But how do you tell musicians who escaped the grips of poverty that they should rap about social issues when theyre trying to buy their mother a house? Theyre trying to get the hell out of the ghetto themselves. The people that theyre rapping to and rapping for, they experience five, six, seven days of hate, of pain, of psychological torture. They experience that. They dont even wanna hear about it anymore sometimes. They just want to escape. They escape through the fantasy of I drive a big car. I have a big house. Im a boss. Nobody can tell me what to do. That music can be as therapeutic as recognizing theres a big problem and speaking about it. How many years have we talked about the problem and nothing's been able to be done about it? Marvin Gaye said, Whats going on? Fast forward to my time, Ice Cube, Scarface, Chuck D, its all happened time and time again. But until citizensuntil societysays, This is what we want and what were ready for, how do you expect the artists to? I do this not because Im an artist but because Im an advocate. Im an organizer, through and through. Its who I am. I can no more escape this than the color of my skin. But I can tell you 99 rappers that are not. Theyre simply trying to make it out of their own personal hell. But with that said, I expect more, even out of them. And shits gotta change.
