KRS-One & Buckshot Interview

So I did a phone interview at least a month ago with these talented MC's. It was supposed to be for this one magazine (I won't mention names) and for one reason or another I don't think they're planning on using it. So I'm gonna put this insightful interview to good use! KRS touches on everything from MC battles to Soulja Boy while Buckshot gives us insight on his fondest Pac memory and what he thinks of auto-tune.

In 2008 you were given an award from BET, mainly for your “Stop The Violence Movement”. Can you explain this movement?

KRS-One: In 1989 a guy got stabbed for his gold chain and died at one of the concerts that I was at. It was the last concert of a tour called “The Dope Jam Tour”. The head of A & R, a women named Anne Carley, was there and was so moved by the incident she ran over to me and said “we have got to do something, it is getting out of control”. She went and got Nelson George. Nelson George, Anne Carley and myself then formed the “Stop The Violence Movement”. Then we went out and solicited the help of D-Nice as the producer, Doug E. Fresh came up with the chorus, called everybody and the people that came are the one’s who appeared on the record “Self Destruction”. “Self Destruction” raised $600,000 for the National Urban League for there literacy programs because we realized that the two major courses of violence is illiteracy, meaning if you can’t read you’re more likely to express yourself in a physical way because you can’t express yourself in words and then also poverty.

Many believe that you and MC Shan were the first to verbally attack one another during a battle. What are your thoughts about this notion?

KRS-One: Rap battles have been going on since the beginning. There’s a gentlemen named H. Rap Brown, he has a book called “Die Nigger Die!”, book came out in 1969. And in that book he talks about a concept called the “Dozens”. Basically black kids in the hood would get together all across the United States and diss each other with words. The point was we’re not gonna hit each other, we’re not gonna beat, shoot, rob, steal, kill, mane one another. Now that’s been going on since 1959, there’s a documentation that’s why I go to H. Rap Brown’s book. 1969 he writes that he was in Baton Rouge Louisiana battling cats on the corner in 1959. He said he had to battle girls because girls were the best freestylers and the best battles.

This one's for Buckshot. You were working on an unreleased album titled “One Nation” with Tupac. What are some of your memories of him?

Buckshot: The Outlawz and I were talking about him at the house and they said that Pac told them to “make sure you listen to Buckshot”. When they said that to me it was mind blowing. That was one of my most illest experiences.

What was the process like in making this album?

KRS-One: This album to record it, to produce it, to do it, it was the hardest project in my career to do and the simplest. Buck is the president, Buck is running his company, there’s no other person to go to. There’s no where to hide. That’s something that’s really refreshing.

The song “Robot” talks about the auto-tune craze. Do you think auto-tune is coming to an end?

Buckshot: Of course it’s gonna come to a medium and then a minimum. There a lot of people out there that are so far behind because you still believe that making a auto-tune record is gonna get you on. The only person who got on with it really was T-Pain. People like Puffy and people like Kanye and everybody else that used it, they got on without using it and then they used it to add style and musical technique. But I don’t think no one from this point will ever get what T-Pain got.

With up and coming artists like Soulja Boy, do you think rap will ever reach a point where it goes back to it’s roots?

KRS-One: Real talk, “Rappers Delight” was just as stupid as Soulja Boy’s music. We was lovin’ that shit, “I got a coupe DeVille with the diamond ring”, and all that shit we was with it. But our parents? They was like wait a minute, that’s not music, turn that noise off. I would say to everyone, force yourself to like Soulja Boy. Because the one thing Soulja Boy will keep you is young.

Being an artist, do you ever get to the point where you get sick of music?

Buckshot: Nah, hell no. Never. Are you crazy? You can take everything away from me but you can’t take music and consciousness. Cuz with those two things I can rebuild everything. Without consciousness I can’t accept my music and without music I can’t build anything. Everything I build is harmony, everything I do is a flow.