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788987
You've got
skateboard kids
and black kids
doing what they
want, even when
certain people try
to stop them.
This is positive,
because if you
leave kids alone,
they get along.
The old attitudes
are what screw
things up.
much control over what happens to the
world. All you can hope for is that you can
keep breathing, chill out, maybe have a kid,
teach it the right thing and stay alive. Most
of my homeboys aren't worried about dying
of old age, they're worried about dying tomor.
row. Most black males don't realize that life
exists after thirty years old. That's kind of
lame when kids out in the country don't think
the same way. The world getting better? I
don't see that.
I do think kids now, the black kids we deal
with, are becoming more educated. Some
people would consider rap the first genera-
tion of 'talkin' niggers.' If you go back thirty
years, black people didn't talk. They couldn't
even go to the same schools as white people
until the Little Rock Five back in 1957. That's
not long compared to three hundred years
of the other bullshit. If there have been three
hundred years of that, it might take three
hundred years to get out of it, so I don't ex-
pect anything over night. 'Fight the Power'
is very new to a lot of people.
I think the first thing black kids have to do
is start learning about themselves. That's
hard because the schools are messed up.
Think about it. If you're black and you go to
high school for twelve years, you come out
and you're like, "Who am I? I'm nothing. I'm
not George Washington. I'm not Abe Lin-
coln. And the white kid's like, 'Well, I'm
everybody and you're nobody.' Indirectly, not
because it's your fault, you feel superior,
because I'm nothing and you're something.
When they don't show the real thing it hurts
white kids as much as it hurts black kids. It
breeds racism.
Take Cleopatra, she was black. She was
from Egypt. But they don't teach you that.
Instead you see Elizabeth Taylor. That's
racism. But I don't blame it on today's kids.
I blame it on the characters who built this
country. They came in and bogarted. They
said, 'Let's make everybody believe we're
superior so we can run the place. All you In-
dians, get over here, we're going to run it
We've killed all of our allies at one time or
another. Japan's our ally-we dropped a
bomb on them; Germany's our ally-we blew
them up; England we had a revolutionary
war against them. Everybody thinks America
is a safe place; well, you shouldn't feel that
safe because the people who founded
America were foul. They housed shit up.
Black music has always been our form of
education. Go back to blues or gospel.
music-it's edu-tainment. It's a way of danc-
ing something into someone's brain, and it's
there for everybody, not just black people.
But you have these fundamentalist Christian
people who want to keep things going in a
certain direction. That's not safe for anybody
Black men in the United States just want to
live but the fundamentalists think. 'Oh they
want to screw everything up.' It's not even
like that. Every person in every movie on
Hollywood Boulevard is white, and we deal
with it. But, if life was reversed and every
movie and TV show was full of black people,
would white people stand for that? No. It's
like, we have our parents saying, "Yo, calm
down. You're okay, they're not whipping you."
And we're saying. 'It ain't equal till it's equal."
But there are people who don't want it like
that. There were people who saw Little
Richard shaking his hips at white girls and
wanted to kill rock and roll. You've got
skateboard kids and black kids doing what
they want, even when certain people try to
stop them. This is positive, because if you
leave kids alone, they get along. The old
attitudes are what screw things up.
How do you feel about people like Tipper
Gore and other pro-censorship types who
are on your back?
Fuck Tipper Gore. If Tipper Gore was in
the bed doing some wild shit like everybody
else in the world is, she wouldn't see these
records as being so obscene. Maybe she'd
be saying, 'Ooh, play some more of that Eazy
E. Most of those senators' wives aren't being
taken care of. They're uptight; they have
nothing else to do so they get up in the morn-
ing. put on their nice little suits, go out and
cause a bunch of trouble. It's all about free
choice. You don't have to buy my record, you
don't have to watch Linda Lovelace and Traci
Lords, but I think you should be able to. It's
a free country. I think anything should be
available. You've got skinhead bands like
Skrewdriver saying, 'Kill all the niggers, kill
all the Jews. They should have the right to
make those records too. Number one,
because I want to hear them and number
two, because if you take their rights away,
you take somebody else's rights away too.
The Klan should be able to march down the
middle of the street if that's what they want
to do. If you say they can't, then you can't.
The thing is, those fundamentalist ladies
are backed by people like Jerry Falwell and
Jim Bakker. We've already proven them to
be foul, but they have a lot of money. The
new thing they do, since they can't legally
say, 'You can't have the Guns 'n' Roses
album in your store, is to have their people
come and picket the mall. The mall has a
clause in the lease that says if you cause any
disturbances they can evict you, so the store
owners end up pulling the record off the
shelves so they won't get evicted. And the
malls are owned by Jerry Falwell and people
like him in the first place.
That's why I say at the end of my record:
'If they can't do it by law, they know there
are other ways to do it. That's wrong. Nobody
can tell you what you should or shouldn't do,
it's up to the artist. I'm a very open-minded
person and when I get up on stage, I'm going
to yell anything I want. I grew up watching
George Clinton. He'd do all kinds of wild shit.
When you get up on stage, you rock and roll.
Do you think the heavy-duty nature of
some of your songs promotes violence?
Defiance of authority makes the crowd go
crazy. I think you should say whatever you
want to say, but you'd better be able to live
with it. I wouldn't make a record that said go
do a drive-by shooting. I have morals.
Generally I deal with serious topics. I writer
songs when something happens. I don't care
if they won't play them on the radio, I do it
because I want to. If you don't want to have
a message, then you shouldn't. But I think
every rapper, if he got out of trouble and he's
making records now, has a message.
Who do you respect?
I respect Chuck D a lot. I respect people
who aren't afraid to say what's on their mind.
I respect people who have integrity. That's
a heavy word. You have to be able to stay
down. Unfortunately, not many people out
there are truly down. A lot of people will play
down, but then they'll sell out. Even Jesse
Jackson. He said he was down, then he stuck
behind the PMRC and said he wanted to cen-
sor rock and roll shows because the first rock
and roll show he ever went to was Parliament-
Funkadelic and they asked everybody to get
high. Everybody who I think has integrity, I
catch doing something. I don't know, maybe
I don't respect anybody.
What about yourself?
Yeah, I respect myself, because I know I
have integrity. I'll quit. I ain't going out like
that. I had to have integrity when I was a
crook. That's why I'm here to talk about it.
If I ran into the store with Culio, I wouldn't
run out on him or leave him. There are a few
people out there I respect. I like Kris from
Boogie Down because I think he's been.
through a lot. He lived in a shelter and he's
married to Melody, a girl he met in the shelter.
She stayed down with him.
You drive a Ferrari now, you've sold
millions of records, but what's truly im-
portant in your life?
Being able to still kick it. I don't want to
end up like LL or someone who can't walk
his own streets. I can walk up to street gangs
and they'll be like, "Yo, Ice, because I tell it
truthfully. I don't dis them. I can walk through
L.A., New York or the mall and people don't
want to run up on me. No matter what my
success is, I want to keep all my friends. If
I ever get a big mansion, I want everybody
to want to come over. I want people to feel
like I deserve it. I want to see my friends get
rich so I can borrow some money too. In the
meantime, though, every million dollars you
get, you better pay a hundred thousand out
for loans to your friends. You have to do that.
One of these days they might blow up and
sell ten million records and I'll be like, 'Yo,
take me on tour. You never know who's going
to be in charge. I would go to radio stations
and meet guys who would just get spit on.
Now they're program directors. Never shit on
anybody.
If you weren't rapping, what would you be
doing?
Time. If I hadn't gotten detoured by rap.
I'd probably be dead. I was out of control.
I was doing twenty crimes a week-jumping
up on top of jewelry cases with sledge-
hammers. I was the best. I won't lie. I look
at the way I was living, the fact that I'm here
and I'm breathing-if I steal a nickel off the
mantlepiece now I should get the chair. If you
add up all my crimes, I could put all of us
in jail for life. And I never got caught. Now
the statute of limitations is up. We never killed
anyone, but we did some outrageous stuff.
We were going to knock Mayor Bradley's
gold coins, right out from City Hall. But I ain't
with it no more. (Continued on page 1187
There is definitely
a force attempt-
ing to keep a
lower class.
That's why if you
go to my
neighborhood,
there's a liquor
store on every
corner. It's
zoning. Go to
Beverly Hills and
try to open a
liquor store. It'll
never happen.
LIFEDEATHGUNSMONEYICE