XXL The Seminar

THE 10 FRESHMEN
HIP-HOP CLASS OF '09



I HAVE BEN WATEING ON THIS ARTICLE FOR THE LONGEST IT GOT A COUPLE OF MY FAVORIT ARTIST UP HEAR I FEEL LIKE THEY TOUCH ON A LOT OF IMPORTANT TOPICS THAT A LOT OF CATS DON’T NOW ABOUT I THINK THEY PICKED A GOOD CLASS FOR 09 GO PICK UP A COPY IF YOU DON’T HAVE IT

HEAR IZ A LITTLE PREVEIW OF THE ARTICLE
XXL: So what do you guys think of being named XXL’s top 10 rappers to look out for in 2009? Did you see last year’s issue? What did you think of being part of this when you got the call?
Kid Cudi: Aw, man, shit is dope.
Wale: I think it’s very cutting-edge, and it’s very ahead of the curve for XXL to acknowledge the fact that there’s a new breed of MCs coming in. The ’90s was cool, but it’s like, for so long, people ain’t been able to let it go. Like, not letting go the fact that Jay-Z’s the greatest rapper of all time, but letting go, like, Yo, it’s been this wall and muthafuckas ain’t been able to push through it. ’Cause, you know what, everybody that’s come out after Biggie’s death is wack. If I didn’t know who you were before Biggie died, then you’re wack. Biggie died in, what, ’97? Eleven years ago. And it’s like nobody new that you just found out about—with a couple exceptions, like Kanye, T.I. But before those guys died, people could come out new, and it’d be like, “Wow, this dude is dope,” and people would embrace that rapper. Now it’s like, “Oh, Wale? Oh, who is he? Cudi, who the fuck is that? Ace Hood and Cory?” People are just not ready to accept anything new, because it’s all… I was on the Rock the Bells tour. You would see people go crazy for Wu-Tang. Crazy. And it hurt my heart, because why Wu-Tang drop an album now? All them people ain’t gon’ buy it. It’s like everything stopped after Biggie died. Everything stopped and slowly declined, with the exception of, like, Kanye, T.I. and a couple of other artists. But the megasuperstar is gone. It used to be seven, eight megasuperstars. It used to be groups—Tribe, Wu-Tang—and it’s all gone now. Now it’s just, like, Kanye, Lil Wayne and everyone else.
XXL: How do the rest of you feel about what Wale said?
Kid Cudi: I think that everybody here is the collection of what took so long to create. Like, when that shit was poppin’, like what Wale said, in that era, we was just young’ns listening to that shit. That’s what inspired us. And now it took us to grow and actually have that vision, and everybody in here has the same dream, and we all worked at it and got to this point. So it took that long. It took 11 years for some muthafuckas to come up and be like, bong, this is what you… Muthafuckas, kids—like a Nas, if that nigga had a son, his son would be on our shit. Like, Prodigy’s son. He’s one of my biggest fans. Prodigy’s son came up to me, like, “Yo, I like [your song] ‘Day ‘N’ Nite.’” I was like, “Word? You know your father is, like, one of the originators of gangsta rap?” [Group laughter]
That’s the illest shit in the world to me. So we speaking to the new generation. It’s a whole new breed of young kids. Girls, boys, all types of muthafuckas is coming up and just wanna hear something different. The kids that wasn’t around for the Biggies and the Tupacs and only see the reruns of the videos and weren’t actually watching the awards shows when muthafuckas was beefing and shit and got to see the East Coast/West Coast beef. We doing it to give our kids, our kids’ kids, something to talk about 20 years from now. Everybody in this know who Soulja Boy is. He played his part in hip-hop, and that’s what hip-hop’s all about. In the beginning, it was just have fun. But, now, the new breed, like us, have shit to talk about. More than just talk about working a 9 to 5 and blue-collar shit.

OFF /www.xxlmag.com/room has the goal of longevity, and I hope everybody’s blessed enough to have that, because not everybody’s gon’ have that longevity. It’s a give and take. Some muthafuckas’ roles is different than the next. Soulja Boy… Who’s to say he’s gon’ be here 20 years from now? I mean, I like his shit. You gotta take it for what it is. He’s a young kid. He’s doing his thing. He played a role. His record is, like, the illest shit. It was on TV. It was in movies… Muthafuckas