Ab-Soul NPR Interview (Audio/Transcript)

[IronFist]

Transcribe:

ALI SHAHEED

MUHAMMAD: Ab-Soul in the building. What up, man?

AB-SOUL: What's the good word, brother?

MUHAMMAD: I'm so happy to be talking to you cause we saw each other — I don't know how many months ago that was — was that like six months ago?

AB-SOUL: Word, yeah, word.

MUHAMMAD: Roughly.

AB-SOUL: And it is an honor. It's an honor, brother.

FRANNIE KELLEY: Where did you guys meet?

AB-SOUL: Where were we at? SX?

MUHAMMAD: No, no, no. Before that it was at LPR.

AB-SOUL: Yeah.


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MUHAMMAD: For the ScHoolboy joint.

AB-SOUL: Yeah, that's right.

KELLEY: Oh, that's right. It was your birthday.

MUHAMMAD: Yeah, it was your birthday.

AB-SOUL: Oh yeah! Exactly, yeah. For sure, for sure. Yeah, I remember that.

MUHAMMAD: And we talked about you coming here. I wanted to make it happen right then and there. I was like, "Could we get you up here tomorrow?"

AB-SOUL: Word. You gotta have something to talk about.

MUHAMMAD: Absolutely.

AB-SOUL: You gotta have something to talk about. I don't like to move without direction.

MUHAMMAD: Me either. I stay quiet because I'm like, "What's the point?" But you have a lot to talk about I think. People want to talk to you. But I respect the position. You got These Days,though, so we here.

AB-SOUL: We are here. We are here. These Days. June 24th, you feel me? TDE.

KELLEY: It's a lot to talk about on that album.

AB-SOUL: Yeah, yeah. I cover a lot. I cover a whole lot.

KELLEY: Do you feel like you did what you wanted to do with it?

AB-SOUL: Absolutely, absolutely. You know, I had turned it in at the top of the year, so this extra time just gave me extra time to, you know, seal the deal, you feel me?

KELLEY: What were you doing with that extra time?

AB-SOUL: Just adding a few extra songs.

KELLEY: OK.

AB-SOUL: Just cleaning everything up, expounding a bit, elaborating.

KELLEY: It's very open and earnest.

AB-SOUL: Yeah. I mean, I try to be that. A lot of my favorite artists embody that so I try to give that back, you know what I mean? That's what I got from hip-hop. I just want to kick that back if I can.

KELLEY: Like who specifically?

AB-SOUL: I won't even be cliche and say, like, Jay Z and Nas, I'll take you to like even KRS-One, you know, hip-hop intelligent movement, that type of thing. Who was the one said that hip-hop was like the black CNN? It's just these things — like a lot of the early artists, you know, Rakim, you know he called himself the God, then, and so we hear it now and I think a lot of people of my generation might think that this is new, you get what I'm saying? So I mean, I just try to, you know, I'm just trying to restore the feeling.

MUHAMMAD: Have you ever met Rakim?

AB-SOUL: No, I haven't met Rakim personally, but I met his son. His son actually called into a radio — I forgot which radio station I was at but he called in while I was doing the interview and it was dope. That was super dope. I'm sure I'll catch Rakim slipping one day though, for sure.

KELLEY: That's the second time today that Chuck D has come up. And I know he's on Twitter a lot right now talking about black radio and everything. I mean, it's pretty shocking that somebody would go at him and not think that everybody would know exactly who he was messing with.

AB-SOUL: What is black radio?

KELLEY: Well, I think that's part of the debate right now.

AB-SOUL: Got you.

KELLEY: But mostly, you know, hip-hop, R&B, quote unquote urban.

AB-SOUL: Urban, got you.

KELLEY: Yeah.

AB-SOUL: Got you. But I mean, it's all subjective. I think that's what also makes it so cool, so fun, you know what I mean? It's subjective. I can't please everybody. I'm not gonna say that's impossible, but it's very highly unlikely that you please everybody.

KELLEY: Yeah. But what do you also say on the album? You don't even have that many haters?

AB-SOUL: Well, yeah, just in terms — that line was just in terms of my circle of friends.

KELLEY: Oh, OK.

AB-SOUL: In my circle of friends, you know, we'd be here without a doubt. Then I guess I would say "too many" cause it might be a couple, a few deceivers in my presence, but for the most part, you know, I've had the opportunity to move around with guys that I've grew up with from the sandbox, pretty much. Fortunately for me.

KELLEY: To me, the album is very like — so we've spoken to a lot of the guys that you work with and everybody seems to have a plan, like a three-album plan.

AB-SOUL: Word.

KELLEY: But Control System was not part of your trilogy and this feels even further removed from the plan.

AB-SOUL: Right.

KELLEY: Is that all a bad feeling, or is there any good feeling about the plan not progressing the way that you thought it would?

AB-SOUL: Oh no, I mean, I'm enjoying every step. And you know, my series I guess that you're talking about would be Longterm.

KELLEY: Yeah.

AB-SOUL: And Longterm is my series that I came up with when I first decided to become an artist. And it's supposed to be four parts. And the Longterm 4 should be my last album.

KELLEY: Oh, OK.

AB-SOUL: The title alone speaks for itself: Longterm. If you look it up, it's a term of considerably 10 years, you know what I'm saying, where you thinking long-term. So everything that happens, all of the hurdles and the potholes or whatnot, are all necessary for the long-term goal, you see what I'm saying. So I wouldn't tell you that — I wouldn't say that everything is not happening according to plan, you know. I think everything is going according to plan. You're gonna have a few surprises here and there, but for the most part, we seem to be, we seem to be touching a lot of people and really being accepted and recepted by a lot of people. So it seems like a positive thing, completely.

 

[IronFist]

KELLEY: Yeah.

MUHAMMAD: When you were coming up, were you surrounded by people who then wholly embraced your vision or your way of communicating?

AB-SOUL: In general?

MUHAMMAD: In terms of music community.

AB-SOUL: I mean, I'm a people person. I'm kind of cool everywhere I go, you know what I mean, for the most part. And for the things that I say, I kind of know how to say 'em to whom I say it to, if you — does that make sense? I could chop it up with my homie that's a criminal and I could talk to Obama, who's the president, too. I got questions for both of 'em and I could talk to 'em both in their dialect, do you see what I'm saying?



MUHAMMAD: Yeah. I think it's clear — I think what I'm getting at is that the community you know, with TDE, you guys are such a force.

AB-SOUL: Yeah.


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MUHAMMAD: And it was quiet before your force was revealed. It was revealed within your community; you knew what was gonna happen, where you guys were going, what you were building, you know. But in terms of the outside world, they weren't privy to that yet, you know?

AB-SOUL: Word.

MUHAMMAD: And whatever was going on around that time, I don't know. Obviously it didn't affect you guys, but maybe it did in the way that it inspired and pushed you guys to really just be like, you know, like, "This is our stuff and this is the way we're crafting our art." I don't know.

AB-SOUL: No, I think I understand what you saying. What's very important to note is that we're actually — those are really my brothers. Like, I slept on the floor with them, you get what I'm saying? We all sat in the studio together and tried to figure it out together.

I probably stepped foot in that studio in '06 for the first time. So if you could imagine that type of time, us — we grew up together, in a sense. So everything that's happening now is only a byproduct of that. And I mean, if you think about that time, we were conditioned for everything that might happen. 'Cause you gotta think, the age that we live in — this is the Internet age. I mean, we see how the media works, we see how, you know, celebrities are treated.

And I grew up in a record shop. So I watched eight-tracks come, and 45s come, and 12-inches and then cassettes come and I watched the whole — I watched the transition. It's always gonna change, but now we have even more of that extensive information. I could look, I could hop online and type in hip-hop and get the whole history of hip-hop at the click of a button.

I just feel like we studied. We're highly conditioned for this, if I would have to say. It's not no type of pressure. I'm so proud. I'm very proud of them and I'm proud of what we've done, you know what I mean. I hope we can continue.

KELLEY: Just in that vain, on "Stigmata," you talk about Steve Jobs taking your grandfather's job and it was your job.

AB-SOUL: Right.

KELLEY: What's the next step?

AB-SOUL: Like I said, I worked in a record shop and my grandpa owned it.

KELLEY: Yeah.

AB-SOUL: And that's physical distribution.

KELLEY: Uh-huh.

AB-SOUL: When iTunes dropped, that was the transition from CD to MP3. Not — I won't say when iTunes dropped.

KELLEY: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Singles ...

AB-SOUL: But you know, Napsters and your file-sharing programs came. Steve Jobs created iTunes to where we could actually, you could sell your music digitally. So that revolution — if you could imagine me — you know, my mom ran it, it was a family-owned business, I'm there every day after school. And I'm trying to rap.

You can only imagine my mom looking at me trying to rap, and we're going out of business. You get what I'm saying? So right when the record shop came to an end — Magic Disc Music, shout-out to Magic Disc Music — right when it came to an end, Murs took me out on tour.

KELLEY: Wow.

AB-SOUL: And then I dropped my project Longterm Mentality on iTunes. So I was rewarded, still. We got to still stay in the music and we still selling records, still, you feel what I'm saying? It's still possible when we thought, you know, just in the physical land that it was over. So that's what that line would imply.

MUHAMMAD: So much of your music is so deep. It's like, where do you go? Because there are things that I think are somewhat literal, and then there's things that have so much layer and depth to it. It's the equivalent of, you know, going to a university or having like a whole bunch of — a library of things that you have to — or are told you should — study and look, read up on, before you can have an understanding of what this whole thing is that we're living in.

AB-SOUL: Yeah. I mean, yeah. I just like to talk about it. I like to reason, you know what I mean? I like to ask questions. I like to talk about it — everything. This world is a big place.

MUHAMMAD: What inspires you outside of maybe the obvious of just living and breathing. Like what's the purpose you get from making music or stepping up to a microphone?

AB-SOUL: I think it's simply that — I could probably honestly tell you that I've learned the bulk of what I know from hip-hop music. You understand what I'm saying? Like I learned — from listening to hip-hop music, I learned about things that I would soon learn about as an adult, from listening to it as a child. And that's just amazing to me; that's just remarkable.

So I want to give that back. I want somebody to feel like that made me feel. Like, "What does that mean? What did he mean by that? It sounded like he said it like I should have known what it meant." Like, "I'm late." You get what I'm saying? That's what I got from hip-hop, and so I just want to give that right back.

MUHAMMAD: Do your fans come up to you and have real in-depth conversations? Like they're clear on —

AB-SOUL: Yeah, all the time.

MUHAMMAD: Like, "I so get it."

AB-SOUL: All the time.

MUHAMMAD: What does that turn into? For example, someone comes up to you and they'll ask you — I mean, I'm fascinated by a lot. You said, "We run this world, price in a Pharaoh pyramid?" I was just trying to write as I heard it.

AB-SOUL: Word. I said, "When doves cry, s—- gets serious / You'll feel like a prince in Pharaoh's pyramid. Scheme."

MUHAMMAD: That's what you said.

AB-SOUL: Right.

MUHAMMAD: Why'd you say that?

AB-SOUL: Well, I mean, obvious wordplay upon Prince and "When Doves Cry."

MUHAMMAD: "It was a scheme."

AB-SOUL: And "it was a scheme." I mean, it's just a lot. It's a lot. I couldn't, I couldn't even — you feel me.

KELLEY: That's the headline on this interview.

AB-SOUL: And that's what I'm saying. It's kinda like you could use your imagination.

MUHAMMAD: Absolutely.

AB-SOUL: But you know, you should be able to directly catch some sort of word association or something. You should catch something. And you can take it as deep as you want. You can go into the deep end if you want or you could, you know, stay on the shallow end, too.

MUHAMMAD: I mean, you just placed it out there. I was like, "Brilliant. Smart." From an MC perspective, you gotta sprinkle things and do things like that. Sometimes there's so specific of a purpose — you know like you choose a word because it lands with something. "I'm really saying this because I need you to open up this little section, you know, and I'm not gonna take you all the way there, but just enough for you to be like, 'Hmm.'"

AB-SOUL: Exactly.

MUHAMMAD: In that particular song, you say, "She can't wait to get rid of me." Who is she?

AB-SOUL: Uh ...

KELLEY: Life.

AB-SOUL: Life, yeah, I'm sorry, yeah. "Maybe I'm just a dreamer / Life is but a dream and I will never leave her / but I bet she can't wait to get rid of me."

MUHAMMAD: Why'd you say that?

AB-SOUL: What if I told you I don't know.

MUHAMMAD: I'd believe you. But it's just so deep.

AB-SOUL: Exactly. I think I said that to provoke that thought. Like what, "What if life is a girl?" I love to provoke thought. Just think about it. But at the same time, you know, I'm trying to figure it out with you; I don't know. I'm not trying to act like — you know what I mean?

MUHAMMAD: I always got that from your music. It's not an apologetic position. It's always been a state of, "I know some s—-."

AB-SOUL: Right.

MUHAMMAD: "And I'm tripping up on some stuff. I'm stumbling on some stuff, figuring out some stuff. I deliberate — I know cause I know."

AB-SOUL: Right. What do you think about it?

MUHAMMAD: Yeah.

AB-SOUL: This is what I — now how do you feel about this?

MUHAMMAD: From me being, you know, older than you, and having such admiration for your art and your crew — your generation and what we kind of left you guys with, in a sense ... It's just, you want to leave people with something better, and it seems like we didn't leave you guys with much that's better.

There's things that you realize on your own, and that's with every generation, but you try to leave something better so that they know, like, "I can cling to this dream and take it to this next thing." It seems like you guys are creating your own destinies without anything wholesome.

AB-SOUL: No, yeah, I feel you.

MUHAMMAD: I hear that and I'm just like, "What the hell?" And, "Where do you go?" Like, "Where does the next generation go?" Where does the next Ab-Soul fan who's like, "I am connecting" — like," I get it" — the same way you learned about things through hip-hop and they're learning about things through you, I'm like, "Where does this go?"

AB-SOUL: Well, what I would say first to that — first and foremost, you gotta remember, you know, hip-hop is amongst the youngest genres of music anyway. Like is hip-hop 100 years old? You know what I'm saying?

KELLEY: It's 40.

AB-SOUL: 40. So, in that right, in respect to all of the other genres that had came before, we sample that, in rap. In that right, we're still trying to figure it out, really.

MUHAMMAD: Do you feel that maybe you guys weren't given much?

AB-SOUL: I think we — I think everyone is given everything that they need to do what they need to do.

KELLEY: Are you asking from an artistic perspective, or not?