* * * New B-REAL interview * * * [Smoke N Mirrors]

[Elano]

HipHopDX: Smoke N Mirrors has been anticipated for a minute now. Why the wait?
B-Real: I had to take my time to get it right. Like with Cypress Hill, I take my time and make sure that I’m satisfied with the end result before I just put it out there because I’m not trying to rush for anything. You put out a record, you gotta be satisfied with it because that shit lives out there forever. If you put out there something that you’re unsure of, or that you don’t like, you’re gonna have to live with that out there forever. And I don’t want to look back at my career and say, “Damn I shouldn’t have done that,” or “I should have done it this way.” Do it right or don’t do it at all. So I took my time and when I was satisfied in what we’ve done, I said, “Okay, let’s turn the record in.”

DX: When you talk about getting it right – or not getting it right – does your standard revolve around lyrics, delivery, flow, or does it revolve around the content?
B-Real: Everything; it has to be everything. If all those things are great, that’s what makes a great song. If it lacks one of those things, you’re always gonna say, “Fuck I should have done it like this,” or “Maybe I should have tried this.” All those elements have to come together, at least for me. I don’t settle just for one of them; it’s gotta be all of them. You can’t show weakness; if you show weakness, you’re pretty much done, you do yourself in. I try to make sure the concept is right, the flow is right, the beat is right and my delivery is right. It all has to come together; otherwise, it’s just practice. [Laughs]

DX: Great point. You wrote and recorded the entire album before talking to labels, meaning, you put up your own budget. In what ways does setting your own parameters emancipate you as an artist?
B-Real: It gives you more freedom because you don’t have anyone breathing down your neck to make this kind of track or that kind of track - or we need it by this time or that time; you go at your own pace. You make yourself comfortable in doing your stuff rather than when you’re worried about a deadline, worried about these guys coming and telling you they want an X amount of singles and shit like that. This way, you finance your own thing and you do your own album; and they either see your vision or they don’t. If they see the vision then you go and try to make it work; if they don’t see the vision, if they want you to change a bunch of shit, then you go somewhere else who sees your vision. At the same time, if they make great points about certain songs, then you have to put your ego aside as an artist. Say “Let me look outside of myself and see what it is about these songs that they don’t agree with, or that they might want to change.” So you have to be open to do that as well.

DX: What can be expected from the album and why the title Smoke N Mirrors?
B-Real: I tried to crate an album that had a lot of substance as opposed to a lot of the stuff out there right now, just bragging about the cars, women, jewelry, money. There’s a lot of that shit out there, didn’t want to fall under that line. I wanted to talk about some things, provoke some thought, inspire and bring people to have a good time. What an album should be: good times, bad times, funny times and the meaningless times, because in life, there are all those things and that’s what I tried to capture in the album.
Smoke N Mirrors, it’s a concept where people got this preconception and misconception that when you become a rapper, or when you become a signed rapper, then automatically you become rich. Because they see these rappers in the videos in all these mansions, driving these expensive cars with all these girls and they think that life is automatic when you sign a record deal. And that’s not what you get. A lot of people don’t know about the hard work that goes into becoming an established artist; to have a little bit of success and fame there’s a lot of work that goes behind that - it doesn’t happen overnight. But people have that conception because of the way MTV pops these videos on of all these materialistic fucking songs and some of the shit that’s on radio right now that portrays the same thing. And it’s not reality – it’s reality for some. Jay-Z lives like that, Eminem can live like that, Snoop Dogg can live like that, T.I.and Lil Wayne can live like that but a lot of rappers under those guys, they front like they live like that but they ain’t really living like that. It’s like a fucking charade because there is a record deal but they don’t really have all that shit, you gotta work to get all that shit. And that’s what Smoke N Mirrors is: it’s like a big façade. Let’s dress these rappers up, make ‘em look successful and when the video is over, all those fancy cars, all these jewels and all those hot women, they’re all going to different places, they ain’t going home with you. Unless you’re those guys like Lil Wayne and T.I. and Jay-Z and 50 Cent.

DX: Does one really want those girls going home with them?
B-Real: Some people do. Some people, that’s what they’re in it for. They’re in it for fame, success and money. Some people want to say something to people, inspire people and some people just want to be artists but they’re fortunate enough to be successful and have all these things if they want them. Some people [have] a humble life and some people fall into what that life becomes. When we’re young we want all that shit; when we get older, we realize we don’t need half of it.

DX: Where do you stand with all of that?
B-Real: Shit, I’m married so there’s no taking a whole bunch of girls home with me. [Laughs] But with the fancy cars and the mansions, I live well. I don’t live in a big blown out mansion, I don’t got six cars ‘cause I don’t see the need for it. if I’m like 60 years old and I’m a billionaire, then maybe I’ll collect a car or two, I’ll have property here or property there; right now, I’m pretty good. That’s due to the success we’ve had with Cypress Hill. And we’re trying to continue that just so we have an established place for our families and we can provide for our families and live the way we want to live – not beyond our means, but well enough to be comfortable. You can have all these millions of dollars and not have the craziness some of these people have. It would be good to afford all that shit but if you don’t need it, why be frivolous?

DX: That is true. You’re a producer, which many people are still unaware of. Have you done any of your own production for this album?
B-Real: I did maybe like three or four songs. I started off doing more, but as we got into the end part of the album, there were beats from other people that I really liked a lot. So I sacrificed more of the stuff that I did at the beginning to get these beats because I didn’t want to have an album of twenty songs; that shit gets boring and people get tired of it. So I basically sacrificed, and did three of my songs and kept them on the album. Had guys like Scoop Deville, Soopafly, my boy Jake Turner who did at least a good portion of the album. We kept it simple; I didn’t go get a bunch of producers, I got people we consider family to come and contribute to this record.
I think with this album, people will hear the style of my production, and when the next Cypress Hill album comes out, I have a few songs that I produced on that record too. People will slowly but surely start hearing about my production. That’s what I want, I didn’t want it to be like, “Oh, it’s B-Real, let’s go get a beat from him because it’s B-Real.” I want to earn my way as a producer just like the way I earned my way as a rapper, as an entertainer, as a writer; as Cypress Hill. We pretty much earned our spot in this game and as a producer, I have to pay my dues and earn my way up to be considered as one of the top producers. I have a long way to go but I’ve had a good head start.

DX: On “Don’t Ya Dare Laugh” with Young De you describe a certain aura of California from the way you see it while stating that the rap game is in “shambles” and you came to “boost it back.” Were you referring to California and the west coast, or the entire Hip Hop scene in the US?
B-Real: Both, really. I’m from the west coast so I have to represent that first and foremost. West coast rappers don’t get a lot of love and don’t get a lot of airplay pretty much anywhere else with the exception of the stable groups like Black Eyed Peas, Snoop Dogg and anything [Dr.] Dre puts out, occasionally us, and Ice Cube and Mack 10 , The Game . That’s just two handfuls of groups that get love around the country. Other than that, there ain’t too many groups out here or artists in the west coast to get a decent shot at making something good unless you’re endorsed by Dr. Dre or somebody like that.

I’m trying to bust the door open for west coast rappers out here. There’s a lot of talented rappers, it’s just that A&R people here on the west coast, and the labels here in the west coast, they’re full of shit and they don’t know anything. They don’t know where to look for these artists, they don’t know what kind of artists to look for and they don’t want to fucking hire the right people to look for these artists and to break these new artists. They’re always depending on what New York is gonna break or what the south is gonna break. We got artists here, we’re one of the fucking centers of entertainment and they ain’t signing shit that means anything. The only guy that’s ever signed anything good is Dre because he knows what the fuck to look for; all these other douchebags don’t know what to look for so you don’t really hear too many great west coast artists that are coming out – the up-and-coming coming guys. These west coast labels got their fuckin' head up their ass so that was one reason why I had to rep it like that.
The other reason is that I love Hip Hop and I see the way that Hip Hop is put as a genre of music on a map. It’s basically at a low point because you have all this materialistic shit out there – and that’s not knocking that stuff because rap has evolved and grown and it has so many faces, there’s something there for everybody – but it needs to have more substance. There’s a lot of shit out there that’s getting played on MTV and on radio and on BET, and it has no substance at all. They need to have a balance. People need to open their fucking eyes as far as these labels and radio people go. There’s more to Hip Hop - more to this music - than what they’re displaying, portraying and playing.

DX: Many rappers address that same topic, and even BET – who is a large perpetrator of rotational junk – even held panel discussions on mainstream Hip Hop’s obsession with violence, materialism, exploitation of women, etc. Though it continues despite all the outcries. Why?
B-Real: Well, here’s the thing. They [radio and television] have control of what they’re playing. We have no control over it. And it’s not like there’s a union that you can boycott them. Rappers are so…I mean a lot of us are united but as a whole, everyone’s on their own; there’s no fucking union. [Screen] Actors Guild has a union: actors are getting fucked, they all go on strike and they shut down the industry. There’s no union for musicians to be able to have that power. Let’s say so and so is coming out with a new record and it’s a great record but no radio stations will play it, MTV and BET won’t play the video and they’re doing that not just to this rapper, but let’s say to ten or twenty rappers that have a chance to be successful. Rappers don’t say, “Let’s fucking shut this shit down ‘till they get it right.” There’s no union, and that’s why we get fucked in our record deals, that’s why we get fucked out of radio airplay, rotation on video outlets. Thank God for Internet radio, thank God for satellite radio, thank God for YouTubes and all that because now, there’s an outlet for what they don’t want to play.
I look at it like this: we can complain about that shit all day – which is not gonna get us nowhere. But we can speak on it and let people know that it exists, that this fucking cock-blocking that they do on a lot of us because we don’t fall in line to what all these little popular rappers are doing, we get blocked from having our shit out there. We can complain about that or expose it – and then use the tools that are out there that we didn’t have before. Like if you got a video and MTV and BET ain't gonna play it, then you go put that shit on your MySpace, you put that on YouTube, and then you mass email everybody and let people know that your video is out. Then maybe these people will start requesting it at these stations - and same thing with your music. You gotta use these tools and if you don’t, it’s your own fucking fault.

DX: Let’s touch upon your delivery. It’s not a cookie cut shape of what we see today, the almost generic laid-back Nas, Jay-Z and all the many imitations that came after that. What do you say to rappers who are starting out and who are afraid to utilize their natural delivery, natural flow – and many times, their natural voice – because it doesn’t sound similar to what has been commercially acceptable, and expected, especially from east coast rappers?
B-Real: What those rappers need to realize is that there’s people who have done it before them and done it better and they’re recognized for it; you’ll never be recognized for it. You might be here for a time where your record has a little bit of steam but they won’t remember you because you’re not distinct, you sound just like this guy. And you have to be distinct, you have to have something that makes you stand out, and your voice is that instrument. You can sound like Jay-Z but you’re just gonna sound like Jay-Z, you ain’t never gonna be him, and you’re never gonna get the respect he has. If you want to stand out and you want to make a name for yourself, you want to have longevity, then you have to do you, you have to be who you are and be different than anybody else. Real artists don’t do music to be that guy. You want to have the success he has, you want to have the opportunity he has, you may want to live the life he has, but you don’t want to be the replica of this guy because you’re always gonna be in his shadow.

DX: Latino rappers are often compared to Big Pun merely for being Latino. Is there a necessity for Latino artists to have the next Pun?
B-Real: There should never be a next Big Pun. There should be the next whoever the fuck you are. That’s the whole deal. Pun is Pun; there’s always gonna be one Pun, just like there’s only gonna be one Biggie, one Tupac, one Eazy-E, one Jay-Z, one Eminem, one 50, one Nas. You shouldn’t want to be the next guy, you should want to be the next you. Fuck all that, because you’re living in their shadow.

DX: Cypress Hill brought attention to gang violence in L.A., as well as other issues like policy brutality. Have the conditions changed in the past decade, and if so how, and how do you see the new president-elect addressing such issues, if at all?
B-Real: In L.A., it’s basically swept under the rug. Pretty much when you have the gang violence on the news all the time, it brings the value of the city down. They’re constantly trying to get people to come out here and buy property in California, most importantly in Los Angeles, downtown, and they don’t want people to be afraid to come and invest out here so they keep the shit under the rug. But gang violence will always exist out here, it’s just something that’s part of the culture in Los Angeles; gangs have been here for decades, and they’ll never stop. You may put one neighborhood down and disband them but another one pops up somewhere else. Sometime it’ll be crazier than others; some years it will be really violent and other years not so much. Right now these guys are just trying to get money as opposed to worrying about who they’re going to go kill. I don’t know how he [Barack Obama] would address that, I don’t know if it’s even on his radar to change it, but that’s definitely something that needs to be addressed.
As far as police brutality, this has been under the microscope for now because there are so many things after the Rodney King beating that were exposed as far as corruption goes. They're [cops] pretty much looked at from every angle so it’s not as bad as it used to be but it still exists…there’s always gonna be corrupt cops. When you have that much power, some people can take it and some people can’t. People that can take it, they do their job as best as they can, trying to cope with what they deal with – because cops deal with a lot of shit, let’s just be real about it. They deal with a lot of stuff that psychiatrists don’t even fucking deal with; they see things and hear things that pretty much you gotta go through therapy to get over. There’s those guys and there’s guys who take it over the line; they know they have power and they’re gonna take advantage of that. There’s always that balance unfortunately.

DX: I was surprised to see the label partnership with Duck Down Records. Maybe because of the geographical stretch – and not to mention the difference in sound – between the east and the west coast. How did that collaboration come about?
B-Real: They heard that I was doing my solo record and we reached out to each other and told them what direction I was going in; they heard some music and they liked it. But the thing about it is that like Cypress Hill, my record doesn’t sound so much like the west coast record entirely. I have songs that sound like east coast-driven stuff because I was very much influenced by east coast Hip Hop more so than west coast, and it’s like that with Cypress Hill. When we first came out as Cypress, we were signed to Sony in New York, and we were a west coast based group but our sound was not west coast and the way that we delivered these songs, they weren’t so much sounding like west coast. So when we got into this deal, I just felt like I was coming full circle because here I was signing to another east coast based label who understands what Hip Hop is, and who knows how to push it, and who were excited about my record. Yeah I got a lot of people telling me, “Wow you signed with Duck Down, how did you manage that?” and I thought it was a perfect fit; I don’t do things normally like other west coast artists do so I thought it was a perfect place for me to be to release my record.

DX: Who are some of those east coast influences?
B-Real: I was very much influenced by groups like Run-DMC, the Beastie Boys, Public Enemy, KRS-One, Boogie Down Productions, LL Cool J, Rakim, all the classic artists that came out in that time. Us in the west coast, we got it late, but when we got it a lot of us that loved Hip Hop appreciated that, me being one of them. And when we started this group, Cypress Hill, DJ Muggs happened to be from New York, he was from Queens, New York and what he did was he brought east coast flavor in his sound over to our west coast concepts, slang and flow and we just basically tied that together so all of our first records were very east coast driven.

DX: Favorite LL Cool J track?
B-Real: He’s got a few of them. I would say “Mama Said Knock You Out”

[Matty]

i wanted to hear this when quik was going to be producing some stuff for it but now it seems like he's not i've completely lost interest.

[Okka]

I wanna hear that album.

[Lunatic]

I wanna hear that album.

same, this is going to be GOOD

[Booz]

I'm not such a big Cypress fan but will check for anything with Young De. 

[Elano]

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/wOH9XSZ0cbE" target="_blank" class="new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/wOH9XSZ0cbE</a>

 

[kuruptDPG]

^^ dope video, luv the trak. why cant evry1 elses videos from the west be like that? especially with the new dpg tak with turf talk.

i cant wait for this album too but too much guest appearances in my opinion, i am looking forward to the buckshot trak and traks produced by soopafly.

[Lunatic]

i cant wait for this album too but too much guest appearances in my opinion,

the appearances/production is what got me anticipatin' the album the most

[kuruptDPG]

i cant wait for this album too but too much guest appearances in my opinion,

the appearances/production is what got me anticipatin' the album the most

well same her but wen thers too much, ther too much. i would like to see a few more solos but its kl. u dont really want this album to depend on guest appearances, u would want b-real to be heard more often

[Elano]

i cant wait for this album too but too much guest appearances in my opinion,

the appearances/production is what got me anticipatin' the album the most

well same her but wen thers too much, ther too much. i would like to see a few more solos but its kl. u dont really want this album to depend on guest appearances, u would want b-real to be heard more often

yeah there are too many featurings,i don't care about the guest appearances on a b-real solo album

[DJJohnB]

breal is a fucking legend

[Elano]

i cant wait for this album too but too much guest appearances in my opinion,

the appearances/production is what got me anticipatin' the album the most

[T-Dogg]

B said some real shit about the industry, real talk. Plus he's helping somebody new and talented (Young De) come up in the game, not just talking about it, gotta respect that.

No doubt a record I'll be checking out. The single is hot, B's got a great track record - things are looking good for this one.

[D-Nice]

Hell a B-Real solo is almost a Cypress album. With a couple Sen Dog verses here and there.