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April 05, 2006
E-40: Interview
[Two things: A) This interview was conducted by Madison, WI Bureau Chief Hastings Cameron, and B) 40 Water's publicist would like you to know his new album My Ghetto Report Card is in stores now. Go cop that. - Bol]
Never let it be said that Bol doesn’t secretly yearn to broadcast positivity and uplift—intact nuclear families with loving patriarchs.
This interview transcript will not address your burning questions re: slang etymology, the cultural significance of ecstasy—from trance and glo-sticks to The New Crack!—sideshows, Mac Dre, collaborations with Hiero, Too $hort and Goapele, let alone capture the joie de vivre of a certain Fatburger franchisee.
This failure can be partially attributed to dawdling at the outset—running through geography (“1300 block of Magazine Street, Carquinez Bridge, hillside of Vallejo”), the relevance of hyphy of breaking in New York, and the appearance of Juelz Santana’s crack-caked “mouthpiece” alongside Bun B and Pimp C on “White Gurl.” But mostly, it’s because, over the course of the conversation—E-40 proved to be the consummate family man.
If you’re working with someone like Rick Rock—who you’ve done a lot of work with before—how much input do you have, or does he still just hand you, like, a beat tape?
Aww, Nah man, me and Rick Rock mostly every song we ever did, the majority of the time, was from the ground-up, like right in front of each other. We’ve got a wonderful chemistry… That’s a friend of mine, and not only that, we consider each other family. When people wasn’t up on Rick Rock, I was workin’ with Rick Rock—game recognize game… We make the best records man… when we did the songs that had the most impact, the Hyphy’s and the Gasoline’s, we did ‘em from the ground up.
Specifically on this record, he did “Yay Area” right? Whose idea was that Digable Planets sample [“we be to rap what key be to lock”] that comes in at the beginning?
That was Rick Rock, that’s him bein’ a hip-hop, bein’ a dude that just knows his hip-hop. Youknowhatimean? And he just came with it.
You know the track “Do Ya Head Like This”—the intro at the beginning, was that also just him messing around?
Yep… the [hums “Auld Lang Syne”]
… yeah, that was him, right there. We made that at his house, right there on the spot… It just came into his head… We both be cra—we be on the same page as far as what we think as far as music goes—we like to do what everybody else don’t. Youknowwhatimean? It’s like let’s roll the dice man. That’s what’s happenin’, that’s our attitude, and that’s what we did… He just wanted to start off with different kinda intro, and then come in with the beat just blappin’ off the top.
Did you give your son [Droop-E] just one track, or did he come to you with a bunch of different ideas?
Nah, he had a couple ideas, a couple of ‘em, you know—actually the track that he got, actually the one that he put on there, he had to kinda, like, come anew, because we had a sample that was so cold, from… I believe it was from… the Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mystery… He had to kinda like remix that song [“Sick Wit It II”]. We couldn’t get the sample cleared—they wanted just a little bit too much. It would’ve changed the whole song, but he still delivered, a.k.a. kept that same feel. I wanted to make sure he got at least one song on the album, because—you know—he is the future.
To what extent do you encourage your son to rap as well as produce?
He’s a cold rapper, he can rap just as good as he can produce, but his niche is producing… He’s got some cold metaphors and punchlines and he know how to tell it straight like it is, you know. At the same time, he knows that the money he’s seein’ so far has been from bein’ a producer, and he likes what he’s doing. When I bought his studio when he was fifteen years old, he came home on Christmas Eve and he seen the studio set-up and everything, and he didn’t know what to do, he just laid on the bed, eyes got a little watery, and just stayed at it, he was hecka happy. He’s one of them dudes, that, when he shows emotion, it’s like a treat—he’s a tough little dude, knowwhatimean? Yeah.
To what extent do you find yourself conflicted when you’re trying to be both a father to him and a mentor in hip-hop. Do you find yourself having to say “ok, if you’re rhyming about this, it’s really just a persona…”
Ah, that’s nothin’. It’s like, of course I don’t say everything I said when I first entered the game. I sit down and think about it a lot youknowwhatimean, at the same time you’ve got to realize that this is a job… Definitely a lot of this stuff is from my heart, but at the same time, everything that I say is not what I do or have done youknowhwhatimean—but you can catch a lot of it in there that I have done, and do do… it’s like you’ve got to mix it up and let the imagination take over, man, youknowwhatimean? It don’t bother my family, you know. I’ve been married for fifteen years, I’ve been with my wife over twenty years. Since 1984 we’ve been together, and I got married in ’91. My oldest son is eighteen, which is Droop-E. So you’ve got to realize I put my first record out in like in’87-’88, so he was… one/two years old, so he’s been used to it, and then I’ve got another one that’s eleven years old. When I spit things it’s nothin’ new to them, they gon’ hear it somewhere else, on the streets, I’d rather for ‘em to get it from me first-hand, as long is I keep it within the envelope. youknowwhatimean. That’s what’s cookin’.
When you initially encouraged him to go in the direction of production—was that purely because it made more financial sense, or was it because you didn’t want him to end up being a Lil’ Romeo…?
You know what it is? Actually, he was one of the first kid rappers—Lil’ E, Droop-E—… somethin’ like this just came about as far as production, because this is how it went:
When he was three years old he was on an album called Federal that I had, 1992. When he was six years old, in 1995, he was on an album that I had called In a Major Way, and he was on a song called “It’s All Bad”—this dude was rappin’ at six years old, youknowwhatimean? In 1996-97, he was on an album called Tha Hall of Game and he was on a song called “Growing Up”—and I’m talkin’ like rappin’ like me and everything, like really spittin’ he was nine years old at the time. So his momma made him play piano for five years… he didn’t want to play piano, but now to this day, he’s so happy that he played, because he know the keys, and once you know how to play the piano and know how to read notes and what have you, you can play pretty much play any other instrument.
It’s kinda like—he’s natural like an apple—because, I played percussion and his drum patterns are so raw, youknowwhatimean? He used to always be… around my studio, because I got a studio in the house, and talkin’ to people like Rick Rock, and my engineers… He was always focused, he was always tryin’ to play on the piano, the keyboard, mess around with the Pro Tools a lil’ bit. What I told him… is that it’s less of a risk to be a producer than be a rapper—cause rappers, you know, this is a dangerous job. But at the same time, it’s like, mix it up, be both, do what you wanna do. He want to mostly concentrate on producin’, not so much because of the money, because that’s what he feel he’d rather do. I like baseball and football, but I’d rather play baseball. You smell me?… That’s what’s up. It’s the longevity of it, man.
Is that slang dictionary, going to actually be released…
What it was, I just kept postponing it off and on—I felt like if I got a penny or a nickel for every word I done made up, man, I’d be a billionaire, I’d be on that page of Time. I didn’t know if I wanted to put that dictionary out there and let the world, let these rappers just take a little bit of that, a little bit of this—just run with it. I might as well go put it out there, due to the fact that… at least it will solidify it, confirm… you know—that I am the undisputed king of slang. It’s been postponed, and then I was trying to re-establish myself, now that I’m on Warner, it should be out soon.
Is that because the label’s connected to the book distributor[Warner Books]?
Now is the time for that, especially with the exposure that I’ve been getting and everything, a lot of new people are open to me now. A lot of my old-school fans are happy to see that I’m in the limelight. I’m grateful, it’s big.
What was it like to go from doing a few tracks with Rick Rock, to doing a bunch of tracks with Lil Jon—was the experience dramatically different?
You know what it is? I’m dealing with two creative, two of the best producers in the game, to me. But they both got they own flavor. It was wonderful man, I don’t regret none of it man. That’s the thing, I think outside the bun. I know that when I get lifesavers, I don’t just go get ‘em. I like the assorted pack… If I want something like a soup or something, I’d rather get gumbo with everything in it…
You got cats that might say the whole album blap all the way through, because they’re a more open-minded person. Then you might have someone that say, the album blap all the way to number 10, and then it turns into the south. Someone from the south might say, the album starts blappin’ after number 10. That’s how it go. You smell me? You can’t just do one thing… You get different flavors, I feel comfortable about it, and I feel like it ain’t goin’ out my envelope… I’m one of the most south, west-coast cats you can ever want to meet and get into, youknowhatimean, cause I been fuckin’ with the south way before any other west coast rapper… It’s very genuine with me.. It ain’t like I’m just jumping on the bandwagon.
Did you go to Grambling or Southern…
I went to Grambling State University 1986-87, fall of 86’…
[Publicist calls “Time… last question”, question about the transformative effects of his southern sojourn ditched]
Who put together that listening party in New York, that caused kind of a big… You know what I’m talking about?
[laughs]
Shoot, you know… We just wanted to make it happen, we wanted everybody to come have fun. Had the strippers, had some broccoli in the atmosphere, you smell me? Had some good music, had the dj’s, you know—it was controlled chaos. I had my hyphy hats, my hyphy dudes, my hyphy heads come down from the Bay Area to show them how to get hyphy the with dress and errything… We were super stuntin’ man, it was big—everybody had a good time.
Posted by Bol at 06:14 AM | Permalink
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