world to Southern Cali's gang culture which included the Bloods and Crips. This is where Ron Stallworth comes in..

His books were written when gangsta rap first started to come out of Los Angeles and LA gang culture began to makes its way to Utah in the late 80s and early 90s. He continued to update his findings till the day he retired two years ago. His books are department issued self-publications which have been read widely by his fellow officers. They are extremely thorough, very detailed and have a keen political analysis that would actually shock most people outside of law enforcement because of some of the positions and conclusions Stallworth takes.

In addition to breaking down the lyrics, street culture and gang connections behind the songs and groups Stallworth and is Utah based unit (Department of Public Safety) kept tabs on, his books gave prophetic warnings as to what would likely happen if certain suppression based policies and practices weren't changed or completely eradicated. Stallworth felt that it was important his fellow officers had a clear understanding of the socio-economic and political conditions that gave rise to some of the material put out by so called gangsta rappers and Afro-centric socially conscious rappers. He let his fellow officers know why some of the rap songs being put out advocated for harm and outright killing of police. In a recent interview Stallworth noted that some of his analyses did not always fit well with his brethren, but he vowed to remain objective and speak the truth.

I first became aware of Stallworth's existence back in 93-94 when I sat on a Hip Hop panel at Laney College in Oakland alongside an Oakland police officer who was also on the panel. This particular officer happened to have a copy of his first book 'Gangster Rap: Music, Culture & Politics' He let me look at the book for a few minutes and as I thumbed through the pages I was blown away by the amount of detail it had on popular gangsta rap acts at the time like Eazy E and NWA, DJ Quik, Ice T and others. When I say detail, I mean it would mention the artists and note his gang affiliation and had lyrics to his songs with explanations as to what the artists was saying and what he was really meant. At that time I had not seen any book out like that…

Just as I was starting to really get drawn into things the panel started and the officer told me I could no longer look at the book because it was just for officers in the Oakland police department. I asked him where he got the book and he became real vague. He said the book wasn't available for the public and that it was just for police officers and that the guy who wrote it was a Sergeant out of Utah. He told me the guys name was Ron 'Shuttlesworth' and told me to look him up on the Utah police department.

Now, here's a few things that were running through my mind at that time. First I kept asking myself, who in the world would ever think a police officer from Utah would be up on gangsta rap? Second, it blew me away while at the same time it left me impressed that OPD had such in depth details about rap. The author of this book from what I read seemed to know a hell of a lot more than most people who were in the industry itself. Over the years I would tell people to be aware that OPD had some sort of book detailing all the rappers and that folks needed to be aware and careful about the things they said and did.

Lastly I never was able to get a hold of Sergeant 'Shuttlesworth' because years later I discovered the Oakland police officer had given me the wrong name and telephone number. Over the years, I tried in vain to track down this book with no luck. Every time I would ask officers who were guest on my radio shows about this book on gangsta rap, they would look at me and say they didn't know what I was talking about. It became a running joke of sorts because usually when I had Oakland officers on to talk about some sort of topic connected Hip Hop they would display a great deal of knowledge about the genre and I would always comment that it was because of Stallworth's book. They would in turn always emphatically deny having these books. I even asked former Oakland Police Chief Richard Ward about the books and he too denied their existence.
It got to a point where I had so many officers look me in the eye and say there was no such book on gangsta rap, that I began to wonder if I had actually seen the book.

I finally got confirmation about three or four years ago when my old DJ partner started working for the sheriff department. He saw the book and told me that there were updated versions of what I had read and they were pretty detailed. He went on to add that he could not bring them to me because they were only for the police department and as a rookie officer he did not wanna risk getting in trouble.

I felt somewhat vindicated, but it wasn't until I read an article on the AP wire about Stallworth retiring from the Utah police force that I felt completely vindicated.

His name came up in the most usual way. You see about 30 years ago Stallworth made a name for himself by infiltrating the Ku Klux Klan in Colorado Springs.

That in itself is a crazy story. How in the world did a brown skin Black man infiltrate the Klan? What's even more bugged is that Stallworth was so good at his job that he was even offered the position of Klan chapter leader. His Klan membership card was issued by to him personally by KKK leader David Duke whom he once bodyguard. His incredible police work led to the eventual dismissal of Klan members who had joined the United States Army with a couple of members actually working at NORAD. (North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).

This is a story that is so unbelievable that in many ways eclipses Stallworth's work in Hip Hop. In fact it was at the end of this article of him joining the Klan that there was a one line sentence stating that Stallworth was an expert in gangsta rap. Hours after I posted a blog running down my long search for Stallworth that I got an email and eventual phone call from him where he gave me the run down of what led him to becoming an expert on gangsta rap. We eventually connected face to face and did this incredible interview

In part 1 of our Breakdown FM Interview we talked with Stallworth about his adventures with the KKK and how after 27 years David Duke is just finding out he had been duped. What's even crazier is that on the back of the KKK membership card which Stallworth is shown holding in the photo above the first rule that all Klansmen are obliged to follow is to -Never talk to undercover cops... It looks like David Duke violated his own rules. Maybe he needs to be kicked out.

Breakdown Interview Evolution of the Hip Hop Police pt2

In our interview explained that he had no intention to become any sort of expert or to keep tabs on rappers. He's an old school type of cat who was working in Utah department of Public Safety.

One of the things this department was charged with doing was engaging the youth gangs. In the late 80s and early 90s Stallworth noted that many of the white Mormon kids started to associate themselves with Crip and Blood culture out of South Central LA and Compton and thus formed gangs. This sort of attachment puzzled Stallworth who eventually made trips to Los Angeles and teamed up with gang task force leaders to see first hand how gangs were operating and how and why they had such a hold on white kids in Utah. He eventually discovered that gangster rap via groups like NWA is how these white Mormon kids were getting their leads and cues. They were fascinated with what they concluded was 'black culture'.

Out of necessity Stallworth had to become an expert in this new subgenre of Hip Hop. The rest they say is history. Stallworth felt it was important to truly understand the culture of He then began to see how police misconduct had fueled a lot of the rage being expressed in the songs. This led to Stallworth writing a ten page paper which contained his conclusions and observations became the basis for his first book.

In this interview Stallworth breaks down the methods he used to gather intelligence. He said it was all about connecting the dots and that ironically many of the rappers themselves through their lyrics and album covers which showed graffiti, street signs and other key indicators provided all the information he and other law enforcement officials needed to paint a picture.

He talks about how the biggest challenge he faced was explaining to other officers the perspective of the rappers and how and why law enforcement needed to change some of their approaches. He wanted the police to study the artists, and find common ground which he felt could lead to better relationships in the community.

He admitted that many officers were invested in maintaining a negative outlook and too often over reacted to situations that could best be diffused with better understanding. In our interview Stallworth referenced a situation in Detroit involving NWA where plain clothes officers rushed the stage after the group attempted to perform the song 'Fuck tha Police'.

In order for Stallworth to maintain what he saw as an objective outlook he would write the books that was issued to the department on his own time and publish them with his own money and resources.

During our interview we discussed the history of surveillance in the Black community in particular Cointel-Pro. Stallworth explained in great detail how and why what he was doing was not the same as Hoover. First and foremost he felt Hoover crossed the line and violated the constitution. In fact he noted that Hoover needed to be jailed. With respect to his operation, he basically listened to the material put out by the artists and then cross referenced things with police resources. In other words if a rapper said he was down with gang, then Stallworth would check that out and see if it was true or not. If an artist took a picture of a street sign and put it on his album cover, he would check it out and see what the deeper significance behind it. In short many rappers were telling on themselves.

Breakdown Interview Evolution of the Hip Hop Police pt3

We conclude our three part conversation with retired Sergeant Ron Stallworth. Here we talk about the 4 books he's written on Hip Hop and Gangsta Rap. We pay particular attention to the book he wrote on Hip Hop activism.

He spoke about the things he saw and heard within Hip Hop that predicted what would eventually take place during the Rodney King rebellion in 1992.

Stallworth noted that today rap music has been neutralized and has lost a lot of its urgent message. He says today kids are all about making money and that's clearly reflected in many of the songs that are commercially viable. Says we live in a time when people want to escape poverty.

We spoke about the Stop Snitching Movement. He personally finds it disgraceful; however he understands the sentiments behind it. He says people in the community are getting the wrong message when they are being asked to tell while Congressmen remain silent when they are asked to speak out.

We talked about studio gangsters. Stallworth said there are a number of rappers who say lots of things in records that don't add up when he checked them out. He cited Snoop Dogg and Ice T are glaring examples. He also talked about the 2Pac case and Suge Knight. He said if he was running the investigation into Pac's killing he would start with Suge. He then talked about the Death Row organization and it being a unique in the sense that it was represented by both Bloods and Crips.

Lastly we talked about the music industry and the role that street gangs played and how they are perceived by law enforcement versus traditional organized crime like the Mafia. We talked about how and why the street gangs came under surveillance and why we don't hear as much about the mob.

www.daveyd.com

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Dr. Mutulu Shakur - Dec. 2007 Parole Report
Category: News and Politics

TO: Friends and Supporters of Dr. Mutulu Shakur

FROM: Teri Thompson, Attorney

RE: Interim Parole Hearing

The Interim Parole Hearing for Dr. Shakur was held on December 11, 2007 at USP-Florence ADMAX. Mutulu and I thank each of you for your letters, prayers and support. Below is my report of the Hearing.

[History of the Case]

Federal law provides, in relevant part, that a federal inmate who is eligible for parole may be released on parole after completion of one-third of his prison term or after 10 years of any sentence over 30 years. Dr. Shakur was eligible for parole in 1996. However, his efforts to have a parole hearing in 1996 were blocked by various forces.

In 2002, an Initial Parole Hearing was finally convened. The Parole Commission denied parole to Dr. Shakur and ordered a 15 year reconsideration date. Therefore, Dr. Shakur is not eligible for parole reconsideration until 2017. We have always maintained that because of the 6 year delay, Dr. Shakur should be eligible for parole in 2011.

In 2004, we filed a Petition of Writ of Habeas Corpus in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia to address, inter alia, the six year delay in having a parole hearing (from 1996 to 2002). Despite our legal battles which ultimately took us to the United States Supreme Court, the highest court declined to hear our case in 2006.

Even though Dr. Shakur was given a 15 year "hit" in 2002, federal law provides Interim Parole Hearings every 2 years. In 2005, after the Interim Parole Hearing, the Parole Commission refused to acknowledge the 6 year delay, and maintained that Dr. Shakur would not be eligible again for parole until 2017.

[2007 Interim Parole Hearing]

On December 11, 2007,the Interim Parole Hearing was held at the country's most isolated dungeon, USP-Florence, or "Supermax," as it is commonly referred to, located in the mountains of Florence, Colorado. There is absolutely no human contact or interaction. In fact, our Hearing was held inside of an attorney's booth; Dr. Shakur was separated by glass and handcuffed.

The Hearing Officer began by reciting the standard rules of Interim Parole Hearings: To determine whether there have been any rule changes and to review any and all "positive and negative adjustments" since the 2005 Interim Parole Hearing.

Ironically, the Hearing Officer commented that the recent allegations that are documented in the two disciplinary reports that Dr. Shakur received which resulted in his transfer to the Supermax facility were "minor infractions" in his opinion. He further stated that Dr. Shakur's transfer to Supermax was also "not significant" and the fact that we were convened inside of the Supermax facility was not relevant to his decision.

We argued again for the record that the 6 year delay from 1996 to 2002 was unlawful and that Dr. Shakur should have a parole reconsideration date of 2011, rather than 2017. The Hearing Officer stated that he was bound by the previous decision of the Parole Commission.

We also argued that the recent allegations contained in the recent disciplinary reports were false and that we were actively appealing each allegation through all available administrative channels. We also maintained that the transfer to Supermax was unjustified.

We raised each of the positive contributions made by Dr. Shakur at USP-Atlanta and USP-Coleman, highlighting his continuous service to rebuilding men. We also covered his detailed plans for release and reentry into society.

[Conclusion]

While the Hearing Officer appeared attentive and impressed by our presentation, Interim Parole Hearings generally serve to review an inmate's file and to determine whether there is enough evidence to modify the 15 year "hit." The Hearing Officer noted that while he found no cause to change the previous decision, the final decision, referred to as a Notice of Action, will be released in approximately 30 days. We will appeal any adverse decision.

I have been proud to serve as Dr. Shakur's attorney over the years despite the number of legal battlefields we have encountered. I encourage each of you to continue to support him in the midst of such times as these. Every single letter counts; I was proud to introduce over 20 letters from various supporters throughout the country and from all walks of life to the Hearing Officer. They will be a part of his file in Washington, D.C.

Dr. Shakur extends his gratitude and love to each one of you. Dr. Shakur remains a bulwark of strength and a never-ending diplomat for peace.

~~~

http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/magazine/16-01/ff_yorke

It seemed like a crazy idea. When Radiohead said it would release its new album, In Rainbows, as a pay-what-you-will digital download, you'd have thought the band had gone communist. After all, Thom Yorke and company are one of the world's most successful groups — a critical darling as well as a fan favorite for nearly 15 years. They hadn't put out a new album in more than four years, and the market was hungry for their next disc. So why would Radiohead conduct such a radical experiment?

It turns out the gambit was a savvy business move. In the first month, about a million fans downloaded In Rainbows. Roughly 40 percent of them paid for it, according to comScore, at an average of $6 each, netting the band nearly $3 million. Plus, since it owns the master recording (a first for the band), Radiohead was also able to license the album for a record label to distribute the old-fashioned way — on CD. In the US, it goes on sale January 1 through TBD Records/ATO Records Group.

While pay-what-you-will worked for Radiohead, though, it's hard to imagine the model paying off for Miley Cyrus — aka chart-topping teenybopper Hannah Montana. Cyrus' label, Walt Disney Records, will stick to selling CDs in Wal-Mart, thank you very much. But the truth is that Radiohead didn't intend In Rainbows to start a revolution. The experiment simply proves there is plenty of room for innovation in the music business — this is just one of many new paths. Wired asked David Byrne — a legendary innovator himself and the man who wrote the Talking Heads song "Radio Head" from which the group takes its name — to talk with Yorke about the In Rainbows distribution strategy and what others can learn from the experience.


Byrne: OK.

Yorke: [To assistant.] Shut the bloody door.

Byrne: Well, nice record, very nice record.

Yorke: Thank you. Wicked.

Byrne: [Laughs.]

Yorke: That's it, isn't it?

Byrne: That's it, we're done. [Laughs.] OK. I'll start by asking some of the business stuff. What you did with this record wasn't traditional, not even in the sense of sending advance copies out to the press and such.

Yorke: The way we termed it was "our leak date." Every record for the last four — including my solo record — has been leaked. So the idea was like, we'll leak it, then.

Byrne: Previously there'd be a release date, and advance copies would get sent to reviewers months ahead of that.

Yorke: Yeah, and then you'd ring up and say, "Did you like it? What did you think?" And it's three months in advance. And then it'd be, "Would you go do this for this magazine," and maybe this journalist has heard it. All these silly games.

Byrne: That's mainly about the charts, right? About gearing marketing and prerelease to the moment a record comes out so that — boom! — it goes into the charts.

Yorke: That's what major labels do, yeah. But it does us no good, because we don't cross over [to other fan bases]. The main thing was, there's all this bollocks [with the media]. We were trying to avoid that whole game of who gets in first with the reviews. These days there's so much paper to fill, or digital paper to fill, that whoever writes the first few things gets cut and pasted. Whoever gets their opinion in first has all that power. Especially for a band like ours, it's totally the luck of the draw whether that person is into us or not. It just seems wildly unfair, I think.




Byrne: So this bypasses all those reviewers and goes straight to the fans.

Yorke: In a way, yeah. And it was a thrill. We mastered it, and two days later it was on the site being, you know, preordered. That was just a really exciting few weeks to have that direct connection.

Byrne: And letting people choose their own price?

Yorke: That was [manager Chris Hufford's] idea. We all thought he was barmy. As we were putting up the site, we were still saying, "Are you sure about this?" But it was really good. It released us from something. It wasn't nihilistic, implying that the music's not worth anything at all. It was the total opposite. And people took it as it was meant. Maybe that's just people having a little faith in what we're doing.

Byrne: And that works for you guys. You have an audience ready. Like me — if I hear there's something new of yours out there, I'll just go and buy it without poking around about what the reviews say.

Yorke: Well, yeah. The only reason we could even get away with this, the only reason anyone even gives a shit, is the fact that we've gone through the whole mill of the business in the first place. It's not supposed to be a model for anything else. It was simply a response to a situation. We're out of contract. We have our own studio. We have this new server. What the hell else would we do? This was the obvious thing. But it only works for us because of where we are.

Byrne: What about bands that are just getting started?

Yorke: Well, first and foremost, you don't sign a huge record contract that strips you of all your digital rights, so that when you do sell something on iTunes you get absolutely zero. That would be the first priority. If you're an emerging artist, it must be frightening at the moment. Then again, I don't see a downside at all to big record companies not having access to new artists, because they have no idea what to do with them now anyway.

Byrne: It should be a load off their minds.

Yorke: Exactly.

Byrne: I've been asking myself: Why put together these things — CDs, albums? The answer I came up with is, well, sometimes it's artistically viable. It's not just a random collection of songs. Sometimes the songs have a common thread, even if it's not obvious or even conscious on the artists' part. Maybe it's just because everybody's thinking musically in the same way for those couple of months.

Yorke: Or years.

Byrne: However long it takes. And other times, there's an obvious...

Yorke: ... Purpose.

Byrne: Right. Probably the reason it's a little hard to break away from the album format completely is, if you're getting a band together in the studio, it makes financial sense to do more than one song at a time. And it makes more sense, if you're going to all the effort of performing and doing whatever else, if there's a kind of bundle.
Yorke: Yeah, but the other thing is what that bundle can make. The songs can amplify each other if you put them in the right order.
"Do you know where your income comes from?"

Byrne: Do you know, more or less, where your income comes from? For me, it's probably very little from actual music or record sales. I make a little bit on touring and probably the most from licensing stuff. Not for commercials — I license to films and television shows and that sort of thing.

Yorke: Right. We make some doing that.

Byrne: And for some people, the overhead for touring is really low, so they make a lot on that and don't worry about anything else.

Yorke: We always go into a tour saying, "This time, we're not going to spend the money. This time we're going to do it stripped down." And then it's, "Oh, but we do need this keyboard. And these lights." But at the moment we make money principally from touring. Which is hard for me to reconcile because I don't like all the energy consumption, the travel. It's an ecological disaster, traveling, touring.

Byrne: Well, there are the biodiesel buses and all that.

Yorke: Yeah, it depends where you get your biodiesel from. There are ways to minimize it. We did one of those carbon footprint things recently where they assessed the last period of touring we did and tried to work out where the biggest problems were. And it was obviously everybody traveling to the shows.

Byrne: Oh, you mean the audience.

Yorke: Yeah. Especially in the US. Everybody drives. So how the hell are we going to address that? The idea is that we play in municipal places with some transport system alternative to cars. And minimize flying equipment, shipping everything. We can't be shipped, though.

Byrne: [Laughs.]

Yorke: If you go on the Queen Mary or something, that's actually worse than flying. So flying is your only option.

Byrne: Are you making money on the download of In Rainbows?

Yorke: In terms of digital income, we've made more money out of this record than out of all the other Radiohead albums put together, forever — in terms of anything on the Net. And that's nuts. It's partly due to the fact that EMI wasn't giving us any money for digital sales. All the contracts signed in a certain era have none of that stuff.

Byrne: So when the album comes out as a physical CD in January, will you hire your own marketing firm?

Yorke: No. It starts to get a bit more traditional. When we first came up with the idea, we weren't going to do a normal physical CD at all. But after a while it was like, well, that's just snobbery. [Laughter.] A, that's asking for trouble, and B, it's snobbery. So now they're talking about putting it on the radio and that sort of thing. I guess that's normal.

Byrne: I've been thinking about how distribution and CDs and record shops and all that stuff are changing. But we're talking about music. What is music, what does music do for people? What do people get from it? What's it for? That's the thing that's being exchanged. Not all the other stuff. The other stuff is the shopping cart that holds some of it.

Yorke: It's a delivery service.

Byrne: But people will still pay to have that experience. You create a community with music, not just at concerts but by talking about it with your friends. By making a copy and handing it to your friends, you've established a relationship. The implication is that they're now obligated to give you something back.

Yorke: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was just thinking while you were saying that: How does a record company get their hands on that? It makes me think of the No Logo book where Naomi Klein describes how the Nike people would pay guys to get down with the kids on the street. I know for a fact that major record labels do the same thing. But no one has ever explained to me exactly how. I mean, do they lurk around in the discussion boards and post "Have you heard the..."? Maybe they do. And then I was thinking about that Johnny Cash film, when Cash walks in and says, "I want to do a live record in a prison," and his label thinks he's bonkers. Yet at the same time, it was able to somehow understand what kids wanted and give it to him. Whereas now, I think there's a lack of understanding. It's not about who's ripping off whom, and it's not about legal injunctions, and it's not about DRM and all that sort of stuff. It's about whether the music affects you or not. And why would you worry about an artist or a company going after people copying their music if the music itself is not valued?

Byrne: You're valuing the delivery system as opposed to the relationship and the emotional thing...

Yorke: You're valuing the company or the interest of the artists rather than the music itself. I don't know. We've always been quite naive. We don't have any alternative to doing this. It's the only obvious thing to do.

~~~

Us Placers - Child Rebel Soldiers



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