Chuck D: Well the state of hip hop is being governed by a bunch of people that sit around in a board room and it’s going to always be one dimensional…I mean if Nas says hip hop is dead, maybe he is saying that if it continues to be one dimensional, talking about these aspects of life that deal with death then how much life can there be…Hip hop is life!!! As opposed to hip hop is dead…When hip hop is life, that means there’s a total balance and reflection of everything around us…So I think that if we think that more is always better, bigger is always better, it’s a problem when art falls into the machinery of commerce being the final denominating say so…I mean many people even listening now… It’s like, to be judged by more is better the same problem that the country has trying to choose a president…Meaning that, that person that gets the most votes automatically is the president, but it’s not just about the most votes cause we have this other thing that really makes the final tally and people confuse and fuck with it…So even when it comes down to someone that’s doing a radio show, it’s like okay I do my radio show…So what’s going to allow you to do the radio show? Well I gotta have the most listeners…So that means you’ll do anything to get the most listeners instead of doing the right thing…Well how about I got a magazine, so we got to sell, you know we printed up 100,000 magazines so now we got to get rid of these magazines…So what’s gonna get rid of the most magazines? So we got to do anything to get rid of the most magazines…So anytime something is based on you gotta do bigger and better and more, it could run into problem areas on the long term…And so I’m just basically saying sometimes we have to breathe a little slowly and understand that there is a quality of life as opposed to a quantity of life and hip hop is involved with the quantity instead of the quality…I tell people all the time hip hop should be like life itself you sip it slowly like wine you don’t guzzle it like a 40…

S1: No doubt those are definitely words of wisdom…Been there done that!!! Listen Chuck I got another real question for you on the reels and I want to get your opinion on this…Now as far as Imus using hip hop as a defense…

Chuck D: Yeah…

S1: I’m just gonna say that and I want you to respond because I’m just curious what your thought is on that…

Chuck D: Well his excuse is a scapegoat for him getting away with racist behavior…I mean I was outside of the country when it happened and I could see that from 8,000 miles away sitting in France…Imus has been the same Imus for the last 15-20 years because you know what? He is on a radio show, he has a radio show cause it’s based on the most amount of listeners and he’ll do anything to keep the most amount of listeners to come in…His job is out of quantity not the quality of his show…The quality of the show is crap…The quantity of his show is how many people can you get to listen to it as a shock jock…I hear radio shows in the morning on the black stations, which really ain’t no more they are urban whatever the hell that means…That means you don’t have black ownership so you can call it urban, I thought urban just meant city…So a lot of times they have the radio shows in the morning and they’ll get away with jokes and call people out just to say that they got by means that they can keep the listener in traffic…Sometimes you got say, you know what? We got to stop coming up with tricks to come up with something that keeps the listener based on quality…But like I said if you are going to be judged by quantity being always a rule quantity, I tell people all the time dog food goes double platinum every 2 weeks…What the hell does it mean to you if you ain’t got a dog…That’s why you don’t see the owners of Alpo going around with diamond encrusted Alpo cans around their neck, it’s only dog food…

S1: No doubt…