AllHipHop.com: Now how does that affect the music that you put out? Not as far as your concepts or content your involvement in all the initiatives you mentioned earlier must take up a lot time. That has to eat into the time that you have to make your music? Correct me if I’m wrong.

Immortal Technique: You’re right, it does. It really does. For a long time I struggled with that. I thought that I had to do one or the other. Like I have to focus on this revolutionary stuff and on the other hand I was like, “Music, I gotta make money, what the hell am I doing running around doing all this.” They don’t have to work against each other; they can work for each other. The people that I help them can help me. They can help those issues I go to those communities, those they can in turn help promote my music and my message, so it has a symbiotic relationship that has assisted a community building effort. In the future I’d really like to address people’s issues in general around the country.

And it’s funny because when people look at stuff that I do they’re like, “Oh yeah he rhymes about a lot of political stuff.” A lot of people oversimplify. N****s talk about the hood but I actually talk about what’s going on in the hood because I’m still there. I’m not living in Hollywood or some s**t like that, I don’t have a gigantic mansion in Beverly Hills. I walk around Harlem everyday. When I’m on the way to the A train I can see the gentrification. I see them kicking us out of our own neighborhood and these modern day slaves thinking they was gonna come in and make the ghetto better…’til they started deporting, U-hauling s**t.

I don’t think they can’t co-exist it’s just difficult to balance stuff until you realize that these people are working for the same things that you are, you just do it in terms of Hip-Hop. It’s not just quote unquote political or revolutionary because that dude’s a political rapper. No, I just rap about life and you wanna talk about politics, dog the reason why someone who’s reading this and is not signed, if you’re an artist right now and you’re talented and you’re not signed either to an independent distributor or put on, or not at the majors or whatever it’s because of politics. It’s because someone has a better political relationship because there are plenty of people who are mainstream and don’t really have that much talent, that don’t write their own rhymes, everything is ghost produced for them [or] they be stealing other talented people’s work for years. So the fact that you’re not on…and you might be reading this and you might feel a little bit of anger towards me like why the f**k is he saying this—“What do you know about it? —homie you’re not on because of politics, understand that.


That’s not me taking a personal shot at you, you f***in idiot, it’s me exposing it for what it is when you go promote your record. It’s like the Obama/Clinton campaign, reach out to super delegates, DJs. “Oh yeah I’ma need your backing for when my album comes out. What do you need from me; I’ll hook you up. I need this or come to my show.” That’s just the exchange. When you show up to places, do the meet and greets, in stores, whatever it may be, it’s like campaigning basically.
Other things in the game are political, who’s gonna produce that track of yours? That’s political. Whether or not they’re gonna clear your samples. That’s political. Whether or not they let you go out your contract. That’s political, c’mon man don’t f**k with me n***a, are you out of your f***in mind? Political rapper…tell me one rapper’s career that doesn’t have politics introduced to it and I’ll give you a million dollars yo.

Features : Immortal Technique: 3rd Eye Vision