Peep the EXCLUSIVE interview!

I was born and raised in Southeast San Diego a little ghetto village in California. I am about a revolutionary movement to transform sound and minds with the art of Hip Hop and through the elements of the culture, and I cannot be stopped.

Your album Mockinbyrd Slang is an energetic album, and shows that you definately got what it takes to rock the mic. How long have you been involved with Hip Hop and is this your first album?

I have been involved with Hip Hop going on 20 years, being that I started B-Boying at the ripe age of six circa ’83. I was with a crew called Creative Energy and it just progressed from there after grasping poetry and creative writing throughout the years. “Mockinbyrd Slang” is not my first album, but is the first collection of material distributed internationally.

How did you hook up with Syntax?

I met the Syntax family at a local function in San Diego, and after releasing my second album “Newearth: tha beyond rhymes lp” locally; the opportunity presented itself for me to do a grass roots album through Syntax titled “Passion and Honey”. It seemed fit to go through Syntax for the project because that is their area of specialty within the righteous hip hop community, but I pulled the album(“Passion and Honey”) and decided to record what you know now as “Mockinbyrd Slang” because I saw the future benefits for the label and myself. Syntax are beautiful people, but I am not signed to any label anymore. I only rep my immediate crew: Kingdom Architechs who consist of a couple of crews.

The tracks Firewater & Beyond Rhymes are some of my favourites on the album, what is yours and where do you draw your influences from?

My favorite joints switch like from week to week, but as of now I am feelin’ “Hydrogen” and “Mockinbyrd Slang” because I think Im the only one who knows what I am really saying on those tracks. Especially on “Slang” the beat brings the mind to receive fluff, but the content is radical in nature. I love doing that. I draw my influences from Truth, and those that have a passion for it as well. People like Langston Hughes, Jackie Saba, Last Poets, Gil Scott Heron, Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Richard Allen, etc. It’s more revolutionary and poetic in nature than musical. To me those peoples words were music, they just didn’t have SirRoc or T.Boy laying tracks for them.

I was listening to that beat from The Rap Nureaupean Anthem and at first I thought that must be a difficult beat to rhyme over but the more your listen to it you kinda get where it’s going. What did you think the first time you heard that beat? Or was the beat made to fit your rhymes?

I was there when T.Boy created the track from scratch. I was zonin’ out like; “that sounds like sonic confusion” the musical interpretation of how Neo from “Matrix” must of felt when he had come to know the truth about the world he had lived in. It was bezerk, but T.Boy knows I love being challenged. The whole album was like that for me, I have never recorded any thing that sounds like what “Mockinbyrd Slang” sounds like, but I was up for the challenge of playing the “artist” instead of that gutter emcee who wants to spit 80 bars, skip the hooks, and just rock it out. This album humbled me because It’s purposed outweighed who I thought I was and so I know God was pleased.

Do you ever perform at secular hip hop shows?

I prefer to perform at “secular” shows! The generation I was born to speak to dwell there. I don’t despise the local church or even mega-church settings, because the Word is beneficial to all, but I mostly do regular or as you put it “secular” functions.

When are you going to bless us with another album?

I will drop my next solo album under an assumed alias next summer. I am also apart of a group called “Zion Scientists” which drops it’s album Feb.20th, and will be a major part of a compilation coming out soon by Lo Cal records titled “Blue Collar Beat Affliacs” so look for that.

In terms of rappers out today, who are you feeling?

I think Black Thought is phenomenal, Common, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Slum Village, Nas, Scarface, Pigeon John, 4th Ave Jones, Sojourn of Future Shock, Street Sweepers, Feats Labrynth, etc.

So what you gonna do 10 years from now?

10 years from now I will be transforming mass media, believe that!

Since you a gospel rap artist, I’m gonna ask you a question that might seem a bit strange but I just need to know what you think. In the recent 20 years a lot of evidence has surfaced that the Bible is flawed and that when the Bible was originally compiled a lot of stuff was “deleted” from it and replaced with misinterpretations. The fact amongst historians now is the Bible is just a mixed bag of ancient documents mixed with modern mans interpretation. There is also another fact that the Gospels were only written 100 hundred years after the death of Jesus. This obviously does not detract from the fact that the Soul is real and that God is the Creator of everything but don’t you think that this tarnishing of the Bible by the Church was a method used to instill fear into the hearts of man so that the Church could control the people? Do you really believe that non-Christians will go to hell? Do you really think that God is capable of such cruelty? I myself have always thought that if my own child were sinful and if I had to throw my child in hell I would not be able to leave her there for eternity. I would have to take her out at some point, in fact no matter how “evil” my own child was I could never throw her in a hell. So does that say that I have more compassion than God? Obviously this is impossible because God has more compassion than all of us, so with all that in mind do you still believe that the non-Christians would go to hell?

That was like a three part question. So for a). responding to the “tarnishing of the Bible by the Church(and or its officials I assume you speak of Catholic) in order to instill fear into the hearts of man” I will say that I believe it’s up to any individual person to believe. If a person believes blood is blue inside the body and it turns red when oxygen hits it, because they read it or a scientist said it was true, it is still the responsibility for the individual to research the issue further and determine if thy believe that or not. Some people believe without investigation and who am I to say that isn’t wise?. Me personally I believe that Yeshua Jesus Christ is the Word of God manifested as the gospel of John teaches, but that is just me. No person told me this, how I came to know God was through the spirit of Truth, and when you get Truth you just know. As for non-Christians going to hell. I will only say that, I personally believe that Salvation can only be obtained through Yeshua Jesus Christ, because He is the only radical that shed His blood for the entire world and the sacrafice was acceptable, because there was no fault in Him. We shouldn’t live trying not to go to hell, but yet live abundantly and that can only be done when you have the abundant life that is Him. I tried it without him for 21 years, there is no other way to endure! Quote that please! I understand what you are saying about your own children, but we need to understand God doesn’t think like we think, and His ways are not like ours. If that was the case he wouldn’t of let His only Son die for the corruption we delight in, that’s love you cant imagine……………………….

Thanks for talking to us, your album is truly dope and there are messages contained therein that are essential for those who need hope. I know that everytime I need to lift myself up I listen to Beyond Rhymes. There’s a lot of passion just like the kind of music coming from Lojique. Any last words or shout outs?

Hold fast to dreams! Big up to Kingdom Architects, ZionScientists, Souljahz, Dreamskeepahz, StreetSweepers, Ferb the Beat Gestapo of ’67, Blue Collar Beat Affiliacs, Little Nanci Sumner and Mahogany Elements, Lts, T.R.U.T.H. (all my philly dudes), Cashless Society, Base Black, Orko, Masters of the Universe, Sojourn, LA Symphony, Featz Labyrinth, Reality Odio, and the legendary Urban Dynamics…………….

Note: Get in touch with Gibraan here.

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