West Coast rapper Ice T and film maker Nelson George sat down with The Guardian Newspaper and they talked about a number of issues. They spoke on Hip-Hop and Violence, Video Games and Crime. Its an interesting read.
Here are some excerpts but you can read the full interview here
On Hip Hop and Violence
Ice-T: “Thank God this music called hip-hop came along, and then rap. We were pimping, we were in the game, we had girls making money … I idolised Iceberg Slim, the style and flair of his conversation. I took my name from him. At some point I realised, “This dude is a writer” … I not only gotta live the game, I have to document it.” That’s when I started to rap …”
Nelson George: “If you have any success on your first album … your lifestyle changes … radically.
Take 50 Cent, for example – it’s kind of weird to hear him talk about shooting people or beating people up because he lives in a mansion in Connecticut … He’s got horses and a stable. He just made $60m-$70m, he’s a big businessman … So how credible is he as an MC talking about the streets? By this point it’s all memory, or it’s all other people’s stories. It’s a very complicated relationship, yet the world believes that rappers are what they say they are … Al Pacino played two of the greatest gangster figures of the postwar period in Scarface and The Godfather … nobody’s more influential in the gangster mentality of this country than Tony Montana and Michael Corleone.
“But the gangster thing became the easily marketable formula. Especially after Tupac and Biggie died. There are nuances in what Jay-Z does and what 50 Cent does that are different from Tupac and Biggie, but it’s a formula these guys profit from that is easily understandable by the corporations that now run the music … 70% of the rap market is controlled by one entity, Universal Records”
