“My first fuck was that year still I don’t call her/my own father brought me over to her house that weekend/he was cheating/so I lost my big V while he was beating.”

DX: Did your pops really take you to lose your virginity?
Blu: Yeah, that’s a true story. I lost my virginity while my pops was smashing some chick on the side. He took me over to old girl’s crib like, “Don’t tell your mom,” (Blu’s step-mom). And she had some cute ass daughters that were older than me and it just went down that night. And I was just like…word. [Laughs]

“I got a call from my girl last week/she telling me about that time of month and how it may not come/dropped the phone right before she said I might have a son.”

DX: How did this story end? Did you end up having a child?
Blu: Naw, that story is actually not true. It happened but it didn’t happen like that. It’s what goes on…the thoughts. I’ve experienced a few abortions in my life. And I still don’t have a child and that was something that really affected me. I wanted to talk about it somehow. I just decided to spit what was going through my head at the time when she told me that. I know people that have been through the same situation. But I didn’t want to put an ending on it because people have different outcomes to that situation and eventually I’d like to have a different outcome with that situation.

"What nigga/I skipped class and school a few times but I ain’t dumb nigga/pitched grass a few times but I don’t pump nigga,"

DX: So you were pitching weed?
Blu: Yeah, that was some real quick shit. That was like fun. [Laughs] I wasn’t really working or nothing at the time. I was just kicking it and writing raps. I would have different roommates throughout my life that slanged weed. So I was like shit I don’t have no burger today, I guess I’ll flip a couple dubs. [Laughs] Now and then I’d pick up a couple bags and start pushing. But I left it alone. The second time I think I ended up in debt or something. I wasn’t that good at it. It’s just something I did to past time.

DX: You’ve lived all over Southern California. What were the circumstances that kept you moving?
Blu: I was raised like that so I just continued to do it. My mom moved around a lot and when I moved in with my dad it was somewhat stable but that was only two years of my life. I went to three different schools in 6th grade and 12th grade. I’d go from a nice crib to an apartment. It was just…life. When I got out of school, I didn’t graduate and didn’t have a job so I just decided to rap for a living. But no one was really checking for me. So I was just moving everywhere. I had mad homies from all over so I’d just be like, "Yo let me crash on your couch for like three months." [Laughs] I wouldn’t say that, but it would go down like that for three months here or six months there. I found myself in some nice situations like living in a four million dollar beach house on the shore. That was for three months of my life. That shit was ridiculous. Now I live in a cabin in the middle of Los Angeles in an alley, but you know, that’s life. [Laughs]

DX: Earlier you mentioned how much Ta’Raach inspired you. You two are working on a project right now called C.R.A.C. Can you tell me about how that came about?
Blu: At the time I was recording with Exile, who Aloe Blacc hooked me up with. Aloe called me one day and told me he was recording an EP with Ta’Raach. He was like “Come through. It’s a different type of project. I’m not rapping on it at all but I wanted you to rap on it.” So I was like, "Okay I’m down," wrote a verse on the spot and laid it first take. Ta’Raach was like, “Naw man, cut that shit again.” So I cut it again and he was like, “That’s dope. You’re dope. Good looks, we should do some work together,” and I was like, "Yeah, I’m down." I wasn’t too familiar with his music then so I decided to do some research. Then I was really inspired. I heard his track “Hey” and I was like, "Damn this is the illest Hip Hop song ever." That song inspired the lyrics on Below the Heavens so much it’s ridiculous. Around the time I was finishing up Below the Heavens in 2005, I linked up with Ta’Raach again that November. He was like let’s hook up and do some shit and I was like, "I’m going to Europe in seven days," and he was like, “Well, we have seven days.” So 75% of the C.R.A.C. album [The Piece Talks] was done in seven days.

DX: Wow that was pretty quick. What happened next?
Blu: After the seven days, we pressed up an album in the summer of '06 of what we had done in those seven days. So Tres Records came along and they’d already heard it from when we leaked it. And they were like, “We want to mess with that.” We were like, "Nah, we put it out ourselves," and they were still like, “We want to put it out.” So we were like oh shit. We put a couple more joints on it that we had catalogued like “Buy Me Lunch” and “Love Don’t” just to switch it up a little bit and now we finally have the official release date of April 22nd. I’m happy because I got to work with someone I really look up to which is a lot of people I work with. But with Ta’Raach, I learned so much coming out of that situation. And he’s still one of my best friends now. We got a lot coming up. We got a C.R.A.C. cartoon coming, we’re shooting the video for “Buy Me Lunch” tomorrow. We’re gonna shoot one for “Bullet Through Me.” It’s fun man. We’re just doing whatever we want just having fun making music. Continued on page 3 »