http://submergemag.com/featured/revenue-retrieval/894/
Yeah, I mean “Tell It Like It Is” for all the game, but the one that bugs me out on a creative level with the wordplay and whole concept is “40 Water.” People don’t make songs and flip shit lyrically like that anymore.
Yup, they don’t, man. That’s what I’m saying. All that stuff, they don’t get like that anymore. It’s gotta be all dance. They want it to be all dance. It’s a trip. What it is though, like, who wouldn’t want to put Akon on their album? Especially at that time. And you know, I’ve been at this for 20 years, so OK, let me roll the dice and try some different stuff. The “Wake It Up” record was a good record, but my fanbase… Fanbases can be stubborn. They don’t want me to do a song like that. They would accept it from anybody else, but they didn’t want me to expand and go beyond what I’ve been doing, and that’s keeping it all the way mobbed out. And even my fanbase turned its back on mob music, which is the heavy basslines and the certain sound we were rolling with in the ‘90s. My fanbase, being the Bay Area, started buying up Southern music. They turned their back on the sound that we were doing, so I had to readjust and do whatever I had to do as far as music and adjust, but not go too far out of my jurisdiction. Do just enough to get by and for my fanbase to accept me. Basically, it’s a tricky a game. It’s either turn with the times, or the times will turn on you. A lot of times, the way hip-hop is, and I’m not griping, but I just feel like I’m way way way ahead of my time. I know people think I’m wack. Like a lot of cats on the East Coast think I’m wack, and the reason is because you can’t comprehend what you don’t know. And if you don’t know, how can you comprehend it? You know what I mean? It goes over their heads like a flying saucer. Then, a lot of cats don’t have the patience to look at creative rappers. They want you to rap a certain way, because that’s the only way they know it. They want you to rap like all the other rappers, and I’m not going to do that. I want to be in a class by myself. It’s fucked up that I have to readjust or downplay my skills to adjust to today’s listeners. You smell me? It ain’t cool. On this upcoming album, though, I’m free. I can do what I want. I can just be me and if a motherfucker don’t like it, they don’t gotta buy it.
I’m gonna be the E-40 from the beginning. Mr. Flamboyant.
