www.hardknock.tv Nick Huff Barili of Hard Knock TV, in collaboration with www.GRAMMY.com sits down with the legendary Chuck D for in-depth interview. In part 2, Chuck talks about the death of Hip Hop groups, influence on N.W.A, working with Ice Cube, lack of Blacks in leadership roles in Hip Hop and more. Transcript below:NICK HUFF BARILI I don't see as many legendary groups in Hip Hop as there used to be.
CHUCK D (OVERLAPPING) You don't see groups.
NICK HUFF BARILI Why do you think that is?
CHUCK D The biggest difference between then and now is that it was a group effort in the '80s. The elements were all in conference with each other. Emcee and break dancing, DJ'ing, which was the ruler of the roots and even, graffiti, part of it, art expression. When the recording contracts came about and they recorded four people and then they, like, five people that sound like one, like the Furious Five used to say, well, the problem came into the area of renegotiation. If something was hot, you had to renegotiate with, like, five people, so that's not on record company time, and when it came to black music, it was the re-negrotiation or re-niggergotiation when it came to rap, and some of these obstacles of dealing with five to four heads as opposed to one company trying to deal with one became the pattern. It's easy to cut a deal with one person and just deal with the lawyer. So it's still a team, but it was a team of others, not the team of makers and creators, and so that, over a long period of time, had sort of, like, been the evolution or the devolution of Hip Hop as far as being the master of its own sphere, you know? Now, it's individuals, and people point to individuals. And I'm telling you, it ain't no one person could do it better than a group that's wired right, that's on focus and on point. They might get paid more money, but that's probably it. Or the, you know, they might get all the exposure. Like, for example, I think Jay-Z and Kanye West, if you took the amount of radio play that they've had over the last 20 years, you know, I mean, I think it's probably 10,000 times has to be 100,000 times anybody had gotten in the '80s and '90s. A hundred thousand times. Like, when you hear a record like 16 times a day. These rap records didn't do that. Nobody made that happen. So therefore, the--all those spoils go to that one situation now. So you have legends, but they're individual legends. NICK HUFF BARILI I can't believe it's been 27 years since It Takes a Nation came out.
CHUCK D I can. (INTERVIEWER LAUGHS) Twenty--yeah, twenty-six years. NICK HUFF BARILI I read that the first two copies, you gave to Dr. Dre and Easy E. Is that right?
CHUCK D Well, they were copies I had, and we'd play in Vegas together, and they were back there. I'm, like, man, boom. When I left them, they were staring at it, turning it over, you know, like, this is the shit, which wasn't--I think it influenced them to make, you know, Straight out of Compton. NICK HUFF BARILI What was your take on NWA at the time? CHUCK D They were nice, young guys. (INTERVIEWER LAUGHS) I mean, I knew they probably scared white America, but to us, we was, like, we were grown men. We was, like, man, these are nice little guys. I remember the NWA and the Posse and it just, like, well, they were influenced by Bum Rush the Show, you know, and I just said, this is a force, because I said this is taking place--this is Hip Hop in another city. And, and we befriended them. I mean, matter of fact, I befriended Ice Cube, so when the whole thing happened with Cube and NWA, I tried to tell Cube just stay with the group, man. The group is the thing, but he said it was impossible for him to do so. So I had to tell my team that we had to figure out (LAUGH) we didn't want to jar their situation by, like, but he wasn't gonna go back to the situation, so we had to agree to helping Ice Cube, you know, make his first album. And that's when the whole shit changed. That's when the west was won. Uh, because after Straight out of Compton, you know, came America's Most Wanted in 1990, along with Fear of a Black Planet and the bread seeds were already laid when Cube was coming to visit us, and me and Kane had been talking for the longest period of time about collaborating with a song, and I said, well, this is the title, Burn, Hollywood, Burn, and Cube happened to be there at the same time when Kane came to the studio in Green Street Studios, and Cube was sitting there and me and Kane was talking, and Cube, you know, we was working out the beginnings of his America's Most Wanted, but he said, yo, I want to be down on that shit. Check out full transcript at www.hardknock.tv
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