Bun B
Happy to take on a father figure role for the many rappers in and around his beloved Port Arthur, Texas, rapper Bun B has taken more hits than a heavyweight in a career spanning more than 30 years. Despite that, he has never failed to be anything other than a true statesman for Southern hip-hop: a walking advertisement for his hometown and for rap’s ability to enact change in society. As one half of UGK, AKA Underground Kingz, Bun left an indelible mark on rap, and following the tragic death of his partner Pimp C he has continued to work and raise a new generation.
In his lecture at the 2008 Red Bull Music Academy, the trill OG recounted his beginnings in Port Arthur, the lessons from UGK and why caring will always beat hating.
Hosted by Davide Bortot Bun B is from Port Arthur in Texas, which is a 90-minute ride from Houston. He is part of a group called UGK who released their first [EP] 20 years ago, in 1988, called The Southern Way. They had their first number one record last year, almost 20 years later, which for hip-hop is a
ridiculous time span, and he is still around – so give it up one more time for
Bun B. (Applause) Bun B Thank you again for having me, thank you. Davide Bortot So when Chuck D
was on this couch this morning, he called you an “analog person.” Would you agree with that? Bun B Absolutely. Chuck D would understand, I come from the age of recording on
2” reels, before ProTools and Digital Performer and all these things
came into play. Recording back then, in the early days – one, it was more
time-consuming. For example, if I had to redo a vocal take, you would
have to stop the machine, wait for the tapes to rewind, wait for all the
tracks to lock back in and then go again, whereas digitally it is two taps of
the space bar. That being said, a lot of the people who came into the music
industry working on 2” reels, they have a better understanding of how music
and vocals laid to tape have a little bit deeper and a little bit
warmer sound than the digital sound. It is really a personal preference. I
can do both and I have done both, but with the UGK records we always try and
bring everything to the 2” reel, because if you are a DJ — and we have a couple of DJs
in the house, [to participant] you did a great job last night, by the way —
sometimes you have records and some of them just hit so much harder than the
other records and, really, it has a lot to do not just with the mixing and
mastering but the actual recording process. Davide Bortot So I think we will have to talk about the special sound that you introduced to the game later, but first of all, Port Arthur. I don’t think many
people are familiar with this place, so would you break it down? Bun B Port Arthur, Texas, is a very small refinery town in south-east Texas. The
town next to it, Beaumont, Texas, is where the largest oil drilling in the world has ever
happened. I think at its peak it was releasing 100,000 gallons of oil a day. The whole
area of the city that I come from, Port Arthur and the neighbouring towns, was all built off of the refinery, so if you don’t
work in the refinery, you don’t have a good job in that area. There are only
50,000 people in the whole town, only two high schools, three elementaries, so
everybody knows everybody. There’s not too much anonymity in Port Arthur, Texas. Not many rich people in Port Arthur, Texas. When I
say rich – rich in a small town like that would be someone with six figures.
Most people who live and work in Port Arthur probably don’t make more than $35,000 a year. So there is not necessarily poverty, but most people in the
town are just getting by. My mother was a nurse, my father was a janitor, so
no big crazy house for me — small house, small bedroom but big love. When
you’re from a small town or a small village or whatever it is, you have a
deeper sense of community with people, you don’t make fair weather friends.
Most of the friends that I have will probably be my friends for the rest
of my life. You don’t have to worry about personalities changing, you pretty
much know how everybody is. Because of where I, and my partner, Pimp
C, were raised, in the small town, it
affected the way we communicated with the world, not just musically but
personally. We wanted to make sure that people understood that we were always
a group that never wanted to put a wall up between the people that listen to
their music, because there was no walls where we came from. Everybody knew
everybody, we could just be sitting in the living room and somebody would just
walk up and come in the screen door and say, “Wassup man, what are y’all doing
over here?” So we wanted to make sure, as a group and with our music, that we were
as open to people as our city was. Davide Bortot I think what is kind of interesting is that you have obviously been associated
with Houston, because it is the next big city and everything, but you never
really claimed that, you always represented P.A., Port Arthur, and it was really important to
you, I think. A lot of other people would have said, “Yes, we’re from
Houston,” just to make it easier to get a foothold in the industry. Why didn’t
you ever do that? Bun B When you are from a small town, most people in those towns have a lot of pride
in their community and it’s one thing that we definitely had. We loved being from
where we’re from and it made us the people that we are, and I think we're
pretty good people. For us, we knew that a lot of the people in that small
town would probably never leave that town. They would never go out in the
world, they would never be able to go and see things. Most of the people I
know that I grew up with never left Texas, much less the US. So for us, it is
important to let them know that no matter where we went in the world we
represented for them, for the people who couldn’t go out into the world. It would be very easy for me to just say Houston every time someone asked me where I
am from. It would be easy for me to say Houston, but the easy way
has never been the way we take it. We wanted people to respect us as we
were, we never wanted to try and fancy it up or dress it up a little bit.
We’re from a small town, Port Arthur, you either like it or you don’t, you
either accept it or you don’t. Either way we’re going to make this music, we’re going
to be here, we’re not going anywhere. For me, it feels good to be in Los
Angeles and New York and even in Barcelona and be like, “Port Arthur is in the
house.” Those people see those moments on TV or the internet or things like
that, and it uplifts them because it is very easy for people to forget where
they come from. It is very easy once you “succeed” in the music industry to
forget the little people. But for us, we are the little people, we are the
underdogs – that’s why the group is called the Underground Kingz, because we
were always the guys that nobody thought could do it. Because we came from a
town full of people that people thought couldn’t do it and would only be who they
were. It was important for us to let people know, “Don't think you know
everything about me, just because I'm from a small town.” Believe me, I can
take it wherever I need to take it. Davide Bortot So, I guess it was 8-Ball &
MJG, they refused to have their music
called hip-hop, they say they made “country rap”. Can you relate to that state of mind? Bun B Yeah. A lot of times in our early days coming up, hip-hop and all of the movement,
for whatever reasons, they didn’t want to include us. There was a geographical
distance thing or whatever, but I think people just didn’t think we knew what
we were talking about. They didn’t think we had the same appreciation, and
when you really think about it, hip-hop is more of a lifestyle. It is not just
music – hip-hop is MCing, DJing, breakdancing and graffiti. We are just MCs. So what we do may be considered a part of hip-hop, but we are not hip-hop. We just really wanted to carve out our own identity. Since we thought we can't
really be a part of what they are doing, so we will do what we do and make
sure people fully understand that it is of itself, primarily just from
this area. In saying that, we never wanted to exclude ourselves from other
people, and we didn’t want other people to not get into what we are doing, we just
wanted people to understand what the core of what we were doing meant. In
America, if you don’t live in a major metropolitan city, they call you
“country,” it’s basically that simple. You are country, or you’re “bama.” With me, I don't mind
being country, I love being from the country, I love being from a small town.
If you think something is wrong with that, then obviously you are out of your
rabid-ass mind. Davide Bortot How important was Houston as a city for you to become the MC that you are now?
Did you go there often to go to clubs, record stores, or whatever? Bun B Obviously, yes, that was the hub for any and all things rap and hip-hop in Texas, as far as I knew. If you wanted the new albums, you either had
to order them specifically or you could just ride to Houston and Houston would
have them. Same thing with concerts, we didn't really get a lot of concerts in
Port Arthur, the only concert I remember as a rap concert was the Geto
Boys and that wasn't until ‘90 or
‘91. So, if we really wanted to see something or know something about rap, we
had to get in the car and drive an hour and a half, go to record stores, go to
the flea markets. You would have to bring your radio with you so you could put
on a local radio show and it would have rap shows on Saturday night. The
university in Houston, Texas Southern University, has a communications department and they have a radio
station, and they used to do a two-hour show called Kids Jam, which would basically debut all
of the new rap records. So unless you had a real big antenna at your house,
you couldn't catch the radio [coming from] Houston. So we would ride out to Houston on
weekends and bring a radio with us, tape the shows, and then bring the shows back
home and play them to people. Davide Bortot So the production, was it all Pimp C back then? Or were you involved in the records as well? Bun B I did a couple of tracks in the beginning, but I realized that I was just
making beats, that I wasn't a producer. There is a difference and I don't
think a lot of people realize that. Probably anyone in this room can make a
beat, someone shows them how to work the
MPC
and play the keys, you don't even need to play the keyboard. Davide Bortot I can’t. Bun B I know you can. Davide Bortot No, I can’t. Bun B You can! Trust me, I said the same thing. You take a record, a turntable, a
sampler and a drum machine and anybody can make a beat. But that does not make
you a producer. Being a producer is knowing the right kind of sound from the
records, hearing the whole song inside your head before you even touch the
first instrument. People like that, you hear them and see their eyes roll
back [sings a beat], you’re like, “What are you singing?” And they’re like: “Some song.” You
go in there and hear the beat and it’s like [sings the same beat], “Damn! How did you
even know how to get that shit out of your fucking head into a machine?”
That’s the difference between a beatmaker and a producer. Davide Bortot So were you always around when Pimp made the beats, or did he do it in a
studio at home and brought you the beats and you rapped on them? Bun B No, we would sit around and Pimp would make beats all day. Most producers, that is
pretty much what they do: they wake up, they go to the machine and they start
making music. They’ll make four, five, sometimes even as many as ten songs. But
most producers I know will make it, and then you'll listen to it and be like, “Damn, that
shit’s dope, that shit’s dope.” And they’ll be like, “Nah, it’s bullshit,” and
they clear the whole board. I’ll be like, “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
They’re like, “That shit was garbage,” and they’ll start again and you’re
like, “Damn! Actually, that’s better than the last shit.” “Yeah, but I don’t
like the drums, fuck that shit!” I’m like, “Come on man, what you doing?” And
they’re like, “No, man, if we’re going to do it, it’s got to be perfect, every
song. We can’t put out half-assed music, not if we care about what we are
doing and not for who we represent. People where we are from don’t get a
second chance, so when we come, we got to come with it.” And he was always
right. Davide Bortot So the “Tell Me Something Good"
record, do you remember how it came about when you recorded it? Bun B Yeah, we did that record actually at Pimp’s mom’s house. All the first album,
the preproduction was done at Pimp’s mom’s, but “Tell Me Something Good”
specifically… We originally started doing all the music at Pimp’s bedroom
because he only had a little keyboard and a little sampler and a little Dr
Rhythm
drum machine and
shit. We were making literally everything in the bedroom and rapping on a
RadioShack microphone. Then we started saving up money and invested it in
bigger equipment and we all went in and bought an
Ensoniq. Once we got the
Ensoniq, it was too big for the bedroom, so his mom was like, “You can put that
shit in the den, but let me know when y’all gon’ make that music so I can go to my
room or something.” We were making music that at first, his stepfather Monroe,
he would just call it “noise” because he was from a different generation. He
didn’t really understand it, and lots of older people would just call it
noise. So for us, we wanted to incorporate records into our records that we
knew our parents listened to and was the shit for them, and we were going to put our rap spin
on it and make it happen. So, “Tell Me Something Good”, the original
record was by Rufus featuring Chaka Khan. Anybody over 30 years old in the
US knows this record – it’s a major record, always a party starter. My mother
loved the record, his mother, everybody loved the fucking record, so we
thought if we do “Tell Me Something Good,” then at least they won’t complain
about that one. On every album, we wanted to try and pull some of those
records that we knew people loved from a different generation, just so that
they would be able to have a chance to get into us a little bit. They weren’t
going to listen to a “Pocket Full Of Stones,” but maybe they would
listen to “One Day.” (music: UGK – “Tell Me Something
Good” (Original)) Wow! I’m 35 years old, I was 18 when I made that. I sound fucking crazy at 18. I
was trying real hard to let people know I was hard back then, I hear that in
my voice. What the fuck was wrong with me? That’s actually crazy that you
found that version. The version that he just played is the actual original
version that we recorded. When the record company got ready to put the album
out, they pulled the sample because they told us it didn’t clear, but then I
found out later that they just didn’t want to pay for it. That’s the kind of
shit record companies do to you. But that’s it, that’s the first song we actually went
with into what you would call a fully functioning recording studio. I recorded all
of that on a reel, just going to the studio and being like, “Yeah, we went to
the studio today.” We brought the tape from the studio and we brought it to the house, put it up on the
wall, we were like, “That’s our first tracklist, look at that shit.” That shit was
big for us. The only other people to make music from Port Arthur, Texas, were
Archie Bell & The
Drells and Janis
Joplin. You’re looking at the ‘60s
and the ‘70s and then nothing for 30-odd years. To us it was a big
accomplishment, not just for ourselves, but for Port Arthur people. Davide Bortot So what kind of music were you listening to back then, since there was no hip-hop music scene in Port Arthur – what was there, New York rap or other Southern
rap? Bun B You could hear rap, most of the music out at that time was basically the East
Coast scene – Juice Crew, Big Daddy
Kane, Kool G Rap. I remember the first time I heard Public Enemy
Public Enemy, “My Uzi Weighs A
Ton,” goddamn! I was a
big bass head back in the day, I loved bass. In Houston, in Texas, we have a real
big car culture, because of the fact Texas is so big. Texas still has a
million acres of land that is not even civilised, that is just land with no people
living there. Unlike in Europe, you can’t get anywhere in Houston on a bike. In Texas you’d
be tired and sweating, you’d be no good when you get there. Everybody
has a car, and in order to make your car stand out from the other thousands of
cars in the city, you’re either going to put the crazy candy paint or the
rims on it, or you are going to put a lot of music in it, especially if you
don't have money for rims and paint and shit. I remember when I was little, my
mom would go to sleep, I would take the speakers off the house stereo,
lay them on the back seat of the car, wire them up. We wouldn’t even play
them through the car system, we would have a radio that somebody took out of
somebody's car and a car battery, and we would have that shit wired to the
battery and the speakers wired to the radio through the outputs, and be playing
it like that, just riding around. People were like, “That’s banging, what you
got in there?” “My momma’s speakers.” That is what you do, you
compromise in this world. Everybody can’t afford to do what other people do,
but that doesn't mean you can’t be part of the party. Davide Bortot So what music was really big in Texas, was that East Coast rap? How about Miami bass music, was that relevant? Bun B We didn't even look at that shit like that, because it was still so new. Rap
music just started getting regionalized over the last ten or 15 years or so. Back in
‘89, when you listened to Big Daddy Kane, you didn't consider him an East
Coast rapper, he was just a rapper. You listened to
N.W.A., the only reason you would be like,
“Those are West Coast people,” is because they wore L.A. shit all day, every
day. And when the Southern rap started coming you had in the early days DJ Magic Mike, he would
just make bass music, just beats with stupid bass in it, no rapping, nothing. That
shit went gold. He was the only person I know that went gold with a rap album
that didn’t rap. What kind of shit is that? No video, no radio play, nothing.
Everybody wanted the bass. Ghetto-style DJ shit like the Gucci
Crew, MC Shy D, MC
Twist. The early
Rap-A-Lot Records like “You
Got To Be Down,” “CarFreak” — that was the first Geto Boys. The
first-ever Geto Boys were Slim
Jukebox, Prince Johnny C, Bushwick Bill and DJ Reddy Red.
Scarface didn't get to the
Geto Boys until the second album. So we were listening to that kind of shit, and I remember listening to the first Geto Boys album and hearing things like “Assassins” and
“My Balls And My Word,” and then
hearing Houston in the middle of the rhymes. It will fuck you up, like, “Wow, Houston people are
making rap music? That is crazy! I didn't even know people can do shit like
that. This rap shit is going to be all right.” Next thing you know, people in
my own town started rapping. I was like, “Hell, no!” I was breakdancing, but I
didn’t really look like I knew a lot of MCs back then. I look like it now
because I’m a little bit past my prime, as you can see, but I used to be the
suicide man. I used to be breaking and falling on my back and jumping up, and I
can’t do any of that shit no more. But East Coast, if you want to call it
that, the early inception of rap, once the West Coast guys had really started
making more harder-edged music, that is when the South was like, “Yeah, I think we
can do that.” Davide Bortot So you said it wasn’t important to you where rap came from, but still your
early record was called The Southern
Way. Bun B We just wanted people to see the way we do things. Everybody knows how in [New York]
they ride on the subways and they go to the bodegas, in L.A. they gang-bang and shit
like that. We just wanted to say they have their way, we has it his way, but
down here we do it our way, the Southern way. Davide Bortot Was there any gang-banging in Houston back then? Bun B Not really, not gangs like Bloods and Crips, anything like that. I don’t think Houston got
Bloods and Crips until maybe five years ago. Within the last five or six years you have people who would come from the
penitentiary who would have affiliation through prison, but as far as just
being on the streets, neighborhoods being blue or red, we didn’t have that.
That being said, the south side of Houston was always into red – red cars and things like that, but it
was never a gang thing. North side of Houston was always into blue things. It
had no correlation with what was going on in L.A.. We had south side
people, who didn’t like north side people and vice versa, but could you find
it anywhere. Anywhere you go where there is a south side and a north side they
probably won't get along. Korea, Ireland, all that shit, motherfuckers don’t
get along! Davide Bortot Is the whole south side and north side thing still a big issue in Houston? Bun B It got big during the screw tape
scene. Lots of problems came about from the screw tape scene, simply because
screw music was purely south side, and they were talking about how much money
they were making and the cars and all the shit they were doing. And north side
people were like, “Damn! It’s not like we ain’t doing it, we’re balling,
we’re making money, we’re doing the same shit.” But they didn’t really have
the outlet to represent that kind of thing. Michael
Watts and them didn’t
come until four or five years after
[DJ] Screw
, so it did get crazy for a while. But
then again, even then it was specific neighborhoods versus specific
neighborhoods. It was never everybody from the north side beefing against
everybody from the south side. It was people from Third Ward getting into it with the Rosewood
cats on the north side. It even got on the tapes: “Boys from Rosewood trying to come through, and we strapped up at the after-hours, it’s whatever.” It was crazy for a while. Unless I’m mistaken, I think they had a bulletproof… What it was, they
were robbing people in cars just as nice as the car they were driving. So when
the car would pull up on you, you thought it was just another car and the next
thing they're jumping out with AKs and
shit and then they jumping in your car and both cars are going down the
street. You’re like, “What the fuck just happened?” It would be like if
somebody pulled up in a Rolls-Royce, took you out of your Rolls-Royce and
robbed you. It was people jumping out of nice shit to take nice shit, it was
crazy. Davide Bortot You mentioned screw music, and for us Europeans who grew up on a healthy Pete
Rock, Nas and Wu-Tang
diet, it was always hard to
understand what you guys were doing. But with screw music, when I first heard
it, I thought, “What’s going on here?” Bun B Me too. Davide Bortot When did you first hear about screw music? Bun B I wanna be very, very specific about that. I met Screw in ‘92 before
the mixtapes were going on. At the time, Screw was just a mixtape DJ like
everybody else, making mixtapes and selling them, just a regular thing. It was
probably around the end of ‘92 I got one of his mixtapes and it was totally
fucking different, the shit was all slow. I brought the shit back and was like “Screw, my tape is fucked up.” If you
remember back in the cassette days... anybody here ever actually bought a
cassette? Ten years ago, did you buy a cassette? Not just an album, but when you buy a 100-minute cassette? If you got the 100-minute ones,
sometimes it’d be so much tape in it, it would get caught up. Especially back
then, if you tape too much, that shit would pop and then you’d have to get out
and splice it, get some Scotch tape and patch the shit back up. Sometimes it would get too thick, I had
some that was popped in two or three different places, the shit would get all
fucked up. So I was like, “Screw, my shit must be fucked up, maybe there’s too
much tape or something in here.” He was like, “My bad,” and he gave me another
one and the shit sounded the same. I said, “Something’s wrong with this one too,” and
he said, “No, man! That’s how the shit goes, that's how it's supposed to
sound.” I was like, “OK, alright.” So I rode around with it like, “I don’t get this shit.” And then I heard myself [chopped and screwed] and
I was like, “Whoa… now, I really don't understand this shit, my shit was
never meant to be like this.” In my own mind I couldn’t really grab the
concept of that shit. Then, one night I’m out at the car wash on MLK, it was a Saturday
night, and I heard it playing in a car with a lot of system, a lot of bass in the motherfucker, and I
heard how long that bass kick would last with a record being played at a third
of the speed, and I was like, “That is what it is about. This shit is about
making the bass even louder, you can play it harder. I can get used to this
shit.” Then I smoked me a blunt or two and that’s when it really started
making a lot of sense. I was like, “Now I can get into this shit for real.” It
was so mellow and laid-back. It’s not something you have to be high to get,
but you do need to be in a very relaxed state of mind. So if you can get
yourself in your own personal Xanadu without doing drugs, that is beautiful. I absolutely recommend that. But if
you’re already doing something, then screw music is the perfect thing to do it
to (laughter). Davide Bortot We could try it. (music: UGK – “Int'l Players Anthem (Chopped and Screwed)”) Bun B Now, keep in mind that a screw tape still has all the traditional shit that an
average mixtape has – it has trick scratching, shout outs and all of that, and the
only difference is the tempo. That was an original invention by Screw and it
is so crazy, because very seldom do you have an invention named after the
inventor. When Michael Watts and different people started making these
mixtapes, people got offended, because they were saying that it is screwed up, but
only Screw can screw a mixtape. How can you say that? That's like saying I just
“bun’d it”, and “how can you bun it if you ain’t Bun?” There was a lot of beef. There are
still a lot of people who feel funny about it because it was one man’s
invention, it was named after him, by him, for him, and then other people started
doing it but giving him no credit or no acknowledgement of the fact that it was
his invention, his creation. There are people today who still feel that there
are certain DJs who have not given it up enough for Screw. I remember when Justo [Faison] – rest in
peace, it is crazy because they are both gone now – but Justo put together the
mixtape awards in America for the DJs to honor DJs. I remember when they
called – Screw said that they were giving him a special award because he
created his own special style of DJing, and he said, “Man, I never thought
them boys would fuck with me. I always thought there was hating.” I was like,
“Man, they just didn’t get it.” I can understand, because people didn't get what we were doing
until years after the fact. As a DJ, and coming up on people like
Grandmaster
Kaz and
all these guys, Flash and Marley Marl, and having these
people saying, “It is incredible what you did.” And I think they even
gave him a ring and he never took it off. He never took it off. Davide Bortot Was it important back then that people from other regions would feel
your music and understand what you were trying to say? Bun B Yeah, like the same way that we’d listen to music and try and figure out, what the
fuck does “buck 50” mean, what does that mean? You would hear all these regional sayings from
places, and you would be like, “What does that shit mean?” So you have to keep
listening to the records and try to listen to the context of the record,
take some kind of uneducated and misguided guess. Sometimes you got it right,
sometimes you got it wrong, but a lot of it was just trying to figure out what
it was they were into. For us, we were just happy that people took the time to
listen to our shit, to try and figure it out and really get into our world, because that is what
our music was, it was really letting you into our world. For people to come in and
appreciate it and be like, “I liked it, and then when I found that you all were
talking about this, man, that is my shit now.” That’s how I used to feel,
that is how I still feel when I listen to shit. I was watching this kid—where were we?—we just left Denmark. There's a kid,
Bushido, he's not from
Denmark but he’s a European rapper. Davide Bortot He’s German. Bun B German, yeah. I was listening to this song, and I had no
idea exactly what he was saying but I could get the text of it, he was saying,
“Ching ching, bling bling, it’s a ghetto thing, thing.” I was like, he is talking about making money, and if you ain’t from the hood trying to
make money, you probably don’t understand it. You don't have to understand
German to get that shit. It is just about the fact that people are taking the
time to get into what you are doing. That is really what we make it for,
to see if people really appreciate the effort put into it. Because for years
people didn't think rap really took much, they thought we were just saying shit over
other people’s records, and nothing could be further from the case. Davide Bortot I think for a kid who grows up with hip-hop nowadays it is kind of impossible
to imagine that there was a time where rap music from the South was not that
popular. Today it’s all about the
Jeezys and the T.I.s. So when do you think it turned
around? Bun B When [Geto Boys'] “Mind Playing Tricks On Me” went
to number one on the charts, not just number one on the rap chart, but the number
one record in the country. The Geto Boys and the 2 Live Crew, these people went out and
they went to every one of these cities before any of us did. They went out
there when we didn't know what people would think of us, they didn’t care.
They basically formed a path that everybody walks now. It’s easy for us to do
it now, but back then, for one, being from the South, everybody assumed that
if you were not stupid, you were at least dumber than them. That is just a
given. That has nothing to do with music, that is just being a Southerner,
just being a Southern person – they assume you are stupid, uneducated,
ignorant, tacky. You've got no fresh, no swag, none of that shit and you don’t
know what the fuck you are talking about it. So the first thing was to try and break that idea, that notion, and a lot of that came through the lyricism of
Scarface. Him being such an incredible writer and lyricist, people just had to
give it up, they were like, “Yo, this dude here is a real fucking
rapper.” Then you had the braggadocio, Willie D, coming through like, “This is the South and you can call us country and all that
you want, but if I hear you say it, I’m going to beat your ass.” And it was
evident that, “OK, I don’t know what they’re doing, but that dude is gonna kick
somebody's ass, so if I don’t like it I’m going to just keep quiet about it.”
That is the best thing to do, just keep quiet. And then
Bushwick [Bill] was there to let you
know it’s still music, still a party. Everybody was still having a good time,
it’s all right to dance, it’s OK to laugh, it is OK to have a little fun with
it. But the early days of those guys going out there, you heard a lot of stories of them going to these
different cities and people thinking they were a joke, and there were so many
towns that they had to fight their way out of. Then they would come
back to that same city that they had to fight their way out of and they would
be kings, because they had earned the respect. That is really what it is about,
not been scared to go out and say, “I don’t care if you like me. If you don’t like me today, I’ll be here
tomorrow and maybe you’ll like me then.” That is really what this is about.
When you’re an artist trying to get into the game, most people aren’t going to
like what you are doing. That’s OK, because they probably just don't get you
yet. I remember the first time I heard The
Chronic, I thought it was terrible.
Most people I knew thought it was terrible. And the next day everybody was
like. “This is the shit.” I remember we popped it in and we thought, “This is
The Chronic? This shit ain’t better than an N.W.A. album.” But it was so new,
everything Dre put in The Chronic
was so new, the way he was structuring songs, the way he was producing, the
way people were even rapping – Snoop and RBX and
Kurupt, they brought a
whole new style and interactivity into the game, and the shit was a little bit
too much to process the first day. Then the next day we listened and were, “Yo, I don’t know what we were thinking yesterday, this shit is not jamming,
this is the most jamming shit I ever heard.” It took me two or three listens
to really get into it and I realize it wasn’t just songs, it was an album. A
lot of rap was just eight songs or ten songs, random rapping about the girl,
rapping about the club, rapping about the car, rapping about the neighborhood,
rapping about peace, rapping about war and whatever the fuck. The Chronic
was a full thought-out album from beginning to end – the way the skits
were done, the music, the way it was put together, it was very fucking precise,
and I think it really changed the way people put shit together. I know it
did for us, not to emulate it, but we had to make sure
our shit would stand out like this. They may not
get it at first, but they keep listening to it and they’ll realise it’s just a
little different and that’s why I didn’t get it, it’s a bit different to what
I’m used to. This shit is good music, period. Davide Bortot So is it important to you when you are creating an album to do something like
The Chronic was, a coherent, consistent album? Bun B Yeah, because like I said, most rappers are not consistent. It is not coherent, it is just random thoughts over random beats. And with that kind of shit going on, it is
understandable why a lot of it gets criticized, because most people are not
putting a lot of effort into what they were doing, they were not looking at it
as a full project. As soon as we started realizing that we are not just making
music, we are making albums and we actually had careers... In the early days nobody
knew how long that shit was going to go on. Once people sort of realized, “OK,
I got a record deal, I got a budget, let me sit down and really concentrate on
what the fuck I’m doing and how it is going to be presented,” that is really
where the game started changing with us. When we were younger we were just
making songs about going out one day and we saw a dude in a nice car and women
were jocking him, and we'd make a song about women jocking the car. But then we
started thinking that we needed to make a full album, we needed to pick a theme, and we need to ride on that theme, so that's what we started doing. Davide Bortot I think it is pretty common sense that the closest you got to making a proper
“album” album is the Ridin’
Dirty album, would you agree
with that? Bun B I kind of would have to. Musically, we were probably in our prime for the
time, lyrically we were definitely in prime for the time, and we had a lot of
shit going on in our personal lives too that affected a lot of Ridin’ Dirty.
But, more than anything, Ridin’ Dirty was the first album where Pimp and I
got to do every song the way we wanted to do it. We got to put
the album together the way we wanted to put it together, we got to do the
cover artwork the way we wanted to do it. It was the first time when a record
company said, “You guys know what you are doing.” Even the record company
thought we were stupid — remember, we’re from the South, we don’t know what
the fuck we’re doing — they would be like, “That is a good song, but the
people in L.A. aren’t going to get that, you probably need to do this.” I
said, “I didn’t make this for the people in L.A. to get it, I made it for all
the people. It doesn't matter where you're from. I’m not concerned about
making something that New York is going to jam. If it is good music, they will jam
get it anyway. You are thinking about radio and the people that you hang
around with, I could give a fuck about that. Give that shit to the man in the
street and he gon’ dig it.” Their problem was that they were scared and
they would only service it to people in the South in the street. I used to go
to New York for my album and I couldn’t find it. I’d be like, “Where my shit at up here?” They’d be like, “We have it
in a couple places but we don’t think people…” I’d be like, “There are eight
million people in New York, how the fuck do you know what eight million people
think? Why don’t you sell more music? If y’all know what the fuck people wanted
to hear, wouldn’t y’all be billionaires. Every record you put out would be number
one around the world. Bullshit. You don’t know what you’re doing. Give the
shit a chance.” Ridin’ Dirty was the first time they said, “OK, this screw
shit, the candy paint and the cars, I think people can get it.” I said, “No,
shit! You can see screw tapes selling all over the world. We have been
telling you about screw for three fucking years. Now all of a sudden? You don’t think, you know,
let’s be real, so let us do our thing.” “Do the album, make the music, this is
the budget. Make it in the budget and we will put the shit out.” And that is
what we did, they left us the fuck alone and we made the album we were
supposed to make. Davide Bortot Let’s listen to a song maybe… Bun B If you’re an artist, you have to fight for your individuality, don't just take
what the fuck a record company tells you. Argue with them motherfuckers, call
your A&R a son of a bitch, don’t be
scared. They just people, they can’t hurt you. Just tell them how the
fuck you feel and they will actually respect you a lot more for it, believe
me. I called my CEO a bitch, that wasn’t a good one. (Laughter) They didn't answer the
phone for two months, but it’s all good. When they did answer the phone, they knew who they were talking to. Davide Bortot By the way, talking about labels, I remember there was a situation you put out
an album but didn't do any promo for it. Which one was that? Bun B Yes, that probably would have been Dirty
Money, and that was because
there was just a lot of bullshit with them. We finally had the big record with Jay-Z, “Big Pimpin’”, and that
was something they could understand. “OK, it was Jay-Z, it was Timbaland, it was a hit record. Let's just do
another one, then y’all can have a big hit too.” I’m like, “That’s not a UGK
song, that’s a Jay-Z song. We don’t do Jay-Z songs, we do UGK songs.” And they
were like, “Still, now people know you from this.” I'm like, “I don’t give a
fuck where people know me from, that is not how I want to be presented on my
own projects. If that’s how he wants to present me on his shit that’s cool,
but when it comes to my shit, my shit rolls different, with no disrespect
to Jay or Timbaland.” They wanted Hype
Williams to shoot a video and all
that shit, so I’m like, “OK, let me get this straight, if I go and get Jay-Z
and Timbaland and do another song, you will pay half a million for Hype to do
a video. But, if I don't get Jay-Z and Timbaland, will Hype still do my
video?” “Well, let’s not concentrate on that.” “No, simple questions – if we do this
and we don’t put them on it, do we still get a Hype Williams video?” “Probably
not.” “Gotcha! Well, fuck you and fuck this album, we’ll turn it in and you do
what you want to do with it.” Davide Bortot We need to talk about the Jay-Z song later, but let’s hear a UGK song, as you put
it. Here’s one off Ridin’ Dirty. (music: UGK – “One Day”) Bun B Thanks. I perform that song at every show but it’s always different when you
listen to it. I don’t know if that’s just me. I don’t listen to myself, and I
do probably a good 150 shows a year and perform that song 150 times a year,
but I never really listen to it. There’s a certain disconnection you have
sometimes as a performer, like, you know it’s your words but it’s just like tying your
shoes and shit, that’s just what the fuck you do for a living. Like, if you
work at McDonald’s, you make the Big Mac, you don’t fucking think about it,
you just make the Big Mac. That’s what we do as rappers. When I listen to it,
it’s crazy because it still hits me the way it did when we wrote it. When we
made this record we couldn’t believe that it hit us like it did. It’s a very
personal record, there’s a lot of very real shit on that song and to
hear it today it’s still crazy. I just left Orange not too long ago and riding through there, I was thinking about boxing. I talk
to my homeboy Bobo all the time and he’s remarried and has a new baby girl
now, and we still do these songs and every now and then we get choked up on stage. We
still cry when we hear this record, because we’re talking about people that
we loved and lost, and that’s real shit. And that is when music is supposed to be at its best. Don't
get me wrong, at the very least music should entertain people, but music when
it is done at its best should be able to inspire and enlighten people and take
them somewhere. It is supposed to be a transcendental experience, it really
is. Davide Bortot I think on an emotional level some of your songs are very strong, people can
relate to them, and I think part of that is that you are consciously trying to
keep it simple somehow — the flow and even some words, it is very direct and
straight and appealing in a straight way. Is that something you try to do
consciously? Bun B Pimp’s main thing was that he didn't want to lose people with flows and
styles, he was like, “Bun B, you can do all that shit, you the lyricist, you can do the crazy
flows and I’m gonna keep my shit sweet and simple.” But for records like that, we tried to keep the flow very simple because we had to get the message
across to people. It wasn’t about us showing off as lyricists and writers. It
was about really getting the pure message across, and with a record like “One Day,”
the whole point of it was that we know that everybody goes through loss, we
all grieve, and it’s painful for everybody, so why not let people know that we
are just like them? A lot of times in rap music particularly, people put up
walls and they put up these pedestals and soapboxes to preach to you and look
down to you, like, “Yeah, I’m the shit.” When really we should be like, “Yeah,
I’m the shit and you can be the shit too.” That is the message we need to be
getting across to people, not that, “I made it and look at you, ha ha, you’re
still broke.” This is about everybody coming up. With us, we’re like,
“Yeah, we might be UGK, we might sell records, but when I lose a friend it hurts
me just like it hurts you. When somebody goes to jail it hurts me just like it
hurts you.” Everything we go through in life. And sometimes for us it’s
a lot worse because I'll be out of town somewhere when somebody passes away
and I can’t get back in time for the burial. That has happened to me at least
four times. One time in particular, my aunt passed away, and she was a woman, who,
when my mother had to work late I would go and stay with. I couldn't even
grasp the concept that she had died because I hadn't gone to the funeral. You
associate it with the past, you go to the wake or the funeral and make your
peace with it. But because I wasn’t there and I was removed from the situation,
I would come home after about a month and be like, “Aunt Jen is dead,
right?” And my mom would say, “Yes, yes. I just told you last month, she is
dead, accept it and deal with it and move forward.” But that’s the thing, you
get so far gone in this music sometimes that you can lose a sense of reality. So we
try and put as much reality into the music as possible so that it is always
there, you always know who you are, you always know where you status is. Davide Bortot I think there is not one single rapper on the whole scene or industry that doesn't
respect you, and I think a lot of that comes from you being honest. Is that
what you mean when you say reality? Bun B Absolutely. I know the first time when we went on the radio and told
people we were broke. We didn’t tell the radio station what we were doing, we
just said we want to come up and go on the air today and they said sure, so we
went to the radio and they said, “What is going on with UGK today?” And we
said: “Shit, UGK is broke,” and they said, “Excuse me?” And we said, “Yep,
we’re broke, the record company are playing us. We signed a fucked deal, and
we fucked up, you bought all those records and we didn't get a dime of it.” So
then people are calling up and going, “Why didn’t y’all get paid?” So then we
pull out the contract and start explaining to people on the air how fucked up
our contract was, and it gave the consumer an inside look into this – they
wouldn’t understand at the time. “You sold 500,000 records, shouldn't you get
a cheque from that?” “No, I can’t get a cheque from that because the way my
deal works I don’t get paid off that, I get paid off this. I only get paid off
the 7% of what money is made, not the 100%.” People didn’t know this type of
thing, the consumer didn't know this about the game. We tried to expose as
much of this shit as possible. One, for an up-and-coming artist who might want
to be us, it is important for you to know the game and have as much information
as possible and know how these record companies will fuck you over. And
two, you can front the people all you want, eventually they will see who you
are. You keep talking about Benzs and Bentleys and you got all this money, and eventually somebody’s going to see you get out of a car, and if it is not the Benz or the
Bentley, you are going to get confronted. Like, “Bun B, you jumping out of a
Hyundai? What the fuck you doing in a Hyundai? You said you rolling in
a Benz?” People see you shopping, they see you taking the kids to eat, you
will get exposed. I don’t care who you are and how good you think your lie is,
it will catch up with you. This is the internet age, with camera phones, there is a
camera on every corner in most major cities. So whoever you really are, if you’re
telling them you’ve got all women in the world, but you really like men, you
can front all you want to, we will eventually catch you with a boy. The
reality is, nobody really cares who you fuck with, nobody cares – we’re only mad
because you lie. People should be real about who they are and honest about who
they are and let the people decide if they want to fuck with you or not. You’d be surprised. “Well, I ain’t got all that, but I have talent.” “Good enough for me, let’s go.” Most people don’t
really give a shit about that. You make good music, I can deal with that. Davide Bortot But still, between talent, truth and being real to where you come from, to not selling out, that is a big difference and there are a
lot of compromises in there. So when the record company asks you to make the
next Jay-Z record... Just to explain that, you had the Jay-Z record, “Big Pimpin’,” it blew up on national radio and made you famous in other parts of the country. Then they ask you on your
next record to do another track with Jay-Z and Timbaland. How tempting was
that at the time, did you think about it one time? Bun B Not at all. For us, the exposure was good but we knew it wasn’t ours. Like,
“This song is number one but don’t get big heads because this isn’t your song.
You may have helped this song be number one, but we know who the star is. Let’s
be real, it’s a Jay-Z record, the biggest shit on the planet. Keep it very
real, don’t get a big head, get back in your little world.” Because all that’s
going to happen is, if I let them go and get the Jay-Z verse, then they are
going to pay $100,000 for that. And if I go and get a Timbaland beat, at that
time they would have had to pay half a million dollars for that. The Hype
Williams video, a half million dollars for that – so already just off one song
I’m $1.2 million in the hole. Now, do you wanna be famous or do you want to
actually make a fucking living out of your music? That is what a lot of
artists have to come to terms with. Very few people get to be rich and famous,
it doesn't really work like that. You either get to be rich — those are the
people who work behind the scenes, the producers, executive producers and
people like that — or you can be famous, the ones in front of the camera doing
all the singing and dancing. Everybody doesn’t get to be Mick Jagger, we're
not all going to be filthy fucking rich and super fucking famous. So at the
very least, maintain your integrity, you can make a living off of integrity. Davide Bortot So there is the money argument and there is the argument that the song with
Jay-Z would have been your song, but if you heard
the song now, the “Big Pimpin’” record, aren’t you proud of it? If you play
it in a club nowadays, it still works, people still go crazy. Doesn’t it make
you proud at all? Bun B It’s not like I’m not proud of the music, but at the same time it is not my
song. I can try and take as much claim as I can but that shit says Jay-Z
featuring UGK, not UGK and Jay-Z. It was his record, he asked us to be a part
of it, we put it together, it ended up being a big thing, but after that he still
gets to be a superstar and I am still here in my world. I did get a few more
fans, yes, I did increase my fan base a little bit, but still at the end of
the day, if I go out of my way just to appease the new people who listen to me
just because of Jay-Z, then I disrespect the 500,000 people who have been
supporting me just because I am me. And I'd rather have people like me for me
than like me for anybody else. Fuck that, like me for me, because if you like
me for Jay-Z, as soon as you stop liking Jay-Z you stop liking me, right? So
if you are going to fuck with me, fuck with me on my terms and on my terms
only, or don’t fuck with me at all. I'm still going to sleep at night. It’s
all good. Davide Bortot So, I think we have a very good example here of a record with Jay-Z that is
still very much a Bun B song or a UGK song. (music: Bun B feat. Jay-Z – “Get
Throwed”) So that’s a song with Jay-Z. Jay’s verse is at the end of the song. When I
listen to your music or just look at what you do with your music, sometimes it
even looks like you do that stuff consciously. Like, you have the Jay-Z verse,
but you put it at the end of the song just to show people that, “I can have
the Jay-Z verse but I can put it in the end if I want to.” Is that true? Bun B No, you put the Jay-Z verse at the end of the song so people listen to
the whole record. Especially for a DJ, because otherwise the DJ gets the Jay-Z
verse and then it’s on to the next record. So if you want the Jay-Z verse on
here, you have to listen to the whole song. Anybody out there, you get a big-name feature, you spend a lot of money on them, put them at the end of the
song. If you put them at the beginning, when they play it on the radio, as
soon as that person’s verse is over they are going to go to the next record.
Be very careful with things. Spend your money and make sure people stay to the
big show, you have to make it a big surprise at the end. Davide Bortot So that was a song off your solo album
Trill, released in 2005. In
2002 your partner, Pimp C, was incarcerated. Whenever a
good friend is incarcerated it is always hard, but for you as a musician, as a
group, what did that mean to you in that moment? What did you think when you
heard that he would need to go to prison? Bun B I was in the courtroom when he was sentenced and my primary concern, for one,
was for his kids. As a father and as a provider for his family, how do you
take care of your family while you’re in prison? So to me, that was my main
concern: how do helpless men continue to earn money? How do I make sure that
his name still has weight when he comes home from prison, so that he can
continue to make music and provide for his family? Initially, we didn’t know.
He had recorded some songs before he went in to try and put something out
during the time, but he wasn’t going to be available to actively promote the
album. So I said, “OK, I am going to have to make sure I get out there and
promote his name as much as I can.” There are no guidelines for that kind of
situation, rap-wise anyway. There had never been a situation where you take a
two-man group and you take one of them out the group. How does the group exist
when it is an individual as opposed to a group? That is the meaning of the
word group, more than one person, so how do you continue to exist? And for a
while we weren’t really sure about how to keep it going. I went and visited
Pimp and we would talk about different things, and he was like, “You know, you
have to make an album, right?” And I said, “I’m not making an album by myself,
that’s dead in the water.” He was like, “Man, you are going to have to, it is
the only way, you are still UGK. Just because I’m not on the streets, we are
still UGK. People know we are down with each other, you have to keep the music
going and keep the name alive.” I had apprehensions about that shit myself,
because I didn’t want people to think that once my man got locked up I’m
off on my own and doing my own thing. That is not how I operate, and people
know I am a very loyal friend, so I was like, “How can I make sure that
whenever I’m doing music people know that I’m still down with Pimp?” And that
is where “Free Pimp C” came from, that whole campaign. Whenever I did a
feature or a verse on somebody’s album or wherever I was, I made sure I
shouted “Free Pimp C” so there was always an association with Bun B and Pimp C, so
that people couldn't twist it. For a lot of people it is “out of sight out of
mind”, but my thing is you can’t see him but you can hear him, you’re going to
hear his name constantly. And any time they see me or hear me they are going
to hear me say his name, they are going to see me wearing a shirt with his
picture or something. I’m going to fucking let them know that Pimp C is still
here. Davide Bortot So as far as loyalty, at that point did it even matter to you, or was it even
relevant to you, whatever he did or if he did it? Bun B No, because at that point, if you love people, you don’t get to worrying about
that kind of thing. And I know it sounds crazy, but if your brother killed
somebody, you are going to be like, “Damn, you are a murderer, that's fucked
up” – I’m not saying Pimp’s a murderer, just making a point – “but you’re
terrible, we used to play football in the backyard. I can’t believe you would
want to kill somebody.” But that doesn’t mean you instantly stop loving
somebody. You may not like them much at all but it’s still your blood, it’s
still your kin and it is still your family. It is not easy to write people off
that much sometimes. My thing was like, “OK, you made a mistake, who is to say
that I won’t make mistakes? I can’t sit here and judge you like that but I am
all right with you. I rolled with you before in the good times when we were
making money and riding around and having all kinds of fun, it was all good.
But now that you are going through a rough spot, I am not just going to write
you off like that. I just can’t do that, it is just not in my nature.” Davide Bortot I think Pimp’s case is in a way very special, the wrong circumstances or
whatever, but don’t you think that it is often overlooked in hip-hop,
whenever there is a “free somebody” campaign going on, those people are
actually criminals sometimes? Bun B Yes, absolutely, and sometimes people just don’t care. Of course, he’s a
criminal but he’s in prison he is paying his debt to society, so we’re not just
saying open the doors and let him out. We know that is not possible, that is
more just a reminder. Let my man go, and at some point he can come out on
probation or parole, so give my man a chance, that's all I'm saying. We know
that when we start a “free somebody” campaign, a lot of times the person may
not be free, but sometimes you have to fight a fight you can’t win just to let
people know you are willing to fight. Davide Bortot So at the point when you started your solo career and became a feature machine,
Bun B is on everybody’s song and does solo albums and that kind of stuff, at
that point were you sure you could win this, or was it a fight you just started
to show everybody you’re willing to fight? Bun B I wasn’t sure. I felt like I was in one the greatest groups of all time, and I
never wanted to be a solo artist. I was very comfortable working with Pimp as
a group. I had no intention of wanting to go off and do my own thing, but
sometimes life takes you out of your comfort zone and shows you who you really
are and what you are made of. Had I stayed in a group situation longer, there
is no way of telling if I would have been able to make a conscious decision to go ahead
and try a solo career. My solo career came basically out of necessity, the
fact that it was the best way that I could keep the UGK name going. So for me
to make a solo album, a lot of it was getting started. Once I actually made the
decision to do this… I probably spent 18 months just
sitting around saying, “I can’t do it, I don’t want to do this, I don’t want
to make a solo album. Because, again, I don’t want people thinking I’m
thinking about myself.” But honestly, I’ve talked to people about it and people would be like, “Man, if
you want to go along by yourself that’s totally understood, dude. He caught his case, he went to
prison, whatever you have to do to keep yourself going.” People would have
understood if I decided to go off on my own. But it wasn’t about that. Where I’m from, loyalty is the
key, because in small towns sometimes all you’ve got is your friends. I
know that for a fact, had I been in his position, he would have done exactly
what I did and maybe even more. Sometimes you have to make sure you do for
people what they would do for you, at least that’s how I feel. Davide Bortot Did you talk to him about it, when you consciously started to work on the
album? Bun B Yeah, I would go and see him and send letters and talk about different
stuff. Pimp had input, he said, “Man, you got to talk about the broads.” I
said, “Man, that’s your thing, I don’t really do that, you do those kind of songs.” And he said,
“Well, go and get whoever is doing the best songs about girls right now, it is
not like they're not going to work with you.” So I got the Ying Yang
Twins, who were making all the
best booty records at the time, and said, “Yo, let’s make a booty record,” and
they were like, “Hell, yeah.” Davide Bortot The solo album was a totally different approach to what you did with UGK. UGK
always had its sound, had its topics, its style, and now this solo record featured
pretty much everybody and there was a whole lot of different records. Was that
intentional? Bun B For me, doing a solo album was not so much about getting my own personal views of
the world out there, it was really about trying to touch as many people as I
could. And I have gotten flak for that, because people say, “Well, you didn't
need to make a song with Trey Songz
and Mike Jones and Birdman for the ladies,”
and I said, “Well, I did, because I needed to get my message to Trey Songz
fans, Mike Jones fans and Birdman fans." Same thing with the Ying Yang Twins – I needed to
get my message out to all these people’s individual fan bases: “Free Pimp C,
UGK For Life.” It was important and I wanted as many people as I could get to
hear it. That’s why I ended up on so many albums because I said, “Anybody
that’s working, let me know. I’m open and I really want to get this message
out.” And then I would have people call me, like
Ludacris was like, “Bun, I know what
you are trying to do right now. If you need me for something, let me know.”
Same thing with T.I., like, “Bun, if you
need me for something, let me know,” and T.I. was like, “Come, get on my
album. That way you can really get in touch with my fan base.” A lot of that
was really people offering themselves to the project. I had so many guests
featured because I had so many people wanting to help me keep the UGK name
alive. There is probably two or three songs that we didn’t even use because I
thought, we got 18 features, this might be too much, that is almost a
compilation album now – but that it is just a testament to the love that people
had for Pimp C as well as UGK. Davide Bortot How did it feel when you recorded the album, when you listen to it now? You stressed before that you were really not about touching as many people
as possible or thinking about target groups, but now you actually did that,
and there was a good reason to do it, how did it feel? Bun B I can’t even lie, I was numb through a lot of it. I had a real bad drinking
issue at that time because that was the way I chose to deal with the fact
my best friend was locked up and maybe my career and life was going down the
drain. I hit the bottle, and it was probably one of the lowest points of my
life, literally. I'm ashamed when I look back and I talk with my wife and my
friends about it. You’re looking at a person who was probably drinking a fifth of Hennessy a day, trying to drown myself in the pain. Then every morning I would
wake up, but the pain would still be there, and then you go and try to numb
that shit again, until finally you make a decision to deal with it and get over
it. Because, obviously the liquor ain’t helping and the problem is still
here. You can take the pills, you can take the drugs, you can do whatever you
want, but eventually, when the cloud leaves, the problem is still there and it
is harder to keep that cloud in front of you. To me, as I said, drinking was a
big problem, and I really had to get out of feeling sorry for my fucking
self. There is simply no other way to say it. I was like, “Pimp C is gone, the
group is over.” All this shit. My wife was like, “OK, then get the fuck up and do
whatever it is you need to do. You can’t be playing here, life still goes on.” So I sucked it up, I got in the studio and I surrounded myself with people I knew I
could trust — my manager Red, and I recorded with people that I knew had my
back and people who would tell me that it’s not jamming. That was my main
thing. If I'm going to do an album and Pimp is not here – because Pimp was the
person with the ear, who knew what songs were hitting and what wasn’t. I needed
people whose opinions I could trust. I didn’t need somebody just sit there in
the studio, I needed someone who would not be scared to tell me to come out the
booth: “Just get out here, that's terrible.” Which doesn’t happen that often
because I'm pretty good right now [laughter], but at the time I was very unsure about the
shit and I needed people, honest people, that I knew would give me the
right information and hold me down the right way. Davide Bortot So when the record came out it was this big time for Houston or Texas rap, Mike
Jones and Paul Wall and even Chamillionaire started, so how did that feel for you, the success? Even for a solo album
which was released independently it sold crazy units, it was really a big
success and at that point maybe a success that no one really expected. So,
could you even be happy at that time, looking at the rap scene, what was going
on? Bun B I wouldn’t say happy. I felt like the mission was accomplished. It is
bittersweet. We had a lot of that lately with the UGK legacy. It is hard
to celebrate when the person that you usually celebrate the shit with isn’t
there to celebrate, and my whole thing was trying to get him the album so he
could hear it. How the fuck do I get this album into prison so he could hear
it? I can't get into how he got it but he did eventually get the album – I’m not gon’ snitch or anything like that – and he
listened to it and he was proud of what I did, and that is really all the
confirmation I needed. I appreciated the sales and that’s important, the radio
play and all of that, but at the end of the day I just wanted to make sure I did my homeboy
proud, and then I knew we would be selling records. Davide Bortot There is this one remix on there with all the Houston rappers on it, and when you
look at it, it is just a regular posse cut, everybody doing their thing like a
mixtape rap, it is nothing special – but you can really hear the pride in that.
Is that true? Bun B My whole thing, it’s called the “H Town
Mix,” and my thing was like,
“Paul [Wall], you doing it. Mike [Jones], you doing it. Slim [Thug], you doing it. [Z-]Ro,
you coming up right now. We need to show them this united front, we need to
show them that all of us are here and we doing it big and we gonna
be here for a while.” Not everyone can do that. Slim can call Paul or Mike, but
maybe he can’t call two or three other people. Everybody can’t get everybody, and
I understand I have a certain position in the game where people look up to me.
So if I call on somebody to do something for me it’s not just because I can, I
call them because I have a deeper purpose in mind. I know that just because
we have the light now that doesn’t mean to say it’s going to stay there. And
the best way to keep the movement going was to show a united front because
there is strength in numbers. And that’s what we tried to do on the remix. (music: Bun B feat. Lil' Keke – “Draped Up”) Wow, I don’t even know the last time I heard that shit. That was a big record. Now that I listen to it, I’m really remembering back to when we dropped it. To us, we were thinking we were gonna make a nice little posse cut – but the city
was really, really proud of that record. Houston was like, “That is how we always need to look.” We have been trying hard to look like that ever since but people are people. Nobody is perfect. Davide Bortot From an outside perspective, it was like those two years where Houston was
really big, it was all about Houston, those different styles and all the music
and everything – but suddenly everybody disappeared. Is that something you
agree on from a Texan perspective? Bun B I wouldn’t say disappeared, but it was just the amount of music people were
putting out. You gotta understand that the reason people like Slim Thug, Paul, Mike, and Chamillionaire rose to the fame that they did was because of their musical output. When you look and see these people who seem like they are blowing
up out of nowhere, it’s no coincidence. 50 Cent blew
up because he was putting out the most music and mixtapes. Same thing with the
Dipset, when the Dipset rose to prominence it was because they were making the
most music. That is really what it is about, putting product out for the
people. As the years have gone by and people have got more and more into the
musical experience, and not just listening, but actually understanding the process
of music being recorded, people realise now that it doesn't really take a lot
of time to make a song, per se, and there are so many songs that you could be
putting out for free. For example, anybody that wants to rap to a Beatles
record don’t even consider putting it out for sale because it is not going to
happen. You will never clear it, it will never fucking happen in a million
years. But that doesn't mean you can't make a great song out of a Beatles record
and just give it to the people. All those samples that you know won’t clear,
that’s the perfect way to get your name in the game. Usually, when a song
doesn’t clear it’s because the song is big and the people are real fucking famous and they don’t
want you fucking with their shit, because there is a lot to be gained from it.
So that is the best thing to do, to take these big-ass records – you can't make any
money off of it but that doesn't mean you can't get it to people and they can't
like it, listen to it, jam it and appreciate it and you. You look back two
years ago and the number one album was the
Clipse mixtape. It was music that they
couldn't put out but it was still good music that they made. At the end of the
day that’s really what this is about. None of us is really going to get filthy
fucking rich off this music, but we should at least be trying to have fun with
it. Who the fuck wants to sit around in a studio with a serious motherfucker all the time, someone who is serious and broken and
frustrated? I’m broke and frustrated, that doesn’t mean I’m down all the time. That is the whole point of making this music: have fun, lift yourself up, lift
your spirits and hopefully other people's spirits too, or stop. We shouldn't
all be making Philip Glass
music
and depressing the shit out of everybody. You didn't know Bun B knew about
Philip Glass, did you? [Laughter] Davide Bortot So when Pimp came out of prison in 2005, going from a situation where it
really seemed like it could be the end of the group, to a situation where the group was stronger than ever before, what was your
state of mind when you started working on the next record? Bun B We were just happy, all bullshit aside, we were just ready to make music
together and do what we had been doing for so long. Pimp was a person who I
knew that, since he was about 14 years old, got up every morning and made
music, literally. So when you do that half your life and then one day you wake up
and you can’t make any music at all, it will fuck with your mind. If you
could do anything every day and then all of a sudden they tell you you can’t do it. Like, if your favorite food is potatoes and you eat potatoes every day and then you wake up tomorrow and there is
no more potatoes, there is a mad potato disease and they had to kill all the
potatoes, we can’t eat potatoes ever again. That’ll fuck your head up because
there isn’t a replacement for potatoes if you like potatoes. You can’t eat
cauliflower and eggplant just because it’s white and mushy, that shit’s
not a potato. I just figured that out at the hall in the buffet [laughter]. So I was just so happy that he was home and he was like, “Man, me too, I just want to
make this music again.” We went in the studio, he was trying to go to the
studio the day that he got out of jail. I was like, “No, you need to go take a
bath, you need a good fucking meal, you need to kiss your kids and your wife.
Spend time with your family. Studio is going to be here, it is not going
nowhere.” He was like, “Shit, it just went somewhere for four fucking years.”
I was like, “Wow, touché, my bad. But seriously, give yourself a day or two.” The first song we did when he came home was the “Get Throwed
Remix” that he
rapped on. We sat there and we put the beat on and we looked at each other, and
one thing, when he and I write our rhymes we are in the same room, but we don’t
talk to each other. He’ll be on one sofa and I’ll be on another sofa and
the beat will play and we will write our rhymes. We won’t say anything
about the rhymes until after it is written, but that shit always meshed. We
don’t even understand that. You do you, I do me. For some reason that shit always
made sense together. That was the one thing that we wondered: he’d been in
prison for four years, can we still do that? We sat down, put on the beat, he wrote his rhyme, I wrote mine, and it
made perfect sense in the world, and we looked at each other like, “Let’s
go,” and we just kept making music. That’s why the UGK album ended up being a
double album. We really made like 35 to 40 songs for the album. We were just on a
roll and it was feeling so good, and it was right. It made all the sense in the
world that me and this dude were supposed to make music together, there’s no way
around that shit. When he came home from prison it was something that we
really both started understanding a lot clearer – not just that we make good
music together, but that we were meant to make this music together. And at that
point we were like, “Let’s just fucking make it, let’s just keep making it.
Whatever goes goes, whatever doesn’t, doesn’t. Let’s just make music and at the
end of the day that is what we are supposed to be doing together.” Davide Bortot I understand it worked out well from the first day he came out of prison, but
was it any different from how it was before? Bun B No, not at all, and that’s the funny thing. That’s what we were worried about: is
it going to be different? But after we did that first rhyme we knew it wasn’t
different. In fact, it was going to be even better because we began to
appreciate it more. We knew now what every song meant, not just to us but to
other people. We had a much better understanding of our history, our legacy,
our reputation, and our fan base as well. We knew everything we needed to know
about this group and everything we needed to know about making the music that
this group makes and our connection to the people, so let’s just do it. The
record company was like, “Yes, please, we don’t want anybody on this album.”
We said, “No, we’re still going to put features on the album.” Well, whatever,
let’s just give the people UGK and by that point everybody understood what it
was. Davide Bortot As a musician he didn’t change in those five years, but as a
person did you notice any difference when he came out? Bun B Just more of an intensity. We would talk, I would go and see him like, “Have you been writing?” He’s like, “Have I been writing? I’ve got 400 songs.” Like I say,
when you're a producer you constantly have these songs in your head. I
asked him, “What do you do with all the beats that are in your head?” He’s like,
“I write them out.” I’m like, “How do you write a beat out?” “I just think of
what the drum pattern will be and I make notes to myself. It’s not something
you could read, Bun B, and understand, but it’s some stuff that I can look at it
and realize, yes, that was this song. I know how to put that down on paper so I can
look at it and still make the music.” All the songs that he made and all the
different samples, nobody ever made them. He would have ideas for songs and
samples in the four years that he was gone and nobody did them, and he was able to come back home
and put the same songs out that he had envisioned in prison. Davide Bortot You said before that whenever you started working on an album together you
always try to put together a concept or an overall style for the album. So
hoe would you describe the double album, Underground
Kingz? Bun B First off, it’s kind of crazy ‘cause we waited five albums to do a self-titled
album. But we did that because the name of the group, Underground Kingz, summed up
everything that we had gone through. No one was supposed to be able to come
home after four years and still have a career. No one man was supposed to be able to keep
a group alive. Who goes to prison and comes back bigger? It doesn’t work like
that. So against all the odds and obstacles that people put in on our way, we
surpassed it, we went past the point that everyone said we would end up
stopping at. When Pimp got locked up, all of those people said that was it and
that was going to be the end of it. I kept doing features and everyone
said, “Still, you aren’t going to have a career.” And I did a solo album and
they said, “You've got a little career but it still isn’t UGK.” Then he came
home and we were still UGK. Every time they said we were going to fail we
achieved and succeeded, and that is because we are the Underground Kingz. Every
time somebody thinks they know who we are, we prove them wrong. Every time
someone thinks they have us locked into a spot we have passed that spot, and it’s
because we care more than they hate. Davide Bortot So the “underground,” is that what you mean by that, when you call yourself an
underground king nowadays? You’re not underground in a classic, narrow sense,
but is that what you mean by that, standing up for yourselves? Bun B Even when you say we still wouldn’t be considered underground, we still rep
for the underground, and we are here as an example of how far an underground
artist can go. So just getting into the game, there are so many levels to
success within this music industry that you can achieve. I still haven’t made
a platinum album and there are people who come out their first time, many people
who probably don't even like what they are doing, and they go two, three times
platinum, so there are still levels of success that this group is trying to
achieve, so for us we’re still the underdogs. I use Jermaine
Dupri as an example of where I
want to go with my life because Jermaine Dupri is my age, but Jermaine
Dupri is worth probably about 100 times more than I am because I am not doing
it like that. He is really, really rich but he’s my age, and I keep thinking
to myself, “What the fuck am I not doing? Am I not working hard enough?” It is
not so much equating myself successfully with him, it is a matter of thinking, as much as I think
I’m doing, there is somebody who’s been the game
no longer than me but has managed to get further than me, so maybe I should
still be trying a little harder. No matter who you are in life, never think
that you've got it because just when you think you've got it somebody will
walk right past you with it, and you are like, “Goddamn, he’s got it.” And then
you're forced with a choice of, do I hate him or do I go do my thing? And I think the
answer is obvious. Davide Bortot Having a number one album, did that mean anything to you? Our generation grew
up listening to chart shows on the radio and it was always about who is number
one, it was important. Was it like that for you as well? Bun B At that point, yes, because we understood the game a little bit better. We
understood that, you know what, there are enough people that fuck with UGK that if this record
drops on the right day, and if, say, Mariah
Carey or Celine Dion or Tim
McGraw, somebody that usually
sells five or six [hundred] thousand albums the first week, if nobody like that comes out, we might
actually have a shot at having the number one album in the country. And for
us, once again, we are from Port Arthur, Texas, a little bitty town, and it would
have meant the world to them. A lot of times when you are an entertainer, or a
person of influence, or whatever it maybe, lots of people tend to live their
lives vicariously through you, and they take your success as their success. So
with us being from Port Arthur, when another kid from Port Arthur sees us and thinks, “If
UGK can do that then I can too,” that kind of shit is important. For us,
to have the number one album in the country, from where we’re from it meant
everything, because it is that much more inspiration to a lot of people who
don’t really have a lot to be inspired by. And I think that is really at the
core of UGK, what we were trying to get across is to inspire the uninspired. Like, man, I know it’s fucked up where you are at and I know
there is not a lot going on, but if you really want to have something in life
you can have it. Right there in a little-ass town, you can have it. Davide Bortot So if the Underground Kingz record represents the essence of the group, do
you think there is one song that represents the essence as well, one essential
tune off the record? Bun B There are several. This is an album where we said we weren't going to leave
anything out on the album. We want to talk about family, relationships,
religion, the way we look at the world, the way the world looks at us, we want
to be very, very real about this, and a lot of songs represent that. Some
songs represent that. “Live This Life.” “Lord, I’m Just A G.” A lot of
people who are in the streets doing different shit, they think about a lot of
things. If you are a criminal, you live your life doing criminal shit,
late at night when you are at home you wonder how God looks at you. You wonder,
if you have done so much wrong, will God forgive you and let you into heaven?
You know you're a good person, but you’ve done a lot of bad shit, and when you really
know how it works, God forgives everybody for everything regardless and you
are still looking at life from the point of a man. That is the kind of shit
that we know young cats in the street have issues with. Like, “I'm trying to do this and I know
it’s wrong. I’m doing it because it seems like it’s the only thing I can do,
and will people forgive me when this is over?” So there is a lot of shit like
that. We did a record with Ronald
Isley that didn't make this album
that I felt represented everything that had to be said about UGK, but it’ll be
on the next album, which is getting ready to come out. Davide Bortot Do you have it with you? Bun B Do I have it with me? No. Is Corey in here? My engineer is with me, he might have it. Even though he
won’t admit it, he probably got it all in his computer listening to it at
night when I tell him to leave that shit at the studio. ‘Cause we all love music, there is no
way anybody in here, anybody who gets new music cannot not play it to
somebody – you’ve got to, and he has probably got all of that shit but he
wouldn’t tell me because he knows not to play that shit in front of me.
But, on the
Underground Kingz album, probably “The Game Belongs To Me.” Because that’s
how we felt and that is how I still feel. (music: UGK – “The Game Belongs To
Me”) That shit be crazy to listen to, I might be in the minority but I don’t listen
to myself. Does anybody around here listen to the music you make? Ride around
listening to yourself? I’m not talking about when you’re making it and you put
it in, you want to hear how it sounds, maybe play it to somebody else for an
opinion, but I just can’t sit around listening to myself. And I have been with
people, I won’t name names, but that is what they do. They get in the car,
they put their CD in, turn that shit up, put the windows down, lean out the
window, like, “It’s me!” “Jesus, you really like you, don’t you? I hope other
people like you because it seems really important.” Davide Bortot So why don’t listen to your own music? It’s not interesting or it bores you,
or do you not like your voice? Bun B I’m not into me like that. Davide Bortot But the game belongs to you? Bun B I don’t sit around reminding myself, I know what it is, I'm cool. I’m still a fan of
music more than being an artist. I will always consider myself a fan of music
more so than an artist, because I listen to music more than I record music.
That is just me personally, so I’m always listening to whatever the new shit
is. If I can’t find some new shit, I start playing old shit again. Not me, I’m
not too keen on me. It seems a little facetious to me to sit around listening
to yourself all day, like, “Really, that’s what you do? Why don’t you just carry a mirror around
and look at yourself all day too?” Davide Bortot Talking about new shit, I think what really sets you apart from other rappers
that have your status is that you still always work with people that might not
have that much of a big name or a big budget or whatever. On the Underground
Kingz record there is a Dizzee Rascal
song and you were featured
on his record too. Is it important for you to help people? You are like some
sort of legitimizer, you know, you rap on people’s records and from then on it's like, “He has Bun on his records, it must be good.” Is it important to help in their
career, or is it that you just like them as artists and want to work with them? Bun B It’s a little bit of both. I listen to a lot of music and you know when
somebody has got it. You can listen to these cats and think, “Yo, this guy is hot, this boy is bad, he’s a real fucking good artist, and I hope that the game don’t
fuck him up.” Because that is what happens to a lot of young, talented people,
is that the game will chew you up and spit you out or frustrate you to where
you don’t even want to be a part of it. A lot of times, as an artist, there is
nobody to talk to because nobody really understands the situation. You can't
go to your friends that don’t make music and tell them, “I’ve got this music
and I just want to get it out. You don’t understand I need to get this out to
the people, I need them to feel this, and to hear this and see this.” A lot of
times you aren’t able to talk to about this stuff. Me, if it wasn’t for Too
$hort or E-40 or J.
Prince I don’t know where I would
be today. If it wasn’t for these people taking the time to listen to me
complain about different shit, I wouldn’t be here
today, I wouldn’t have a career today. For me, I felt it was only right
to be that person to people that Too $hort and E-40 were for me. If I hear a
cat I think is talented, I’ll call them and let them know, “Whenever you start
going through some shit, because you are going to go through some shit, give me
a call.” A lot of times, like right now, because I have been with my wife for ten
years, we’ve been married for five, so most of the young rappers who are getting
engaged or are ready to get married, they pretty much call me because they want
to know how you balance a career with the family. When money gets fucked up
and contracts ain’t right they call me because they know I had a fucked up
contract and was able to work above that. That is why we try and be honest
with it, so that when people have the same problems that we have, they have
somebody that they can come to. Some people I just call and tell them, “Look, you
are going through some shit, I know what you’re going through, you fell out with the management, you went over here.” They are
like, “How did you know all this?” And I say, “It happened to me twice. It is
no big deal, you are going to get over this.” But a lot of time when you are in
this stuff you can't see past it. They say you can’t see the forest for the
trees. And it is important to call, say, Killer
Mike and them say, “Just keep your head
up, G. And if you don't understand some shit, just call me and I will try and
talk you through as best way I can." Davide Bortot So, inspiring other artists and helping them along the way, is
that the main reason why it is still “UGK For Life,” even after Pimp C’s death?
I can’t even imagine how it feels if your partner in the group dies, after
all you had been through together. Is that the main reason that you want to keep
up the group’s name and keep doing what you are doing, just to show other
people the way and what is possible? Bun B My thing is that you can tell people all you want, you can talk to friends
until your tongue falls out, but it’s only when they see you doing what you
say that they really understand what you mean or give you credit for it. Me, I
could talk all day but I’d rather lead by example and prove the point by action.
I try to keep integrity out front as much as possible. I tell every artist,
“If you have no integrity, you have nothing. Your friends will leave, your
money will leave, your fame, everything will leave that is not built on
integrity. That is the foundation of every artist. Whatever you are true to,
be true to that.” With UGK 4 Life… UGK in the last few years few years, especially
after Pimp went to prison and came home, we both came to the understanding
that UGK is bigger than just the two men in the group, and it means a lot to
people — what we have been through, what we represent, the length of time that
we’re in there doing what we do. The fact that people have been supporting us,
for one financially – all my bills and everything like that are paid
because people come to my shows, buy my music, or other artists who like me buy
verses off of me, and that is how I take care of my family. There is an
appreciation for my art and an appreciation for those that appreciate my art. And you just have to keep it real with people
nowadays. This world is very real and it doesn't matter if you are Bun B, shit
will still fuck you up, you can still get crossed out in this game, you just
need to know how to persevere and fight through this shit. A lot of people, I
can tell them, you probably will have a bad run, but it might not be as rough
as mine. If I can make it through this shit and UGK can still be here, then
anybody can do it, and that is what UGK really means. Anybody can be an
underground king. Most people in this world are underdogs, but that doesn’t
mean you are going to stay an underdog. Don’t let the fact that people don’t
appreciate you today stop you from being who you want to be tomorrow, you have
to keep that in mind. Davide Bortot After Pimp went to jail, it was hard for you. You said you were
sitting around for 18 months not knowing what to do, but now the situation is
even harder, it seems to be completely different. Is that something you learned
from that situation? Bun B Absolutely. If we had not had the “Free Pimp C” movement, with Pimp going to
prison, we would not have known that we could persevere through his death, if we
had not persevered through his imprisonment. We look back now and realize that
with him being locked up it was a test for me. It was to test the people
around me and the people who have been working with this group for so long.
Can you do it by yourself? I didn’t understand it then but it makes all the
sense in the world now, that unfortunately I was going to have to continue
this by myself. Now we all know that I am capable of doing it by myself so I
just have to make sure that I am based right, make sure that I keep focus and
know what the purpose is and just have the right people around me. People know
that we can do it because unfortunately we’ve had to do that before. Davide Bortot The whole responsibility thing that you were talking about, being influential
to young artists and helping them, does that go beyond career issues or music
business issues? Do you feel some responsibility in other respects, too, when
it comes to politics? Bun B Absolutely. Just because I make music does not mean that I am not beholden
to the same laws that everyone else is in my community. And it is important
that I show people that I care about the same things everyone else in my
community cares about. It is important for me because I am a parent and I am
also going to be a grandparent next week, which sounds crazy — I’m 35 years old
and going to be a grandfather, don't go there. But it is important that people
understand that I am still a person. I still pay taxes, still have to vote,
the shit that is going on in my community still affects me. Even if it doesn't
affect me directly, I can’t sit back and let them fuck over you, even if I have
got to the point where they can’t necessarily fuck over me. At the same time
I have to understand that because I have more, I have more to lose as well. At the end of
the day, being a human being, I have responsibilities to the world, I have to
show compassion for people that don’t have what I have. I have to show concern
for people being mistreated around the world. I like to call myself a person
of influence. I wouldn’t say I was a role model, but people are certainly
influenced by things I say and do, so I have to make sure it is not always bad
shit that I am saying and doing. You have to equalise the effect. I understand
I’ve made some records in my time that have some raw, raunchy, “Wow, did he
really say that?” type of shit. Probably 80% of the shit I made I wouldn’t
dare play in front of my mother. My mom has my first album and if I took it
right now and put it in the tape deck it would pick up from the second part.
The first album comes on and says “Pimp C, bitch!” and that is all she
heard. She put it in and said, “I want to hear what you're all doing,” and she
heard “Pimp C, bitch,” and said, “Cut that! Get that away from me!” [Laughter] Saying all
that, I do feel the right, or the need rather, to get involved with certain
things. Of course, politically, I inspire people so I should inspire people to
get involved with the voting process. I try to be as fair as possible and not
tell people who to vote for. It is important to get people involved with the
process because a lot of times, especially in America in the inner city and in the
hood, they don’t even approach us about voting until it is a presidential
election. But keep in mind that there is a lot of state shit that goes on,
city shit, local community shit, even in your respective community they may be
passing laws about the school or a dress code, or you can’t keep the music loud
after 10 o’clock, shit like that. And if you don’t know about these things and you
are not registered to vote on it, people will always be making decisions for
you. So that is what I have been trying to do, get people involved with the
process so they can start having a say. I tell people all the time, “Do you
know you can go to your senator’s office any time you want and talk shit?” If
you don’t like some shit your representative is doing, you can go to his office
and say, “Where the hell is the senator? They said they would fix my street
out there three years ago, I pay your taxes, I voted for you, where is he?”
You have the right to do that when you vote. But most people who complain don’t do shit about it, they just like to complain, and it’s time they stop talking and
start doing and I know that I can get people energised. If I say Benz is the
new car, people going to buy Benz. So if I say that voting is the new shit,
maybe they will go out and vote and try and make the process easy. I try to
get people involved with the world. Too many people are just looking at the
world letting it go by, being fucked up. Take charge, that is what’s wrong,
that’s why the world is fucked up, because there are so many people who just
don’t want to do anything about what is going on and I’m just trying to light
a fire under some asses right now. Davide Bortot So with the situation right now where everybody seems to feel like he needs to
have the Obama mixtape or whatever, do you still think it is a good thing? In
the end, it’s not like those rappers who represent Obama make people think
about it, they make the decision for them, but do you still think it is a good thing? Bun B It is good to get people involved and Obama is the first candidate… Davide Bortot But do they get people involved? Bun B Here’s the thing. Say, for example, I am a gold artist. Gold in America means
I have sold 500,000 records. So if I say, “Vote!” does that mean 500,000
people are going to vote Obama? Fuck, no. Those people like different things,
some people like the style, some like the music, some people like the content,
some people might like the whole package. It is just to try and get people
involved with it. But that being said, we have had a lot of people jump on the bandwagon
and make songs about Obama who don’t know his policies and any of that stuff,
and a lot of people who like Obama today are not going to like him no more
when he’s president. Everybody always has some issues at some point with the
standard president, and a lot of people are just jumping on the bandwagon and
joining the hype. But I speak to cats all the time who are like, “Yo, Obama
for president.” “OK, so you’re going to vote?” “No, I mean I’m down with him,
I’m running with him.” “What does that mean, you’re down with him? He isn’t
just going to win, do you think he’s won already?” You’ve got to get in the
game. A lot of people are so separate from the process they don’t even understand it. We have to get people involved. Davide Bortot So what is happening right now, will it change anything? The election has not
even happened and still Obama is this pop culture icon who everyone seems to
like, and when he came to Europe everybody was crazy about it, hundreds of
thousands of people showed up to hear him speak. Do you think some kind of
change is already going on? Bun B Absolutely, and I say this to a lot of people: it is not just that Obama is black,
it is because he is different. I just think he inspires hope, he looks
different from everything that comes before him. Every president before Barack Obama —
possibly with the exception of Clinton and Kennedy, but for the most part — most of them pretty much look like the ones before. If you put up a picture of
George Bush and put up a picture of George Washington, there is not much of a
difference, about six inches, they pretty much look like the same motherfucker.
He could have been George Washington’s great-grandson, or great-great-great-great grandson. America has always said it is the melting
pot, it has always said that we are open to all these different cultures and
all these different races and all these different whatever you say. We welcome
everybody, but the country has never reflected that. For the first time we have
a candidate that actually reflects what America looks like. Like I said, he
could have been Hispanic, he could have been Asian, he could have been European, but
the fact is that he is different. The world is so fucked up and people are
so disenfranchised about everything, family, friends, economy, house, car,
everything is fucking people up, and nothing anyone says makes people feel the
slightest bit better until Barack talks. It is sincere and it is genuine and if
it is not, he is the best liar God put on this planet, point blank. I honestly
believe that he wants change. Can he actually make a change? With our help,
yes, he can. But he cannot do it alone, we have to support the man beyond the
election and we had to hold him to his shit. That is the main thing, don’t
just vote for Barack — this is for my people who are probably going to see this
online or whatever — don’t just vote for the man because everybody else is and
then when he’s elected say, “OK, we are going to be good now.” We have got to
make sure that he makes good on his promises. We have to hold him to the
standard that he is putting up there. Davide Bortot Don’t you think it is pretty sure that it will come to a point he has to make a decision
he doesn’t want to take or goes against what he says now? Isn’t that in the
nature of being president, and could that even be a bigger problem? Like, when
George Bush was president not too many people expected too much and he was
just another president, but if now some person steps up and everyone has this
high expectation and are really expecting them to change the whole world, don’t you
think it would be even more of a problem if he cannot really do that? Bun B That is the thing, it is not that we expect him to change the world. He is
just one man, he is only as powerful as the country he represents. And it’s
not just the President of America, it is Americans as well, we have to believe
in his message of change and be prepared to go out and start making a change.
We as citizens have to help him make America a better country, we have to out
start looking out for our fellow man more, we have to be more environmentally conscious, we have to be more understanding to other peoples and cultures and
lifestyles. This is what we have to do as Americans to help America make a
great country again. He is a president who wants to help us do this, he is the
person that is inspiring us to be better people. And McCain will only make
people feel worse about the state of the world that they are living in now,
“OK, great, four more years of Bush, this world is going to shit. Why should I
go to work? Why should I give a fuck any more?” And Barack is telling people
that this country can be great again if we believe it, but we don’t believe it
when the other guy’s talking. Davide Bortot So it is more about motivation than actual politics? So Young
Jeezy could be president? Bun B I hope so, it would be a reflection of the inner cities of America. The thing
in America is that anyone is supposed to be able to become president. The fact
that a president’s son became president kind of fucked that message up for
people and it made it seem like this shit was an inside job. He has no
qualifications to be president other than the fact his daddy was president.
That’s alumni shit, what the fuck is that? People are just tired of the same
old shit and they are tired of this guy getting this guy in, and everybody that
has the power and influence in America, there are all helping each other. It
is the top 3% of the world running everything else and it is no different in
America than anywhere else and people are just tired of it. We are a
democracy, the people are supposed to run this shit. But we haven't had
representation to tell us, “Hey, you are supposed to be telling me what to do,
you’re supposed to be doing it.” Now we do. Until then it has been, “Trust me
and I know what’s good for you,” and now Barack is telling us to trust in
ourselves, that is the difference. Davide Bortot So that is very similar to what you are doing, right? In a way, that is the
same words you used when you are talking about your first album? Bun B You brought that shit around, didn’t you? If you say so, I don’t ride around
with a mirror to my face. I am trying to inspire lyricists to make better
music and be better people because I know how we get looked at a lot and it is
time to start changing the perception of a lot of stuff. If I could be hip-hop’s Barack — shit, yeah, I am with that. They can make all the songs about me
they want. Davide Bortot I think this might be a good point to ask if we have any questions? Participant Hi, I’m Michael from Israel. You said that back in
the day, when hip-hop just started out in the South, you would listen to a lot
of the shit that was going on in New York and the West Coast – but how did the
people producing hip-hop rapping in the South come up with the distinctive sound? With the slow tempos and the whole style? Because it is a distinctive musical style in hip-hop, it is not just trying to
do something else. Bun B If you look at New York, New York is a city where most immigrants come into
the country, so a lot of what goes on in New York is very international, it is
very cosmopolitan. There is a lot of influences from a lot of places and a lot
of people. Rap is basically disco music mixed with Jamaican DJ sounds, put
together. So that is the influence on the East Coast. The West Coast has more
of a rock tinge to it, a lot of guitars and stuff like that because most of
the music coming out of L.A. and being made in that area is rock-based. In the
South, most of us in the South, our parents listened to blues, a lot of
gospel, most Southern producers are heavily influenced by gospel, blues and
early R&B. We pretty much made a lot of the music we listened to. For a
long time we didn’t really notice it, but now that we are more cognizant of
it, we try to put as much influence into it as we can, just to give our music
more of its own personal distinction. Also jazz, a lot of people don't know
that a lot of the Southern artists — because they think we're stupid — listen to
a lot of jazz music, and there is a lot of influence in that. Not so much the
sampling of jazz, but more the instrumentation. Southern artists, more than
artists of any other region, use live instrumentation in their music, and a lot
of that comes from the fact that most musicians are from the South, there’s a
guitar player everywhere you look. There is a certain thickness when you
listen to Southern music, there is a thickness in it that comes from the
strings of the guitar, the strings of the bass guitar, the keys on the piano —
it is a different sound and that basically comes from the music that we
listened to coming up. Davide Bortot Don’t you think it has a lot to do with how and where people are listening to
music? When you are from New York you listen to music on the subway and on
your iPod or whatever. You mentioned before that Texas is so big that you need cars,
and then you listen to the music when you're in a car, and the same goes for L.A.. I
think that is a huge influence on how music sounds? Bun B I could agree with that, definitely. Then again, you have to be careful about
that, too, because you almost want to say that a lot of East Coast music isn’t
bass-influenced. But a lot of the early hip-hop was
808s, the Marley
Marl records had a lot of bass
because they were making music for the park, actually to be played outside.
But I do understand the philosophy of living in a city where most of your
transportation is public so you have to condense whatever you are doing to
your own personal space, hence the iPod and personal computers and things like
that. So, I totally understand that and I do believe that has an influence in
it, because why would you put a lot of bass in your music for people who aren’t
going to listen to it with a big stereo? That being said, you can buy some
headphones now that sound like a goddamn car when you put them on. Some of
that Skull Candy shit, I can’t even put that shit
on my ears because it is too goddamn loud. Davide Bortot I know that Jay-Z has a theory that a good song has to work on the most shitty
speakers ever, and if it doesn't work on those speakers, it is not a good song.
So what is your take on that, coming from a Southern perspective? Bun B That is absolutely, positively, 100% true. When you go in the studio on these
big control rooms with all these monitors and these big-ass woofers, it
doesn’t matter what shit you play, that shit sounds good. I don’t give a fuck
how good the shit is, if you play it loud enough on the right stereo, that
shit sounds great. But then you take that shit and translate it to another
form and it doesn’t work at all. One thing we do, and a lot
of people do this: you take whatever you do in studio and you go
to the little battery-operated CD player with one little speaker and a tape
deck and you play it, not on some Blaupunkt shit, I’m
talking some cheap-ass Walmart $30 boombox, and if that shit jams on that, it
is going to jam on anything. And that is as true as it is. If it doesn't make
sense on there, because the majority of people aren’t listening to music in
big houses and stereos and cars, they are listening to it on little shitty-ass
radios at home. Participant Hi, I am Sarah from London, which is why I wanted to ask you about the Dizzee
Rascal collaboration, how you first heard about him, and what it was that he
did that made you want to do a track together? Bun B I met Dizzee Rascal at South By Southwest, I would
probably say about five years ago, through the guy who books the rap acts at
South By Southwest. He said, “I’m bringing this dude from London. This dude is
hard.” I said, “London? I never really heard a London MC.” So he played “Fix
Up Look Sharp” for me and I was like,
“This shit is hard, this dude got some real breath control.” Then when he came and
performed and I saw him doing some real grime shit, like some real high-speed, crazy-ass shit, I was like, “This motherfucker is a problem.” Then I
talked to him and it was a whole other story when I talked to him. Dizzee Rascal, in my opinion — and I want to make sure I say this right — I have never
met a person anywhere in the world in any class of life doing anything that
understands people as well as Dizzee Rascal does. It has got a lot to do with
his own personal experience and the life that he has led, but he really gets it.
He understands… I know this may sound crazy, but he understands everything.
When I talk to him about shit he has such a grasp on everything, and this kid
is like ten years younger than me! I was really impressed. When I met the
kid, he was probably 19 or 20 years old, and most kids at 20 years old, when they’re the shit, they don’t give a shit about being anything other than the
shit. When I was 20 years old, I didn’t give a fuck, I was
the shit. But this dude has compassion for other people. He goes to these
other countries but he doesn't just perform and take money, he really looks at
what is going on, with people's conditions and shit like that, and I really just
ended up having a lot of respect for the young kid. We were friends for three
years before we even went in the studio together. It was like, we felt we needed to do a
song because where you’re at, and where I’m at in the game, we just need to come together
and show a connection. Southern music and grime music have so many
parallels, in the delivery of the vocals and the production of the music, the tempo, the
energy of the artists as well as the energy of the crowd. And it was
all about just being true. A lot of times rappers meet each other and that’s the first thing they say: “Let’s do a song.” But they very seldom do the
song. I don’t even pay attention to that shit any more. “Take my number, we’ll
hook it up.” Whatever, you know they’re going to change the number on Monday
anyway. But he just really intrigued me, how could this young kid know so much
about everything? And when I got to talk to him, it was just the life that he
has led. Unfortunately he has been privy to a lot of shit in his life, but he
didn’t let it bring him down like a lot of people I know, who will let the stuff
that they’ve been through make them. Whatever you have been
through, it doesn't define what you are. Just because
you’re from somewhere, you are who
you want to be, and you go as far as you want to go in life. He’s a real good
example of that, and I wish he could get the success in America that he gets in
London so that people could understand him as a person, because I think if
people got the chance to know him as a person, it would take him so much
further in this game. But sometimes we get locked into our artist identity and
you don’t get the chance to let people know the real you. And also he’s a good-ass rapper, that’s why we did a song together. Participant I am Reggie from Australia. In Australia, we get UGK records and that is it. So
we've got East [Coast] music and the West [Coast] music and just recently people are starting
to get a bit more into the South. And where I am from in Perth, Australia,
sometimes we have discussions about how maybe there is a tension or animosity
between the East and the South or the West. Do you connect with many people from the East? I see that you
collaborated with Jay-Z? Bun B I have a lot of friends on the East Coast. I hear a lot of talk about there
being problems with the East and the South and it is really only the media
trying to pump things up. Most of the people on the East Coast and
the South, when we see each other, we kick it, have fun, smoke, drink, whatever
else they do, pop pills or whatever the fuck, everybody does that shit. We
have way more in common than we do differences. The only time I see any kind
of iffy behavior is around award time, and that is just natural. That has
nothing to do with music. I am sure when the Oscars come
around, whoever is nominated is not crazy about the other people either, no
matter how you act socially. “I respect all the nominees and I'm just happy to
be nominated” and all that shit. That's bullshit. If you get nominated you want to win, that’s
why we do things. We do it for people to acknowledge these things. I’m sure
there is a couple of artists in the East Coast who didn’t like the success the
South is getting, but I’m sure there was also people in the South who didn’t
like it when the East Coast was on top. The reality is that no region gets to
claim this. At some point Australia will get the crown and everyone is
going to have to roll with it. Nobody is going to be the shit forever, and if
you are in the mind that “once I am the shit,” you already lost. It is a
baton passing. The music industry and all this shit is just a relay race. I
get my chance on the top and people stop fucking with me, they start fucking
with you. I pass you the baton and you get your run, then you pass the baton. What tends to happen is that some people try to hold on to the baton too long,
and somebody has got to come and take it from you – then you don't get it back. But if you can willingly say, “Hey, he is doing his thing and I’m just going to
fall back and let him have it,” a lot of times they will honour that respect
and they’ll be the people to bring you back. But if you shit on the next person coming
up... Because you see everybody in life twice: once on the way up and once on the
way down. So how you treat people the first time will be how they treat you
the second time. A lot of times, I had East Coast artists front
on me when I was first coming up. Do I take that as a reason to just hate all
East Coast artists? Fuck, no! Maybe just this dude was a dick. There are some
dicks in the South too. There is bullshit music where I’m from, and there is some
bullshit music where you are from in Australia, that is the reality of the
world. But there is also some real good shit, too, and there is no need to be a
bitch about it. Just give everybody their due credit. And even when it was the East and West, it really was just
this dude didn't like this dude, it was nothing personal about the region, it
was just, “this dude is a dick.” Anybody else? It looks like that may be it. [Applause]