When you came out, besides your association with The Game, you didn’t really have a connection to the N.W.A family tree. Was it difficult for you to get people, especially radio folks, to understand where you were coming from? Nah, hands down people know what’s up with me. They know I am the West Coast and what the West Coast sounds like. People hear me on the Toomp beat and think I’m like Jeezy. I’ma Crip for real, people don’t just talk like this. I talk West coast gangsta shit. I get respect everywhere I go. If you listen to a combination of my songs, you’ll know what I do and what I sound like. Of course you want radio stations to accept the music. Sometimes it takes a little time, [but] it’s all in due time. As long as I got the West Coast I’ll be okay. But I get love nationwide. Greg Street, J Tweezy, Skip Cheatam, Kay Slay, they all show me love. You just can’t rush it though. Especially with my type of music. I’m dealing with real life issues. I don’t make trendy music, I make real shit. Whether I’m talking about something as shallow as cars and stunting, it’s all grown man shit. I don’t rap about clothes, I rap about houses and shit like that. I’m not really on shoes or clothes, I’m on that grown man shit as far as getting that real life expensive shit. You speak about doing grown man shit. A couple of years ago you blogged about Jay-Z’s Kingdom Come album getting a lukewarm response because he was being too grown. Do you fear getting the same kind of feedback? No, because I’m not talking to that extent. That nigga was talking about crazy ass balling. That’s what I’m saying when he’s getting old. All the places he went, that’s next level shit. I’d don’t give a shit if you 12, you want a mansion, you want a Phantom, you want a couple million dollars. I’m just saying I’m past the Jordans, I’ve had every pair. I just talk about shit I can get that I ain’t got yet. I got a Bentley, Silverado and a Camaro. Now I’m trying to get to that next level. That’s what I mean when I say “grown.” Jay is next level, he was rapping about buying malls, I’m still trying to get a store in the mall. Everybody couldn’t relate to what he was saying; that’s all I meant.
--------------------------------------As a man of his stature, Glasses Malone probably wouldn’t be allowed to rap about shoes and clothes even if he wanted to. Coming from Watts, shoes and clothes are things most would probably beg for instead of brag about. In some instances, not having the right shoes and clothes on could very well get you killed. Home to violent riots, gang related deaths and high rates of impoverishment Watts isn’t designed to birth many success stories. --------------------------------------You’ve put it out there that you do don’t drink or do any kind of drugs. Why? I ain’t spending money on no shit to make me feel good. I just can’t do that. Not some shit that’s temporary, I just cant get into that. Then nobody really gave me a good reason to do it. Most times niggas be like, “Smoke weed, you got nothing else to do.” What kinda logic is that? Niggas pop X and be like, “You gonna fuck this bitch way harder.” I can fuck hard without the X. Niggas be like, “Drink and you’ll be faded, nigga.” I’m high off life. I wake up every day with a new challenge; that shit is like adrenaline to me. I never heard a good reason to get high. A family member dies so I’m supposed to get drunk over that? Hell naw, that’s
a reason to live longer. I’m not knocking people that do that, but I’ll be damned if a nigga pressures me into doing anything. So what’s really going on in your neck of the woods? Is the black and brown conflict still strong out there? Black and brown is forever and a day. But it’s in certain ‘hoods, and it’s not on sight. It’s just the gangs. When you’re banging, a lot of the hoods got beef with Black gangs immediately. But it’s not a race war going on out here where the average Hispanic or black man is fighting out here. It just gets out of control and spills over to the regular world sometimes. It’s fucked up, but it ain’t as bad as it could be. What is it exactly that makes banging generational? With so many lives being lost or affected by it, you’d think someone would get tired of it. It’s just all the people dying and the continuousness of practicing that ignorant shit. Even the kid that listens to G. Malone and hears me screaming unity is gonna hear another rapper that ain’t from here saying they a Crip or Blood acting like it’s cool. It’s a lot of years of niggas getting killed. You can’t stop this shit in one day. A lot of Bloods and Crips [have] been killers for 30 years. It’s easy to break a glass window, [but] it’s hard as fuck to fix it. You gotta get a new panel, take the frame out. If you break a community for years over and over again, it’s gonna be hell to put it back together. So it’s gonna take me doing shows with Crips and Bloods together. I’ve had 13 great shows like that, but all it takes is one bad one to make [the other 13] not mean shit. At the end of the day, everybody’s got their own thing, it just seem a lot worse here. People think it’s Crips and Bloods in L.A., but it’s not. Its 7th Street Watts Crips, Rolling 60s Crips, and it’s Long Beach Rolling 20s Crips, but none of those Crips are the same. So you think it’s just Bloods and Crips, but it’s a tribal thing, Crips go at Crips and Bloods go at Bloods. You’ve got neighborhood unity. It’s like having the same last name - every “Williams” in the world ain’t related. That’s how it is with banging. It ain’t Crips against Bloods, its neighborhoods against neighborhoods. Growing up around that, how did you even get into rapping? At the time, in 1998, I was trapping real tough. I was slanging water and sherm at the time. Fucking with one of my boys, hanging out with him, they was battle rapping and was kinda clowning on each other. So I started getting into it as a whole. In 2000, I kinda had a gig and was trapping at the same time. I recorded my first song with my younger brother who just got out. So you don’t have the familiar rap story about only getting in the game to not sell drugs and not be poor? Nah, this isn’t the regular rap story. I wasn’t a nigga who came up poor and broke. I had every pair of Jordans, all the jeans. I came up with a lot of shit I wanted, Nintendo games all that. My mom was a registered nurse but she was also a trapstar. She’s in the pen right now for 10 birds and 7 gallons of sherm. I came up in a house where I saw her work, but I was also brought up with rules, like not snitching. So I think I got the balance between the street and the real world. I don’t remember growing up without nothing, but I do remember having everything taken from me 2-3 times and having to regain everything back.
medical field? When I was in high school I got a 1320 on my SAT, and I wanted to be a pharmacist. I wanted to go to Azuza Pacific in LA. I felt like I was gonna hustle on the side like mom and have a regular job. When I started getting in the streets and getting money, it was different because I got addicted to the hustle. So when I started going to Cerritos College I’d just go to my math class and get back in the street. No English class, no other classes, I was liking that money. After a while I stopped doing math. It was early and my favorite shit to do. I took statistics in college and everything. I’m really good at math for some reason. -----------------------------------------
If Glasses has his way, he’ll have plenty of plaques and dollars to count when Beach Cruiser hits the streets this year. Beyond that, he looks forward to counting how many times he can top his debut album. ----------------------------------------“I don’t think this is my best record, actually,” he admits. “I think my next album will be better because I don’t have to compromise and make shallow songs. People understand how street I am but if you go too deep on niggas, they don’t know how street you are. I just want people to really give a listen to it and make my contribution to West Coast Hip Hop; Hip Hop as a whole.” Is it frustrating having to compromise on certain things when making your album? Yeah, especially being a real nigga. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do, and you do that so next time you don’t have to do it. It ain’t gonna kill me. The songs ain’t bad, they’re just shallow songs that don’t have any real life substance to it. I wish I could make my album like Scarface’s MADE album, with substance on every song. But my next album will be able to be that and I’m not worried about it. It’s only three or four song on the album that’s shallow. Out of 15 records, that ain’t bad. Everything else is real deep. You know what, though? Even the three or four I think are shallow, two of them might pass. People will understand that they go with the album. It’s like your favorite movie. You may not like certain scenes, but you sill love the movie. I hope that’s what I do with Beach Cruiser. Besides Beach Cruiser, what else are you working on? I’m doing an album with Mack 10, he put me on and we’re just gonna have a ball. Then me and Mistah FAB are bringing Cali together with our album. He’s a real live nigga. I brought him to Watts and he didn’t take off his chain. Another rapper I brought out here, he tucked his chain in. I won’t put him on blast because he a cool lil nigga, but FAB never tucked his chain in. He wasn’t scared. I gained a certain respect for that nigga. Doing the records I’m doing with them, I get to have fun. My album is more serious business, but I have fun making it because I live the challenge creatively. But with Mack, I get to show how cold I am on the mic. I like doing those types of albums because one of my favorite albums was Westside Connection when him, Cube and WC hooked up. That’s dope to me. Imagine if Hov and Nas put out an album or if Jeezy and Akon would have finished the album they started. //
Did you ever want to go to school to be in the OZONE WEST // 17