It's been a minute since our dude Damon Campbell hosted an artist, but he's back today with a 19-minute interview with Vince Staples. The interview is pretty insightful, as Vince Staples discusses West Coast lifestyle, both present day and past. The rapper talks about gang culture portrayed in rap music, and glorifying street life versus simply wanting to have a good time. He also talks about going to Catholic school when he was young, and his current view when it comes to religion ("I seen somebody die before, like right there, and I personally think you don't go no where. Cause it's too easy"). That's just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Vince wisdom.
"Niggas say YG is glorifying, 'oh this nigga tryna be hard.' It sound like party music to me, it sound like the nigga wanna have a good time. That's our generation," Vince explains. "Nigga like ScHoolboy not tryna glorify no shit, he tryna have a good time. These stories are being told, but I feel like we over that, we grew up in a time where...You know they talk about shock rap, the shock factor in early on West Coast rap was like, 'damn, is it really that bad out there?' So of course mufuckas like, 'yeah it's really that bad out here, we dancin' on low-riders,' like, shut the fuck up. Nah, when Snoop Dogg came out he was on a bike, tryna go to a house party. That's real. All that other shit, it just make people look bad."
He also commented on how things have flipped in modern-day rap: "Xanies, lean, all of that shit [in rap music], coke-- niggas is dopeheads now cause of rap music. It was the other way around...Nowadays we just copy what the rappers are doing."
To further bring that point home, Vince said, "It's little niggas in Long Beach that grew up under us, that full out act like they from Chicago. Like they call weed disrespectful terms that's named after dead people, not even thinking twice about it cause they heard a rapper say [it]."
Finally, Vince spoke briefly on shaking hands with Yeezus himself. "Oh yeah he's cool man, he's a cool nigga." He continued to reveal that he got an advance listen of So Help Me God. "We talked, he played his album. The new one, it was pretty much the same thing that's coming out now. He done know my manager for a long time, I got good people around me, so I'm able to link with a lot of cool people."
Watch the full interview below, and you just might learn something.