| Ghetto Baby: Life, Life,
Life. Living and Dying. |
| What had you choose this style?
Why not do scientific rap, backpack rap, or any
other style? |
| Ghetto Baby: My style; it's
natural. It's the real deal coming from the heart
100%. I let the fans figure out what style I bring
but I try to be original. |
| Do you think that you'd do your
community/neighborhood a bigger service if you'd
speak on other issues? |
| Ms. Jesse: As far as the
first album we put out: "Welcome To My City
Chapter One", it was filled with a variety
of styles from different artists and the theme was
the neighborhood and city in which we were raised.
We touched things like racial profiling, discrimination,
exploitation and corruption focused on our minority
communities. And Da Ghetto Baby really does this
on his solo album "Product Of Da Ghetto"
too. We just do it in a fun way. You don't really
know your learning something meaningful until you
listen to the lyrics. And that's usually after you
get over the great music coming from our camp. |
| How about the hip hop community? |
| Ghetto Baby: I am more concerned
about the people on the streets: the up and coming,
the youth. They are the ones who need positive guidance.
And that's why I focus my debut solo album "Product
Of Da Ghetto" on educating lost youth that
are looking to the streets for answer and finding
the wrong role models. |
| Are you willing to pick up the
responsibility of being a role model? |
| Ghetto Baby: No, I don't
want to be a role model, because I'm no perfect
man. I'm just trying to provide some hope. |
| How do you make that your message
doesn't clash with the ones that mainly only want
to be entertained? |
| Ghetto Baby: That is a tricky
question I can't answer it at this time. |
| If you want to stay real to
hip hop as a culture, can you ever do just entertainment? |
| Ghetto Baby: It is entertainment
but you have to be real to the culture. The culture
has been passed down for many years. It's black
music. But as with most black cultures, rights have
been stolen. And just as with the U.S. his-story,
it gets rewritten. Media and the powers that be,
would like to rewrite the history of rap. Rap is
a way that our culture used to get ahead. As usual
creating something from nothing. |
| So do you, personally as an
artist, but also as a member of the hip hop culture,
feel threatened by the success of a white artist
like Eminem? Do you see it as a problem? Or is it
more in general, how whites embrace hip hop as fans
and consumers? |
| Ghetto Baby: It is political
if you ask me. But I love Eminem as an artist. I
don't think his success will hamper another artist
success. He is not the power behind the rap music
game. There are higher powers that pull the strings
to make what they want happen. |
| How much does hip hop as a culture
mean to you? |
| Ms. Jesse: It's the culture
I was raised in. It is my life. I didn't know how
much it would become part of my life. As a young
girl, I remember traveling the east coast and watching
all the old school acts, Run D.M.C, Fat Boys, Whodini,
N.W.A and so many other artist that the media said
would only be a fad called Rap music. Here I am
20 years later and it ain't no fad. It's a fact
of life, rap music is everywhere and it's possible
to make a living with it. |
| Hip hop has a lot of characteristics
of a youth culture. Do you think that with that,
it's loosing a lot of the old people, that eventually
will move on and away from hip hop? |
| Ghetto Baby: No. Real fans
will stay real fans. You never know though, I guess
it is up to the individual. |
| What do you add to your scene? |
| Ghetto Baby: We are basically
pioneers of the music scene here in Tacoma, WA. |
| What do 'the streets' mean to
you? |
| Ghetto Baby: Hustle and
hustlers. A lifestyle where you work to make it
another day in the game. How to survive, depend
on yourself on your own that's what 'the streets'
mean to me. |
| Have you found a 'wisdom' on
how to overcome or deal with the struggle? |
| Ghetto Baby: This is the
only way I feel I can help or spread knowledge through
music. |
| Felony Ent. writes on the website,
that their "focus is on more than creating
a successful record company our purpose is to create
employment opportunities for disadvantaged youth
and adults". Do you have a similar agenda? |
| Ms. Jesse: That is the main
agenda. I see so much money to be made and so many
individuals with the skills to go get it. They just
need that opportunity and the guidance of someone
with a vision. |
| You've been to jail. Do you
feel any need of communicating how this experience
was, and maybe teaching the youth on how not to
end up in jail? |
| Ghetto Baby: First of all
it is somewhere you don't want to be. And second
of all it's a version of modern day slavery. Do
you want to be a slave? I don't. The next time you
have a dilemma between right and wrong, just think
about that question, "Do I want to be a slave?
Working for $0.12 per hour with someone telling
you when to get up and when to go to sleep, no sex,
etc.. etc...?" Think about it... |
| Is that the strength of rap
music, that it allows you to talk to people about
such things, and they listen? |
| Ghetto Baby: You got it.
It's like being able to preach to folks of our generation. |
| How was it performing away from
home, as far away as Texas? |
| Ghetto Baby: To be real,
we were kind of intimidated, because they really
support their own and our music was very different.
So we were very curious about the response we would
get about our music. But our worries were for nothing:
they loved our music in Houston and Beaumont Texas.
We also got to visit the Rap-A-Lot Records compound.
One of they peeps laced us with a private tour of
there offices: I saw Scarface's Bentley and stretch
limo's and more. This was in 1999. |
| Was that also when you hooked
up with Bushwick Bill? |
| Ghetto Baby: Naw. Believe
it or not he just called us up one day out the blue.
His manager had given him the number, because he
had hollered at me about a year ago about Bushwick's
album. |
| How was working with this legend? |
| Ghetto Baby: First of all
it was an honor to do a track with the lil Big man.
I don't trip off his status in the game but I have
much respect for his accomplishments. And I knew
he would fit my song "Military Tactics"
perfectly. |
| When will the album be out? |
| Ghetto Baby: We are shooting
for late April. Cross your fingers. |
| What's coming after that? |
| Ms. Jesse: "Welcome
2 My City - The Last Chapter". The Kaisers
Soze solo debut album "Northwest Nugget"
and "Unlawful Possession Of A Firearm"
from Strapp and Ammo. |
| Aight, thanks a lot for your
time. Any final word, shouts, etc? |
| Ghetto Baby: Yep my boy
Awall aka Kaiser says this: 'Wait till the world
gets a load of this.' |
| »
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