R.O. Double
Holdin My Balls Since 83
This is a long interview. I'm just gonna post the part yall came in to see. If you wanna listen to the interview hit play, if you wanna read the whole interview click on the title.
MUHAMMAD: Do you — well, why do you feel you're doubted? By who? Who's doubting you?
GIBBS: I don't feel like I get the recognition for being as innovative that I am musically, you know what I mean? I don't think that I get put up there with the J. Coles and the Kendrick Lamars and guys of that nature when I definitely think that I'm rapping on they level and definitely higher.
It's just a matter of just me sticking to my guns and doing it the way I want to do it. And I'm at that point now where I can put out music when I want to, shoot a video when I want to, just basically have total control, so it's like, I can sway more people in my direction than ever now. But I still don't think that I get the credit that I deserve, like I said, for being an innovator.
MUHAMMAD: Well, you definitely innovative. You probably — one of the things you stick to your guns, which is in terms of sound and style: I feel you consistently deliver a edge to your music, but you not playing the radio game.
GIBBS: Nah.
MUHAMMAD: See, if you would do that, maybe —
GIBBS: Definitely not.
MUHAMMAD: Maybe then —
GIBBS: That's been a theme on me and my career. Like, "Ah, man, you don't really play the radio game." But it's like, "What's the radio game?" You know what I mean? Like, shoot. Like I said, man, I just heard J. Cole put out a song on the radio like, "Don't save her. She don't want to be saved." These other guys do what they want, and they get accepted. And that's fine. That's great. That's what I like to see, for guys like that, who I admire, breaking the radio rules.
But if they breaking the radio rules, I'm like, "Hey, man. I'm just gon' keep doing what I do." All that'll come around. I never got into this game to be the guy making radio singles all day. I figure I'm going to make what I make, and if you play it, you play it. If we come with some kind of campaign for the record, then that's cool, too.
But like, I'm just all about the music, man. I never really chased radio singles. And I think that if I start doing that, then I'm going to fall off. I think that my method, the way I've been doing things, has served me greatly. So I think that I just gotta just keep doing that. The radio'll play something eventually. If not, then whatever.
Like I said, we making a lot of money doing it without it. So it's just like, I might be showing some 15, 16, 17-year-old kid that, "Hey, man. I don't even got to — I could do what Freddie Gibbs doing. If the radio don't like my music, that don't mean that I have to quit. That don't mean that I have to not rap, not feed my family off of this."
