Video After The Jump
Sit back and relax you mind because you're about to hear some real talk from two rapper with 43 years of experience between them.
Cory Mckay aka Cormega and Percy Chapman aka Tragedy Khadafi held court recently right in the middle of Queensdridge Housing Projects and talked to Taj Mahal about the good times and bad times they have seen in hop hop.
TM: Is Queensbridge different nowadays?
Cormega: On some real sh*t, Queensbridge is a clean ass housing project these days. You can see white people come through here jogging... not running from a n*gga (laughs). It's dope out here now.
TM: What was an average day like in QB back in the 90's?
Tragedy Khadafi: You could come out your building and not know what would happen. It was always something going on, you know how it is. In the summertime it's hot, you got a bunch of motherf*ckers coming in cause they cousin live here, trying to take over. Hood Wars, we'd go look for wars.
TM: What happened to Queensbridge running the rap game?
Tragedy Khadafi: Queensbridge to me, we was like the first supergroup.
Cormega: I call Queensbridge Rome because anybody that's familiar with history. During that era with Ceasar they had that world... their modern world they could have ruled it. The only thing that brought them down was themselves. That's how Queensbridge is... nobody could f*ck with Queensbridge if everybody was together.
TM: Tell us about 2011 Cormega vs the old
Cormega: My mind is so elsewhere with it. I aint on that stupid sh*t no more, I'm on some grown man shit. I'm a grown man - I'm not acting young, I'm not trying to portray a young man's image.
TM: Has prison changed your outlook on life?
Tragedy Khadafi: We [blacks] got the wrong concept of hustling. Black people spend $600 billion dollars a year in disposable income. We spend so much money, but we don't have economic power cause we're hustling backwards. I aint gonna front, to me hustling and making it was like having the illest clothes on, having the illest jewelry, you know the same old sh*t. Success to me was jewelry, cars, clothes and women, but that's not really success at the end of the day, cuz in that there's no value.
Today I'm a man and the things I value are of real value. A year from now that chain aint gonna be hot. That car aint gonna have the same value people place on it, it's value is gonna depreciate. Real life never depreciates when you're living it to it's highest value.
TM: Hip Hop started in New York, why are we losing?
Cormega: It's just certain sh*t n*ggas gotta look at. All these songs coming out glorifying liquor, like everybody got a song about poppin bottles. What the f*ck n*ggas celebrating in a recession? I don't wanna be a hypocrite. I'll go upstairs right now and put on jewelry, that'll make n*ggas that's brainwashed and stupid go 'oh that's ill', but that's not me no more I'm grown. We gotta wake the f*ck up real talk. You got rappers wanna know why n*ggas [record] sales is down. It's because everybody's partying, how you gonna party in a recession? That's why LL [Cool J] lasted so long because he looks like a regular everyday n*gga cuz he never threw that sh*t [in people's faces]. That's why Russell [Simmons] can walk around without security and he's richer than everybody.
TM: What happened to the originality of New Yorkers?
Tragedy Khadafi: I remember there was a time when you would see a dude from Brooklyn and go 'he's from Brooklyn' or 'yo they from Harlem.' Because everybody had their own style and originality. Now if you look at anybody, on any corner, in any hood they all look the same. There's no more originality, there's no more style, there's no more authenticity, there's no more realness.
Cormega: N*ggas is d*ck riding other places when we created this whole sh*t
There's more to the interview, peep it below. Are Tragedy and Cormega right? Has New York fallen off because it lost touch with why they were the kings of hip hop? Is champagne rap killing hip hop?
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