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Kool G Rap’s musical career has been a journey that most Hip-Hop aficionados could only dream of. Now the self-proclaimed “Donald Goines of Rap” plots a simultaneous comeback and exit from a profession he helped pioneer since the 80s. AllHipHop chronicles this expedition in THE REBIRTH OF KOOL G RAP, a reoccurring feature. Check in this week as G Rap discusses the art of the mixtape.
Kool G Rap: For people asking what I’ve been up to, I’m finishing up the mixtape. Green Lantern’s gonna be hosting in. I pretty much been focusing on recording. I haven’t been performing much lately. The last two months, I been getting the mixes done. I’ve been doing extra songs here and there - I already got a lot of songs. Everything I do now, is extra. Really, the songs is for both my mixtape and my album. This’ll drop within no more than two weeks.
As far as the time off since Giancana Story, I take two or three years between records because I really try to put my best into what I do. I’m not the type of cat that’s gonna bang out an album in three months. It’s gonna take me longer than that. I’m really tryin’ to be creative with it. But at the same time, time off is not nothin’ that I do intentionally. I’m definitely my own toughest critic.
These days, it’s a necessity – doing the mixtapes and all. You can do it with one DJ or a few. I’m just doing it with Green Lantern right now. It really was my man Questchon that arranged me and Green Lantern to work together. He thought Green Lantern was a really good look as far as hosting the mixtape. I got a team of cats around me nowadays that’s sitting here night and day, tryin’ to plot the next and best moves for G Rap. People thought Green Lantern was the best move. Other cats are nice too, but he’s the top of the list. It happened to work out with Green, so that’s the way we went.
It’s not songs that I wouldn’t be able to put on my forthcoming album. I pretty much treated the mixtape as if it was an album – it’s not even a mixtape to me. I didn’t go really go crazy doing a bunch of stuff over other people’s tracks or nothin’. I pretty much did a whole catalog of original songs. You could sorta say this is like a G Rap street-released album. It’s not so much the normal mixtape you would get of a cat rhyming over other people’s beats and stuff. I did that a few times, not too much of it. You couldn’t pull out five songs like that.
When I was with Rawkus, I had a lot of stuff circulating the mixtapes, ‘cause they was leaking everything. In my early days, Kid Capri and Ron G was doing it differently than DJ’s today. You gotta realize, 50 Cent set a standard. He made it necessary for artists to flood the mixtape circulation, so did the DJ’s who hosted his mixtapes like the Whoo Kid’s and them. 50 did mixtapes with so many DJ’s, I can’t even name ‘em all. They set the standard too, for mixtape DJ’s to do that with artists. Kid Capri and them wasn’t really doing that back that. They was just putting out mixtapes with other people’s records and freestyles. They never really snatched up a particular artist or group and based they whole mixtapes around them.
This is all-new material. I pretty much set aside the songs I’ve recorded by never released. If I ain’t like ‘em enough to make the album, I’m most likely not gonna like ‘em a year after or two years after. A lot of mixtape DJ’s now, they snatch up all the old stuff that people ain’t throw on they albums, because it’s still vintage to them. It’s still something special to them, ‘cause it’s like Lost Tapes or like the lost episodes of The Honeymooners. There’s always a market for it.
Even after my albums release, I keep workin’ right through. I got a studio in my house that’s available to me at any time. Before the studio, I would write here and there leisurely. But now, I’m in the recording stages every time that I write. I’m recording all the time.
People don’t know that I was one that never liked a big crowd around me when I’m working. It’s distracting. I really like the atmosphere of the studio in my house. Now, I can get up, eat breakfast, go downstairs and record. You ain’t got no interruptions or distractions. Ain’t got people around me sitting there, boppin’ they head to anything and everything. That’s when I’m most creative. This is what the fans will hear.
"Got Compton on my back, I'm startin' to feel the pressure/ I'm lyrically Kool G. Rap, on these Dre records." - The Game on "Westside Story"
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