CANIBUS: Rhetorically speaking, that sort of goes back to what I was saying about the ideology of rap music in the '80's.
It was a mode of communication that you could learn from. Artists would sit down and write about their beliefs and they'd be technical about it. Artists like Rakim, for example. Big Daddy Kane, he'd use language that you didn't use in school and you didn't know it. But by hearing him say it then you'd go to school and you'd try to find out what he was talking about. Artist like The Gza, Killah Priest, Ras Kass, we all came up listening to relatively the same type of music and trying to emulate that in our own way. We wanted to be prophets, if you will, of an unexplored science.
I feel like my lyricism and the dexterity of it has come from trying to recreate and recapture what was being done when I was coming up. I wanna say things that provoke emotion. Because emotion manifests thought and thought manifest words and words manifest action and action manifests reality. Those are the five keys to making something that is in your imagination become real. First I see somebody rapping or I see people doing graffiti or a DJ spinning outside at a little block party. I'm out there and I see somebody get on stage. I see Grandmaster Caz get on stage and rhyme or I see Roxanne Shante or MC Shan or KRS One rocking.
Seeing that invokes an emotion in me and that emotion turns into a thought. I'm really moved by what they're doing so I wanna do it too. And then after the thought comes the words. I start talking about how I'm going to do it. Then the action is me writing the rhymes and me going to all these talent shows and all the battles that I've experienced and been through. And then it becomes a reality.
Now I walk down the street and if it's in a town where people love Hip-Hop music and somebody sees me, it doesn't matter what I'm doing or where I'm at, I could be overseas, somebody is going to say – yo man, you look like Canibus. I didn't make it that way by skipping any of those steps; I made it that way by following each and every one of those steps. I'm just emulating what I came up seeing. And I'm doing it in my way, I'm putting my tint on it and I'm grateful for being able to have done it and I'm grateful for the fans. They give me the energy back that I have been putting out there for so many years. And that's why I say I'm only doing what I was impressed upon to do.
My thing right now, if you want to know what I wish I could do or what I hope to do or what I'm charged to do or what I'm compelled to do right now, it's to inspire people who are writing rhymes. If they got profound statements and lyrics and they're just putting all their time and energy into writing the poetry, I would just like to inspire them to feel as though it's not in vain when you make the music and it doesn't sell off the charts. It's still not in vain. People are still listening and you're still making a difference.
But in order to inspire them I have to have some level of success too. That's my biggest penchant, just being successful. I'm successful at being a lyricist, successful at being known for stellar lyricism but there is no other success. And I think that is uninspiring to a fan that has got lyrics out of this world but they want to go get a record deal and they want to go buy their mom a house and they want to go floss and run around town.
No one ranks the success of the lyricism, they only rank material success and that's the hardest internal war that I have had to fight. Saying to myself, does it matter? Well of course it matters! If I go to the show and here I am performing for 3000 people and I show up walking to the venue and I leave walking, does it make me any less of a lyricist? No. But how does it look to the fan that's saying – man, Canibus is incredible. Then he sees me and it's like – Canibus ain't what I thought he was gonna be. That shit fucks with me more than anything else.
That's why a lot of times I am reclusive and I am a recluse. Just like Rakim, just like Big Daddy Kane. I'm not putting their business out there like that because for all I know everything could be peachy with them. I'm just saying that if people sit there and they're wondering like – yo man, why don't you do shows, why don't you come out, the people just wanna see you.
Yea, I know people want to see me. But once they see me, how does that inspire them? Does it make them go home and switch up their shit? And say – yo, I don't want to be lyrical no more, fuck that, I need to just make me some club songs ‘cause I need to get on the radio; I don't wanna be like Canibus; I don't want to speak my mind and try to make the art grow and get blackballed, I don't wanna be like him.
I'm so glad you asked me this question and I ended up saying this, because it's embarrassing to talk about it sometimes. It's like, how can you have eight or nine albums out and be a decade into the game and still be scrambling to get studio time and scrambling to get backing from artists who get backing in an industry where I helped create a lot of the shit that's out there now. If Hip-Hop is a religion then I am one of the disciples. I'm one of the twelve too, I'm not like the fucking thirtieth disciple; I'm in the twelve.
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