AllHipHop: Well, I really hope to see this book take effect to the fullest magnitude.
KRS-One: Well, you’re taking the first step now. Because this interview, based on how you write it, is gonna be what it takes to galvanize the movement called Hip-Hop. A lot of Hip-Hoppers read AllHipHop.com, and this is a very important discussion we’re having right now, which by the way – we’re fifty/fifty in the leadership role. Whatever you write, people are gonna read. What is written is about Hip-Hop as a movement, is what’s going to galvanize around an agenda around, “this is what we want”. We want a two dollar minimum artist royalty. We don’t want artists getting thirty cents a record [which] sells for $10.35. We want a Hip-Hop guild, where one of us from [major Hip-Hop] organizations sits upon the guild. The guild takes a point or two from every single Hip-Hop artist in existence, period! That money then goes into a legal defense fund, health insurance, life insurance, home insurance, and maybe something – if you want to go into a plan, that you can have your kids going to college off of your first album. That needs to happen, that’s what we’re working for, that’s what takes up the bulk of our day. It’s a longer process, but in the end, we win. Right now, you turn on the television, you’d think it was hopeless. But hold on, it’s not. If I can get one message across to the readers of AllHipHop.com, it’s not hopeless! It only takes people time to grow up and become conscious.
AllHipHop: Amen.
KRS-One: For instance, AllHipHop.com, this is an excellent example or point. Last year, AllHipHop listed it’s best albums and its worst albums (Year End Wrap Up of 2002 / Thread in Ill Community), KRS-One’s “Spiritual Minded” was one of the worst albums depicted by AllHipHop.com. Spiritual Minded was a complete waste of time for AllHipHop.com, according to [you]. But I did see that other work of mine was very highly treated or praised. But Spiritual Minded – that was crazy, that was garbage. There was even comments about it on AllHipHop.com. I read that. I thought, “Wow, they missed the point.” But I said, “They’re gonna get the point eventually. Because if they truly love Hip-Hop, they will see that KRS-One does not use art to sell it, he uses art to galvanize a movement.”
KRS-One: I asked Russell [Simmons] why he didn’t run for governor or run for mayor of New York or something like that, and really get that party started. And he chuckled and he laughed and said, “I smoked too much dust. Ain’t nobody gonna elect me.”
AllHipHop: These days, they’ll elect you FOR that!
KRS-One: I told Russell! I told him that! That’s the conversation me and Russell had at The Source Awards. It’s the truth. Maybe Russell should run. And I would call him out right here in this interview and say: “Russell you need to run for governor so Hip-Hop can have that political base, so we can at least have somebody to vote for!” Once we get our Hip-Hop vote together, we need to get somebody in the office. Russell, I think you’re the candidate. Start with mayor then to governor then to senator.
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