Interview with Spice 1

By Black Dog Bone

Why did you name your new album Spiceberg Slim?

The reason why I named the album Spiceberg Slim is because I pattern myself after the writer Iceburg Slim. He writes a lotta gangsta shit, but he's never seen. Me, I got a strange kinda fame. Everybody know I write a lotta gangsta shit, but they don't see me. That's why I'm up here fuckin with Murder Dog today. They gotta see what I look like. So many times when I tell someone I'm Spice 1, they're like, Shit I’ve never seen you before.

You've read a lot of Iceberg Slim's books?

Yeah, I read a lotta his shit and I felt where he was comin from. A lotta his stories was like everyday drama that go on in the ghetto that I seen face to face, firsthand, eye to eye. I felt like, let me write about some of that shit, and let me make it rhyme. I don't even know if Iceberg Slim is alive today. If he is, this is a tribute to everything that he did. I appreciate what he did. As a youngster I was reading them books and learning about what really goes on. Donald Goines too. I was readin the hell outta them books. It actually made me look at the urban streets and gangsta life and all of that poetically. I could see it in a poetic form. I could take what I saw in the streets, put 'em down in my raps and make 'em rhyme.

A lot of people look down on Gangsta Rap and still don't recognize it as the art form that it is. Some of the lyrics are real heavy.

Gangsta Rap is a form of expression for the inner city youth. We're all thugs and we live a thug life. Thug life means the hatred America gave little infants, Black people. We’re like fuck everybody. We grew up in the these streets with this hatred. When we was little kids we was scared of the police. Then when we got older it turned into anger. We deal with life in the streets intelligently, but we keep it gangsta. That's the only way that we feel we can get respect. We out here and it's hard on us, but we ain't no dumb muthafuckas.

So many people won't even listen to Gangsta Rap seriously, they just disregard it. They should listen to it.

They should just sit and listen. They need to go get this new album, listen real close because I'm explainin everything and I'm puttin it in a rhyme. It's easier for you to understand. You can say the rhyme over and it's gonna make a lot of sense to you. That's what poetry is. Rap is rhythm and poetry. I get in there, I come off the head, I say shit I got off the streets, and muthafuckas is feelin that shit.

It traces back to Africa. The original music of Africa was rhythm and poetry.

Hell yeah. With the congo drums and the bass. There was a group called The Last Poets. My dad turned me onto The Last Poets when I was nine years old. I was lookin at him like, this is not music. He's like, I know, it's Rap; it's rhythm and poetry. I been writin poetry since I was in sixth grade, so when Rap music came my way on the West Coast, it was right up my alley. I could do that in a snap, write about what I see. It got to a point where I could just look at anything I want to and think poetically about it. I could do a song completely off the head and muthafuckas would swear up and down I wrote that shit. I go back to the days of the battle rappers, so if I can't rap off the head I feel like I'm lackin. So I keep my skills up to where if I do perform or do an album it's off the hook. I'm a big Bruce Lee fan, I’m crazy about Bruce Lee, plus I know Bruce Lee came from the Bay Area. But he said this one thing: "It's like water, you have to be water. You have to flow like water and you have to change into whatever shape you have to become, like water." You have to go with the flow, adapt. Adapt with the changes in the world and in the industry, you have to flow with that so you can have longevity as an artist. When you pour water into anything, it's gonna change into the shape of what you poured it into. That's how you have to be. You have to be like water.

Rap is African people making music in America.

You gotta change like water. If I was in Africa I'd be still playin the drums. Now I'm in America sayin my poetry in a whole different language. It's like my dad was a poet, his dad was a poet; they wrote poetry. Now I’m here carrying it on. Especially comin out of the Bay Area, we started a lot of this shit. A lotta these cats is poppin their collars and we been doin that since elementary. I was walkin to school poppin my collar, talkin to my friends in the third grade.

Tupac grew up listening to Spice 1…

When I met Tupac he was already a Spice 1 fan. He was singin my songs and I was singin his songs. We're like, let's go! We drove off, kicked it, started smokin big buds and shit. After a while we adapted to each other and we were talkin some real shit. Pac was like, I'm gonna change this whole muthafuckin industry. He was talkin about shit like that. He said, "after I leave they not gonna be able to look at Rap music the same way." And they haven't. They're seeing what life's like in the inner-city streets that we have to deal with every day. As a Black man, you have a lotta problems to deal with every day and you got a lotta pressure on you to uprise from a lotta people. All that pressure comes down on you and you just put it out in your lyrics. It comes out in your lyrics and people think you're crazy. But when they get in your shoes and walk the same streets, they don't think you're so crazy no more.

The problem for you has always been when you'd come out with a new album, you’d get locked up or something, and never get to really promote it.

That was hard-headed 25-year old gangstered-out, don't give a fuck about goin to jail, shoot at a muthafucka…that was some off the wall shit. But I'm not mad at myself because of that, because I kept it gangster. In some cases like that, if I hadn't have had a gun I wouldn’t be alive to talk to you right now. I'd rather be sittin here talkin to you than to be six feet deep. I was like, fuck it I'll take the case. Livin in the Bay Area and livin in Oakland is a motherfucker.

I know you've had many problems with the law. You’ve been in and out of jail….

You get tired of it! I've been driving cars since I was maybe seventeen and I'm 31 now and ever since I got behind the wheel of a car, I've been in fear of bein pulled over by the police for the simple fact that I'm Black. No matter what I'm drivin--it could be a $200 bucket or a $200,000 Rolls Royce--you’re still in fear. You get tired of that shit! You get tired of having to worry about those muthafuckas harassing you all the time. You just want to live regular. You wanna be able to drive around the neighborhood relaxed, just drivin cause you wanna drive.

And then they wonder why you're so angry.

You're so tired of the muthafuckas bein over you! You’ve been dealin with that shit all your life. Even if you have a suit on--if you a doctor or you a lawyer or a president or a policeman--if you Black, you still a Black police, still a Black lawyer, still a Black doctor. That's just the way the world is right now and you have to deal with it as individuals as best you can. Just get over that shit and keep it rollin. I learned that a long time ago. My pops died in '97 and everything that happened to me after that that was bad didn't even faze me. Nothing can hurt you as bad as losing somebody close to you. After that, you done been through the worst. Unless you die, ain't nothing worse gonna happen to you than when a close family member dies. Everything after that, you just take it and keep rollin like a tank. That's what keeps me going.

You were very close to your father?

No doubt. He taught me a lotta shit. He handed me jewels when I was a child, planted seeds in my head that I could use when I got older, that I really didn't know he was planting. I'm using them now. He was a very intelligent man. He graduated from high school with all A's. He got a degree in Communications. He had a lot of knowledge to give.

He must have been proud of you. You're one of the pioneers in the whole Gangsta Rap genre. As much as NWA and Ice T, you were a big influence in this.

I met up with DJ Red Alert and he was saying the exact same thing to me. He been in the game a long fuckin time and to hear him say, "Spice, you was the first cat out here before any of these muthafuckas." And we was smilin when he said it. That typa shit right there keep me goin back to the studio, keep me fired up. I could go anywhere in the country and people recognize me for the shit I did.