New Rakim Interview From XXLMAG.com

[bigted]

PART I

With a new label, a new album and a new master plan for New York hip-hop, the God MC is finally ready to do it his way. Almost three years after leaving Aftermath, Rakim breaks his silence in an exclusive two-part interview with XXLMAG.COM.

Posted In: Features

Interview:Brendan Frederick

Aside from rocking a few shows, paying child support and popping up in a Juelz Santana video, Rakim Allah has kept a low profile in the nearly three years since parting ways with Aftermath/Interscope Records. The split was both disappointing and painfully inevitable. With his elusive Oh My God album shelved and no deal, the great Rakim seemed doomed to the same (royalty) check-to-check existence as 99.9% of rappers who released albums before 1990. But, as it turns out, Ra has been drumming up quite a bidding war for his new label, Ra Records, which will release his seventh album, The Seventh Seal, this summer. While he still seems to have genuine respect for Dr. Dre, Rakim is through compromising, and eager to execute his own vision.

Where you been, Ra? Word is you might have a new label situation.

Yeah, that’s one of the things that’s been keeping me occupied. I’m trying to get my CEO on, trying to set up a label deal where I do my own album on my own label and look for artists. I don’t want to put too much [out there] yet, but I got a nice situation. I did it different than a lot of people in the business do nowadays. I didn’t go to the labels. I went to an investor and got a bag of money.

So even with backing, do you know who will distribute this label?

Well, right now we got maybe four or five [distribution] deals on the table, and we trying to get the best deal. That’s another reason why I don’t wanna speak too much on it yet. Got some nice situations and we just want to make sure we got everything on the table before we go ahead with it.

Do you know what your label will be called?

Right now I’m going with Ra Records, man. Nice and simple.

There was a rumor going around that you were maybe doing some business with Talib Kweli. Is there any truth to that?

Yeah, Kweli’s manager…they had a deal on the table for us as well. After me and Kweli did a song for Marc Ecko’s videogame, his manager was coming across a deal and wanted to sign us to the deal as well.

Is it his label at Warner/Atlantic?

Right, right.

Is that something you’re still considering?

Well, that right there—we don’t close the doors. We got a lot of people just getting at us. We don’t know if we need Warner for the distribution, so we don’t close no doors.

How much of the new album do you have finished?

We got a little more than half, but a lot of things gotta be done, man. I’ma do some more collabos with a couple people that I respect and some people who have been showing me love throughout the years in the industry. I think the world gonna be surprised by the people that I’m doing collabos with, man. The name of the album is The Seventh Seal. We looking to put that out this summer.

What happened to the material that you recorded while you were with Aftermath? Have you been able to keep any of that material?

Yeah, the material that I did out in California, I still have access to if I want to put it on my album. But at this point, it’s kind of dated. I made it two, three years ago. I want to make sure when I drop that everything is brand new, fresh. And, without question, as soon as you hear it, it’s going to be what you expected.

Now that you’re off Aftermath and without a single producer like Dre overseeing your project, is it more challenging to pull the production side of your album together?

When you got one person in the room listening to the tracks, it’s a little easier to pinpoint what you want and where you want to go with it. At the same time, I got a team and we listen to beats. I don’t deal with yes men. If it’s something that I’m feeling and they not, they let me know and vice-versa. It’s a team thing. But at the same time, the team gotta be in tune with what the direction is, what we trying to do here. If you got that in the right place, then everything will go smooth.

How did you end up in Juelz Santana’s “Mic Check” video?

My man Nick Wiz, one of my producers. Juelz called his crib one night. We spoke on the phone and he let me know he wanted to do “Juice” over. I gave him the blessing on that and let him know how much I respected what he doing. A couple of days later he had the video and I surprised him. I just went down there and showed love. It was kinda totally out of the blue.

Are you a Dipset fan?

No doubt. I like the Diplomats’ swagger, man. Juelz, Cam’ron, Jim Jones—they bring a lot of swagger back to the game. New York needs somebody right now to hold New York down.

So when will there be a Rakim/Diplomats collaboration?

Probably soon, man. They one of the cats in the game that I got a lot of respect for, music respect and street respect as well. And when I do do collabos, it’s gotta be respect. I’m not doing it because they sell records or just because they own a certain part of the market. I call ’em “smart collabos” because at the end of the day they makes sense. I don’t want people do be like, Why did Ra do a joint with this dude? I’m just trying to be focused. It’s 2006 and a lot of things have changed. A lot of different producers is bringing different things to the table and it’s that time. I’m solo. Everything should fall into place. I’m not going to spread the album too thin as far as different sounds. You gotta have that chemistry on the record. If I can make a classic album, then I did my job.

Nowadays New York hip-hop has essentially taken a back seat to what’s going on Down South. What do you think the next generation of New York rappers should do to get things back on track?

I think it’s simple, man. If we just do what we do, then everything will be good. That’s what makes the Down South artists successful. That’s what makes the Midwest artists successful. That’s what makes the California artists successful. They do what they do. They bring theyselves to the table. The world is intrigued by seeing what they do down in Texas. The way they dress their cars up, what they drinkin’, the way they dancing. Just like they was intrigued by the movement that we was bringing to the table. But now I think some of the artists figure that we have to kind of change our sound to fit different markets. I think if everybody just stick to they guns, it will be beautiful. Without the market being big and blowing up, it’d still be backyard hip-hop. We gotta take advantage of the marketing being so big, but we have to know how to capitalize off it without giving up too much of the original New York sound. We can touch the Down South market, we can touch the West Coast as long as we make sure we give them something that they can relate to.

PART II

Maybe it was too good to be true, but a collaborative album between Rakim and Dr. Dre—Oh My God—was worth finding out. Aside from his appearance on Truth Hurts’ smash R&B hit “Addictive,” Ra’s stint on Aftermath seemed doomed after years went by with no album to show for it. So when the inevitable split with Aftermath came in 2003, things looked grim for Ra. But his future looks bright since getting his C.E.O. on, founding his new label Ra Records (Click HERE for Part I of the interview if you missed it yesterday). With his new album, The Seventh Seal, on the way, Rakim Allah finally tells the truth about why he couldn’t work with Dr. Dre.

Back when you were leaving Aftermath, you said in some interviews that Dre wanted to go in one direction and you wanted to go in another. What exactly did you mean by that?

The artist that I am is the artist I want to remain. My integrity and my pride for my craft, hip-hop and the hood is something that I don’t want to play with. Dre, I respect him. He’s a smart cat, man. He knows what’s in the mainstream. But at the same time, picking the guns back up and talking about a lot of the dirt that I’ve been around and seen, I don’t think that’s a smart move for me right now. I respect the people that I been around. I respect the neighborhood too much. I don’t want to play myself short with that. The things that I’ve seen and the people that I’ve been around is real people. I respect them, and I’m not going to do nothing to put them out there.

So, do you feel like there was a sort of pressure for you to talk about more street stuff when you were on Aftermath?

Yeah, because basically that’s what Dre wanted to me to do. That was Dre’s direction. My direction is the direction that I’ve been going in for the last few years.

Was there ever a time Dre sat down and said, “You should rap about this sort of thing”?

In a nutshell, no doubt. Dre got his people around him that would speak to me, or they would ask my manager to ask me. Sitting down in the studio and speaking to Dre, he would most of the time say, “Well, that’s what I want you to talk about, Ra.” Things that go on in the ’hood, things that I’ve been around—that’s what he wanted me to speak on and that was clear. And [from] some of the people at his label, that was they message as well.

So you wouldn’t want to rap about things that go on in the streets?

I do grimy records, but it has to have a purpose. One of the grimiest records I did was “Juice,” and that was for a movie. Its purpose was to show you the difference between what you think juice is and what happens if you take the wrong road. If I feel there’s a justification for it, like the Truth Hurts song that I did—that record right there was a little controversial for me because of the content that I spoke on. A lot of people used to think I sold drugs, but I never did. But it’s to the point now where everybody know I don’t sell drugs. But on the record, [“Addictive”] was speaking on how she love her man regardless of what he do or what his job is. Regardless of where he at, he turn her pages. I like the song, I like Truth Hurts as an artist, so I did the song. I felt it was a little controversial, but that’s what the song was calling for. I like to make a point with what I do. I don’t want to keep doing the same thing that I might have done before or keep doing the same thing that everybody else is doing right now. I don’t feel that’s good for Ra, I don’t think the world want that from Ra and I definitely don’t want to hear that from Ra myself.

So when he was trying to get you to go in that direction, where did you see your lyrical content going?

I like the more conscious levels of hip-hop that bring awareness. I’m trying to get out of the stereotype that they put us in. Everybody don’t have to rap about selling drugs, everybody ain’t gotta rap about guns. A lot of people seen it, a lot of people been through it, but [if] you saturate the game with it, it gets to the point where that’s all there is. I’m that other dude; I want to rap about something else, I want to say something else. And at the end of the day, the ’hood is going to embrace it. That’s who I am. But I don’t have to speak on negativity. If I got 15 records on my album, all 15 of them don’t have to be about the ghetto miseries.

Lyrical content aside, were there other reasons working with Dre was difficult for you? Did you have different methods of working?

Nah, I can work in the morning, work at night—that’s really no problem. It was just the content; I was trying to get on the same page. That’s the main problem. Sometimes I get up in the morning now and work on something. If I feel like the creative energies is flowing, I do it in the morning, if not I wait till eight, nine, 10 at night when it get a little quieter. The time and the situations, that’s nothin’. I’m flexible with that.

People say that Dre is kind of a control freak when it comes to his music. Is that something you experienced?

Dre has been doing what he’s been doing for a while and he feels that that formula is it. When something’s not broke, you don’t fix it, and that’s his formula. The only thing is, he gotta look at the artist sometimes. I came from my own beginnings as far as hip-hop. I didn’t want him to feel that I was going to do 15 records about peace and ****. But, at the same time, I just wanted him to respect who I was because I respected who he was. I like rhyming on more New York–oriented music, but I told Dre, “Look dude, I know what you do. I love what you do. The world love what you do. So I have to get on some of them West Coast tracks.” Of course he’s going to put a little Ra swing on it, but that’s what Dre do. That’s what we love him for. I was ready to make the change and meet him halfway and I just wanted him to meet me a little more halfway as far as who I was and what I wanted to do.

At this point in your career, you don’t really have to prove anything to anyone. Realistically, what kind of commercial expectations do you have for this next album?

I want to kind of finish what I started. It got to the point where it’s eating me up. But as far as commercial [expectations], I’m not really reaching for nothin’. I think the world know what I do. They not expecting me to be extra radio-friendly as far as the sound of my music. I wanna do good music. I know the producers I’m gettin’ at is gonna give me that big music, and I’ma do what the track calls for. That’s the main thing that me and Eric B used to do when we did our album; we didn’t sit down and try to make a single. We did 12, 13, 14 records on an album and after we finished the 14, we sat down and picked a single. But I think nowadays, people try to reach for a single or try to make a single. I just like to let it flow, man. I like the beat to tell me what to do and I take it from there. When I walk down the street for a young kid to say, Oh, that’s one of the greatest ever right there. That’s enough for me. I don’t have to reach.

[Turntable]

Its intresting that he respects Dipes that much..

[ash trey]

Dope interview don't sleep on it! I think Rakim can sign some dope upcoming artists to his new label or maybe sum slept on old-skool greats hint*JJFP*.

[bigted]

If there's any album Will should be guest appearing on it should be Rakim's album, I'd really like to see that happen, btw I'm also sorta surprised that Rakim's feeling Dipset so much like that

[rcpbball30]

Yeah, him and Dipset is an interesting connection, but whatever, it doesn't really bother me, him and Will really should do something together. Will obviously has a lot of respect for him as he mentions his name in "Lost and Found" It would be great to hear them together,

[bigted]

Honestly I don't mind if he does collab with Dipset, maybe he'll get younger fans if he does that, hopefully his older fans won't say he's selling out for doing that but honestly I don't see it as a bad thing as long as he drops some dope rhymes, yeah Will definately got a lot of love for Rakim and I think that if Will collabed with Rakim that'd also surprise a lot of people, a lot of wack mcs will be dropping their mics

Edited March 27, 2006 by bigted

[Turntable]

I think it`s good to see Rakim showing to love to new Crews. You can say what you want about Dipset, but they aint sellouts. For example KRS-One is too paranoia for that, he just looks at all of them as potencial beefs..