#239 - Immortal Technique

Excel mm hmmm, a few other cats. Yes, I got to see you live, and I saw I've seen I mean, I've seen you live a bunch of times over the years. But yeah, man, you're an independent I would say, like a goat in the independent hip hop space. Man, there's not a lot of people who could be like Yeah, Headline Festivals is an independent rapper, and I remember seeing you Headline Rock the Bells Rock the Bells Pay Due

is one of those. I mean, I hold the record for some festivals for Uta from our old agency at United Talent, we did four festivals, sorry, three festivals in three different European countries which were nowhere near each other within a twenty four hour period. What I used to do probably about two hundred, two hundred and fifty shows a year. Now, obviously it's a lot less because I

have other responsibilities. But unlike other artists who you know, no disrespect to the DJs, course focused a lot on mixtapes, right, I focused a lot on touring rather than mixtapes. So I may only have like one or two free mixtapes, but at the same time, I have like seventeen world tours under my belt. Right countries that people are like, oh my god, You've been to Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand, all these places, Romania, right you, Czech Republic, South America,

all over the place, Morocco, Africa. Yeah, now you're worldwide, dude. I mean your music. I feel like your music was very like you know, I feel like I learned so much from your music as a kid because it was before I really had like readily like internet access, if that makes sense. So like some of the shit like about like our government or just the world, like I have first heard like you rapping about it. Do you

hear that a lot? I mean, I think it was during a time in which people were living in a post nine to eleven world that was really fresh, and a lot of individuals were scared. They were looking for

easy answers, looking for ways to blame people. And when I brought up things like, for example, that I made a post today because it's the twenty year anniversary of Senator Wellstone's death and a mysterious plane crash, and he was one of the only senators after nine to eleven that brought up the fact that bin Laden was a CIA asset. That was not something people wanted to discuss in two thousand and two, right, that his code name and this is not a conspiracy, No, it's not a conspiracy.

It's true. His code name was Timothy Osmond and that he carried out several acts and atrocities in the name of the United States government for their purposes, but not just that. Also, so talking to people in Afghanistan when I went there, he was responsible and took part in what they call the Hazada genocide, which is something that is going on now with the Taliban, and that's a series of Asiatic Central Asian people from Afghanistan and they

were targeted for genocide. So before bin Laden ever killed any Americans. He murdered children outside of a city called Mazardah Sharif, and like, I went to Afghanistan in two thousand and nine to build an orphanage in a school with the profits from an album that I had called The Third World with DJ Green Lantern. Sho shout out

to my brother Green Lantern. I remember that yet and thank you for helping me with that Green Lance And he was somebody that believed in me and brought me up to the radio even when they were like, don't bring him the fuck up the Hot ninety seven. Now they're like, oh, he's a legend, but before they're like,

don't bring him up here, he's crazy. I remember when you guys linked up because Green Lantern had kind of been like heavily associated with, like you know that mixtape era with Eminem and then like to you guys come together, it was kind of like dope because obviously, perception wise as a kid, you don't I didn't associate a Green Lantern and Immortal, even though it makes sense like musically

and it was dope. But yeah, I think it, like like you said, like you pointed out so much stuff early because again, at that time, we didn't have access to YouTube and like jumping down a rabbit hole and it's like, wait a minute, what is he talking about? Like, you know, I think I think that you definitely, uh, you know, in terms of shedding the light to a whole generation of kids who were just hip hop heads, you definitely did open their eyes to a lot of

wild shit, man, and a lot of truthful shit. Right. And also I think that even to this day, there's songs that I've written that people still ask me questions about, Like I'm not gonna lie keV. Even twenty years later, people ask me, is Dance with the Devil a true story? And I have to look these people right in the eye and say, sir, I am not responsible for raping or killing any women. That is absolutely crazy. It is

a song. However, Yeah, I can take people if they really want to, the building where this incident happened in Harlem. And the truth is that that actually did happen, and those people that were allegedly responsible for that began dying. And that's why it became such a powerful story because everyone's like, oh, you're telling hood tales. What if these

motherfuckers come back for you? And I said, let them what they're gonna do, Like you think that the neighborhood is gonna protect them after they find out what they really did, that they raped a woman. Do you realize that in rich communities you can get away with stuff like that, Oh their little kids coming in all hours

of the night. No one says anything about billionaires. But if you live in the ghetto and someone says a rumor in the hood, oh, someone's touching kids in apartments, everybody from the neighboro the fuck is going on in your homes. So that's the kind of energy it was. And these people literally started dying, and one of them. We're not gonna mention names because these people don't deserve to be remembered in a good light, but this is

a sad story. They couldn't find this man keV. And what I explained to people about the street is that there's no rules, just like there's no such thing as a safe gun. You have to respect everything. I'm a big Second Amendment guy, but you have to respect the weapon. There's no such thing as a safe gun. These people were out here thinking that they could get away with a crime and that they wouldn't be found, and they murdered this man's son to get him to come to

the funeral so they could kill him. This is the type of shit that people were dealing with. That's one of your would you say that's your most popular song, It's like one of them, right, probably? Yeah. For people who have because there's gonna be people watching this YouTube video who subscribe, who maybe are not hip to your catalog, give us a break, Like for people who haven't heard

Dance with the Devil. What is the premise of the record? Well, I mean, without giving the entire thing away, I would say that it's definitely a very realistic tale of what happens when people feel peer pressured to commit violent to join a gang, or when they feel like they have to overcompensate for not being as tough as everybody thinks they is, and they commit violence and do horrible things

to people to try to prove something to somebody. I remind individuals that are really living in the street, we don't deal with gratuitous violence. We deal with people that have offended or hurt us, who have come into our neighborhood and caused problems. The premise of going into another neighborhood and just trying to hurt people doesn't make sense now. I mean, even if you ask the essays that run each block, they'll be like, why would I start a war for no reason? But in New York City it

was structured differently. It wasn't so much gangs, it was cruise back in New York. So if you heard about a story like this, it became an urban legend immediately. And not just that keV. It was that the story was always a little bit different. Instead of it being the guy's mom, it would be the person's stepsister, it

would be the aunt, it would be someone related. When you have tales about, you know, murder or killing people, it's a grandized some sometimes in hip hop, to the point that you never really see the impact of what that is. Like. Even if y'all kill someone that's not a kid, if y'all kill someone that's thirty years old, you think that's not somebody's son. Of course, you don't think you have a target on the back, but you don't think that somebody's coming back for you. That's the reality.

And more often than not, when people come up to me and they say, oh, do you think the guys from Dance with the devil, were really cursed by the devil, And I'm like, no, they lived a horrible lifestyle where they thought they could get away with hurting people at random, and eventually it catches it not just to them, but to their children as well. M D. That's some real shit. You had so many records that were controversial. Did you ever like feel any pressure from like outside entities when

you were tor in, because obviously you were. You were kind of like one of the few people I would say pre you cause I kind of attribute like YouTube to helping with a lot of people's education on certain situations because it's free and it's readily available, right, And I feel like when you first kind of came on

the scene that wasn't necessarily the case. Did you get any blowback from like the government or did you ever have like a target on your back in terms of like just some of the things you were talking about, especially to the youth post nine to eleven, You know what I mean. I've had several instants where police have come to my house homeland security. I didn't become a citizen until I was seventeen, so they brought an ice officer with them, as if that was supposed to intimidate me.

But an individual such as myself is lawyered up the wazoo. Yeah ago, Like listen, I can't fight the system by shooting back at them. That's what they want. Yeah, I mean, unless I'm ready to go full Chris Dorner rest in peace. But if I am sitting there trying to get my point across and I don't want to be censored or I don't want people to control that aspect of the music, then sure I have to take those precautionary measures ahead

of time of whatever I do. I think being mature enough to look back as a kid and know, hey man, these are some of the mistakes I made. These are things I could have done better. There are things I would have done differently now, Like honestly, I'm doing it one hundred percent alone. Now I'm even more independent than I was before. Everything is now Rebel Army Records and

just straight immortal technique. And then I built five oh one C three that we modeled after the Black Panther Breakfast Party program to be part and linked to that label. It's called Rebel Army Runs and you can find us. It's a charity, right, Yeah, five one just for people don't know. Yeah, it's a charity. You can find us on the internet at Rebel Army Runs and basically remember

the projects you were talking about. We've been to just about every project in Manhattan and now we're expanding to Brooklyn where we give away a two week food pack to the seniors. Through that through their community centers and

through that Nischa Housing programs directly. And I just want to point out to people that didn't know that in New York City right during the pandemic, they canceled fourteen food programs for people they couldn't afford to feed those people, and we actually became the functional food program for the Dykeman Houses, for the Grand Houses, which were serviced this morning by my team when I wasn't there. You can

see the posts right now. Big shout out to my brother Thanos and the little short, little Dominican and shorty Gene that came and took my place, because I do it myself when I'm not doing a series of other things. So it's been a joy to be able to do that. And we've were proud to say that all donations are now tax deductible because of our five oh one C three status and we've passed the mark where we fed over ten thousand families. And when I say a two week food pack, I mean we give them like four

two the three four cases of tuna. Then we have a two week oatmeal pack. We have canned milk, We have ravioli's, we give them like tomato paste, we give them pasta, and then we like to have soups in there, and then we give away inshore for the elders. And we have also pedialyte and pampers wow, and they have feminine products as well. So I always tell people revolution isn't sexy, you know what I mean. It's not just having a beret and running around the jungle with a gun.

You gotta get your hands dirty and help people, and it's not always easy, you know. Well, I think too, Like that's I think that's important to point out because so many artists that I grew up listening to around that same era, who I guess will probably perceived as conscious rappers. And I don't know if I consider you a conscious rapper as much as like a reality art But you know, back in that day, there was like the conscious wrap thing, and a lot of those guys

did and put their money where their mouth was. I guess you know what I mean in terms of, like he it's dope to see twenty years later, you're just fighting the good fight, man, fighting the fight for your people. I can't speak to other people, but what I can say is this. I could say that because my life was personally affected by these things, I wanted to contribute back, like, for example, for the people that don't know I went to I got locked up when I was a kid.

I spent my twenty first birthday being incarcerated in the whole, and when I got out, I thought one of the things that I could do is teach at a school. And what we did is myself and a young lady named Carmen Perez. I met the great Harry Belafonte. Shout out Harry Belafonte, and he said, you know, you have such a way with words, would you consider being a teacher in one of these school programs? So Harry Belafonte gave me my first teaching job, and I taught at

a school called Horizons. So it was interesting time. I was still kind of touring this album called The Martyr, which did great, like four million downloads. Everything wonderful we told the world. But after the tours were over, I had the the really kind of painful but joyful reality of bringing this workshop, which was called Confronting Trauma through Writing to the kids. And the stories that they wrote

were not just uplifting, but they were also heartbreaking. Sometimes you feel like you need a shower afterwards because you realize how much suffering these kids have been through. And then again, to bring it back to your other point, those kids, those hood kids, they're the real underground, right Like you talk about the backpackers. Yeah, they had guns and knives in that backpack, and they had ship that

they stole from the polo store. The underground, the underground kids are the people that make up the cruise of all of the major label rappers. So while y'all are praising them and acting like they're the hardest people in the world, the reason that they're in the position that they are is because they're backed by underground, independent people that are in these neighborhoods. Right now, you would think that applies to just one of them, No, it applies

to all of them. And I feel like in my particular situation, any neighborhood or any city that I've come in, I've always approached them with such love and respect that I've gotten nothing but that in return. So whether I'm in Detroit, I got fam out there. Whether I'm in Miami and in la I'm home. Half my family moved out here when we came from South America in nineteen eighty four, and you know, they married into Mexican families

from Oxnard and also from Inglewood. So we've had our family be here for years and now we get together. We have arguments about whose food is better, Peruvians or Mexicans, whose pyramids are nicer ours, But I think that it's nice to have that kind of camaraderie. And I will say this, keV, It's sad for me to see artists come out here and die or get hurt and rob because I've never felt unwelcome here. Brother, I've never felt that, and maybe it's just because of the way I move.

And I don't call it checking in because I'm not paying people for protection. But I'll come and if some of the brothers or the essays ask me, hey man, we're doing a kids program, like, for example, sick Jacking and hood Santa and then my homie Sleeps. The artists incredible, dude. They they did this workshop for kids where they brought a bunch of different neighborhoods together from East Low, from other places to do art workshops. I was a pleasure

to join that. And I don't charge people for parents, as I'm like, yo, man, let me just come there. Whatever I can do to offer and lend my voice to this is something that we need. You know, at some point somebody's got to be the adult in the room. Kevin, Hey, what have y'all? Bulet keV gott to stop the interview to tell you about our newest sponsor. Man. Shout out to the homies at home Hard Dean, Las Vegas. That's right then, number one dispensary in the whole state of Nevada,

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Las Vegas. Let's get back to the interview. Yeah, I think too, man, la Is it's a unique place because of how the unemployment stimulated people's pockets during COVID, probably more than anywhere else. And once that went away, I think people a lot of people who weren't used to living a certain lifestyle, right they got a taste of that lifestyle and and you know they're trying to keep that. I mean, once you get a taste of having that real money because there was people eating off PvP and

the and the edd out here. So I also too, like, you know, I think a lot of the obviously, you know, there's people who are just wrong place, wrong time. I think another thing is is like kind of being your self aware of where you're at. Are you gonna walk around with one hundred thousand dollars around your neck when somebody's starving. I mean you got to kind of like understand, like the climate that's going on in LA right now.

It's crazy because I used to feel like when i'd go to New York, I'd be like, you know, New York is the place where you get jacked. And I'm not saying it still isn't, of course it is, but I feel like LA feels like just a much more dangerous place now. Even just going to New York, we were just like, man, it's so nice. There's not that many homeless people. Like there's homeless people, obviously, we saw a bunch, but like certain areas of LA it's like

it's it's like skid row all over them. There are skid row places in New York. I'm sure there are. I'll take you that next. Yeah, I'm sure. No, I'm sure, and and every city has that, right, But I was we were all over the city, like if you just drive around la which I'm sure you've seen, it doesn't matter. If you're in skid row, there's just thirty tenths on the side of the road. There's like, I mean, but you guys don't have a subway system that people live in.

This is true, that's what we have to now, that's true. The subway system is a whole nother area. We have people that live underground. As a matter of fact, years ago, there was a movie made called The mole Men, and it was a documentary about people. And I would tell you myself one of the craziest experiences I've ever had is I was seventeen and I used to run with a bunch of wild Dominican motherfuckers me and talk about cutting slice and get the fuck out of the way

when you're seeing all thirty of us. And one day we were writing graffiti at a place called the Freedom Tunnels, which is on seventy second Street. It's all gentrified now, but I walked down the Freedom Tunnel right and when we were leaving, we saw a dude just coming out looking like shit, like a regular homeless dude. Yea, all fucked up, yo. And he had a plastic bag with him, right keV. He goes to one of the the little fountains. He washes himself off. keV. He takes out a hand

towel and uses it like a regular towel. He puts on a button up shirt, smacks on a name tag, puts a hat, and gets ready to go to work. And we approached him because I was like, ya, I want to ask this motherfucker something. So we approached him and he at first was like, all right, you're seeing twenty thirty Dominican. He thought wen we were gonna gi vic him and I said, yo, yo, we don't want to do nothing to you, bro, I said, I just want to ask you something. And he was like, what's up?

And I said, you really live in the train tunnels? He said yeah, there's one hundred and fifty people down there. Now He's like, I'm one of the people that lives there with my wife. Oh wow. And I said they got that in Vegas too. So there's like a whole city of people underneath Las Vegas. Right. So when I

asked him this. I said, wait a minute. You live with your wife down there and then you guys, And she's like, yeah, she has a job as a waitress and I have a job working at this spot where I like, you know, I'm like a floor helper or whatever. And you know what, that day, I'm sitting in the park with all our people's a small wild and now I'm just smoking to el thinking and I'm like and they're like, what's wrong, And I'm like, you know that dude we ran into and they were like, yeah, I said,

he's doing better than me. And they were like, what are you talking about. He's homeless. I said, no, no no, no, no, no. I asked the guy before we left. I said, what what's the goal? He said, you know, we can save up some money and then me and my wife, in like a few years, we can move out of there and we can try and get our own place again, get back on our feet. And I looked at the guys and I said, don't you understand, bro y'all motherfucker's

out here looking for random broads. This motherfucker not only found the love of his life, but he found a woman that really holds that standard. For better or for worse. And not only that, but y'all motherfuckers don't got a plan this ding I got a plan. And I sat there and I was like, I don't got a plan and I don't got a ride or die? What the fuck am I doing? I still live with my mom and dad. I'm still, I'm still. I'm still with a life preserver on this dude's swimming in the ocean with

wifey trying to make it. And it humbled me so much that I swear I have such a different attitude dealing with people. I talk to a janitor the way I would talk. I think everybody should do that, man, because you never know. Like I always tell that to people. I'm like, man, you never know who you could, especially you know, outside of just day to day real life.

Like I talk to young artists all the time about just like treating the end you gotta treat the interns with respect, you gotta treat the engineers with respect, because you never know who's gonna end up being the president of your label one day or you know whoever. So yeah, no, it's definitely the case, even like up becoming artists. You know a lot of times people shit like will shit on up and cooming artists like it's like that could

be the next too. Hover the fuck and they might or they'll just go at the youth because they're like I don't like this style or something like that. So I know that being from my era, everybody when the when the skinny jeans first came out, they were ripping these kids. And I used to joke with everybody. I used to be like, listen, they might be wearing skinny jeans, they might even have a person on, but there's a

gun in that person. You gotta be careful with these little kids, like you can't just smack them up like this nothing. You have to respect the fact that the youth still they want to prove themselves in something. And so you know, whether people make fun of them here like the Edgarls, that not's very farm. You don't want

to get jumped by tapped into the Edgar. You don't want to get jumped with some fam Don't get jumped by fifty Edgars at Knotsbery Farm because that is not that's not something that your your reputation can recover from. All right, you getting beat up by gang members people are like all right, what what do you expect? You? But you're getting jumped by children, don't you? Do? You follow all the like food communities and like all those ig pages. Who's gone wild? Yeah, big shout out to

Foodl's going wild? Yeah, it's hilarious. I think that. But they always have the edgars fighting at knots. It's always like what's going on in Notts Very Farm. They had to change the rules. Yeah, they made it so that you have to have a big homie with you, But that didn't change that much because I could just get the twenty year old homie to come right, right, So you have to be accompanied by someone over twenty one? Yeah, so you just got to bring the big homie? Now? Uh?

What it was your because obviously, uh, I think that we just went through a pretty wild historical time with the pandemic. I think that a lot of the people who questioned the vaccine are probably like feeling a little more vindicated of recent recent memory. But from your perspective, someone who's always kind of spoken about big government and just shit, you know, what was your thought process now that we're kind of removed, I'm gonna say we're totally removed, right,

But that we've kind of gotten through this pandemic. The vaccine just all that. It was kind of a weird era of life that I'm not sure we'll ever see again, and maybe we will, I don't know. Well. I mean, when they came out, I posted on Twitter that I thought the mandates were unconstitutional. I got into lots of arguments with that. I told people that they shouldn't listen to media personalities and that they should concern themselves with

dealing with their doctor rather than anybody else. There are people that are immunal compromised that would have benefited from that. And then there are people, for example, that had a high heart rate, like my friend's mother when she went to go get that accident, she went to her doctor first and they said, wait a minute, ma'am, you have very high blood pressure. This is dangerous. Let's lower your

blood pressure first. That's what happened. And she was an r N, so she was one of these people that

had to get vaccinated or lose their job. But now this right, but now in court in New York court that they've overturned well, like I just saw that they're reinstating all Well before we say that that's not actually happening yet There's been an appeal filed by the mayor, So the mayor is going to appeal it because I saw that they were going to try to pay them some bada no, no, no. Just for the people that are watching at home, they fought the nine to eleven

first responders for twenty years. You think that they're going to get their pockets tapped by their handful of people. No, the city is ruthless. Okay, these people are monsters. These are the animals. Like when I say that, my friend Aton Edwards, who was on Fox, on NBC, he was on all these companies. He's a survivor expert. And when he went down and was helping to pull people out of the rubble on nine to eleven, he was in a full hasmat suit. keV who told me he was

like and he was yelling at the police officials. He's like, look, dude, why are you given these firefighters and cops, these fucking shit breathers. Why are you giving them like a fucking n nine to five That doesn't help. There's radioactive chemicals in the air, Like, there's actual nine to eleven syndrome. Now people have this corrosive chemical in their lungs because they don't actually have a conversation about what was in

those floors those buildings. Yeahocracy of the politics of it, I mean, I think that's a big John Stewart's a big proponent of trying to get help to I mean, if people maybe have seen some of the viral moments of John screaming at politicians, but yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy if like you can't take care of the people, the biggest tragedy in the history of our country, really,

you know, I mean, how about this. We went on a different podcast, America control O, and we brought up the fact that there are a lot of deported veterans. And I have a lot of my friends that don't have papers that say that they're a United States citizen, but they have papers that say they're a United States Marine and that they served in Iraq and Afghanistan. And these guys aren't being deported because they're murderers or rapist kep.

They're being deported because they fucked up some paperwork or because they had a drug addiction. And my stance is, regardless of how you feel about immigration, how dare you tell a person who stood a post and supposedly serve this country for your freedom. Whether you believe that or not. Some people say, oh, it was all oil wars. Regardless, this man stood a post. And if you can throw him out so easily, and you can throw his benefits out right, if his missing hand doesn't mean anything, then

you're missing. I don't mean nothing, Congressman. If his missing fingers and his missing jaw don't mean nothing, then your missing legs don't mean nothing. Senator, that's the truth. Whether it's Democrat or Republican, you have to pay attention to the people that have bled for this nation. Because empires don't die because they lose a war. We haven't won a war since World War Two. They die because people stop believing in them. That's real, that's I mean, that's

crazy to say out loud. We have not won I mean, we did not win the Afghanistan War. We did not win Vietnam. I mean, we tied Korea. It was it was a wash. It was a wash. All right, you can have that. You will take this. Yeah, hey, guys, we got to stop the interview to tell you about our good folks over at blue cheo dot com. That's right. Listen, you gotta go to blue Choo right now. Sign up

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Go to boot you dot com promo call bootleg. That's it. That is wild to think, man like, for you, do you feel like your messaging your music like? Do you feel like you're a voice that is needed now more than ever because there's so much muck in the world. There's so much, especially on the hip hop side. Man, Like I mean, I feel like we're missing immortal technique right now. I mean, thank God that I'm coming out with a new record, right yes, thank God that I'm

working on new music. So I've definitely been doing that. And also, I guess I'll just come out and say it since I've been saying in another podcast, I do some screenwriting now. I do like fixing scripts and people contact me for stuff, and it's been an incredible experience. The only problem with that, Kevin, that when I do writing, people can edit the joke if it's too ruthless or

something like why this is the point. This is why you people have me in the room to write the type of shit that people are like, oh my god, what the hell. But that's just to a limit. I think with music, with hip hop, I'm able to do that even more so than I ever was before. And then, of course, you know, I started this journey with my brother South Paul, who used to work for Puff Daddy, so he knew a lot about kind of the studio environment. He had set up the pro tools for Daddy's house,

So I guess for me. One of the best parts about kind of growing with this culture has been to always stay true to the ideals that it first started. We're not here to try to convince people of what it is. We're here to offer you these facts that you have not been presented before. You haven't even seen the evidence. You're basing your opinion on what you've been shown, but not everything else. I think it's hard to divorce

people from their politics, keV. It is because their politics is not just politics, it's their entire circle of friends, with the family that they're with, It's who you follow on Instagram, telling youth, telling people to leave your family. Right. So, people have gotten to a point where it doesn't matter the morality of the person that's been assigned to it. As long as it's their side, they can find a reason to not hold that person to the same standards

as they would somebody else. And at that point, it's just so politicized that there's no moral left in it. It's not like there's a moral compass. There's just like, oh, okay, imagine if your lawyer your son goes to trial for murder. Right, right, the best lawyer in the world has a fourteen year old wife, and you're like, dude, he's the best lawyer in the world. Though, right, what are we doing here? That's where we are in politics, and you know, we

don't even have a shared history. You saw the governor of Florida get up and say, hey, it's wrong that we're to say that we have stolen land. Yeah, right, literally, yeah, it's crazy. I was gonna ask you, man, because we're probably It's funny because I remember as a kid how much people did not fuck with George W. Bush at a certain point. I remember, like that Michael Moore shit came out. I forget then it was a bonly nine to eleven or some shit. The first documentary that kind

of like was like kind of political. People weren't fucking with Bush, but then there was people who were loving Bush. But now, man, this shit is so crazily divided, and I feel like the pendulum on each side has swung so extreme that like if somebody, like you said, if somebody is just a normal, common sense human being, like you said, like, I feel like I probably I grew up like a Democrat, right, but I feel like more and more I'm just like, maybe I'm just like a

independent or a libertarian. I don't know, because, like you said, I'm also very pro Second Amendment. But nowadays, man, it's like everybody and it's probably always been like this, but it's a little bit more magnified these days because of social media. But I just feel like we're in this like weird rut as a country where like everybody is just so standing on whatever this island is and whatever this island's going for at the time, you have to align with all of it or you're on you're over

there like I would like I would have. The truth is, if you bring up a good point, Democrats have never fought against Republicans as hard as they fought against the left wing of their own party. Fat that's the God. That's the God's honest truth. And a lot of people that I personally know that started getting closer to trump Ism and to Maga and I listen, this is the God. Listen if you if your feelings get hurt, I'm I'm

not here to coddle you. A lot of those people were actually Bernie Sanders supporters, and they feel and they feel that the Democratic Party is more corrupt than the Republican Bernie over but they feel like more corrupt. I think when we talk about the war being involved in it. That's one thing where I have to draw a line because Republicans can't hide behind Trump's skirt simply because he

didn't start any new wars. He dropped a moab on Afghanistan, and after the first eighteen months of his presidency please look it up, the drone strikes started again. However, that doesn't excuse them pushing Democrats to a point where they had to have mister Obama commit a series of war crimes because the drone strikes that he was sending out

to Afghanistan were based on metadata. That's why they gave him the name the drone Ranger, right, because those metadatas the metadata literally means a phone or a device, so you're basing it on a phone that this person could have, right, which is why when they exposed the rate of the drone strikes, they found out that it was over eighty and ninety percent the wrong person that they hit. And

why did we have to learn that through WikiLeaks? That's just unfair to the people themselves who paid taxes into a system where they believed they were actually fighting a war against people trying to kill us, whereas we knocked over a country that had nothing to do with nine to eleven. Nothing. And then when we get really into detail, remember that lady Sarah Palin and everybody was making fun

of her because she couldn't answer what the Bush doctrine was. Listen, the Bush doctrine, ladies and gentlemen, is us knocking over countries in the Middle East that don't follow our hegemonic view of the region. Tell me that mister Obama didn't do that once mister Bush got out of office. Thing. That's the issue that we're facing. We're facing the nakedness of the empire, the mask taken off, the revealing of the fact that we don't actually care if a place

is democratic or communist or any of these things. As long as you back the United States of America will

give you a pass. In the same way that I see these horrible things that the arguments that are happening online in between black people and Jewish people over what's transpired with Kanye and everything, and I say, the sad part is that if you look at actual conservatives that have said horrible things about Jewish people, they're they're not touched but it's also because they supported the state of Israel in the same sentence. So this complicates the case

very much. And I think it's actually damaged the relationship that Black and Jewish people have because they feel like they've been singled out and the other group feels like they've been singled out. I think that more than ever, needs some kind of healing, some kind of reciprocity to understand, because you have an entire group of people who say, well, there's different consequences for us versus that, and that makes people feel like their lives aren't worth the same right.

And I think on the other end, you have a group of people who have felt that they've been persecuted in Europe and now they're persecuted here and therefore high up on end. And whether you agree with anything the man said or not, you have legitimate divide in the community now where people are arguing that didn't even have

a problem with, weren't consciousness to argue before. So, like you said, the political lines are already kind of drawn there for a person if they wanted to crawl into that trench, to then feel comfortable with because they don't have to listen to an opposing opinion. Like you said, there's a lot of echo chambers. There's a lot of places where people just hear something repeated. They don't want

to hear the truth. They don't want to say, Okay, well, Republicans have actually never shrunken the size of government that Democrats have committed war crimes in the past two decades.

These are not comfortable topics, but they're true. And that's the reason why I guess people love my music because I give it to both sides, because I don't pull punches, and because when it comes down to it, I'm not just independent in terms of the music, but I try to be independent here in front of the politics because

I realize what's actually happened as a case of this. Now, we could take subject matters independently, right, like immigration, abortion, and we can discuss all these things, of course, but with that comes historical nuance, right when people say, oh, immigrants, who got everything? And I'm like, well, why don't you look up the Homestead Act or the DAWs Act, where this government gave millions of acres to white settlers that just came off a boat from somewhere because you wanted

indigenous people to be replaced. We hear a lot from the far right about a white replacement theory, but let's have a conversation about indigenous replacement practice that took place reality of that. Yeah. So I think in many ways,

it's not that people are angry at socialism keV. They're mad that only rich people have been able to use it, that they got billions of dollars of bailouts, and that nobody who lost their home got any bailing You always say, like socialism, like obviously, I think like I was a Bernie supporter. I donated to his camp. I loved Bernie. I just loved him because he was the most consistent

politician I had ever seen. At least he was very honest in the sense that you know, when you heard that Hillary Clinton calling him a violent misogynist, everyone was scratching their head, like you talk about your husband, you talk about Bernie, She's wild. What are we doing here? She's She's yeah, Jesus Christ. But I think, but I think that that that having a conversation just shows you how many people were understanding that, yes, we do have

socialism in this country, socialism for the rich. And I'll give you an example. The first kind of economic experiment that people learn in this country is a lemonade stand for little kids. Right, what up, y'all, we gotta stop the interview real quick. Tell you about our good friends at my Bookie. That's right, man. My bookie is where you want to get this money and enjoy being a

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failing you. The little kid is out there selling dollar glasses of lemonade. You haven't bought the lemons kid, your mommy did, just like the government buys stuff from these big companies. You didn't buy the knife that you cut the lemons with. As a matter of fact, you probably didn't even cut the lemons. You don't own the picture, you don't own the house, you never paid the water bill, you didn't bring the table outside, right, and you're not

going to clean everything up when it's over. So you are the exemplifying, precise example of what the American corporation does, which is live off the welfare of the state to make money for itself. And meanwhile, you're fighting imaginary communism when it's just corporatism. You don't even have to imagine illuminati. Imagine the corporate board of Kmart. They'll give you as much access to what they're talking about Illuminati will you're

not invited into that boardroom. You're not invited into the boardroom where they say, oh, we can't sell these products because they have high fructose corn syrup. I just came back from a tour in Europe. They don't even sell American products there because they say that they cause cancer and they're crazy. And another thing, you could buy a doctor just as easily as you can buy a politician, ladies and gentlemen, which is what the FDA does here in this country. So I'm sorry that I got just

bad news. I feel like that that's kind of what happened with the entire COVID shit. It was like the doctors who would say, hey, it's not for everybody, or they got silenced here, they got taken off Twitter. I know there was one guy who was a writer. He was just on Joe Rogan recently, who he actually sued Twitter because they took him off Twitter. They banned him. He's like a writer because he pretty much spoke out against the vaccine, just saying, hey, guys, it doesn't cure it.

They deleted his tweet, they banned him, and he sued him because he's that's kind kind of a part of his living as a writer, and they had to reinstate him and then they had to pay him money. Right, Well, I mean, his premise was, and I think I know exactly what you're talking about. He said, listen, if I'm not an anti vaxxer, I I'm propolio for all these

other things. Yeah, I got the first rounded. But but let me just say, honestly, the thing that he brought up that's incredibly important that he should never have been punished for. He said that it's technically not a vaccine because if you take it, then you shouldn't get the virus. If you can still get the virus, but for example, what they decided to rebrand and say, well, it's not that you don't get the virus, it's that you get a must much lesser effect. But that's a virus exactly.

So that's kind of the backfoot that they fell on. And that's kind of like what I get when I argue with people and they want to try to convert me to something, and then I bashed them so hard and then they're on the backfoot saying, oh, both sides are corrupt. No, that's where you should have started from, brother, That's not the position you retreat to. So when I discussed these things in terms of like the COVID response, that was a big reason why we did the rebel

army runs. We defied the lockdowns, not out of gratuity, not just to be on IG like, oh, we're out here when they said we couldn't be. That's not rebellion, that's not revolutionariness, that's just you trying to be a troll for IG. We actually went out there and when we were moving this food and these products, the police stopped me before and they said what are you doing? And I said, I've become the food program for the grant houses. I'm feeding these people. That is what I'm

supposed to do, isn't it. And the guys like, you're wearing like a you're wearing a vest and you have a scanner. I said, that's for my own personal amusement. And he's like, what are you doing with that today? I said, I don't feel like discussing my day, officer, but I'm going to be here and I'm going to continue to support these people in my community. Oh, by the way, you're from the twenty sixth precinct, right, You're

one of Captain Alexis boys. What if she found out that you were trying to cut off the food program out of that Deblasio canceled, you know, the Blasio, the one that you hate. Right. I know how to talk to people. So the guys like, man, you can either stop me from doing what I'm supposed to do, brother, or you can make sure that we get through to these people. And I'm gonna be real. They folded, not like oh oh no, like no, they folded like wow, I see your point. Cool. So we were out there

and through all the lockdowns. We started this program in March of twenty twenty, so when this just started, because they really announced the pandemic in like February, so late March, early April was when we started. And it was me and this one tiny little Dominican girl, right and her boyfriend would help now and then. But that's what it was. So I tell people, listen, you're gonna get yelled at,

You're gonna have people disagree with you. It's okay. What the purpose is is not to force your ideas on other people. You let them come to them naturally, You present other arguments, and you give them the ability to make that decision. I think too many, too many times, like we were just talking about, people expect to be able to change someone's mind immediately, and people don't work like that. I mean, if you tell people not to do something, it's a perfect way to get them to

try to do something. That's how human beings are wired. And if you if you tell people they have to do something, then they don't want to. Well wait a minute, right, wait a minute, I have to do it. It's my body. What the fuck as opposed to like, hey, here's what, here's the facts, figure it out one hundred percent. Man. But I mean, I look, my mom is a two

time cancer survivor. So I took it very seriously. Of course, like you, I was asked away from it, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, she was in a nursing home, man, So it was obviously a real it's a real thing. I just think that, like, there was just so much misinformation that was being fed to U. Was on TV every day. It was the fear mongering normal ship that it's been happening on the

media forever. And I feel like so many of the voices that were just kind of giving other alternative points and actual facts about the vaccine were silenced, and it was just like it just like I feel like to two years fast forward a lot of that, it's kind of like, yeah, well maybe if you did catch COVID,

you really didn't need to get the vaccine. If you're a healthy person and you got it, your antibodies are going to be stronger, and you you know, if you're a younger male, you don't have to worry about the risk of mildcard died and all this. But if you are a young person and you happen to have anything like a breathing issue or asthma, then you're much more likely to suffer some of the worst consequences. Right, It's

like it just depends on your like that. But that's my whole point why I told people, hey, don't listen to come up with shock jock. Come up, go and go to your doctor and get checked out, and say, hey, is it okay if I do this or is this wrong?

And I think what the main issue that I saw happened with so many people is that a one, people weren't empathetic to people who thought they really needed it, and the people who were in need of it had no empathy towards the people that were on some like holistic medicine stuff, which is something that I'm down with, but at the same time, it's like, okay, you're gonna tell me that now because this person wore a mask,

that they're propagating fascism. Like, Okay, I had an argument with a dude, like a friend of mine who's a prominent guy in the anti Maxarin and I said, listen, brother, didn't take your freedom this time. They already had it when you butchered one million of rockies a country that had nothing to do with nine to eleven. They already got your freedom when they sent you to Afghanistan. They already got your freedom right when they had you bomb Libya and open a slave market there, they already got

your freedom. What they wanted now with this was something totally different. They didn't need to put a microchip in the vagazine. You already got the micro chip with this, it's in your pocket. But what they did do is that exposed something even crazier that Adam Smith and Carl Marx, even though they're diametrically opposed sides of communism and capitalism, we're both right. There's only two classes. The middle class is a farce right, and that's what COVID taught you.

Because you could be have a nice HOUSEKEV. You have a nice car, a job, but you're worth negative six hundred thousand dollars and a lot of you lost your homes during that time, and you realized, oh no, there are only two classes. There's the working class, and they're the people who control the means of production. And if you're not one of these two people, then you think you're one in the middle, you're not really one in the middle. You're here. See these people know who the

fuck they are. They don't pay taxes. Their corporation doesn't pay taxes. If people want to look up any example of that. There's a famous woman from New York called Leona Helmsley who owned the Helmsley Building, and she got in trouble because for years she paid no taxes like all major corporations. Yeah, I mean Google doesn't pay I mean, none of these people pay taxes. But she went out and said in the media in the New York Times,

only little people pay taxes. And they had to get her because this you can't see such a fucking uproar in New York. They were like little people like you mean,

working class people. Because the capitalist system creates food and shelter as commodities, so you're forced to work a forty hour work week instead of venturing to things you would possibly like the fact that, look, if I get an album done and I pay the record label back in a traditional scenario, I don't even keep the intellectual property. That's crazy. If I get a bank a loan for anything else and I pay the loan, bag own the car, everything. The problem is this now people bring up is the

house really yours? Because if you don't pay those property taxes that equal the equivalent of the house paid over fifty years, they take the house. Do you ever stop paying for it? Also, like how many people actually finish the thirty year mortgage before they move on to the next thing. Ever, it's like a rotation of fuckery for sure. Man, Hey, we gotta stop the interview real quick to tell you about our partners at odd Socks are presenting sponsor here

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all right, go to odd Socksofficial dot com. Promo code Bootleg at checkout, save twenty percent off and support our family at odd socks and the podcast at the same fucking time. Let's get back to the interview. Well listen, Uh you say you're you're dropping new music. Yeah, we got the new website and Mortal Technique dot com. I actually had to sue for it. I had an anonymous squatter that was trying to charge me twenty thousand dollars

for it. So hell of a hustle. I know a lot of I know that there's a lot of people doing that. They just buy websites and they my lawyer said no, no, no no, We've reached out to this person and they said no, no, no, we'll put the price up. So he goes, we're gonna sue and we're gonna demand that they show up to court, and they didn't show. I showed up with my best pseudo and I was walking there like I always made the joke that I was walking like Malcolm and Spike Lee and the like this.

H I was walking right to court like what is it? No show? Okay, thank you the website's mind for one hundred and seventy five dollars. Fuck you people that trying to rob me. But now we're live at Mortal technique dot com. You can get the website, you can get tour dates, and you can contact us at the Rebel Armie Runs if you want to make a text deductible

donation to the charitization. Are you going to the streaming services or are you doing cause you know there's a lot of people who have kind of it's an unfair system.

I feel like in terms of like, if you have like a thousand fans, you should be able to make real money off your music as opposed to making pennies off your streams, and I know a lot of people are just going straight to consumers these days, whether it's like dropping the CD, dropping a download on your website, doing the vinyl thing like howry are you gonna drop it? I guess traditionally in twenty twenty two ways, like on Spotify, on iTunes and all that, or are you gonna do

other stuff? I'm still looking at that, But I mean, I think either way presents its own challenges. I know that when I release record that I have to campaign the album right. It's not just like throwing it against the wall. I think also the fact that I've spent so much time working on this album the middle passage that it's incredibly important, the fact that it has the subject matter of pretty much an African genocide. In that sense, I don't have the N word anywhere on the record.

It is one of the most scholastically put forth examples of my work. And also I'm gonna show you that even without using certain words, I can be even more ruthless, more brutal, more painful, more gut wrenching, more metaphorically and similarly driven wretchedness that will make you vomit blood than I did before and I'm still that guy, and I'm still here. I'm still down with the immigrants, I'm still down with the Second Amendment. I'm still down with educating

my people about how to grow food independently. And you know, I appreciate any platform that I'm giving the ability to come and speak. Brother, Yeah, you're a legend. I'm curious earlier you said recipes Chris Dorner. Now I feel like his story and his manifesto, I feel like that's such an interesting topic that doesn't get brought up enough because I do feel like it's kind of like depending on

your perspective on it. I mean, obviously nobody should ever condone like people dying and stuff, But I always was thinking in my head, I was like, man, I wonder if anybody will ever tackle that topic from like a conceptual way through hip hop, whether it's a record, whether it's telling that story. Maybe I'll keep you in the game. I can't throw it for you, Kemp, but we definitely did bring something up like that on the record. I appreciate you saying that, yeah, because I feel like you

would be the guy to do it. I'm the guy that did it already. Okay, it's coming out. But I mean, like I said, we don't do gratuitous violence. We talk about what it is in terms of what that extright. The fact that people were so scared of him that they decided to shoot other people that weren't even him, the fact that they were like, okay, you actually have documented files and we heard testimony from the city council

and so many racist things they said. Chris Dorner allegedly had documents and recordings of high level people in the LAPD and government saying things that were probably just as bad, if not worse. So I think that there's a lot

of sketch that's around him. There's other people in that are in my proximity that I've had a similar experience with that I'll say, Okay, I went to Penn State University right and around the same time when the sexual molestation allegations were going over against Sandusky that other coaches knew. There was a district attorney who was the district attorney in my case as a matter of fact, when I

went to prison. His name was Ray Greekar, and he was investigating the Sandusky stuff and guess what he was disappeared. They found his his he's still going. He was he was declared missing, like and he's declared dead. You can look his name up ray Greek card g r I c ar. And they found his laptop missing a hard drive in a fucking lake or like in a river, like a little stream, like a mile away from his house.

So this guy who was investigating who could have possibly covered up the rape allegations, gave whoever it was cover enough for them to blame only the people who got caught, and none of the giant donors from Penn State who partook it in the circle to it. Hey man, I'm not gonna stop talking about this, So if something happens

to me, we all know what it is. That shit's crazy, you know what, man, I do feel like though we are in a I mean, even if it doesn't really matter, I do think that nowadays people are a little bit more skeptical of the information they're given and they try to dig in a little bit under the surface a little bit more then, you know, I feel like that's obviously the Internet's kind of changed a lot of just

the way people think. And hopefully, like you said, hopefully people can snap out of this fucking weird tribal like extreme I'm over here or I'm over here, And if you don't agree with me on this, but you agree with me on ten other things, but you don't agree with me on this, it's fuck you. You're over there. It's like, well, I think the primary basis I have to say is that I'm willing to agree with anybody or be able to have that disagreement, as long as

those disagreements don't infringe on my humanity. I'm just trying to take away my humanity. And I think what you also bring up is important to say. For all those people that are talking about a civil war, just remember the only winners of a civil war United States will be China and Russia. You'll hand them the planet. Good luck though. That's how we're going to hand the interview. That's right,