Speaking with HipHopDX from the Sunset Strip Music Festival this past weekend, N.O.R.E. explained his recent weight loss and the inspiration to live a more healthy lifestyle as an artist nearly two decades into the industry.
“I just wanted to live longer,” he says in a clip that premiered in the DX Daily today (September 22). “It’s so many bad images of the Black man doing the wrong thing. I wanted to do the opposite of that and say, ‘You know what? I’m 37-years old. I don’t have an industry age. I know these other guys got industry ages. I’m 37-years old, I was signed at 17.’ You do the math, almost 20 years in the game. I just wanted to live longer and live for my kids. I just jog. I’m not gonna lie, if I take off my shirt I still look like spaghetti. I only jog but it brings joy in my life and it brings tranquility to my life. That’s all I do. I have fun with it. And I stopped smoking cigarettes too. I smoked for 20 years. I stopped smoking cigarettes.”
Last month, N.O.R.E. spoke with HipHopDX about his long-running friendship with Pharrell and previous collaborations like “SuperThug.”
“A lot of people this year with his success, a lot of people have tried to get me to flip on him,” he said. “They’ll say, ‘Why he ain’t invite you to the All-Star game?’ Idiot, because I was trapped in New York in the snow storm. You feel me? Pharrell, all he owes me is to be real with me. That’s it. He doesn’t owe me shit. I got a chance to witness him in the beginning and I enjoyed that. I enjoy that we still speak and I enjoy that he’s sitting there, waiting for me to say, ‘I’m ready to start my solo album.’ But I’m not ready. I’m not ready right this moment because I want to indulge in being a CEO. I want to indulge in putting somebody else before me.”
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Over the weekend N.O.R.E. joined artists like RiFF RAFF, Onyx, DJ Quik, and Bun B in performing at the seventh-annual Sunset Strip Music Festival in Los Angeles. According to Murs, DASH Radio’s Independent Grind station will rebroadcast a stream of the MURS 316 Stage specifically.
