Many news outlets point to your performance before the U.N. Commission for Refugees as another key, defining moment out of your career. Few details are available about the content of your performance, so what details can you share?
Well, the performance took place in 2001. I was addressing names that I heard were in attendance and so on. I just thought it was a necessary thing to do at the time. I didn't really calculate all that it meant or if I was being brave at all. It was just what had to be done. There was a line that says "George Bush says that this is God's mission. So how could that end all wars and mob lynchings? This is what America goes to war for without the consent of its people. Worst of all, they bombing a place far away, probably never heard of, where young Americans can show off and take their shirts off." Then I started talking about U.N. fancy suits and things that I might say that might cause me to be sued and blah-blah.
Was there a specific title to the piece or were you just speaking from your heart?
I attached the piece to a song called "Must We Die," so that was kind of a cry for the injustices for things, like people who call for your assistance and help and then you kind of end up being the aggressor to them. That's what the song is about. At the end of that is what I attached the piece to. That piece itself wasn't called anything. It was just a, you know, what-had-to-be-done kind of piece.
Having traveled the world, you have an international view of hip-hop that a lot of people don't have, for better or worse. Is there a common thread of themes that transcends all continents that you have seen as you travel?
Yeah, there is. There are differences, too. I look at hip hop or any other kind of thing whatever it is — music or otherwise — and I just think you can exhaust that theme no matter what it is. As good as hip hop is, if there is no perspective shift, if there is no feeling of freshness or something new about it, it can kind of just become exhausting. When you go abroad and you see something fresh, it's eye-opening and it's beautiful. The one American perspective that we are all exposed to and the only one that exists is kind of exhausting. However, to the credit of the American form of hip hop, it's great that it is the one-track-minded element that it is, as well, because sometimes in the foreign world you find a corny element, too, that I can't listen to either. You find it rarely — the thread — but you find it. Sometimes it's great and fresh and not corny.
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