Dignetumble

It's when you're in those situations, with your back against the wall, that you see motherfuckers' true colors. There will be a few people who stand up to hold you down no matter what, and everybody else will be nowhere to be found. You just have to take note of who has your back, pick yourself up, and get back to work. And the faster you realize that, the faster you'll get back to where you're really supposed to be.

And when you see that shit firsthand and then you think that one in three black American men will go to jail at least once in their lifetimes—and have their relationships all fucked up and their records permanently compromised as a result, making it more difficult for them to get jobs and housing and loans and all sorts of shit like that—you can't tell me the American legal and prison systems aren't part of a systematic effort to keep the black community down. You can talk all of the civil rights movement shit you want, but when you look at what's really going on today, ain't a damn thing changed but some words on a piece of paper. Sometimes I think it's even worse today. At least under Jim Crow, you could point to that shit like, See how fucked up this shit is? Now racism is so pervasive and spread out, it's almost like having cockroaches or some shit. You can't kill it because you can't find it everywhere it is. It's taken over the whole damn house.

Shit, I got so sick of it, one day when I was in [Rap-A-Lot's] offices trying to get some straight answers, I saw the contract proving that I was no longer signed lying on a desk out in the open and I just grabbed that motherfucker, stuffed it into my pocket, and walked out the door.

And to anyone coming up in the game, please take this advice: you get in the homeboy business and you think you're going to make it with your friend, but the sad truth is, nine times out of ten in that situation, your homeboy isn't going to play fair because he isn't really your friend. It's on you to handle your business. Act accordingly. You don't want to be on the other side of a successful career wondering where your big payday went or if you ever saw a real, fair payday at all.

James [Prince] had signed a big new distribution deal for Rap-A-Lot with Virgin in August, and The Diary was the first album we were putting out with Virgin behind us. Virgin was a huge pop and rock label at the time—they had Janet Jackson and Smashing Pumpkins and shit like that—and they wanted us to help them gain a position in hip-hop. Of course, I didn't see shit from that deal personally. I just knew I was on the same label as Janet Jackson, so that seemed like a good look.

Honestly, I didn't realize what it took to be a good father until I was about forty. It's only recently, now that my career's settled down and I understand more about relationships and about really being there for someone, that I think I'm finally ready to be a real, good father. I've learned so much. And I've learned a lot more from a distance, just by watching my son Marcus raise his kids. That's taught me more about fatherhood than I could have ever known on my own. Watching all of my kids raise their kids, really, has brought home just how much being a father isn't about money or about being cool—it's about time. And I'm so grateful that now that I have some time, I'll get to be there as my youngest daughter grows up.

I had just bought my first house. I was twenty-three and it was over in a neighborhood called Woodlands. Real estate was still pretty inexpensive and I got a 3,500-square-foot house for around $200,000. This was before Woodlands took off. I ended up selling it a few years later for $400,000 and I hadn't done shit to it but put a studio in it. Considering how much money I was able to make on that deal, I don't know why I didn't just go into real estate back then. The white folks that bought it off of me didn't know shit about making music so it wasn't like they were buying it for the studio and I still made some good bread.

No one wants to believe that their kid is a monster, but, real talk, the only piece of entertainment that's ever really influenced me to take action is some porno, and that's just giving me some ideas on some shit I might like to try.

In fact, the only thing that wasn't real about that first Scarface album was the coke on the album cover. That shit was flour. But those guns sure were real.

Why am I on a social network if I can't post memes?

After all of the shit that the world had thrown at us, it turned out the only thing it took to stop the Geto Boys was ourselves.

We Can't Be Stopped lived up to its title in every way and we went gold almost as soon as it dropped. You could boycott us, ban us, dis us, dismiss us, attempt to disband us, and even fucking shoot us—it didn't matter what you tried to do. We couldn't be stopped, for real.

...Geffen backed out, saying they refused to distribute [The Geto Boys] because the content was too offensive. They'd already had problems with their regular manufacturer—some Indiana company that refused to press up the album because it offended them or some shit—but then the label pulled out completely. Con you believe this shit? This was coming from the same motherfuckers who were distributing Def American albums by Andrew Dice Clay and Slayer, and making a killing off of Guns N' Roses. Andrew Dice Claw was like the scariest shit in America at the time, but somehow the Geto Boys were too extreme? Guns N' Roses were one of the biggest rock groups in the world—I'm talking sold-out tours, videos on MTV, merchandise, the whole shit. Axl Rose was running around singing all about heroin, easy pussy he was getting, and chasing death in the alleys of Los Angeles, and somehow that was okay, but those same stories told from our perspective were somehow a problem. Man, fuck that shit for real. We were just a rap group from Houston with some street records looking for a big break. If you ask me, Geffen just didn't want to see a bunch of niggas make some real money. When you think about all of the shit that we went through just trying to find a place to put our music, it's hard not to see that shit as what I really think it was: active discrimination. We were entertainers just like the rest of them. The album didn't come with a fucking gun and an eightball.

I wanted to be Chuck D, Rakim, and Big Daddy Kane balled into one. Give me Chuck's delivery, Kane's skills, and Rakim's rhyme style, plus Willie D's content—that's what molded me. I wanted to talk shit, be political, and spit some gangsta-ass shit. That's what I was after. And then Ice Cube came along and fucked the whole game up. As soon as I heard 'Straight Outta Compton,' I knew that was the music I wanted to make.