Dipset’s Shiest Bubz

Shiest Bubz is the Dipset-affiliated head of Purple City Records, practically as known for his marijuana exploits as for his music. He recently released his solo debut The International Bud Dealer (The I.B.D), and spoke to Supreme about lavender bud, changes at Purple City, how he became an emcee.

First question: Is the best weed always purple?

No. It’s the funnest to look at, though. If your intentions were to make purple weed, then I guess it’s a good thing.

It must be hard to accidentally make purple weed, though.

Not really. It’s a temperature thing, it’s scientific, you know? It’s more like genetics and lights and shock treatment. That’s a High Times issue right there.

You pride yourself on being true to what you rap about. Do you think there is any truth to Rick Ross’s claims?

He’s trying to portray a coke lord, being that he’s from Miami and that’s what they’re known for. So he’s no threat to what I’m doing. But Rick Ross is not on the top of my list of favorite rappers, I’ll tell you that.

You come from an atypical rap background, in that your dad is from Trinidad and your parents are still together. How do you think that has influenced your music?

It gives my music structure. When I do albums, there’s a start, a middle, and an end. It’s like a relationship. My dad taught me to always have my own, to work hard for it, and that I could achieve anything I wanted to. That’s the whole premise of me doing music, to prove that I could do something that I learned. I wasn’t born into the music game, I evolved into the music game.

You never thought rapping was your strong suit.

I’ve been listening to hip hop since it started, and in high school I came to the conclusion that I just wasn’t good at rapping. I figured I wasn’t going to get into the music industry. I figured that wasn’t going to be my ticket. But what happened was, I was like, “If I can’t be a rapper, then I’m just going to live the lifestyle of a rapper, or even a drug dealer.” Living the lifestyle, it attracted entertainers to me — everyone from the NBA to the rap world. They said, “You have to be a part of this.” Sometimes it’s not what you know, it’s who you know.

Do you ever feel like that lifestyle is empty and phony? That it’s not all it’s cracked up to be?

I do feel like that a lot of the time. What people don’t understand is that the jewelry and the expensive clothes they’re chasing, a lot comes from that. People that have nothing, they’re chasing that lifestyle, people are dying for that type of stuff every day. And now that the recession is here, if you’re living in New York City you can’t really front like you have ten cars. Because, if that’s really the case, the wolves are going to come get you, man. In hip hop, I’d rather see more realistic rapping, more realistic looks, and not just Cristal popping and bitches. Because, though that’s going on, it’s not going on to the extent that it’s portrayed.

Since you never though you were going to be a rapper, was it hard to gain the confidence to actually do it?

Even before I entered the music game, I was like, “I’m going to learn how to do this.” I’d observed people that I thought were less qualified, and since they were doing it, I thought I could. There’s maybe a million rappers in New York – if there’s nine million people, there’s got to be a million rappers. So, with that being said, I knew I had to do homework, I had to learn to like my voice, I had to learn a bunch of things. And over time I just felt like I evolved into that. I feel like I’m on the right track.

Are you satisfied with your album?

I’m going to keep it 100 [percent real]; I feel like this new album is the most underrated album of the year, but also the hottest. It’s hotter than the Jim Jones album, it’s hotter than Rick Ross’s album. I’m a hot dude. I’m never going to do anything wack. All of my albums have always been hot. This one is even hotter because it’s all me, and you get to hear the story. It’s a story about a guy doing his thing, selling bud. He’s the number one bud man. He’ll smoke anyone out. You can relate to it; that’s what makes it relevant to what’s going on.

I know you’re a big proponent of the independent hustle. Do you think Jim Jones should have stayed with Koch?

I said that in an interview one time, but now I think it was better for him to go to a major. There’s more money. Even though I had personal issues with Jim Jones at one point that I never really brought to the surface, I always wanted him to win. And I still want him to win. I felt like he was winning more on Koch, but he had to go to the next level and get his feet wet. So, no, he shouldn’t have stayed on Koch.

Tell me about the changes on the Purple City label, and what sparked them.

Purple City was built as a stepping stone for artists to come out and get a look, and that’s continuing. The new roster consists of artists under 25, which include Smoke Dza, Streets Da Block – who’s a 106 & Park champ six times – and Den 10. Also Harlem veteran Broadway Slim. He’s over 25, but it is what it is.

Un Kasa and Agallah were kind of in denial of the positions and roles that they played in Purple City. They wanted to play different roles. It was a conflict of interests. When you make a couple dollars for the first time, there’s a saying, “You got a little money and you don’t know how to act.” That was kind of the problem. They saw some money and they felt like they should be a boss. The word “boss” in Harlem is a big word that everyone likes to use, but it’s a hard shoe to fill. So, I was like, “If that’s the case, go ahead. Control your own destiny.” No one artist makes Purple City anyway, because it’s a finance thing.

Kanye West: Rap’s Liberal Nightmare

While every rapper this side of RA the Rugged Man voted for Obama, hip hop is still a conservative culture. In fact, as far as its celebration of capitalism, praise for God and disdain for homosexuality is concerned, it has lots in common with the G.O.P.

More to the point, mainstream hip hop doesn’t seem particularly interested in evolving. Rapping about rims, parties and chicks with big butts has worked thus far, the logic seems to be, so why change?

Kanye West used to fit into rap’s conservative mold quite nicely. This was a man who came up under the mainstream label system with Jay-Z as his mentor, a man who — for all his lyrical and entrepreneurial gifts — has shown little inclination to shake things up.

West’s first monster hit, “Jesus Walks,” meanwhile, brought Christianity into the mainstream like nothing in hip hop’s history. And on later albums he stuck largely to the rap playbook as well, rapping about conniving hos (”Gold Digger”) and featuring big breasted white women like Pamela Anderson in his videos. Sure, he may have felt bad about exploiting diamond miners in Sierra Leone, but that didn’t mean he was going to give up his Jesus piece.

Still, there were always hints he didn’t buy into hip hop orthodoxy completely. Take the preppy, pastel-accented clothes he wore, which caused emcees like Beanie Sigel to accuse him of being gay. (Plenty of others probably would have spoken up, too, except that they needed his beats.) Rather than simply denying he was a homosexual, West went on to denounce homophobia in rap.

But in recent months West has begun challenging practically everything rappers take for granted. He started by releasing something of an anti-rap album, 808s & Heartbreak, which featured mostly singing. Next he announced that he lost (or at least toned down) his faith. “I don’t believe in religion and people that are about giving it all up to Jesus,” he said. And then he dropped the bomb - declaring that wanted to pose nude sometime in the near future.

Slathering yourself full of oil a la Nelly and Curtis is one thing, but posing nude? That’s, um, groundbreaking.

“I [want to] break every rule and mentality of hip-hop, of black culture, of American culture,” he went on.

Now, there’s no doubt that hip hop — not to mention black and American culture — could stand to be more tolerant and open-minded. But by transforming himself from a conservative follower to an off-the-deep-end liberal, he seems to be breaking the rules simply to break them. In fact, he sounds like a disgruntled teenager.

Then again, Kanye has charmed us before by being immature, such as when he rushed on-stage at the MTV Europe VMAs after losing to Justice and Simian. So maybe we’ll learn to love this rebellious phase of his life.

But that still doesn’t mean I want to see his nude pictures.

Whatever happened to White Rappers?

Rock and roll was once the domain of black musicians, until Elvis came along and made it safe for white acts. Before long, the Beatles and Rolling Stones were selling more albums than Chuck Berry, and nowadays most rock musicians are Caucasian. Most people probably assumed the same thing would happen with rap. After the Beastie Boys, Third Bass and Vanilla Ice made lots of money off this black art form in the ‘80s and ‘90s, it seemed like the writing was on the wall.

But despite Eminem and Paul Wall’s best efforts, white rappers haven’t taken over. In fact, hip hop is blacker than ever. Pretty much every top-selling emcee is a black guy, and – following Relapse’s release and yet another Eminem retirement – it will probably stay that way.
One could even argue that pale spitters are less relevant than ever. I’m not talking about the ribbing they have taken on Ego Trip’s (White) Rapper Show and Malibu’s Most Wanted (which is totally underrated, by the way). I’m talking about the fact that the few Caucasian rappers out there have become sideshows, with almost no commercial viability.
Take nerdcore, the white-dominated subgenre characterized by rhymes about laptops and Star Trek.

It seemed to be gathering momentum a few years ago, with MC Frontalot (great name) leading the way with hilarious self-deprecation rhymes. mc chris, meanwhile, was making a name for himself as Aqua Teen Hunger Force’s MC Pee Pants, even before MF Doom and Danger Mouse got involved with Adult Swim. Last year a documentary on the subject emerged, called Nerdcore Rising.
But the halcyon days are over. Even genre trailblazer MC Lars admits as much. “I saw nerdcore come/ I saw nerdcore go,” he raps on his new album This Giant Robot Kills. He’s probably right. It’s hard to imagine any of these guys crossing over. In fact, the problem with nerdcore is the problem with most white emcees generally. Though sometimes hyper-literate and great storytellers (see MC Paul Barman and the Anticon crew) they often don’t possess the skills most people associate with hip hop.
Contrary to what a lot of white rappers think, rap is not about dropping big words or crafting elegant poetry. It’s about flow, dexterity, style, pizzazz and spontaneity. In a word, it’s about craft. Too many Caucasian emcees, however, see it as a term paper. (Guilty as charged.)
The best cracka rappers – Eminem, RA The Rugged Man and Mac Lethal, in my opinion – articulate interesting ideas, but their appeal goes far beyond that. They each carry a certain bravado and seek to entertain their listeners, rather than trying to impress them with how clever they are. They employ humor, but they’re not about gimmicks. Each has had to battle rap to prove themselves. Through the process I’ll bet they learned that no one in hip hop cares about your skin color, so long as you’ve got skills.

Supreme Magazine & Tatis Entertainment Present the Official Memorial Weekend Grand Finale with Mario Live in Concert at Suite 181

Supreme Magazine the newest online publication focused on hip-hop culture, education, and entertainment in conjunction with Tatis Entertainment is proud to announce The Official Memorial Weekend Grand Finale hosted by RnB Sensation Mario and Nessa from San Francisco’s on WILD 94.9 on Sunday, May 24th, 2009 at Suite 181 in Downtown San Francisco.

The Platinum, Grammy Nominated Artist and Actor Mario will be live on stage at Suite 181 performing tracks from his New Album "And then there was me” as well some of his other tracks including “How Do I Breathe”, “Crying out for me”, and “Music for love”. This is a concert not to be missed this Memorial Day weekend come get up close and personal with Mario at Suite 181 located at 181 Eddy Street in Downtown San Francisco. Advance Tickets are only $15.00 and available at www.suprememag.com VIP Tables and Packages are also available. This is a 21+ event, doors open at 10pm so get there early. Dress code will be strictly enforced at the venue. For more information log on to www.suprememag.com.