xzibit article from xxl

[antt213]

My Life

Screw the screwface, Xzibit’s one happy rapper. And why not? He’s got

the best producer in rap providing tracks, famous MC friends, and a new album. Jealous ones please don’t envy.

Words Matt Diehl



What’s the difference between you and Xzibit?

About five bank accounts, three ounces and two vehicles.  Actually, make that three vehicles: X currently rocks a Range Rover, Escalade and a classic Chevy low rider. And you can keep the ounces, dude—believe it or not, Xzibit no longer smokes chronic. And you probably don’t get to fuck with Dr. Dre neither. You know, the kind of association that fosters appearances on Snoop Dogg’s smash “Bitch Please,” the Doctor’s own six-times platinum 2001, and the earth-shaking Up In Smoke tour, propelling you straight outta the underground into million-selling M.V.P. status. Most of all, you don’t have Man Vs. Machine coming out this summer.

Due through the major major label, Sony/Columbia (X’s previous home, Columbia subsidiary Loud Records, dissolved in March), the new album is so good, so Xzellent in fact, that it just might put end up alongside those other West Coast G-funk masterpieces made by... Oh yeah, Dr. Dre. “I know the streets is listening,” says Xzibit, beginning a tour of his grand, but tasteful, abode. “And have I got something for them.”

Oh, one more thing that’s different about you and Xzibit: you don’t get to live in this dope-ass house. Placed in the most gated of gated communities, far from LA’s inner-city blues,  surrounded by perfectly paved roads, epic gardens and manicured lawns (when Toni Tony Tone said it never rains in Southern California, this must be the place they were talking about), the crib is big and white, with a subdued earth-tone interior, and spotlessly clean (take off your shoes upon entrance.) There’s even a second living room, “Where you can’t sit on the furniture.”

X-to-the-Z’s house fits the all-American, proud new home-owner picture perfectly—with some key exceptions. For example, what soccer mom gets Jay-Z to autograph a basketball jersey for their sons? Or collects Spawn and anime model figurines and vintage Zapp concert posters? Or keeps a bong sitting on the mantle (just as a reminder of daze past?) Sure, X’s been paid after his last album Restless brought him his first platinum plaque, but he still walks around his rarefied confines wearing a blue ‘do rag, wife-beater, and sagging khakis—like he was trapped in prison, rather than suburbia. He pauses in front of a framed platinum award from his last album, Restless. “I don’t rap for that—my success comes from something different,” he comments, recalling the diss of sucker MCs who only “rap for the money and the fame” that reverberated through his debut single, the 1996 underground classic “Paparazzi.”  

Still, a gleaming silver Glock left casually on the TV-room couch, hints of trouble in this paradise. “It’s for my own protection,” he says. “Undesirable people moved into the neighborhood—people I don’t have no business being around.”  

He turns off the tape recorder, and, off the record, breaks down just how serious it is for Xzibit to live in the land of Lost Angels. (In fact, he’s moving out this house to avoid any potential trouble.) Back on the record, Xzibit explains his place in thug lifestyle. “The gangsta lifestyle is not new to me,” he says. “I’ve never been involved in any particular set, but I know people from both sides of the fence. I was hustlin’, I used to sell crack. It’s real, wherever you are.” But for Xzibit, keeping it real isn’t a cliche. “It’s funny, though—I haven’t had any life-threatening problems with anybody until I started selling records.”

Moving to the garage, X opens the door to reveal an exquisitely refurbished, pale blue, 1964 Chevy Impala low rider. “There are some people that only rent low riders to be in their videos,” he says. “And there’s other people that actually own them.” Xzibit throws open the hood, and the resulting shine puts a grin on his face. “Everything’s chromed on this muthafucka, even the hydraulics. It cost me about 50 grand to get my car restored. I even had custom ‘Xzibit’ rims made.”

There won’t be any low riding today, though. Xzibit chooses the Range. Any of his current rides, however, would be a big step up from the Geo Tracker he drove to escape New Mexico some 12 years ago. X came to California by himself, when he was just 17—he thinks of it as an escape.

Xzibit was born Alvin Joiner in Detroit, Michigan, and was only nine when his mother died. His ex-Marine father uprooted the family to New Mexico to start a life with a new wife whose abusive ways, Xzibit claims, “Didn’t have me and my siblings’ best interests at heart.” X soon became immersed in his parents’ strict Jehovah Witness religion, even bringing pamphlets door to door. Adolescent growing pains, increasing isolation (“All five of the black people in New Mexico knew each other,” he cracks) and the lure of the street came calling, however, and his relationship with fam unraveled. The situation culminated in his father telling a local judge to sentence his son in a firearm incident; young Alvin got six months in a detention center. “People tried to frame me for murder,” he says. “All of my friends from there are in jail or dead. New Mexico took more from me than I could ever imagine.”

Eventually, X’s California dreaming panned out. Around 1995, while so broke that he was eating Campbell’s Chunky Soup heated up over a candle, he began immersing himself in LA’s underground ciphers. He became associated with Tha Alkaholiks (a.k.a. Tha Liks, a.k.a. Tha Likwit Crew) a rhyme collective that included West Coast legend King Tee, and younger talents Tash and E Swift. “I come from backpackin’,” X says. “I come from being in a circle and battling and smashing cats. I know the importance of having a vocabulary and something to say.”

Flexing his descripTK lyrical steez and brazen, “wake-up-muthafucka!” vocals on ‘Liks tracks like “Liquidation,” X got noticed fast. The group’s New York-based label, Loud Records, offered him a deal as a solo artist. The “Paparazzi” single, off his debut LP At The Speed Of Light, created massive street buzz, and went platinum in, of all places, Germany. Two years later, the video for “What You See Is What You Get,” the first single from his sophomore release 40 Dayz and 40 Nights, broke records on BET’s Rap City—staying at #1 for six weeks. Still, with Xzibit’s album sales hovering around 200,000, the only gold he could lay claim to was hanging around his neck. “Loud refused to film a second video,” he says. “They shit on me!”

Salvation came in ‘99, when Xzibit got the call to guest on “Bitch Please.” While Xzibit had met Dre before, and knew Snoop socially, the call was a surprise. “I shot down there, spit my verse, and left,” he says. “I wasn’t like, ‘Would you put me on?’”

The professionalism paid off later that year, when Dre recruited him for the 2001 sessions. “I ran to the studio,” says Xzibit, laughing. “I didn’t even get in the car, I just started running down the street. When I got there, I recorded ‘What’s The Difference’ in one take—that’s really what they liked. Dre told me later that he was impressed, because, as soon as I finished my verse, I didn’t go in there like, ‘Hey man, Who should I contact for some business?’ He was like, ‘Usually when someone comes in, they’ve automatically got their hand out, but you were just eager to work.’ If I’d have been just all about the dough, I would’ve missed a lot of opportunities presented to me.”  

One opportunity that Xzibit didn’t miss was summer 2000’s Up In Smoke tour, featuring the whole 2001 crew, from Big Snoop Dogg to Eminem to Nate Dogg. “Up In Smoke was a turning point in my career,” X says. “Dr. Dre gave me an option: he said, you can have a solo set in the beginning of the show, or you can come out and do a couple of songs with me and the fellas. I thought, ‘Do I want to perform when people are coming in and the arena’s filled a third to capacity, or do I want to come out at the height of the show, when everybody’s in there rocking like a muthafucka and is going to notice when I come out and do my thing?”

As a result of X’s stand-out performances on 2001 and Up In Smoke, expectations shot extremely high for his third album, Restless—especially after Dre signed on as executive producer. “I asked him to produce one or two songs,” Xzibit recalls. “He was like, ‘Shit, man, why don’t you just let me do the album?’ I was like, ‘You’re goddamn right! Let’s go!’”  

[antt213]

While catchy Cali bangers like “X” and “Front 2 Back” pushed Restless to platinum status, rap fans hoping for a career-transforming masterpiece on the level of Doggystyle or The Chronic were somewhat disappointed. Today, Xzibit seems to understand this. “I made Restless on the run,” he says. “That’s not an excuse—it’s more explaining how the album came together, and the amount of time I had to work on it. I’ve never claimed to make the best album ever. It’s a learning process.”  

On Man Vs. Machine, however, Xzibit comes out swinging like the “Dark McGuire” he’s always threatened to be. Executive produced, once again, by Dr. Dre, the music is big, bold and funky enough to match a personality as oversized as it’s bearer’s baseball jerseys. The grooves are varied, with cross-coast producers like Bink (who sat behind the boards for Mr. Cheeks’ “Lights Camera Action”) and Gang Starr maestro DJ Premier getting X into a New York state of mind. Perhaps more importantly, the new album isn’t packed with collabos the way Restless was. This time, listeners get uncut X—no seeds, no stems, just sticky-icky rhymes.

Today, X is going back into the studio with Dre to pump up the jams a bit more. He arrives around 4 pm, and Dre, sporting a blue velour Sean John tracksuit, is already hooking up beats with Mel-Man and bass king Mike Elizondo. New Aftermath diva Truth Hurts is also in the house, giving X a warm embrace as he enters the room. (Dre, however, doesn’t embrace XXL’s presence as warmly. Upon learning that a reporter from the magazine was present, he is cordial yet, um, firm: “Tell XXL they can suck my dick, and you can print that.”)

In Dre’s house, it’s all work and all play. Deep Cover—the Laurence Fishburne flick that featured Dre and Snoop’s first ever collaboration—is playing on the studio TV. Elizondo busts out pictures of his kids, while an intense Doctor plunks away on a Fender Rhodes. “Dre’s learning the piano,” Xzibit explains. “He thought, ‘Imagine how I could make music if I actually knew how to play.’” (Dre’s focus slips when a new X verse poking fun at R. Kelly comes on. He jumps up, laughing, and sings along.)

X cues up some tracks from Man Vs. Machine, turning the bass to lethal levels. When the beat kicks in, X starts bouncing and gesticulating, rhyming the words as if he’d never left the Up In Smoke stage. The first track, “Symphony In X Major,” has Xzibit predicting, “this song is going to change the face of what we consider hip-hop!” He might be right. The combination of S.U.V.-rattling LA street funk and crazy classical orchestra flourishes comes off like a b-boy “Bohemian Rhapsody.” X’s flow, meanwhile, is more confident and brutal than ever, especially when contrasted with Dre’s sinister, laid-back intonations. (“Make sure it says Andre Young in big letters, on big checks,” he snarls.) “This is for the people who spoke too soon,” counters X. “I’m not gonna shoot at y’all niggas, I’m gonna shoot for the moon.” Over the squelching bass and electro-tribal groove of “Harder,” Xzibit welcomes his group Golden State—fellow Cali underground scribes Ras Kass and Saafir—for a pounding posse cut. (The back n’ forth verses leave no question as to why Xzibit made Golden State the first signing to his new Open Bar label.) “I use truth as a weapon,” X barks. “I’ve been through the worst and avoided the hearse.”

This is just the tip of the iceberg, the natural result of X raging against the machine. In recording the album, he turned the vocal booth into the confessional booth: “Man Vs. Machine represents my personal struggle. The machine is the industry, the machine is the public, the machine is the critics, the machine is everything that has built itself to be against me. This is on top of the struggles everybody goes through day to day. I’m not the only one with a brother in prison, I’m not the only one with street problems, I’m not the only one with people that I care about that I want to do better but I can’t help them all the time.”

The whole process of Man Vs. Machine has visibly changed Xzibit. He’s given up drinking and smoking weed. Both to make his live performance stronger (he’s back on the Anger Management tour this summer, with Eminem, Papa Roach, Ludacris and the X-ecutioners) and to serve as a better role model for his son. “I know what it’s like to be high off the fuckin’ planet,” he says, of his decision. “I know what it’s like to be drunker than drunk. But I didn’t know what it felt like to be coherent for weeks at a time. Most of all, I didn’t know what it felt like to succeed on my own terms. I own a record label now, I’m a full-time father, I just recorded the best record of my career, I’m around people that are striving to change the face of music. To show what hip-hop music is supposed to be. That gets me higher than any kind of blunt.”



PULL QUOTES
“I recorded ‘What’s The Difference’ in one take—that’s really what they liked. Dre told me later that he was impressed, because, as soon as I finished my verse, I didn’t go in there like, ‘Hey man, Who should I contact for some business?’ He was like, ‘Usually when someone comes in, they’ve automatically got their hand out, but you were just eager to work.’”



“I made Restless on the run. That’s not an excuse—it’s more explaining how the album came together, and the amount of time I had to work on it. I’ve never claimed to make the best album ever. It’s a learning process.”



“I know what it’s like to be drunker than drunk. But I didn’t know what it felt like to be coherent for weeks at a time. Most of all, I didn’t know what it felt like to succeed on my own terms. I own a record label now, I’m a full-time father, I just recorded the best record of my career, I’m around people that are striving to change the face of music.”


http://xxlmag.com/main/features/39_xxbit.php

[LyRiCaL_G]

shit, thanx dawg, that shits ill to read

[Jome]

Big props antt!!
Do I smell the best hiphop-album EVER?
Shiiiit, cant wait.

[LyRiCaL_G]

i dunno about that, but shits gonna be dope as fuck no matter what n even if it was the best hip hop album ever, no one wud ever accept it as so thers no point askin questions like that ya know?

but on the real, i think xzibits one of the most talented mcs out there

peace

[Don Seer]

tight!

[E. J. Rizo]

Dre, however, doesn’t embrace XXL’s presence as warmly. Upon learning that a reporter from the magazine was present, he is cordial yet, um, firm: “Tell XXL they can suck my dick, and you can print that.

lol....anybody think this has anything to do with the JD interview on XXL it sounds stupid but could be anyway thats still shows you how he can care less who was there he didnt give a fuck he just went in and did his thang

[themovie]

He’s given up drinking and smoking weed ? ? ?        
I can't believe that ! ! !
However,xzibit's album will be better than snoop's one.....

[Suga Foot]

damn that was a tite interview thanks homie.

[themovie]

"Most of all, you don’t have Man Vs. Machine coming out this summer. "      

[themovie]

"The whole process of Man Vs. Machine has visibly changed Xzibit. He’s given up drinking and smoking weed. Both to make his live performance stronger  and to serve as a better role model for his son."
SNOOP GOT 3 SONS BUT HE DONT GIVE A FUCK......he smokes all day everyday...
PROPS to xzibit for that!  

[KVB]

Dope article... thanks antt213 for posting this, I really enjoyed reading it... peace.

[The Watcher]

Xzibit not smokin' chronic no more, Eminem stopped doing drugs & alcohol, Snoop's recent good behaviour language wise on a few bootleged tracks.. maybe we'll see a gospel album soon from these 3 !

[Jome]

"Most of all, you don?t have Man Vs. Machine coming out this summer. "      

It will come out.
It was just a figure of speech, as in "What's the Difference"
YOU dont have a album coming out this summer, but XZIBIT DOES!

[caTASHtrophe]

Plays "3 card molly" in the background........



Ras/Saafir/X

Whooo Hooo.