Interview: Rhymefest

October 1st, 2006 | Written by: Mariama "Ms.M" Primus Published in Featured, Interviews, Music

BLUE COLLAR UNDERDOG

Rising Chicago-native hip-hop artist Rhymefest, speaks with TOUR-Mag on new album Blue Collar

TOUR Mag: First of all, I love your album. It’s phenomenal.

Rhymefest: Thank you very much.

TOUR Mag: Oh, you’re very welcome. I was honestly blown away listening to it. I like so many tracks on it; I can’t begin to tell you which one’s are my favorite; But “Sister” really hits home with me. I love it. I love that track.

Rhymefest: Thank you. It hits home with me too.

TOUR Mag: So, you were born and raised in Chicago?

Rhymefest: Yes ma’am.

TOUR Mag: Do you still live there?

Rhymefest: I live in between Chicago and Indianapolis. So, I have a home in Indiannapolis and I have a couple spots in Chicago I stay at. So, I’m back and forth.

TOUR Mag: What was the main driving force behind you starting your music career at 17?

Rhymefest: I wouldn’t even say that I started at 17. I would say that…I have talent. “Am I just a dancing monkey in the window? Am I just a cat rapping? This is the easy way out of the hood…. Is this is all I’m good at is rapping?” So many of us think we can rap and play basketball and that’s our way out. I often battled myself with that question. Then I realized I’ve been rapping since as long as I can remember…third grade, you know? As soon as I heard a hip-hop song I connected with it and before I heard a hip hop song, I was writing poetry. Like this is what my gift is. So, nothing sparked it. The spark is the inspiration. It comes from God. The spark is the want that I have to see my community grow and change and be balanced. And that inspiration, and that talent, and that desire is also the thing that makes me the underdog. Because I’m not doing it based on money, I’m doing it based on this is good music which sometimes, isn’t looked at as very marketable. You know, I don’t have as much radio play as Kanye. I don’t have as much radio play as Common, or Lupe, you know? But I’ve been able to be competitive with all of my colleagues who share good music.

TOUR Mag: The first song I heard of yours was Brand New. And I was like, “Oh okay.” It just immediately grabbed me…something about your style just immediately spoke to me. What I get from your music and your sound is a range that just comes off as you being yourself…no trying to fit any specific mold.

Rhymefest: And that’s what I’m trying to bring to music. That’s what I believe this album brings to hip-hop is balance. You can say “yo, put it on my stick. And I want to go to a club. And I want to have sex with a girl.” You don’t have to be asexual just to be an aware hip-hop artist. But then, you can say, “Man, I went to the club and I met a girl and yo, she was having all these problems. And her mother became a widow before she got the wedding ring, and Damn. All this stuff that this sista’s going through and I just wanted to fuck her.” You know what I mean?

And then, you can say: “Yo man, I just got off work. Times is hard, life is hard. I just lost my job. Baby, Oh my God!” You know balance…that’s what our children are missing, our community is missing. If you gonna talk about selling dope, talk about the kids that are at home eating paint chips off the wall ‘cause you sold they momma some dope and they momma left the 10 year-old, 5 year-old, 3 year-old [home] by themselves, with nothing to eat. Balance it out. Don’t just glorify it. If you gonna talk about going to the strip club, understand that 85% of all strippers have been molested. You know what I mean? Scarface would do it wonderfully. He would say, like in “My Mind Playing Tricks on Me,” he would say: “Day by day, I find it possible to cope/I feel like I’m the one that’s doing dope.” That was vulnerability. And the artists and young people today don’t have vulnerability and balance. If it was Tupac, Tupac would say: “You wonder why they call you bitch?” Then he would say: “To all my real sistahs/ yea, you found some bitches.” Duality. And that’s what this brings balance.

TOUR Mag: How long have you been working with Kanye?

Rhymefest: Kanye and I have been working together about 8 or 9 years.

TOUR Mag: How did that relationship develop?

Rhymefest: I think with Kanye, his thing is he has a wonderful perception of music. He wants to make the greatest songs; he wants to make the greatest music. Kanye desires legacy. And he knows that in order to do that, he needs to put a message in it. Beautiful music always has messages. Stevie Wonder, Bill Withers, Nina Simone…I mean, the list goes on and on. My thing is message. And I make great music, but I have more of a message. So when Kanye and I get together - have gotten together; it’s a combination of me putting my message into his music and him giving me bits and pieces of his music to put on top of my message. And it just blends and goes together very well.

TOUR Mag: And you won a Grammy as the co-writer of “Jesus Walks,” correct?

Rhymefest: Yes, ma’am.

TOUR Mag: Okay, and what was that moment like for you?

Rhymefest: You know…a Grammy, to me, is just a statue. It doesn’t give me any spiritual power. It doesn’t give me any power in the boardroom ‘cause at the end of the day, they don’t give a damn. They want to hear what music you got. “How did you perform it? How can you make me money? You made Kanye money. Make ME money.” You know? The Grammy is a beautiful honor. I was honored to get it. I would love to win more. But at the end of the day, it warms my heart more to make that little 12 year-old smile or to meet the fifteen year-old that’s like, “Wow!” And I’m like, “Yo, c’mon, let’s take pictures together. Let me hear you rap. Let me give you pointers.” That is my award to change my community. That is my award to be a good man.

TOUR Mag: That’s great. And it’s not too often that you hear people say that. You’re looking at how you’re gonna move that next person. And most people are very egocentric about their music careers. They’re just worried about selling their next record, and don’t really care about the effect that it has.

Rhymefest: That’s because, number one, they’re cowards. And I’ll say it. See, this is another thing about me. I’m a fighter. I’m a warrior. I’m a soldier. And these other little rappers out here, doin’ what I call “poverty pimpin,” they [are] cowards. They cowards…. And I’ll tell ‘em to their face, they’re cowards. And I feel as though, when you say, “Look man, I’m just tryna get mine and feed my family.” That’s a dope-dealing mentality. That’s sayin’, you gonna feed your family at the expense of my children, at the expense of the kids in my community without a momma or daddy, that can turn the TV or the radio on and look at you like ‘God.’ You are a role model. We are examples. This is the Civil Rights movement. We are the leaders of an aging Civil Rights movement and we are not stepping up and taking our position. And the people are judging us. Look at all these rappers getting shot. Look at all these rappers getting killed by the people. And as long as we don’t step up and take care of our business, the people are gonna continue to kill us, are gonna continue to shoot us coming out the radio station. I walk through my neighborhood, ain’t nobody tryna rob me. I walk through my neighborhood, ain’t nobody tryna shoot me. You know, and I’ll tell ‘em the truth. “Brother, you need to get off the block selling dope.” It [also] goes to the so-called “conscious rappers”, which I hate that terminology. They need to jump off the stage, jump out the videos and jump back in the hood so shorty sees them as a viable option of what they can be. ‘Cause shorty needs to say it’s okay to be Talib Kweli. It’s okay to be Mos Def. It’s okay to be Rhymefest. It’s okay to be Common or Kanye. We need to hop back in our communities for a minute, and hop out of LaLa land, you know? We, as rappers, are cowards. We supposed to be the ones to speak up and be all hard and this, that and the other. We don’t even live in the hood no more. That’s our problem. And I say ‘our,’ I include me, you know? Because I…too. And it’s not just rappers. It’s DJ’s that are complicit with it. It’s journalists that allow rappers to be stupid by not asking us hard, challenging questions, exposing us to the people if we ain’t right. The whole industry is complicit in the dumbing down of our children.

TOUR Mag: Absolutely… How would you say that you’ve grown as an artist? I know, you say, you were also doing this as long as you can remember, but what has your personal evolution been like? I guess, getting more in touch with what your message is and how you want to be perceived by people.

Rhymefest: Well, I will say three words: drop the fear. Drop the fear of what people think, or what they say. Drop your fear of… “Man, I wanna do right; be a journalist or be a rapper, but I still gotta pay the bills so I’m working a job that won’t really allow me to fully concentrate on what my mission in life is”. When you drop the fear of what people expect… You know? Stop asking, “is this hood enough? If I don’t rap like this, this might not be hood. Is this what the hood want….” I call that the “nigga burden.” When you drop the fear of the “nigga burden,” when you drop your fear, then you will find evolution in yourself - change. You will grow, you will rise. When you stop grabbing so hard at the feather, and the feather keep floating in the air the more you grab at it, when you open your hand and just let it land in your hand, that’s when you’ve evolved … Does that make sense?

TOUR Mag: Definitely. One line you said I thought gave a good insight to the title that you chose for your album, “Blue Collar.” In your song, “Dynamite,” you said, “I know more real niggas that U-Haul, then Haul Crack.” And I really like that because it’s like you were giving a lot of weight to people who hold down regular lives and regular jobs rather than glorifying that street mentality…

Rhymefest: That is keeping it real, you know what I mean? I know guys that work at U-Haul that will whoop your ass, you know what I mean? They wanna work, they wanna support their families. They tryna do things the right way. They picking it up and they moving it around. They really carrying weight. And it’s like, these guys on the block that exploit children and go buy some gym shoes and some rims. That ain’t real. That’s poverty pimpin.

TOUR Mag: What are your favorite tracks off of Blue Collar?

Rhymefest: Well, the album as a whole. It’s just to me…I don’t really have any favorite tracks. I find myself listening to “All Girls Cheat,” a lot. I find myself listening to “Sister,” and “Bullet,” and more. …It depends on what mood you’re in.

TOUR Mag: Yea. “Bullet,” is a great one, too. You just have this knack for storytelling. I felt like I was watching a movie. I was watching the whole progression of this kid in the mall signing up for the army and all these things happen to him and him dying as a result. And it was just so sad because everybody knows somebody that did it for that same reason. Just tryna have enough money to get by or go to school to advance themselves and that’s not the way the story ended. It was really a moving song to me.

Rhymefest: It’s amazing how many times…you wouldn’t even be able to believe how many soldiers hear that song and come up to me and say, “That’s the story of my life,” you know what I mean? How many men—black men and white men—that come up to me and say, “That song touched me in a place that I don’t think anybody knew existed in me…even myself.” That’s what we’re supposed to be doing as rappers, though. You know, there used to be a day like…you ever remember those commercials where they say: “When you sniff coke, your house goes up your nose, your family, your car,” and they had the picture of all that stuff going up the person’s nose. Then, recently, I saw a commercial about Methamphetamine ‘cause that’s the new drug of the white community is meth, and I saw anti-meth commercial and I said to myself, ‘who’s doing public health service announcements for crack? Who’s doing them for heroine? Who’s doing them for the drugs that we use?’ Nobody. And I’m not saying that they should. I’m not blaming the white man. I’m saying that’s the job of the rappers. The rappers—we know what’s going on in the hood. We know what’s good, we know what’s bad. Yes, it is our job to entertain. It is our job to make money. But, it is also our job to save our people, and to be leaders. And we ain’t doing that. And we not giving the public service announcements. And so hell, if they ain’t gonna do it, damnit, I’ll do it.

TOUR Mag: I definitely agree with you. Who were some of the producers you worked with on “Blue Collar?”

Rhymefest: I didn’t take my budget and look on the Top Five charts and get the Top Five rappers to rap on my project. My thing was I thought it was important to have great music. So I took a lot of my budget and I got producers. [I] got Jim Flav, Kanye West, Cool and Dre, Mark Ronson, No I.D; the list goes on and on. Some of the featured artists that I worked with like Mario, ODB, Kanye West, and a few guys from Chicago, were all family. They’re all people I felt comfortable working with. Like, the next album, the only features I might have…might consist of Cargo Fishing, Lupe Fiasco and Little Brother. I just want to work with people I feel comfortable making good music with.

TOUR Mag: The vocalist - Mike Payne, from a few of your tracks, Mike Payne; has a great voice.

Rhymefest: You think Mike Payne has a great voice? Yea, he jammed on “Sista.” He really conveyed the pain that I was trying to get through. When he sung that chorus that is what my subconscious was saying to the woman if I could sing.

TOUR Mag: What are some of the most interesting things that you’ve experienced while preparing for this album?

Rhymefest: Overcoming being the underdog, overcoming ignorance and overcoming everybody riding on everybody’s dick depending on who they think has what. Overcoming the obstacles of…like, the most interesting thing to me is the fact that my album, “Blue Collar,” represents also my struggle to the top because I really gotta work for this thing. They really putting me through a fucking ringer to prove people wrong, that good music can still exist and still make it…even my friends, even my colleagues, even Kanye…. I really have to prove to people that real music and real hip hop still has a chance and so I’m fighting. I’m fighting, ya know? And I think it’s amazing, that with no video out right now, no significant radio play or single, I sold 200% over Best Buy’s expectations… And I feel like the devil, he don’t want it. He don’t want it! God is so much more powerful. God is opening up things I’ve never heard of and opportunities for me to be exposed to the public. And the public is responding in the same way that they responded to “Jesus Walks,” when people told us nobody wanted to hear it. Now, see what happened.

TOUR Mag: If people could go away knowing only one more thing about you what would you want that to be?

Rhymefest: That in life the key to success is balance… The dropping of your fear and balancing everything else out… Don’t be too extreme in one way or the other. Be balanced in your art and in your heart. They can reach me at www.myspace.com/rhymefest and my album, Blue Collar, is in stores now. Go pick it up and be balanced.

TOUR Mag: Well, thank you very much for your time. I appreciate it. I think you’re a great artist and talent. I can’t wait for the next album. I wish you must success.

Rhymefest: Thank you very much, sister.