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Kurupt Drops Science
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We caught up with Kurupt to talk to him about his upcoming album, “Streetlights,” the war on drugs, the legalization of marijuana, and his family.D: Hey Kurupt, how are you doing? This is Nick Conway from DeftMag.
What’s good Nick?
D: I’m lovely. Thanks for taking time out to do this interview and sorry I was running late.
No problem, I was just picking up my kids from school.
D: You got kids? That’s great. How are they doing?
Oh I got great kids man. They absolutely wonderful.
D: That’s beautiful. I love kids although I don’t have any of my own. I can’t even imagine though. Must be so wonderful but at the same time it must be the world’s biggest challenge to be a father, and do it right, particularly these days.
I can’t even tell you. I watch over my kids all day long. With children you gotta constantly be monitoring all of their inputs. I’ve been studying these children for about fourteen years now and I tell you they do it to themselves. They are easily sidetracked.
D: Especially nowadays there is so much to be sidetracked by.
There’s Internet, there’s computers, there’s all of that. I don’t really let my children do too much of t the computer thing alone. Because you can really get caught up in there. There’s too much information for children to be involved in on the Internet without supervision.
D: That really is a good point. It is a valuable too, it’s very valuable but at the same time you have a young kid whose mind is like clay and easily molded. They don’t know how to filter things out like the rest of us do, and what to take with a grain of salt.
It’s a double-edged sword man. There’s a negative and a positive to everything. It’s like school man. School can either make a kid or break a kid. So many different walks of life at school. Different things, different people. Young children are so influential to other young children. It’s all the same: Internet, school. Every place they are is an influence upon them. They’ll pick something that they like so you need to monitor every movement of a child and let know what time you can let off of them. Television, DVDs, music, everything. Every aspect of life can influence the kids. No this ain’t influencing the kids. You are because you are allowing that child to have access. You are giving them that break, that break when you should be on them. Asking the artists to take on your responsibility. AS a parent you have to monitor things that are for adults and thing for children. Nowadays they mix em all up. There is no adult and child. There is a just a person. There are just things. Back in the days my mom and pop would monitor everything. I used to have to hide my albums from my mama. Nowadays you don’t cause she banging the same things you banging. Those kids man. Not even the radio man.
D: I’ll believe it. As I mentioned, I’m not a father but it must be the biggest challenge in the world to do it right. Which is interesting because that’s one of the questions I wanted to ask you tonight was if you were a father, which you said you are. And with fathers day coming up and the particular bad rap hip hop has, what place has being a father taken in your life. I remember I was teaching in a kindergarten several years ago and on Mothers Day, it was a school wide policy, all kids would make a mothers day card for their mothers, but on fathers day so many of the kids didn’t even have a male presence in their lives that they didn’t want it to be a stigma for all the kids that didn’t have a father, they just made it special persons day so they could just draw a card for somebody who had meaning to them.
That’s wrong. I don’t believe you can penalize those that have fathers because there are those that don’t have fathers. There are also kids out there that don’t have mothers but you don’t penalize them cause they don’t have mothers. That’s discrimination right there. You need to teach kids the reality of life. Reality is there is a father’s day, it’s not a special persons day. Best thing you can do is that for those that don’t have fathers is the same that you can do for those that don’t have mothers. Just something you have to deal with. Can’t penalize them others. Best thing you can do is be a father to that child or that special person right there. And you can separate it saying this is father’s day but if you don’t have a father, this is special persons day. Sorry for breaking you off. I’m such a politician.
D: No no not at all. It’s beautiful. That’s what I want man. This isn’t about me; I just wanna hear what you wanna say. And that’s beautiful to me, it really is. Its insightful too cause like you said you can’t whitewash everything in this word. Gotta show the reality. And the whole issue of father/mother, there’s a whole lot more to being a parent than simply creating a kid.
And a lot of kids will just look at their mother as both their father and mother because they are such a big part of their life. So for father’s day they might do the same thing they did on mother’s day.
D: I think that’s beautiful. It could be a big brother. It could be a friend. It could be an uncle. It could be a cat who cares. I like that rather than hide from reality, you embrace reality. And at same time you say embrace the fact you know what though it’s more than us technically what is a father, its what is or who is special to you. Cause kids aren’t fools, they know its fathers day man. If you don’t mind me asking, has being a father changed, or maybe when you first started rhyming you were already a father I’m not sure, but has it really influenced you? Or as you’ve grown as a father how has that influenced your sensibilities as a hip hop artist, as an emcee? Has it influenced the content of what you do? Has it influenced the aesthetics? Has it not changed your style at all? I was curious if it has affected your hip hop sensibilities in any way?
Well you know I think it affected it in a lot of ways since I took such a great hiatus from the game to embrace the fact that I was a father and play a greater role in their lives. And I try my hardest. And its tough since there are several different mothers. And so it seemed like a lot harder since there are so many opinions coming to the table. But the mothers are doing such a great job with the children. And you know with that fame it’s hard to do both. But you know I can’t water down my music. My music isn’t for children. My music is for adults. My music is for a grown crowd. My music isn’t for my kids to listen to. They have their own music to listen to and enjoy. I don’t water my stuff down or say oh I’m a father I’m not making these type of records. You know I can’t do that cause I’m not speaking from a father’s perspective I’m speaking from Kurupt’s perspective. However I also do records that my kids can listen to. I think one of the things that’s changed is I actually have a broader view of the type of music I will make. But I’m not gonna stop from making the original music I made. Whatsoever. This is who I am. This is what I am. These are my views, until I change em. Another change is I do more records catered to others things I hadn’t done before which comes with my older age. I realize there are other types of people in the world.
Nicholas Conway is an adjunct professor, teaching Hip Hop Music and Culture at Trinity College, Yale University And SUNY-Albany. He is currently authoring a textbook on Hip Hop and freelances for Deft magazine as well as Albany’s The Time Union, UndergroundHipHop.com and also serves as a guest lecturer on hip hop.
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