During Jay-Z and Nas’s battle of boasts, Jay would often compare their lyrical tirades to boxing. Although his comments were made partially to quell the fears of another battle potentially going wrong (Biggie/’Pac), for the most part, his assertion was correct. For instance, rappers spend just as many hours recording in the studio as boxers do training in the gym. And each witty bar by a rapper against his opponent stings just as much as a stiff jab by a boxer against his. But while the men’s divisions of rap and boxing are fraught with testosterone-filled rage over disrespect and the argument against who’s number one, the women’s stage is decidedly less crowded.
Enter Remy Martin, the Laila Ali of rap. This Bronx-bombshell is the undisputed female champion of hip-hop. Check the unwavering confidence she displays as she sashays across the screen in the “Lean Back” video. Peep her rapid delivery on “Yeah, Yeah, Yeah,” as she spits: “If you fronting then I will flip/ I’ll give it to a lil’ chic real quick.” And don’t forget she’s battle tested, too. Just ask Lady (no) Luck. But Ms. Martin leaves that all between the ropes if you will. Outside of the ring, she’s surprisingly as domestic as Martha Stewart, enjoys Jeopardy, and has a crush on a certain somebody you know. She can’t be going soft can she? Watch for the hook.
AllHipHop.com: What’s going on, Remy? How you doing?
Remy Martin: I’m fine.
AllHipHop.com: You sound real relaxed right now.
Remy Martin: I’m chilling. They got me in the [Universal Records] office; they got some like metallic green couch, mad juice and stuff. I don’t know where the cookies and potato chips is, but—Hell yeah. Hold on one second, wait, wait. Let me see if somebody can open my soda can. [laughs] They asking me, ‘Is there any specific cookies or potato chips you want?’ The good kind, hello?
AllHipHop.com: So they treating you much better now?
Remy Martin: Yeah. [raps] When you first come in the came they try to play you/ then you drop a couple of hits, look how they wave to you. I couldn’t have said it better.
AllHipHop.com: And now you got them running to get you the kind of cookies you want.
Remy Martin: I don’t even care. I’ma test it when we on the phone while we doing the interview. I’ll be like, Nah, I don’t like these kind, I need something else. We’ll see if they go back. Let’s just test it. Nah, I’m playing. I don’t do sh*t like that.
AllHipHop.com: Now you’re on Terror Squad/Universal, and I wanted to ask you about that, because we had a previous interview with you in November and you were saying business wise, you wanted to go somewhere else from TS. You didn’t make it sound like beef, but you said you and Joe were so cool that you couldn’t go business. Did something change?
Remy Martin: Now we have more people, like, Universal is a big label so it’s not like just me under Terror Squad. I have Terror Squad, I have SRC helping, I have Universal, so I have all these different outlets. Say me and Joe, we just can’t figure it out. I say I feel one way, he say he feel another way, we won’t just keep arguing forever
AllHipHop.com: It always seems like every female rapper needs a male rapper to co-sign for them. Like with Biggie and Kim, Jay-Z and Foxy, but with you and Joe it seems different. Obviously TS is a co-sign, but it seems like you and Joe are on the same plane.
Remy Martin: Because it’s like that with Joe. But actually Joe’s not the one who brought me in. Pun brought me in. So, rest in peace, if Pun was still alive, it’d probably seem more like that. The Biggie-Lil Kim, Jay-Z-Foxy. It’d be more like a Pun-Remy. Being that Joe’s not one of the super-lyrical rappers, so it’s like we’re kind of on the same playing field. And they never downplayed me. Like he [Joe] never put it as without him there’s no me. It’s like I always did my own thing to whereas I wouldn’t be overshadowed by him. I never wanted nobody to think, ‘Oh, it’s because of Joe.” Even though it’s still some people that say that. But Joe doesn’t feel like that and neither do I.
AllHipHop.com: You made big news with Fight Klub [an underground New York emcee battle] versus Lady Luck, now that you’re moving onto the mainstream, are you retired from Fight Klub?
Remy Martin: Now, it’s crazy, you don’t even know, like every week I get at least 10 to 20 calls. ‘Oh yeah, this girl named Kill-A-N*gga from West Bubbleville says she’ll battle you for $500 dollars. She better than you.’ I’m like, Come on. I have a lot more to lose than I had then, but everybody wants to just beat me now. No one even cared before, now everyone wants to battle me. Why does everyone want to fight me? F*ck. Let me blow first. Leave me alone. Listen, I got an album to drop.
AllHipHop.com: Right now, it’s a lack of female rappers in the game. Foxy don’t got anything going on, Rah Digga’s album is in limbo. Do you think that helps you or hurts you?
Remy Martin: How do I feel about them? Stay wherever they at, don’t drop a song, don’t do nothing, let me be the only one. I’m having so much fun. I hope they never come out. [laughs] That’s f*cked up to say, it’s gonna look bad when they read it. [laughs longer and takes deep breath] Nah, I wish everyone the best of luck. Just don’t drop when I drop. That’s all I got to say. Matter of fact, just don’t drop at all. It’ll even be better.
AllHipHop.com: I wanted to address the rumor mill with you. There’s the one about you dating Juelz Santana.
Remy Martin: Yeah, I heard. Actually, wasn’t it on YOUR Web site?
AllHipHop.com: We don’t start the rumors—
Remy Martin: [laughs] We don’t start it, we just post it. Okay. Nah, that’s my peoples. That’s my boy. We chill. I knew him for a long time, before I was doing big things, before he was doing big things. We was all in little roach motels together, him and Jim Jones, all of them. I’ve know them for a long time. We chill, we smoke out, I don’t even know where it came from? I heard that the rumor was he had mad pictures of me. Oh word, Elz? For real? Do you like me? [laughs] I don’t know, that’s my boy. I don’t listen to all the crazy things like that.
AllHipHop.com: Okay, well, you heard the Trina song “I’m Leaving You,” where she names all the rappers? If you did that song, what rappers would you name?
Remy Martin: Rappers? How about basketball players? Let’s see. Carmelo Anthony. Um, Carmelo Anthony. Probably, I’d put Carmelo again. [laughs] I don’t know? Method Man. Jada. Whose my n*ggas? Probably all my n*ggas just to get them gassed. Um, Lil Flip. I like Lil Flip, he’s cool. He’ll probably be scurred. I don’t know? She used everybody that I would’ve used.
AllHipHop.com: Come on, Remy. We trying to start a new rumor here.
Remy Martin: [laughs] I don’t know. He said, ‘We trying to start a new rumor.’ You want me to give you some information, somebody who I actually know? Um, no! [laughs]
AllHipHop.com: Well, what’s something else you know besides rap?
Remy Martin: I know a lot about everything. Everything that I try to do, I can do it. I know how to bake cakes. Like, nobody will probably know, but my friends and people in my family will call me to this day to bake them cakes the size of people. Like, one day—You listening to me? You got to say, “Uh-huh,” or something like that.
AllHipHop.com: Yeah, I’m listening. I was just caught off guard that you bake cakes. That’s all.
Remy Martin: For real, I know how to make mad big cakes. Like the ones you would go to a bakery for. I could make a wedding cake with the tiers and the stacks, I made a Sponge Bob cake, I made a Power Puff for my goddaughter, I made a baby shower cake for my brother’s baby mother. Mad big cakes, like if you seen the pictures, nobody believes me unless you see me do it. What else? I’m dumb nice in Jeopardy.
AllHipHop.com: Word? That one dude made a million recently.
Remy Martin: He was winning for like two months straight! That’s my sh*t, I watch it all day. I even got it for PlayStation. I know all the questions, though, I need a new chip actually. I know all of them. I remember them. And then my friends will come in—I know most of them—but then I’ll know the ones I didn’t know before and I remembered the answers, but I guess I know it now.
AllHipHop.com: That’s cheating!
Remy Martin: It’s not really cheating! It’s not cheating, because I learned it. I learned it the last time I got the question. I’m really smart anyway, but it’ll seem like I’m Einstein when they come over. But then I’ll play along with the one of TV and they’ll be like, “Remy, you should go on.” But I know I’ll probably lose or something.
AllHipHop.com: But if you qualify that’ll be a big thing for hip-hop. A hip-hop first.
Remy Martin: [laughs] Yo, did you ever see the hip-hop Weakest Link? Oh my God, some people are dumb! DJ Kool and Young MC were both mad smart. Your man, Jermaine Dupri? Oh my God! It was a couple of people that should have never ever did it to themselves. They making people think rappers are really dumb. But that’s not true. Only wack rappers are dumb. If you think about it, all the fly rappers, you could tell that they are mad smart. Eminem, you can tell he’s not stupid. Jay, ‘Pac, Nas, Rem, Pun. [laughs] See how I just threw me in there? It sounds good, right? Like it went. I got the right about of letters, three and one syllable.
AllHipHop.com: I agree with you. What do you think about colleges studying rap now?
Remy Martin: ‘Cause rapping is really like poetry. True story. That’s how I started writing rhymes. I never was writing rhymes when I was young, not until I was thirteen. Before that I was writing mad poems and I was in all the reading activities in my school. Then one day my brothers and them was rapping, and I used to read my poems like as if they were rhymes, and I never wrote another poem again. But that’s all it really is. Now everybody’s on hip-hop’s d*ck all of a sudden. Everything is hip-hip, rap this.
AllHipHop.com: That’s true. You could make Remy Martin cakes.
Remy Martin: Then they’ll believe it. Like, ‘Yeah, it’ll sell.’
AllHipHop.com: You could be the new Martha Stewart.
Remy Martin: I like making sh*t. Like different. I’m the type that will buy a brand new pair of shoes, and see somebody else with them, and I’ll write my name all over them or try to color them different. I just like being different.
AllHipHop.com: Is that what we should expect from your album?
Remy Martin: No! I mean, I’ma try and put as much as I can, so people can see a different side of me so they don’t just think I’m “Ante Up” smack that b*tch girl. But at the end of the day, nobody wants to hear 13 songs and interludes about me smacking their girlfriends, baby mothers, little sisters, aunts, and every other female in their family. I’m not gonna go Andre 3000 or like, something crazy. I’m gonna step off the curve, I’m not gonna move outta the country.