KRS-One
KRS-One, one of the most important and influential rappers in the industry, was homeless as a teenager. His ascent from street kid to rap revolutionary to acclaimed lecturer and intellectual is the stuff of hip-hop legend. With Boogie Down Productions, KRS-One played a crucial role in bringing a social and political conscience to hip-hop, through such groundbreaking albums as By All Means Necessary, Criminal Minded, Edutainment, and Ghetto Music: The Blueprint Of Hip Hop. As a solo artist, he has continued to expand the genre's thematic and musical boundaries, rapping on albums from artists as diverse as R.E.M. and Shabba Ranks and lecturing regularly at college campuses nationwide. After a late-'90s hiatus, KRS-One has returned with The Sneak Attack, his first record in five years and first solo album not to be released by rap/teen-pop powerhouse Jive. The blunt, outspoken rapper, intellectual, and activist recently spoke with The Onion A.V. Club from the road—where he's touring with opening act Afu-Ra—about industry politics, respect, and the linguistics of hip-hop.
The Onion: Do you think recent artists like Dead Prez, Mos Def, and Talib Kweli, who are socially conscious and clearly influenced by your work, are bringing more of a sense of balance to rap music?
KRS-One: Well, yeah, on the surface of it. Yes, they're bringing a great balance to hip-hop as a culture and to rap music. But it's more accurate to think that the people of hip-hop, those that participate in the culture, are growing up and seeing Mos Def. They are reaching for Talib Kweli and Jill Scott and Common and these people. They're reaching for them more readily now because of their own maturity. It's not gonna last. It's not gonna stay this way. But, while it's here, artists like myself are enjoying it.
O: Why do you say that it's not going to last?
KRS: Because hip-hop as a culture itself goes through stages. It grows—it's breathing, living. I've noticed that we usually start off conscious, then we wind up very highly sexual, and then we thug it out. Then things get a little funny again, with comedy and that kind of thing. Don't be surprised if you see a "Parents Just Don't Understand" coming out. That kind of rap may all of a sudden become very prevalent. People might wonder why that's going to be, but usually when the conscious rap comes about, comedy comes about, too, and usually when the gangster rap is out, just to use that phrase or term, the sex comes out, too. We're getting ready to leave the sex and violence—which, by the way, won't disappear. It's just that the community of hip-hoppers is going to look at something different. This will now spur on a whole lot of artists to start thinking more consciously, and making music that pertains to their self-worth.
O: You left Jive after I Got Next. What was the cause of that?
KRS: We went in two different directions. I'm a staunch critic of Jive Records, as you know, but I'm also very respectful, because Jive supported me for 13 years, through some very controversial times. The guns on the covers of albums, the Malcolm X thing. And the head of Jive is a devout Jew. He's allowed me my freedom of speech, even when it went against Judaism and had a pinch of anti-Semitism in it, even though I'm not anti-Semitic. But when you're an intellectual and you're questioning religion, it can get pretty controversial, like "Why Is That?" for instance. Jive Records gets my respect, but we went in two different directions. They started putting out Britney Spears and The Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync on the same label as me. They knew it, I knew it, we all knew that this was a disaster, the fact that they got Britney Spears on the same label with KRS-One. It was an issue. Not so much that Britney… In no way to demean her art or anything, because I think she's very talented, but you can see where I'm coming from and see where she's coming from, or where 'N Sync or Backstreet are coming from. We went in two different directions and decided that it was time for KRS to go. What happened was, first I went to Warner Brothers' A&R and I took an A&R gig there, because I wanted to study philosophy full-time with an emphasis on metaphysics. I thought that getting a job that was 9 to 5, or something like that, would somehow help me out, give me the freedom I needed to study. But I learned that there were other things involved with that, as well. First of all, I'm not an executive. I learned that. I didn't know that before, and I now know it. I also know that I'm freer as a hip-hopper than as an executive. Even as a black man, I enjoy more freedom as a hip-hopper than as a black man. That, too, is controversial to say, but it's the truth. We all realized that it was time to go our separate ways. Jive was not pleased with me being over at Warner Brothers, and they were also kind of shocked and embarrassed. That wasn't my intent, but at the same time, I had to think about myself and my family. When I got to Warner Brothers, I realized, well, first of all, I'm not an executive. I can do it, I have the mind for it, but there's a life that you have to lead, and you have to give up your creative freedom. That's what I didn't want to give up. So I ran out of there, ran back to New York. By the way, my two-year stay at Warner Brothers was the best time of my life. Excellent company to work for. Time-Warner is the ultimate, and I was treated with high respect there. Just even thinking about it now makes me think about all the things I could have done there. But I would have had to give up rap. I would have had to give up hip-hop as a culture. Time-Warner would have become my culture, and it is a culture unto itself. It's like being Italian or Jamaican. Going back to the question, though, we just realized we had to go our separate routes. I also, creatively, was going in a different direction than Jive, because here I am wanting to save the world and uplift hip-hop. Jive was just interested in booty music and going platinum. That, too, was a dividing line. All of that led me to pursue my own label. I didn't want to sign with another record label. What's the sense? Fifteen years of industry, and I'm going to sign another contract with Sony or MCA or RCA? It makes sense for me. My wife had, and has, a label called Front Page Records, which we used to do breakbeat albums on. So we simply took that label imprint, went over to Koch Distribution, and did a joint-venture deal with them.
O: What did your A&R work for Warner Brothers teach you?
KRS: The single most important lesson I learned is that black people are the cause of black people's demise. I learned that at Time-Warner. Though I was treated with the highest respect from the owners of the company, which is obviously white people… Not obviously, but… [Laughs.] White ownership. This is not a black-owned company. This is a white-owned company in so many racial terms. All the white executives there treated me as if they were my son and I was their father, not the other way around. But, then, when I met with my black brothers, I say to you today, very reluctantly, it was a disappointment. The attitude that I was confronted with on that level was ridiculous. They didn't want to speak to me. There were heads of A&R who didn't even want to speak to me. For the two years I was there, they never called a meeting with me to discuss things. I called many meetings that were ignored. Our head of publicity couldn't get it together with the artists I was signing. I had about a $5 million budget. They couldn't understand why I would sign Kool Herc, who was the father of hip-hop culture. They couldn't understand why I was talking to Chuck D and Public Enemy about signing to Warner Brothers. They couldn't understand why I signed Kool Moe Dee, why I signed Mad Lion on the reggae side. All of that, they couldn't understand it. They wanted artists who basically thugged it out and pimped it out, and it was a disappointment to me on that side. But I never again will join in on the rhetoric that the white man is the reason people can't get ahead in corporate America. That's bullshit now, as far as I'm concerned. Maybe it was like that. Maybe in some corporations, it still is. But I know that at Time-Warner it ain't, and I was there from the highest level to the lowest level. And the problem is, black people are just constantly immature in their thinking, undisciplined, and we suffer as a people. You know, this is not about race in the sense that black people got to get something better than whites or Latinos or Asians. This is just basically that we keep complaining about what we don't have and what we can't do, and then, when we get in positions to do stuff, we fight amongst ourselves like savages. That was the single most important lesson I learned. It also opened my eyes to the reason black music looks the way it does on television and radio. It's always baffled me why BET looks the way it does. This is Black Entertainment Television. Why are we up there, then, looking like idiots? It's because black people are marketing black people like that. I commend the deal with Viacom purchasing BET. I hope Viacom cleans up and does some work. Viacom is a Time-Warner company, by the way.