beanie sigel

Mack Mittens muses on topics like hollywood, hating on his Bentley, TI’s war chest, and more on BET.com’s Hip Hop Vs America blog…(props to Carl)

Here’s a sample….

“That T.I. situation. Things like that make it hard. But T.I. was trippin.’ C’mon boss, who you going to war with? If you didn’t try it then, why would you try it now? I don’t know his situation, but for a lot of these hip-hop artists, the problem comes in with the people who didn’t live that lifestyle. These kids got that Internet now and they will Google you. They will find out what high school you went to, what grades you had. Now we’re in the position where people have to live those lives out. That’s what I got a problem with. People wait until a certain age to get those attributes attached to their name. Gangsters aren’t sworn in, they’re born in. You’re what you were in junior high.

If you look at this generation, this generation is illiterate. These young rappers are making up their own language. It’s a lack of education. Before you had the KRS-Ones. He was considered a hard-core rapper, but he was also schooling and teaching people. These young people don’t know how to express themselves. ‘What’s up homie? What the f–k,’ that’s all they know. Their vocabulary is crazy. I went to jail and there are grown men who don’t know how to read. Pick up a “Source” magazine and all they want to do is look at the picture. Hip-hop needs a literary test. People will pick out the negative in my music, but I still make those songs. “This Can’t Be Life,” “Have Mercy on Me,” you gotta have that balance.”

Here’s the entire Beans blogpost on BET.com….

We’re making lot of money in this music business from this thing of ours, this music, this hip-hop thing. It’s entertainment, for one, but it’s our form of entertainment. You got people like Jay-Z, Nelly who are crossing over into the corporate world and they don’t want us there. We’re talking about people who are owning basketball teams and things like that. These brothers is multimillionaires. Jay-Z is predicted to be a billionaire from hip-hop and making music with no college degree. You’ve got people who’ve been in school all of their lives and he’s about to be a billionaire and have fun on his way to doing that. A lot of those people have jobs and they’re strenuous but it pays well. A lot of people in my family went to college to make money but they don’t really like what they do. It’s like a slap in the face.

To me, hip-hop is the number one marketing tool in the country right now. Everyone uses it. Jay-Z got a Hewlett Packard commercial — Pepsi, Coca-Cola. Targeting what we say is nonsense to me. What we do is no worse than what people do in Hollywood, but it’s worse there because it’s a visual. If someone reads a story to you, you’ll be tuned in, but you’ll be even more focused if you watch a movie. The same thing they are doing to hip-hop, they should be doing to Hollywood. They’ve been doing it forever. We’ve got a little two-minute video with a girl in a bikini, but they’re showing everything. They have parental discretion advised, so do we.

I think they don’t like people next door to them in big mansions with big chains having parties. They don’t want us as their neighbors. They thought they were going away from that, but now ‘those people’ are millionaires too. We’re buying ours, because they got that good credit. We’re buying ours full-out. They’re dying and leaving it to the kids and they got to pay them bills and we’re not doing that. When I ride down the street in my Bentley, they look at me like I’m not even supposed to have that car. What I got to say to that is stop hatin!’

I rap about what I know and what I see. I live in Philadelphia, the murder capital, where people are dying every day. What else am I rapping about? I see it every day. I didn’t move away. I’m there every day. I eat there. My music is like that because that’s where I come from. The problem that I got with rappers is that if you’re not part of that lifestyle and that’s not what you do, then don’t talk about it. I give you the pro and cons, I give you both sides of it. If you really listen to my music, I tell a story. It’s not just me going out there and killing everybody. That’s not what I do. Don’t just skim through it, really listen to it. I got a problem with certain rappers who don’t live that lifestyle who never did. They do it because they think that’s what’s selling records. They don’t know both sides. I know what the outcome of that life is. You got to be of the people to get to the people to relate to the people. You can’t come down in a suit and tie and tell them to stop the violence. Who is you? These young kids are forced to be adults at a young age so they have to go out and start doing adult things. Most of them can’t get jobs because by being adults they don’t have time for school. They’ve got to figure out how to feed their little sister. Their mom is working part-time, the dad is in jail. Take the drugs off the street; they’re going to start robbing people. If they are robbing people who don’t have enough to get their rent or their Pampers for the baby they had at 14, 15 years old, then they get frustrated. That’s where the killing starts. These are kids killing kids.

That T.I. situation. Things like that make it hard. But T.I. was trippin.’ C’mon boss, who you going to war with? If you didn’t try it then, why would you try it now? I don’t know his situation, but for a lot of these hip-hop artists, the problem comes in with the people who didn’t live that lifestyle. These kids got that Internet now and they will Google you. They will find out what high school you went to, what grades you had. Now we’re in the position where people have to live those lives out. That’s what I got a problem with. People wait until a certain age to get those attributes attached to their name. Gangsters aren’t sworn in, they’re born in. You’re what you were in junior high.

If you look at this generation, this generation is illiterate. These young rappers are making up their own language. It’s a lack of education. Before you had the KRS-Ones. He was considered a hard-core rapper, but he was also schooling and teaching people. These young people don’t know how to express themselves. ‘What’s up homie? What the f–k,’ that’s all they know. Their vocabulary is crazy. I went to jail and there are grown men who don’t know how to read. Pick up a “Source” magazine and all they want to do is look at the picture. Hip-hop needs a literary test. People will pick out the negative in my music, but I still make those songs. “This Can’t Be Life,” “Have Mercy on Me,” you gotta have that balance.