Former Aftermath artist and the game’s resident God emcee, Rakim recently had some harsh words for today’s crop of studio gangsters. In an article appearing on Davey D’s website, Ra chastises younger emcees for glorifying violence on wax.
“I never sold drugs or nothing. but coming up in the hood I knew the code of the streets. I was in the hood since a young kid, man. And I was very observant. I watched how everybody did they thing. It wasn’t cool to talk about what went on on the block. Especially on a record.”
If you’re not up on the legend, don’t think he’s gone soft. Rakim believes in keeping it real, but also believes that emcees owe the youth more hustling and other negative behavior.
“I had people that was close to me that was doing what they do. I respect for doing what he got to do, I’ll let him know if it ain’t good, but still I respect that man he got to get his food. I got people that’s close to me was doing real things in the streets. For me to get on the mic and start talking about certain things.. It’s like three-dimensional right now, every time somebody get on the mic and mention some crime, you got 5-0 knocking at the door or tapping the phone or investigating this crew or this crew.”
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“So I kinda seen it early. I didn’t want to extort the streets. I didn’t want to extort the hood, my dudes, or hip-hop. So I try to just keep it real, but at the same time it is a limitation. A lot of people today respect me for that, cause they call it, I didn’t give up the street codes. I respect what hey do, but leave that over there and I used to just try to find words that sound good, man. See if I can move the crowd that way.”
