My Dad Interviewed Murs

Being a 57-year-old man, my dad never really enjoyed, or particularly understood, hip-hop—as far as I can tell, his favorite musicians are Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon, and James Brown. Anything other than those three, and you’re entering into dicey territory with him. I recall a certain moment from my childhood when he found me listening to rap and gleefully yelled, “Rap? More like c-RAP!” to me. I point to this moment and this moment alone as the reason I became a rap blogger. But in the past few years, my dad’s come to appreciate hip-hop’s viability as an artform, to the point where when he recently told me he was coming to New York to visit, he asked if I’d take him to a rap concert. So, I took him to see Earl Sweatshirt. He enjoyed it to the extent that old people can enjoy loud things at late times, which is to say he enjoyed it greatly, but then immediately went to bed and complained to me about how he should have brought earplugs.

The next day, I had him interview Murs, the West Coast underground legend who recently signed with Tech N9ne’s Strange Music label. I honestly had no idea what would happen. Luckily, both Murs and my dad are open-minded enough dudes to the point where they pretty much immediately became best friends. The two spoke frankly about fatherhood, what it’s like trying to mentor young people, the evolution of hip-hop, and why Murs shaved his infamous dreads.

My Dad: I will be honest with you, I’ve never interviewed a rapper before, or any musician for that matter. And I’m certainly a novice when it comes to rap music. I went to my first rap concert last night. Earl Sweatshirt.
Murs: Oh, wow!

I’ll also tell you that you are my favorite rapper. Drew sent me a lot of your music and I played it and—just, I mean, “I’m Innocent”, that song is so, I think, universal of you gotta keep goin’ no matter what, no matter how hard things are you gotta keep goin’.
Thank you.

Hello, who is this?
This is my son, Bishop. Say hi, Bishop.

I’ve got several questions and while we’ve got Bishop here it made me think that you’ve got—how many children do you have?
I have one more.

And they’re adopted, right?
Yeah, my only two are adopted.

How old is Bishop now?
He’s 15 months. We’ve had him for about a year now and we’ve had the 15-year-old for about nine months.

How has that changed your life?
Oh man, it’s made me a lot more patient. Hold on. You wanted to meet Andy? Oh, okay, you’re good. Bye.

Bye, bye, Bishop.
Okay, you want to tell him bye. Say bye. No, you don’t want to say bye? You want to play with bacon? You gotta get in the shower, man. Is that okay? I know. Okay, see you later. Alright, sorry. Yeah.

So how has that changed your life?
It’s made me a lot more patient and… a lot more focused on being a better person, you know? Especially him, we didn’t really plan on a baby. We wanted to adopt older, but we got a call—we had submitted ourselves to so many agencies—we got a call one Sunday saying, “Do you want this baby or not?” And we were like, what the hell? (laughs) And I was like, we didn’t want a baby at all. I didn’t say that on the phone. And they said, “Well, the mother picked you out two months ago. We made a mistake, no one contacted you. If you’re not here to pick up the baby in North Carolina in 48 hours he’s going into foster care.”

I suspect it makes you kind of grow up pretty fast?
Yeah, definitely. The teenager more so than the baby. I’m not very patient, and when you’ve got a newborn… it was just like I was yelling at him and he’s yelling at me and I feel like such a asshole for yelling at him. And so every night I’d be like, I gotta get it together. He doesn’t know any better, I know better.

It’s obvious to me that you’re aware of sort of your place in the world and your responsibilities, but you’re in the midst of an artform that is based on, essentially, rebellion and rejecting all of those things that we often times as adults have to go through. How do you reconcile those two things?
I consider myself the “one rapper,” you know, I am trying to stay with one woman, be faithful to one woman. That’s irregular. Takin’ on children that aren’t yours, most rappers don’t even take care of the kids that are theirs. So I think I am the rebel. Rap started out in a good place, and even had stayed in a good place I think until NWA. And they were very rebellious and then everyone’s been riding their coattails, talking about bitches and hoes and gangster shit for 20 years now. So to me, I am the rebel. I am the new, what hip-hop is really about. Being rebellious means taking care of your responsibilities. And I see a need in the black community to take care of this generation because they’re all just man-children, you know? They’re 40-years-old and they’re still partying. And so that’s why we wanted to adopt a teenager, because I feel like to break that cycle we’re going to have to start taking responsibility even for those children that aren’t ours. But I think they’re all our children as a citizen of the world, you know?

A lot of rap is based on a specific version of rebelliousness, not necessarily yours.
I think mine is the pure version of the artform for someone my age. You saw Earl last night. He’s a product of boarding school, Los Angeles, so many different things, and he’s 19, 20-years-old. He should be saying the things he’s saying. The 40-year-olds and the 35-year-olds that are still saying it shouldn’t. And by me making this revolution I think what’s going to happen to the artform is going to make room for me to do adult music and for Earl to express himself. He shouldn’t have to compete with a 35-year-old, but right now his is. And by me stepping my maturity level up and my intellect in my music it creates room for the youth to have the movement like Odd Future and Earl. Right now I feel like he’s unnecessarily crowded by old men who want to talk the same BS that he should be talking. And I love Earl and I respect what he does.

So for example like Earl, as he grows and matures, his music can grow and mature as well.
Yeah, they can do that without being corny. I did everything that they’re doing, but I evolved. I own a festival, so I meet a lot of them and always try to tell them like, invest in some property now. Party, but know that it has to end. Know that around the time that you’re 30 you’re going to want something outside of music to go home to. And the funny thing is is some of those kids are wanting it now because they can’t deal. The internet give you this hyper-fame, so you burn out a little quicker. So you look up and have some money but nothing to live for. And I was at that point.

When you sign to a label, you get a big chunk of money. And it seems to me that in a business like yours where you make a lot of money quickly and then you don’t make any more for a while, it takes a lot of discipline to be able to take that, get some property, make some savings, some investments… How have you been able to do that?
I come from a long line of entrepreneurs so I was lucky. My family had some dry cleaners in South Central for over 65 years. And my grandfather owns the whole block along with various other apartments and things throughout the city. So he wasn’t extremely wealthy but he was well-to-do and he hated me bein’ a musician, but that’s because my uncle was a musician and blew his money and he thought I’d do the same thing. And I listened to him. I bought a triplex with my first large sum of money. And I lived in one unit and rented the other two out. And before I bought a house I bought another duplex. And then I moved from Los Angeles to Tucson and I commute to LA for work because property is cheaper here and it’s cheaper living. And for the $300,000 I bought a triplex for, you know, that was built in 2010, a new triplex, I can live in Watts in Los Angeles, I could live in the worst part of Los Angeles. But most people are concerned with appearances and at the time I was living in the Palazzo paying $2,300 a month for a 700-square-foot apartment next door to famous UFC fighters and R&B singers and driving an SL500 Mercedes and I was like, what the fuck am I doing? This money could be gone. I knew better and I got caught up in it. So there’s kids that come from nothing that all the sudden get $100,000, and to be frank, you can’t tell them shit.

Yeah, you can’t tell anybody anything.
I been there, you know? But it’s a hard lesson and they all think—when I try to tell them they think that I want something from them because they’re new and they’re hot. And I was like, I don’t want to do a song with you, I don’t want to be your friend, I just want you to know that this shit isn’t gonna last forever and you should probably invest in some property. If I have your time for 60 seconds before you get swarmed by TMZ, all I want to tell you is that, you know, buy some land or find someone that you can trust to handle your money.

Do you think that because your music has been more independent, not quite so mainstream, that you’ve been able to maybe fly under the radar a little bit and make your own path?
Exactly. And I that’s why I try not to judge or talk down to anyone else because my situation is different. And even now for the independent rappers someone like Earl—I compare our careers with, you know, talent, whatever to the side, because I think he might be brighter talent than I am. But we came up in a similar way but with the advent of the internet, like I said, it accelerated his fame gave him a lot really fast. I don’t know what it’s like for him and I don’t know what it’s like to be a radio success or to show up on TMZ every day. But the fact still remains that you have to be careful with your money. Even moreso now because, I think finances and the economic environment was way different when I was 19 or 20 than it is now.

I think you’re so right about the internet, where it’s a fame multiplier that all of the sudden they know everything about everything that you do. That’s gotta be a tough thing to live under. Can you go to the store without being recognized?
That’s why I moved to Tucson. Here I can.

What happened to your dreads?
Yeah, exactly. (laughs) When I left Warner Brothers I wanted to leave all of that behind, so I moved to Tucson and I’m very non-descript now. But in LA I started having to add 30 minutes every time I went to the store. If I left my house people would start screamin’ out of their cars. I couldn’t walk to 7-Eleven. And I’m just a normal guy, like I wanna just hang out at the comic book store. And it became I had to take ten pictures to do that, sign, you know, 50 things here and there, and if I don’t do it I’m a jerk.

Who is your hero?
My grandfather, my mother. I just love my family. And outside of that I recently met a older guy by the name of Darryl Jenifer, the bassist for Bad Brains, an older punk band. And we made some music together and he’s been playing since the 70’s and still relevant and still youthful without being stupid…

That’s a great quote right there: youthful without being stupid.
He’s been an inspiration. Also the guy I just signed a record deal with from Strange Music, his name is Travis O’Guin. The way he handles his family and has been a successful businessman has been really admirable and I feel like I could learn a lot from him.

If you had to do anything differently from what you’ve done, would you change something?
Nah, man. I wouldn’t change a thing. I ask myself that all of the time and raising a 15-year-old has made me realize how lucky I am. It’s because I’ve known what I was put here to do since I was 14, 15. And my mother and I—I had to leave the house at 15 because I told her I was going to be a rapper and she told me I’d never make it. And you know, 20 years later I’m still rapping and I’m more in love with my mother than I was that day. I love her. We made amends and everything. And I appreciate her pushin’ me out there and making me do it myself because it made me resourceful. It made me more responsible so I’m not angry at her at all. Looking at my son who’s going through that “what do I want to do?” phase… I don’t know. I never had that struggle so I just realized how lucky I am. I’m fortunate enough to say I wouldn’t change a thing.

Tell me about your mother.
Single mom. My father was a drug dealer, drug addict, very abusive. My grandfather ran him out of town, literally. Picked him up, showed him a gun, and said, “Here’s where your two sons your two sons and your wife are gonna be living. You lay carpet, you paint the walls, and I’m takin’ you to the Greyhound station, and if you ever come back to Los Angeles I’ll kill you.”

Whoa!
When I finally reconnected with my father when I graduated high school, he had to call my grandfather first and make sure it was okay to come back. Yeah, my grandfather is a serious guy.

But he does it out of love.
Everything’s out of love, but he’s a hard man.

Is there anything about young people that really irritates you, or you wish you could make them understand?
Inside of the black community there’s a sense that you’re not going to be living past a certain age. My son tells me all the time—and I believed this same thing, and that’s how I ended up at 28, like what the hell’s going on? So you just go on, after 18 you’re still alive and you just go on auto-pilot. You survive and you just have fun because you think you’re going to die at any moment. But I think that’s true with a lot of teenagers, you don’t recognize your own mortality, you know?

I see a lot of young people who think that they’re never gonna die and think they’re always going to be young. I think you and I are both saying the same thing just from opposite sides of the coin.
It creates the same mentality. My son tells me that once a week, you know? And I used to tell my mom that once a week. But it doesn’t help when you have rappers on the TV sayin’, they’re forever young. I’m like, come on man, someone had to grow up and be a dad on the TV.

My son tells me Strange Music has an incredibly loyal fanbase that if you hook up with Strange Music that chances are you’re gonna to get lots of loyal fans just from that. Talk about that a little bit more, if you don’t mind.
I always wanted to stop rapping at 21, I thought at 21, you were old. I’ve been able to parley that a few times, so now I’ve been lookin’ for a permanent home. My mom moved us around a lot so I think it comes from that. And now that I’m married with kids there’s a sense of permanence and I needed to find a home. And I’ve done business with everyone from Snoop Dog to Odd Future, and I’ve seen the interworkings behind Warner Brothers and every independent label and labels in between. And Strange seemed to be some of the most honest and hard working people I’ve dealt with and I couldn’t think of a better home. They’ve been around, they plan to be around for a long time. And I also know that Tech N9ne, who’s the lead artist of the label and co-founder of the label, is 42 and I’m hearing him make some of the best music of his life. So that’s encouraging to me. And his stage show, he’s still the best live performer in the world. And I’ve seen Prince, Tito Puente, Jack White, Odd Future, I’ve seen everyone. And I can still learn a lot from him as an artist and I can learn from Travis as a businessman. And I know that Strange Music has the money and the desire to stay around for a long time. And I’m just happy to be a part of how they do business and looking forward to learning and becoming better because of it.

It’s nice to be a part of something that you can feel good about, rather than being a part of something that just writes you a check, but you don’t really feel good about it.
Yeah, you know I have friends that work for Raytheon here in Tucson and they’re—you know, I was tellin’ you I don’t judge you but, some people that go to work to support their families and they make missiles, you know? But that feeds their family and gives them great healthcare. So I’m thankful I don’t have to be faced with that conundrum.

Did DJ Quik master Murs for President?
Yeah, he mixed it. I spent three weeks, everyday with him. Like, 14 hours days with him, 18-hour days.

What did you learn from that?
I’m a big fan of his and I wish he would have told me in his music what a great father he is. We would finish at five in the morning, he would show up at noon and start our session, he’d be like, Murs, I haven’t been to sleep but I had to give my son a haircut, get him to school, drop my daughter off, and then made everybody chicken soup from scratch. (laughs) I’ve seen him tell a 25-year-old engineer who’s fresh out of school to do something and the kid goes, “You can’t do that.” And Quik sighs like a dad would, and then get up and do himself and the kid would be amazed. And then we did it all reel-to-reel instead of digital. Quik knows how to cut the tape, mix, do scratches, do a beat, and rap. He can do everything. He’s a genius—you can make chicken soup from scratch, drop your kid off, know everything about the Corvette you drive, beat everybody in the room in a fist fight… I mean, he’s amazing, he’s an amazing human being. And it’s funny because I’m hopefully work with him on mixing my records at Strange, because I think he’s retired from being an artist and wants to just mix and master. And his ear sonically, you know, is phenomenal. And he has a nice perm, his hair is always immaculate.

Drew Millard is the Features Editor of Noisey. He’s on Twitter – @drewmillard

Find Drew’s dad on YouTube.