The man, the myth, the legend, the god, Rakim Allah, recently spoke to theformula.com about a variety of topics. Here are some of this highlights:
On his influences:
“When I came out it was different man because I was a fan. I was influenced by the whole nation of Hip-Hop. From the Fantastic 5, uh, my favorites was the Cold Crush 4, Treacherous 3, Melle Mel, Grandmaster Flash, Furious 5. I had a lot to pick from. We had the Force MC’s back in the day. So Hip-Hop as a whole was just the craziest shit a young teenager from the suburbs or the ghetto or anywhere, it was the craziest shit to experience man. So I think listening to Melle Mel, Grandmaster Caz, Kool Moe Dee, definitely put me on the track that I’m on now.”
On working with fallen emcees:
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Oh no doubt. Tupac, Biggie, Pun and what’s messed up is we don’t appreciate our great artists until they are gone man. That’s some of the problems. But I definitely wanted to do some joints with them.
On KRS-One and Nelly:
That don’t even match man. It’s like a rapper battlin’ a R&B cat. Nelly do what Nelly do well man. Let Nelly do that. KRS did what he did well. I don’t know what sparked it off. I think it was the little number one thing. Personally I don’t think Nelly was pointing at KRS-One as far as I’m number one, but like I said man, brothers hear shit in records and they might feel they speakin’ on him.
On Primo tracks being rejected for the new album:
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“Yeah, somewhat bro, he sent a couple of tracks and for one reason or another they turned them down, so it’s like you know Dre has got a vision as far as where he wants the album to go. So I’ma respect that vision. So at the end of the day once we get up in the lab and you know see what we got then that’s when the conscious decision is gonna be made, but right now we just trying to find the right joints, get the chemistry right and make an incredible album. If it takes me doing 20 tracks and picking the best 13, if it takes us turning down some tracks to get a better one, we gotta do what we gotta do. My man Premier, he is a professional. It didn’t worry him at all. He was like ‘well whatever man, I’ll make some new joints, send them to you and we will get it poppin’ like that.’”
