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Outtakes from XXL's Sept 2010 editorial, which is on stands now.

In XXL's September 2010 editorial letter, cover subject Shyne flipped the script, played reporter and interviewed Editor-in-Chief Vanessa Satten. The subject matter ranged from the mag's 13th anniversary, to the changes that hip-hop has gone through since XXL's inception. The overall conversation was too much to fit in the magazine's pages, so here is part 2 of Shyne Po's interview with V. Satten, exclusively on XXLMag.com. Now that's gangsta!

VANESSA: The people don’t want it! The fans don’t want it, the fans change.

SHYNE: Oh my goodness, no! It don’t have nothin’ to do with it. The people don’t want it, they don’t have it to get. So they settling for less. Of course if they can’t get it, that’s human instincts. Human instincts is adaptation. If you can’t have some—just like when I was in the pen, I wasn’t gettin’ no new magazines, and I wasn’t thinking ‘bout nothin’ I couldn’t do. Fuck everything I couldn’t do. That wasn’t even part of my vernacular or my thinking process. Because I knew I couldn’t have it so I wouldn’t even do it to myself. So don’t say the fans don’t want that classic shit, that fuckin’…

VANESSA: I don’t think most hip-hop fans today want the “classic” shit, or the street shit the way that they used to. I think it’s shifted and that it’s changed to a degree….

SHYNE: Nah, they want it greater! So do you think hip-hop is better today than it was 12 years ago?

VANESSA: No, I don’t think it’s better than it was. I think it’s shifted. And I think it’s shifted with the dynamic of the fan base and the money behind it. Twelve years ago there wasn’t so much to risk as there is now. And 12 years ago, the fans were different than the voices sitting there behind the keyboards trying to dictate shit, really having a voice online that never existed before—a questionable voice.

SHYNE: My humble opinion is you can’t really blame these entities, because the Internet applies to Spider-Man, Batman, all these fuckin’ billion-dollar blockbuster movies that come out and people are overwhelmed. All the words you use, all the operative words, “anticipate,” “excited,” they’re fans. You know why? Because it’s worthy of that. So what I say to you is, in the industry, if the people ain’t got shit to be excited about and shit to be anticipating, then they ain’t. It’s not that they don’t want to…

VANESSA: I just don’t know what the fuck excites people anymore.

SHYNE: Greatness excites people and that doesn’t exist. In my humble opinion, ain’t nothin’ out there that got a muthafucka jumpin’ up and down.

VANESSA: But is it that something hasn’t come along or is it just not possible to really excite people anymore?

SHYNE: What the fuck you mean it ain’t possible? Nessa, come on, man. You insane or somethin’?

VANESSA: I’m asking you. There’s such an element of hater in the world now, there’s such an element of hater in people that comes out now, that maybe folks’ automatic response is to not celebrate.

SHYNE: Nahhhh, it’s always been like that. You crazy? It was harder back then than it is now. At least now muthafuckas get over. Someone can sell two million ringtones, or two million downloads on a single. That’s it. But at least they givin’ them that much. So I don’t think it’s the hater, it’s just muthafuckin’ times is hard, so muthafuckas ain’t spending that guap for no bullshit. But I bet you they’ll spend that guap if some shit come along that got ’em blown away.

VANESSA: True, but I think it’s harder than ever to blow people away.

SHYNE: When Wayne puts out an incredible record, a million people go buy it the first week. When fuckin’ Kanye puts out an incredible record, a million people go buy it the first week. I think economics or no economics.

VANESSA: I don’t know if a million people are gonna buy a record the first week. I’m curious to see that. I read an article the other day, and it interviewed a whole bunch of people about their opinions of whether a million people will ever buy one record in a week again, and will that happen. With Em selling 750,000, I don’t know if I agree!

SHYNE: Eminem just did 700, and that’s without a hit record. Did Eminem have a hit record? Keep it honest, did he have a hit record with that last album he just put out?

VANESSA: I heard it was a hit on pop radio, but I don’t listen to pop radio so I’m not sure.

SHYNE: I’m asking you.

VANESSA: No. Not on his level…

SHYNE: Exactly. And he always sold. Yeah, he went to pop later, but Eminem as I knew him and not Marshall Mathers, when he was fuckin’…

VANESSA: But I heard that song on radio six, seven times on Hot 97 today. Took them a while but urban radio played Eminem eventually this go around. After pop music decided it was hot.

SHYNE: They play dudes that I wouldn’t even name in our conversation on the radio six, seven times a day. That don’t mean shit. I’m saying, a hit is just a form of, “Yo, I love that record. Oh, man, that record is incredible.” Is that the general consensus you gettin’ from the records he’s puttin’ out to promote his album?

VANESSA: No, that’s not the general consensus, but I don’t think you’ll get a general consensus like that for anyone.

SHYNE: It does, it does, it does. Because there was a time when Marshall Mathers was puttin’ out records and the general consensus was… I’ll tell you what, when I heard “Stan” and “I Am,” I was like, “Wow!” When I heard 8 Mile “Lose Yourself,” I was like…

VANESSA: You wanna set me up on this Eminem conversation, don’t you?

SHYNE: No, no, no. Ma, I’m tryna make a valid point which is it can be done. ’Cause if he’s selling several-hundred-thousand without a fuckin’ undisputable monster hit…

VANESSA: Maybe, maybe, maybe it can be done with the perfect set-up, but I think there was a misstep with his last album.

SHYNE: Of course it can be done! All you gotta do is make that shit that everybody want hands down.

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VANESSA: I don’t know. Maybe, if Eminem came out with this project a year ago on the rollout and put Recovery where Relapse was supposed to be, maybe with that story and he didn’t have that fake record in between, maybe he could have had the build up with his story and not talking yet. But that Relapse misstep in between fucked that up for me. So maybe, but you have to have such a story. Look at everything. He has five years of being gone, he had everything in between— the death of his friend, the break-up with his wife, how many times? His drug addiction, Katrina, a Black president, the recession, the war, politics in hip-hop, all of that was stuff to pick from and he made a fiction album about serial killers for his return. We needed something deeper than that. There’s not that many people who have a hiatus with a story like that and anticipation for their return like that, who are set up with that moment. And Relapse didn’t fill the moment. A lot of stars have to align.

SHYNE: And he still sold 700,000 without any of them shits aligning. So imagine if they would align. He would’ve did like 1.5. Bet that. And I wanna bet this, when the Damu Wayne get out, I bet you he do a million.

VANESSA: I’m curious to see. Maybe he could. Here’s the thing about it. Us journalists, and this is gonna sound dumb to you but it’s totally honest, we watch rappers and we see what happens. We’re not ignorant. The record label guys aren’t so much smarter than us. We’ve been documenting this for a while. So we see and we says, “Okay, they should make this move, they shouldn’t make that move, they should make this move.” And we watch the moves the rappers make and we say, “No, don’t do that! Yes, do that!” And we watch what we think are the wrong moves being made and they are. Then we document it and it bugs us out cause we watched it being made and even maybe some of us tried to give warning signals. We have our opinions of what guys should and shouldn’t do. And we watch, and we see them or their management or their labels advise them of what to do when we in our opinion think it’s the wrong or the right move ’cause we’ve seen it. And so your moves that you make when you have a certain story in your hands, and I don’t just mean a story that, “Oh, you’re gonna give it to XXL.” I mean, you have this story, you’re in this position—Kanye has it right now, you have it right now, Wayne will have it when he gets out—you’ve been through a certain, whatever it is, Eminem had it.

Once you have that in your hand, however you handle and roll it out, if it doesn’t get fucked up and you handle it well, then maybe you have the potential. Jay-Z—nobody rolls anything better out than Jay-Z. I’m not gonna sit here and jump on the Jay-Z bandwagon right now because that’s not what this is about, but nobody rolls anything out better than Jay-Z. However, he never has that story that others have had. What if he had the rollout, and the perfect planning and everything and made the moves that he did for the rollout, but he had the story ridiculous story at the same time? Then maybe there’s something crazy there. Because his team knows how to do it right.

So if Wayne came out, and they perfectly made the moves as far as when they put the album out, and they really plotted and planned everything he did just right—and I’m not saying I know what those moves are or that they must involve XXL, I’m just saying if they did it carefully and they did it right, then to me the potential’s there for something fuckin’ huge. But if it all goes to shit, and everything starts bouncing around, and this date gets pushed, and this person comes before him, and this interview happens on this site and that site and this blog and that blog, and gets pushed six months later and fans are confused. The shit’s gone, the moment’s gone, destroyed and there goes the million, I think. That’s my opinion.

SHYNE: The thing is, I really do believe in man’s mortality. So while I believe that a muthafucka can put the best brand together, it’s really some metaphysical shit when you talk about stars aligning. Like no matter what you do, you can’t make stars align. You can just set yourself up, and hopefully…

VANESSA: You’re right, you’re right, you’re right. Might be too deep, but you’re right.

SHYNE: That’s in everything. Whether it’s Michael Jordan and Phil Jackson, or fuckin’ Kobe Bryant and Phil Jackson, to work hard and you hope that everything falls into place. You don’t have control. ’Cause look at Tracy McGrady and fuckin’ Yao Ming, you would think that’s a match made in heaven and they would win a ring. But dude get hurt, the stars just not aligning. You can have, theoretically, the perfect fuckin’ set-up, and it just doesn’t work. But that’s one of the things that’s lacking just in general culture. Again, to get my humble perspective on shit, is that that sense of gratitude. That sense of mortality where a muthafucka understand, “Yo man, this shit might not happen.” I think we take for granted that, “Yo, it’s gon’ pop.” And the fuckin’ heavens, whoever be controlling that shit up in that metaphysical world, be showin’ us like, “Muthafucka, you ain’t in charge of this shit. You ain’t in charge of nothin’.”

I think back in the days, comin’ from Queensbridge or comin’ from Marcy, or comin’ from Shaolin, muthafuckas was grateful. Just grateful to be on the mic. Just grateful to be spittin’ and performin’ and seein’ they little videos out there with the rest of the pop world. And muthafuckas wasn’t thinkin’, Yo, I’m supposed to do this or I’m supposed to that. Or they wasn’t really sellin’ themselves like that. They were just musicians who just wanted to make their music and have their music recognized by the masses. Like they were grateful. I think it was a lot more, Thank God. Man, God is good. Wow, I’m grateful, man I can’t believe this!

Now, I think it’s some real, Yeah, whatever. I rap. I got this. Nah, muthafucka. Nah, it don’t work like that. This some shit, you supposed to knock on wood and be grateful, man. And maybe that’s why the faith for the fuckin’ music has gone for the worst. ’Cause muthafuckas ain’t grateful no more. They just really think that this some shit that’s due to them. And they supposed to pop. They supposed to sell 500 to a million the first week. And I think the heavens is showin’ us, Nah, nah it don’t have to go like that.

What do you think?

VANESSA: I think that it could be part of that. I also think that and I know I sound like a broken record, but I think technology plays a role with it. The fact that you can be in your house making a record and you don’t have to go in and put in that work of going to the studio and trying to battle, and trying to get on, and trying to be put on. You can be in you house, and be in your living room or in your mom’s basement, and you can take something and throw it online and make a song that way and be hear and create a fan base.

That changes the element of work that you put in or how you got on. It’s a big difference. It changes the artists. But I also think that we’re in a little “i” generation. Fuck you, go to my MySpace, go to my FaceBook, follow me on Twitter, did you see my so and so? Go to my this and that. Look at the photo I took of my bullshit. It’s all about “me” more than ever. So because of that, I think people care less about you— whoever you are. Whether you, as a celebrity, as a general person, in general I think. “Well, I’m more focused on us.” People, more than ever, want to be stars. And they see that there’s a possibility with reality shows, and they see there’s a possibility with Internet stars and all that, and there’s an obsession— not with everybody—but more people than ever with mainstream culture to be self-centered.

That controls things to a big degree. That’s on a mainstream level and I do think that that affects hip-hop. And you see that within the music, and how things are executed. You don’t see the passion go into things that you used to. Now everybody’s e-mailing each other these verses. They don’t get in the studio like that anymore. You know how one song turns into three because you guys are spending the night together in the studio and it just is goin’ and it’s goin’? Whatever it turns into organically, there’s nothing organic about an e-mail exchange like there was organic shit about studio interaction. And I think that hip-hop is missing that. It’s starving for the creativity that it was built on. For human interaction that made it. Because it’s being replaced by instant gratification. Forget press play, press send.

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SHYNE: I think we sayin’ the same thing. The unappreciativeness of the art and if you don’t appreciate the art, you ain’t gon’ go hard.

VANESSA: The art could be street or the art could be soft, the art could be hipster, whatever you want to call the music.

SHYNE: Whatever it is, it should be excellent.

VANESSA: Think about it. Everyday when you wake up, you can go online and listen to music that wasn’t there yesterday that someone threw up there from artists that they made. Doesn’t mean it’s good music. It’s just new music, right? But a couple years ago, I had to go to the store— to Canal St., to 125th St.— I had to physically leave wherever I was on a certain day, hope I caught the mixtape guy, hope I listened to the radio at the right time to listen to music. Now, I’m so spoiled that every morning when I wake up, I gotta get online and figure out which site I should go to either download or stream a full mixtape or new music from someone. And why aren’t they giving it to me on the regular for free? It’s almost like if you want to leave hip-hop for a second, you have to close the computer. There’s an element of that to it now. We’re at a hip-hop site, and everyday there’s tons of new music. And now the new thing is they’re giving you “EP’s”— it’s really just a mixtape ’cause that’s what they’re labeling it. And it used to be “my mixtape album” but it’s really just a mixtape. You’re oversaturated with stuff, so it changes the whole dynamic of how fans deal with the intake. Everybody doesn’t deal with it the same, but it’s still different than it was ten years ago, eight years ago, five years ago. And I appreciate it.

SHYNE: At the end of the day, I’m a grateful muthafucka, man. Being in the pen for 10 joints, I appreciate the…

VANESSA: You did 10 years in jail. Not a lot of people in rap sat 10 years in jail and think like you do.

SHYNE: Yeah, maybe you’re right. Maybe it does make me a little more grateful than a normal muthafucka ’cause you know what it’s like not to have. But I mean for me growing up on Wu and growing up on N.W.A, and like the greatest fuckin’ musicians ever. I guess I appreciate not having that. I appreciate not havin’ the Marvin Gaye’s and the fuckin’ Aretha Franklin’s, but I think that’s some divine shit, man. I think that’s shit that can only come about in the generations that has more of a divine connection. I think back then we were poor, in the 1970’s, 1960’s and 1950’s. The urban communities were plagued by drugs and all types of shit and I think music was a gift from God.
But not just a way out in the sense of, Here, go make some money. It was the way out in the sense of inspiration.

VANESSA: Anything else that you wanted to ask me during our interview?

SHYNE: Nah, you just threw me off. I was gon’ let you pull a gun out on some other shit, but you done pulled the gun out on some other shit.

VANESSA: What do you want me to pull the gun out on?

SHYNE: Do you think a musician has to really live what he sings about? And in hip-hop, do you think that’s a requirement? Like if a dude is talkin’ about bein’ from the streets, should he really be from the streets? Is that a requirement? Like does a guy really have to be a banger…

VANESSA: For me, yes. I know that hip-hop is not completely true, because we’ve been documenting it. I know that every thing people say is not true. I know that every guy from the street, everything that they say is not true. But I would like to believe that if you say you put that work in, you did put some work in. If you didn’t put that work in, you say that you’re an artist that you are some kind of real artist. If you say that you’re educated you are.

SHYNE: It used to be like that. Like when everybody was really tellin’ the truth without gettin’ they selves indicted, once you listen to fuckin’ Wu-Tang, or once you listen to Jigga, you knew that you could have faith in the shit that they was sayin’ and what they was representing. You always gon’ have a muthafucka that slide through the cracks. But overall, I know my heroes, they were all keepin’ it 100. All the guys that I looked to. Even Kanye. I love Kanye ’cause he’s honest.

VANESSA: I don’t think Kanye pretends to be anything he isn’t. I think he pretty much tells you what he is at this point.

SHYNE: But overall, that’s how it used to be with music. Everybody was who they were and it wasn’t so much about bein’ this image and this persona as much as it was making great music and making sure you had an image and a persona to go with that. But it was more so about the music. Now, it’s seems to be more…I don’t know. Music is the most important thing, that’s why it’s an interesting question. ’Cause I get beat up a lot for that because it’s like, ‘Yo, you know everybody ain’t gon’ be Shyne, and everybody ain’t gon’ be stand up and have integrity and live by the morals and the streets and the code. It’s not gon’ happen. So should a guy, should we not listen to his music because he’s not 100? Shouldn’t it just be great music still in all? Can you still listen to a guy even though you know everything he’s saying is just absolutely not true? And it felt like he’s telling you like after the record goin’, “I’m just a fan of gangsters. I’m just a fan of the real bangers so I make music about guys that inspired me but I never did any of this stuff, just for the record.”

I would have a easier time listening’ to a muthafucka if he said that than when a guy goes and be like, Yeah, yo, yeah, I’m from the streets. Yeah, yeah, word, word. But he’s so not any of the things he said. What do you think about that?

VANESSA: I think it’s fuckin’ crazy. You’re either from the streets, or you’re not. And if you’re not from the streets and you just wish you were, or you wanna pretend you are, that’s fuckin’ crazy. But I think that where are the people that are from the streets? Why aren’t they calling that person out? Because whoever it is, wherever they are, or whatever it is, they get away with it now. The doors open to get away with it ’cause nobody’s sayin’ anything. Why? That’s the bigger question to me.

There’s several people out there that can be talked about in this particular situation right now. It’s tough for me to call them out ‘cause I’m not from the fuckin’ streets, but I am surprised that guys from the streets haven’t said anything too much. And I think that that shows that in general in hip-hop we’ve gone to a kind of area where we’ve gone to either a subliminal place, a place where we don’t really want to diss people. And maybe that’s okay. Maybe that’s not a bad thing. We’ve had a lot of bad stuff happen because of beef, that’s something we discuss in this issue.

SHYNE: But I think it’s a difference…

VANESSA: You’re not saying anybody’s name right now. You’re a rapper not saying anybody’s name right now, for a reason. Not to get you started…

SHYNE: Nahhhhhhhhh, nah, nah. I’m asking you a question. There’s a time and a place for everything. You just listen to my records and you’ll see what I have to say.

VANESSA: Yeah, but I think…

SHYNE: Listen! Let me answer the question. You tried to put me on blast, let me answer the question. I’m not a bully. So I don’t believe in taking advantage of people per se, though I do have my feelings on this issue. And you know that when people listen to my music, they’ll hear me talkin’ about it and how I feel about the situation. But it’s not that important for me in the sense of callin’ a muthafucka name. I don’t think about muthafuckas like that. And they don’t matter that much to me. But I won’t do a record with anybody that’s not who they say they are. I won’t do a record with a muthafucka that’s gettin’ on the stand. I won’t do no record with no cops, no shit like that. I’m not doin’ that. And that’s just personal. I won’t do it, I won’t talk to them, I wont talk to them, I won’t fuck with them, I won’t look at them, I’ll keep it movin’ and have nothin’ to do with them. That’s just some personal shit.

And I don’t necessarily believe I need to be in the magazine sayin’ this person and sayin’ that person. That’s none of my business. I don’t give a fuck what them dudes do to that extent. It matters to me that I won’t fuck with them. And if I see any of my little brothers or any of big brothers fuckin’ with them, I’ll be checkin’ them. I’ll be callin’ them like, “Yo, what the fuck is you doin’? That’s not where we from, we don’t do that. We don’t talk to those guys. They can’t hang out with us.’

My approach is always to handle shit the way it’s supposed to be handled. ’Cause, you know, these muthafuckas is tellin’ on muthafuckas and you fuck around and get indicted with these dudes. So that’s why I don’t really be callin’ out names like that. ’Cause these muthafuckas’ll fuck around and tell on me. And I’ll probably never be able to come back to New York. So that’s why I really don’t be sayin’ nobody names. ’Cause I’m not really a rapper. If there’s a problem, I’ma handle it. So I don’t really wanna be puttin’ shit out there like that because that’ll be used as evidence against me. And that was already done. So particularly, that’s why I don’t do it. So I feel the way I handle it, is you’ll never see me fuckin’ with none of them dudes. You will never see me shakin’ they hand, nothin’. I won’t be in they video, they can’t be in my video, nothin’.

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