Sublime

what really made me want to take it seriously was hearing highly skilled MCs like Kool G Rap, Big Daddy Kane, Rakim, and Chuck D really pushing the form with their wordplay and rhyme patterns and bringing their unique voices and deliveries to the game. They were all so sick and so sharp—just straight killers on the mic. And I wanted to be like

We have a problem in this country with telling the truth about what’s really going on, especially when it comes to the history and the day-to-day realities faced by the black population. It’s always skewed or distorted or ignored. Sometimes I can’t tell which is worse. Would I rather they ignored the death of Michael Brown, or would I rather they

That notion of empire—expanding into adjacent industries, starting companies, building new brands, grooming protégés, growing bigger and stronger—seems to be a much more natural part of hip-hop than other creative fields. The path from hustler to artist to mogul is a well-trod one, from P. Diddy to Birdman to Jay Z.