Vince Staples Only Wants to Rap for Two More Years

The California Sunday Magazine profiled Vince Staples, painting a conflicted portrait of the rapper who has been able to escape gang culture due to his profession, but is already planning his exit.

"You’re out of your goddamn mind if you think I’m going to be doing this music shit for more than two more years,” Staples said. “And let me really get some money? If I get some in the next six months, you’ll never see me again.”

Staples, who has recently been tapped by Time and GQ for video interviews, is critical of rap culture, going so far as to say, “It’s not that I don’t care about rap. I’m not a fan of rap culture.” And later: "[Rap] doesn’t progress with the times. I think that’s unfortunate, because rap culture is an extension of black culture, no matter what anybody says. That shows we have to get better.”

Staples also commented on his low key needs, “I have no need for any extravagance. I’m blessed to not have that nature, which is good for this up-and-down business.” And the hand that Odd Future played in breaking him onto the scene. "They didn’t change my life. I love them to death; they opened doors, but ...Syd couldn’t pay my mom’s rent. She would’ve if she could’ve, but she couldn’t. None of them could. So that didn’t change anything.”

The profile covered Staple's days as a gang member, with the rapper saying that he will forever be tied to that lifestyle. “I’m always going to be associated. I’m never going to say I don’t gangbang. I don’t believe in ‘former gang member,’ all this shit like that. That’s not true. I’m still a gang member, forever, until I die.”

At one point in the piece, the reporter asks if the art Staples is going over will be for an upcoming album, and Staples gets elusive.

"It might be ten different covers for the album," he says. "We might not do an album cover. We might not do an album. You never know.”