X Raided
By Black Dog Bone
Ice Cube and NWA were bringing a political message and the streets in a certain balanced way. But now you have gone beyond that. You bring the streets, you bring politics, you bring African culture, and are like a tribal elder mixed with a shaman and a mystic.
The emotional side is missing in the Rap game. Now you have people who try to keep it real and express emotions and they call them Emo. Like expressing emotion is somehow beneath us as rapper. Nobody said Marvin Gaye was Emo when he made “What’s Going On”. It’s like if a brother expresses any type of emotion you’re weak. America is turning us into emotionless robots. I 
can’t agree with that. Ignorance caused me to be in this situation and I make the best of my situation. I educated myself and learned a lotta things and I appreciate that. But if I could do it again I obviously would do it differently. That’s a part of the lesson, to communicate that it has to be done differently to the next little dude out there thinking about making some of the mistakes I made. You do have to express your sincere feelings and that’s what’s missing from the music. Everybody can’t kill everything. Every song can’t be about killin everything. How can that be honest? They lock people up and put you on death row when you kill everything. That can’t be truth. If it’s not true then there’s nothing wrong with that being a fictional art thing. Hip Hop is an art form. Say Martin Scorsese makes a movie about killing everybody and they give him a damn Oscar for it. They recognize that he did it creatively and that it’s art. It’s the same with Hip Hop. I just feel like the honesty and the integrity are the key. I couldn’t have done it if I weren’t influenced by people like Ice Cube. I’m fortunate to be old enough to have experience of early Hip Hop and young enough to be able to relate to what the youth is doing too. I’m in the position to get the best of both worlds. What Ice Cube taught me along with Chuck D and Scarface, even Too Short. Too Short had balance. He spit pimp shit, but he turned it over and took it deep too. These brothers had balance. Somewhere that balance got lost. I don’t know if the young are not paying attention to the elders, but somewhere it got lost along the way in terms of what real West Coast Hip Hop is. I’m not in the situation where I have the ability to be dishonest to that. I can’t go make no music about “shake my dreads and I’m gonna pop a pill”. I bless them dudes. They’re getting their money. Any dude that’s makin their money I bless them, I ain’t hatin on nobody. I’m only saying that’s not my reality. I’m not shakin no dreads or poppin no pills. Maybe that’s one of the reason I can see some shit. Maybe my clarity is coming from my sobriety. I’m proud of my sobriety. I don’t wanna be no sloppy drunk idiot. I’m not proud of being intoxicated and can’t think when somebody slide a contract up under me. Or somebody be trying to give me some money. I don’t wanna be considered a liability to somebody when they invest in me. Maybe that’s why the West Coast can’t get a deal, because as soon as they bring you in the office you’re a complete moron. Don’t no one wanna invest a million dollars in somebody about to go shoot a dude tomorrow, drunk and intoxicated. I put myself in the position to where I can benefit from my opportunities. One of those ways is I need to be clear headed, if that means being sober. Trust me, if I wanted 5 ounces of heroin tomorrow I would have it. I don’t want that shit, it’s not gonna do me no good. That ain’t my lane. I’ve got my head together so I can understand what’s being presented to me and I can also regurgitate it in a way that the hood can understand it. That’s the way I’m doin it. I feel I don’t have no choice. When I sit down and be honest with myself or honest with somebody else I have to say what’s real to me. So they get that mystical aspect, they get that political, they get the emotional. That’s my honest conversation, that’s the way I speak.
You were saying how Marvin Gaye was making emotional music, and so much African American music was very emotional. Now when you make emotional music they shun it.
Right. They can diss Kanye West all they want. They can say what they want about the dude, but you can’t say he’s a dishonest person. His truth might not be everybody’s truth, but he’s being authentic to his experience. I don’t know when that became something to ridicule. We’re so busy ridiculing and saying this ain’t real or that ain’t real, that’s why we can’t succeed. It’s crabs in the bucket. I know the homies gonna hate that I use that word, but it’s crabs. When one is trying to crawl out the others pull him back in: That ain’t real Hip Hop. If your Hip Hop ain’t workin and his is workin, if you listening to it enough to judge it then that means it is workin. They’re propagating ignorance. They’ve got us willing to criticize our own people for being intelligences. At this point intelligence has become something to ridicule and stupidity has become something to praise. I remember when a crazy muthafucka’s running around the neighborhood he’s get his ass killed. You ain’t gonna have no crazy muthafucka in the neighborhood, he’s a liability. Your kids ain’t safe if a crazy muthafucka’s runnin around the neighborhood. Now he’s the celebrity. He’s the one who gets the girl. It’s cool now to be the crazy nigga. It used to be cool to be the smart dude.
I think everybody should listen to your music. You’re so clear. You have such a deep understanding about everything. I haven’t heard anybody speak like you in years.
People out in the “free worlds” are confused and lost. They need to hear what you’ve got to say.
I appreciate that. If somebody wanna know weather or not I’m speaking my authentic words, if woulda been more money for me to continue to be the “Psycho Active” dude who’ll kill anybody and don’t give a fuck. I coulda pretended to be Robo-gangsta, super hardcore, a gang banger. I coulda spent my career talking about how hard and how much of a gangsta I was. The fact that I chose a different path, some people could’ve considered that a career suicide. My money’s good, but it’s not to the point of what I could’ve made. That’s a constant choice I made to tell my truth, even if it would cost me some fans. I feel like it’s more people that I could gain that lose by being intelligent. You can burn your ass with some stupid shit but you can live forever with some intelligence. Maybe it wont’ be appreciated in your lifetime, but trust me it will be. I’d rather speak the truth and let that be my legacy.
How many albums have you released so far?
In my whole career I’ve got “Psycho Active”, “Xorcist”, “Unforgiven”, “Nefarius”, “Vengeance is Mine”. Then “City of Kings”…we dropped the three “X Filez”, “Ignition”, “Unforgiven” Volume 2 and 2.5”—that’s the real winner. At the end of the day the new wave of stuff that we’re doing right now is what matters. The “Assisted Suicide 2.5”, that’s my honest spirit, my real energy. We did “Blocc Bizniz”, that’s more Hip Hop. I love Hip Hop and that’s what “Blocc Bizniz” was. Now we’ve got “Unforgiven 3” just came out. It’s my grand opus, the best one I’ve ever made. I feel real confident in it. I’m anxious to find out what everybody thinks. I put everything I had into it. That came out May 17. Produced by Filthy Rich and my boy Leviathan out of Brooklyn, 17 tracks. It’s real Hip Hop, real raw. We didn’t play no games. We did it the way it’s supposed to be done. I wanna get support from everybody that recognize true Hip Hop. If you hear “Unforgiven 3” and you feel like we did it the way it was supposed to be done, beats and rhymes, I need that support. If E-40 listen to it, I need E-40 to say it’s the shit. And it’s on behalf of the West Coast. I did it for everybody. Anybody who wants to argue weather we got emcees over here, I made the album to validate that argument. That’s what it’s called “The Vindication”. It’s the Vindication for anybody that ever slept on me and it’s the Vindication for anybody who say the West Coast ain’t got real spitters. I paid homage to Cube, I paid homage to Face, I paid homage to E-40, I even paid homage to D.O.C. I paid homage to Yukmouth. I showed everybody their respect and made a true West Coast Hip Hop album. I hope that everybody can hear it and say that it’s the bomb, cause it is. Everybody needs to support West Coast music instead of trying to take each other out, instead of having all this bullshit. If somebody’s dope, he’s dope. Do a friendly song with him and show some friendly competition with him instead of hating on him and dissing him. We need the spirit of friendly competition. That’s why Tech N9ne is succeeding. Tech N9ne ain’t never hated on nobody, and nobody needs to hate on Tech N9ne. If you remove the hate and operate on love you’re gonna succeed. If you quit hating you’ll win.
You’ve been working with City Hall for your distribution since the beginning, and I feel like City Hall has been real good to you.
No doubt. Walter Zelnick’s had my back at least over the course of the last decade. I mean truly. It ain’t never been nothing funny if I call him and tell him what I want. Walter don’t even ask me a lotta questions. If I call him and ask him to cut the check for this or that, he’ll just go and do it. He makes it happen for me. I sincerely love and respect Walter Zelnick like a godfather. He’s been around all these years supporting Northern California Hip Hop. He makes sure the people have the medium to put their work out. He deserves recognition. Walter Zelnick is just as important to us as Jimmy Iovine is to Eminem and Dr. Dre. He’s that important. We need to give him his respect and acknowledge what he has done for us. At Blocstar Entertainment we don’t do no hatin. We make music, we do work.
Walter at City Hall has been supporting so many artists that nobody else supported. He is upholding so much independent Rap. He is keeping the Bay Area Rap alive.
He’s upholding damn near the whole independent scene up North. Select-O-Hits do what they do in the South and they’ve been good to me too. Johnny Phillips, Jeff Phillips. But certainly without Walter Zelnick I don’t know what woulda happened to me. Loyalty is hard to come by nowadays and he’s giving it to me and I respect that. The man is a legend. I wanna say to everybody out there doin what you doin, to everybody out there wondering where the West Coast music is, the West Coast music is here. You just need to support it. Crooked I is doin his thing—support Crooked I. Slaughterhouse is doin their thing—support Slaughterhouse. Support Brotha Lynch Hung. Support C-Bo, Thuglordz, Yukmouth. Support West Coast Hip Hop period. Listen to your own, support your own, make people aware of your own. Collect Hip Hop like sports cards.
Are you able to access the internet in there?
Naw. Anything I get I have to do on my own. My people Filthy Rich and Bonny Parker, anything I need I get it from them so I can stay current. In these institutions, the California Department of Corrections, if you wanna get your life together and rehabilitate yourself they’re not gonna prevent it but they’re not gonna go outta their way to do it for you. Anything you need you’re gonna have to be on your grind to get it. And then you can get some help. If you go outta your way and prove that you’re worth their time they might help you. For the most part the only help I got from these people was being left the fuck alone. That’s all I need, leave me the fuck alone. I ain’t doing nobody no harm. I come in peace, even if I gotta come with a piece.
Being such a talented artist and locked up for so many years, how do you keep yourself together? Do you get depressed?
I understand the nature of my circumstances. I’m not under the illusion that I’m gonna be happy go lucky. I wake up every morning and I’m in prison. That’s the reality of my situation. I also understand biology and physiology. I take care of my body. I exercise. I wash up and let that water purify me. And then I go about my day. I attack my day. And at the end of the day I say my prayers and I hope I did something productive through the course of the day. That’s how I make it, one step at a time. I don’t have the time to be depressed. It’s too many people depending on my spirit for me to allow my spirit to be defeated. So I just gotta do what I gotta do, no matter what. I have no choice. I’ve gotta do this regardless so I might as well do it with a powerful spirit.
A situation like yours can be a blessing. I’ve never met a rapper who has your perspective. In this music world you have a unique voice. You’re almost like a tribal shaman or a mystic who sees things that other people don’t see.
That’s a significant compliment. I accept it because it’s true. Why wouldn’t I accept that when I come from a people who were of that caliber? What do they want I us to think? They want us to think that we’re not intelligent beings and that we’re not capable of educating ourselves, so we don’t even try. But the truth is that as long as you was born without a deficiency of some type of faculty—if you was born a healthy baby then you have just as much capacity as that other person who went to Yale or Harvard or graduated from Stanford. You have the same capacity. Whether you’re using it is the question. I know what I come from, I know the cloth that I’m of. Whether or not I was given the opportunities of other people is the difference. Going to Stanford University and graduating wasn’t my life path. I was afforded a different gift, I was given a different blessing which is the ability to pay attention and absorb what’s around me. I ain’t gotta go to no university to do that, I can read and pay attention and educate myself by way of that. And then I regurgitate all of that for my folks in a language they can understand. Street politics, man. That’s what West Coast Rap is really based on. Somebody go listen to “Amerikkka’s Most Wanted” or “Death Certificate”. Ice Cube was kickin street politics. It was game spit in a political way where it was welcome in both worlds, both the university and the street, because it was intelligent. That’s what West Coast Hip Hop was. Somewhere they lost that because they wanted to lose it. Our school system ain’t shit. Muthafuckas ain’t reading out there. It’s just stupidity. So they’ve got these niggaz runnin around and screaming and yelling and making funny faces in the camera and callin it entertainment, basically telling niggaz to stay stupid.
What I’ve noticed is that people who go to school and get educated are not smart. They’re taught how to think and talk just like everybody else, but they don’t know how to think for themselves. They’re like machines like robots. But someone like you has an intelligence that’s based on experience and instinct. It’s powerful.
The education is an opportunity for you to learn how to read. That’s it. Once you learn how to read you go and read what the fuck you wanna read. Why the fuck I need to read “Huck Finn” for? What the fuck’s that gonna do for me? I respect Mark Twain, all of that, I get it, but this muthafucka ain’t talking to me. I don’t wanna hear what he’s talking about in terms of saying I gotta retain this information and it’s gonna help me for the rest of my life. What I’m talkin about is use their tools to fill up your tool kit. OK, Math and Science don’t belong to the university, they belong to the Universe. Math and Science wasn’t created, they was discovered. You go learn your Math and Science and you learn how to read and after that you tell there people fuck ‘em. Cause if we was going to universities that’s what you’d do anyway. The first thing they do when you get to college is tell you to forget everything you learned in high school. These professors is revolutionaries. They don’t all agree to what the other muthafuckas is talking about. If you go to Cairo and go to that university, see what they’re talking about. Honestly what I’m sayin is Hip Hop is a conduit for conveying energy. Whatever energy you wanna convey you conveying it regardless. So if you conveying an energy of ignorance that’s what you conveying. These dudes making this fictitious music wanna convey their little stories, that’s cool too. That’s all good. I ain’t hating on what nobody’s doin. If a person’s getting his paper and being creative I support that. As long as when they get in the interviews they speak the truth. I ain’t with the dude who rap some bullshit and then get on an interview and act like that’s real. Just keep it clean. I don’t know what the fuck happened, that’s what I’m saying. I love Hip Hop music. I feel like it’s the greatest teacher that we’ve got in poor communities. They’re learning from these musicians.
I learned from Ice Cube and Public Enemy more than I learned from school.
Yeah! Rakim, Tupac, Scarface. I never forget those words. That’s an education. These artists passed what they knew down in a story, in the form of songs on top of drums. That’s the way our people shared information once upon a time. That’s Hip Hop to me.
In Africa they used to share the wisdom through drumming and chanting. Now after all of these years it’s still happening among Africans in America.
I think the beat of that drum is the heartbeat of Earth. It’s the heartbeat of the Universe. Again, it’s not something that was created. Nobody created the drum. It was discovered. They stumbled upon the drum. Math ain’t got nothing to do with the patterns of numbers. That is the way things move. Like how the sun rises and this time and your shadow is going to land at this angle at a certain time—that is a system of measurement. It’s about paying attention to your surroundings. The same is true with the drum, it speaks to everybody. You could be the dopest rapper but if the drums don’t work the songs ain’t gonna work.
We’re all waiting for you to come home, X-Raided.
Yeah. Three more years; I’m on it! We did everything we supposed to do the way we supposed to do it. February 17, 2014. That’s when I go to my parole hearing. That’s it.
It’s amazing how you’ve been able to release so much music while you’re in prison. You’re more consistent than most artists on the outside who have studios and labels and everything right in front of them. That’s a miracle right there.
It’s a blessing on top of being a miracle, cause I recognize that some stuff is much bigger than me. I put myself in the right position. I educated myself and did what I had to do. That just gave me the ability to take advantage of the opportunities as they came to me. The opportunities is a blessing. It’s way bigger than me.
Are there other people doing music in there or is it just you driven to do this?
It’s just me. It’s not something that they allow, but it’s not something that they go in and….there’s a way to do everything that you put your mind to do. I look at it like this: before anything was on the face of this earth we had dirt and grass. Anything other than dirt and grass on this planet got pulled out of the human brain. It’s all a matter of human will. So to me it’s all about just willing myself with determination. If a dude could put a rover on Mars then I can make my little CD. My little trip is small compared to what other people have done. I don’t wanna create a light bulb or split atoms. I just wanna make a record. If some dude can figure out how to split an atom then I can figure out how to make a CD. It’s just that I have the drive, determination, never giving up. I feel like I come from a lineage of strong people. We don’t do no quittin. If we was gonna do some quittin we wouldn’t have survived the Middle Passage. So I ain’t gonna do no quittin.
What amazes me is how your music sounds so current. How does X-Raided stay so up to date with the outside world? I feel like your spirit walks out from you when you’re sleeping and checks everything out in the outside world.
It’s true. I feel like most of the time those who’ve got the experience I absorb the energy of my dudes. I’ve got dudes around me and I recognize the struggle that they do through. I’ve got a 20 year old dude in this prison that just got caught up on trying to have a pistol to keep himself save. If you from a neighborhood where you call the cops and they don’t come for four hours. A body could be in the streets for four hours but then they give you 10 years for carrying a gun. You ain’t gonna protect me but I can’t protect myself. It’s either die or carry your gun and risk going to prison for 10-20 years. These dudes come in here and I hear their stories and feel their energy. I understand that oppression is separate from race or money or anything. It’s about overcoming someone that’s trying to hold you down. I listen and pay attention and I take that energy and regurgitate that shit. And it turn into “Unforgiven 2.5” or whatever.
Aside from that, I feel like I speak for the dead homies. I tap into that. And I keep it moving. I’m reading the magazines. You know I’m always reading my Murder Dogs. I see what everybody’s doing. I’m listening to the music. I’m feelin what everybody doin. I either agree with it or don’t, but I still listen just to check it out. Then I do what I gotta do. I do me. In a certain way, me being separate from shit puts me in a position of a watcher. I’m the dude on the mountain coming down to glean the information. I’m not immersed in the bullshit that everybody’s caught up in. So I’m bringing a fresh perspective cause I’m separate from it.
Thank you for the great interview.
I love you, X-Raided.
I love you too, big homie. You’ve always been good to me. Everybody support Murder Dog. And I gave you a shout out on my new album.
