FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Music

Living My Life to the Fullest: Blackalicious's Gift of Gab Talks Police Brutality and Kidney Troubles

The Cali rapper responds to right wing criticism of his group's politically charged "On Fire Tonight" video.

Between Beyoncé sending the internet into a frenzy with her Super Bowl 50 halftime performance of “Formation” and Kendrick Lamar stealing the 58th Grammys with a riveting medley of “The Blacker the Berry,” “Alright,” and “Untitled 3,” Cali indie hip-hop duo Blackalicious quietly released the video for “On Fire Tonight,” a powerful cut from their 2015 comeback album Imani, Vol. 1. The video features the pair, with singer Myron on the hook, performing in beautiful silhouette, spliced with raw footage from recent instances of police brutality and protest around the country: the shooting of Walter Scott in South Carolina, the chokehold of Eric Garner in New York, and footage from the streets of the Ferguson and Baltimore.

Advertisement

While the video hasn’t exactly hit viral notoriety, a popular right-wing political website recently labeled it as “propaganda.” The simplicity and unapologetic straightforwardness of the clip makes for a bold statement worth discussing. We caught up with Blackalicious lyricist Gift of Gab during a recent tour stop at B.B. Kings in New York City to speak about the video for “On Fire Tonight” and due diligence in hip-hop homework. Minutes after our chat, he’d drive directly to Boston where in the morning he would sit through five hours of dialysis—he currently awaits a kidney transplant—before performing that night.

NOISEY: So your new video, “On Fire Tonight,” has been getting a lot of attention. Can you tell me about it?
Gift of Gab: It’s a celebration of the beauty of blackness. Also, being that we’re talking about blackness, it’s also about raising awareness of something that some people might not want to talk about. For certain people it may be uncomfortable.

Were you going for that? Were you ok with making people uncomfortable?
There’s a dialogue that we need to have as Americans, and some are afraid to have it. Some want to ignore it and act like everything is equal, particularly with police brutality. It’s still goes on. We’ve got to talk about this shit as a country, black and white people, people of color, all people, period. If there’s going to be a solution, it needs to be talked about. We didn’t even know what was going to happen with Beyoncé or Kendrick Lamar around the same time.

Advertisement

It’s a strange time to live in America.
And it’s very coincidental, that all these things would happen around election time.

Did you see that one right-wing website posted your video referring to it as "propaganda"?
My video! [laughs] Wow, it’s happening. Right now there is an apparent divide. “Oh, we still feel this way.” “Well, we still feel this way.” You thought all of this shit was over? You thought we forgot about slavery? That energy is what’s going on, particularly in the media and in music.

When the outrage over Beyoncé started, a friend of my posted something emphasizing that being proud to be black doesn’t mean you hate people for being white.
It’s just the cry for equality and justice. People love saying, “We have a black president! What are you mad about?” But, see, you can pretty much guess what race the next president is going to be. If we were at a point when you couldn’t guess that, things would be a little equal. If you couldn’t guess how many poor or rich people are in jail as opposed to how many are in college. These are individual choices, but how many people have come from one community, and how many come from the other?

The social constructs…
Yes. We might be in an equal place if we couldn’t be predicting who is gonna do what. That’s equality. But it’s not where we are, and it never has been. That’s the thing, people get upset when it gets talked about, they want to act like it’s all done because it’s 2016, but police are killing people. They’re getting filmed doing it. And they’re still doing it!

Advertisement

Do you think it’s important for artists to be making statements like this? What Kendrick just did was really powerful…
Every artist doesn’t have to. It’s music. You can have some of that, dance at the club, talk about things that people can relate to in day-to-day life. I think it’s great that it’s happening now. But I can recall a time where people would come up and try to divide what I do from what Compton’s Most Wanted or N.W.A did. They were trying to pit it like good against evil or something! At the end of the day, music only has to be honest. And that’s all art, really. Back in the day, you had groups like De La Soul, Slick Rick, Public Enemy, who were all saying different things, but they could all tour together. To me it’s about the individuals being themselves. That’s why I don’t get too political. If someone walks around like “Mr. Political,” and he’s not, it’s phony. If a person grew up living a criminal lifestyle, and they try to be positive, they’re not telling their story either. Of course, there is a need for these conversations, but not just in rap, in life in general. I’m just telling my truth.

What do you think about guys like Killer Mike? He’s super involved in the Bernie Sanders campaign.
That’s dope. Like I said, that’s him. It’s needed in the world. I admire people like Killer Mike and Boots Riley. We need people to step up and talk about change, and spark that change.

Advertisement

But I think it’s cool that even if a younger hip-hop fan who listens to someone like Drake can come across a video like yours and think differently about what hip-hop can mean, even if that wasn’t your overt intention…
Definitely. When I grew up I was listening to Boogie Down Productions, X Clan, and Lakim Shabazz. At an early age I knew what kind of MC and person I wanted to be.

What do you think kids are looking for now in their hip-hop? I mean, you could listen to “Hotline Bling” or To Pimp A Butterfly, and those examples serve very different purposes…
I’m gonna be honest, I think that it becomes more about the money than the culture at some points. It started out as something we did did in the neighborhood. It wasn’t about a record, doing a show, or getting paid. Once you throw money into the equation, and we’re talking millions of dollars, it’s going to affect it. There are dope artists out, but certain elements have been lost. You can listen to some MCs and wonder if they’ve ever even had a battle. You used to have to battle to earn your stripes. It was a right of passage. You couldn’t just wake up one day and decide to be an MC. You had to prove it in the neighborhood first.

What was it like for you battling in California?
I was in Los Angeles first. Then I moved to Sacramento when I was in high school. I’ve been living in the Bay now for 20 years. When I grew up, if you met another MC it was time to battle, we weren’t gonna be friends off the top. I wasn’t just gonna call you cool, I was gonna try to destroy you first. Either we were gonna leave and someone was gonna be mad or we were gonna have a mutual respect for each other. “Oh you rap? Let’s go.” That’s the mentality that I had when I started. I carried that.

Advertisement

Did you ever lose a rap battle?
I may have lost two battles. They were in my early stages of rhyming. Maybe three. But once I got to a certain point, I just didn’t lose anymore.

Did you ever battle in front of crowds?
Not really. You would see somebody on the block or at school. You’d go looking for whoever’s rhyming. It wasn’t about shows. Those came later. It wasn’t about a career. The payment was being the doper MC.

God, where I grew up the only form of rap battles kids were exposed to were probably in 8 Mile.
[laughs] How old are you!?

Almost 25.
I didn’t grow up in New York, but later, I had to go on and do my homework and learn about Cold Crush Brothers and Grandmaster Flash and DJ Charlie Chase and all the pioneers. I didn’t experience that on the West Coast. My introduction was Kurtis Blow “The Breaks” and Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper's Delight,” and breakdancing of course. That was my introduction, but I did my homework. It seems like the youngsters don’t care about the people who built this for us to even be able to be doing this.

Often seems that way with music writers too…
I’m gonna be honest with you, and no disrespect to you because you have a really good energy, and I don’t want you to take this wrong… but I despise critics [laughs]. Even in sports, I think that if you haven’t done it great, why should another artist respect your opinion? I’m not dissing you personally, but I think critics should be people who’ve already done it well. Kool Moe Dee, KRS-One, I care about what they think! But we won’t go into tangent on that… [laughs]

Advertisement

I’m always trying to educate myself. There’s so much history. A lot of people don’t seem to care though.
At the end of the day, it’s just the way things are. When I grew up I was into hip-hop, but did I go back and study bebop and the R&B groups who came before? It wasn’t until I was put onto real old school hip-hop, I didn’t know. Maybe kids don’t have a reference point. I don’t want to judge nobody, but if you become an MC or producer, you should always learn about the history.

So our scheduling got a little messed up today because you were having trouble finding a place to get your dialysis done. How often do you do it, and how does it affect how you’re feeling when you have/haven’t gotten it done?
I do it three times a week. I’m not feeling that bad right now, if I miss a bunch of them I’ll start to really feel sick, but one is not gonna kill me. We just did a show and we’ll get on the road and do it again tomorrow. It’s an interesting lifestyle and way to tour. After dialysis my energy is definitely drained. I have to go to the hotel and eat and sleep all day until it’s very close to showtime. When my kidneys failed in 2012, I told myself that I’m going to do everything that I did before it. I wasn’t going to let it stop me in anyway.

Was it really challenging when you first started playing shows again?
It was. At first, I didn’t know if I was going to be able to do shows. I couldn’t even get through rehearsal. I couldn’t get through a song without being able to sit down. I got scared. “Is this how it’s gonna be?” Fortunately, the more we did it, the more I adjusted. Then I was back. I can still tour, we just got back from Europe, Malaysia, and China. I had to do it out there too. But I’m still doing what I love to do, putting albums out, traveling the world, and making music. Life is good. I tell people I’m on dialysis, and they go, “Oh no!” But I’m good!

How long does it take?
Five hours.

Wow. What do you do when you’re getting dialysis?
I listen to music, I watch TV, and I write rhymes. I got a lot of work done. Imani, Vol. 1, about 70% of that record was written in dialysis. If I’m there, I may as well make it productive.

So right now you’re waiting for a kidney transplant?
They said I could be called this year. I’m ready. I’m on standby. They could call me at any time. But it could be a couple more years. But it is what it is, and until it comes I’m gonna keep living my life to the fullest.

Derek Scancarelli is a journalist based in New York. Follow him on Twitter.