DX: When you wrote that record, the message is multi-faceted. On one hand, the guy is curb serving and the king, the superman of his neighborhood. On another, he’s a block baby, and there’s so much more. What was the message you were trying to convey not only to folks in the hood, but white kids like me watching it on MTV back then?
Big Hutch: I think what people got from “Black Superman” is sometimes you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do. Sometimes it’s not all about the shine. KMG’s verse is, he’s a madman who really doesn’t give a shit, but he’s pushed to that point to where he’s got to do what he’s got to do. My verse is more like, I’m pushed into a situation to where it’s so hard for me – my moms is hurtin’, I’m hurtin’, so I’m just gonna push it like this, but I’m trying to save who I can save in my world. I think what it bred through it was sometimes you’ve got to go through the darkness in order to shine, just to have a little bit. You’ve got to do wrong to have right.

In the times we was livin’ in when we wrote Uncle Sam’s Curse, that was the whole premise of that album. As young, black teenagers and early twenty-somethings, the way we was lookin’ at the game was, “Hey, it’s rough out here, man. It ain’t no joke.” So we decided to make a record that was gangsta and politics. We were understanding to where a lot of peoples’ mindset was in this country at that time. That’s why that worked for us. We were so on top of everything that was going on in the country. Back then, either the groups were gangsta-gangsta’d out or they were political; there was nobody who bridged the gap. When we did Uncle Sam’s Curse, we bridged the gap with that. It allowed people to listen to some gangsta shit, but have some thought to it.

DX: Were you embraced by that conscious, political community that championed Public Enemy, X-Clan and Poor Righteous Teachers?
Big Hutch: Oh yeah! For sho’. We had did a record about us hustling on the streets, which was Livin' Like Hustlers; Black Mafia Life was our family record. We’ve done all those records that said we were tough, grindin’ it out, hustled, pushed packs up to weight and up to drinkin’ nice liquor, havin’ nice cars and being around women and still bein’ grimy, we had done that, so we wanted to bridge every step that we’d taken in our careers, and put a record out to the marketplace that brought both of those worlds together. We are big N.W.A. fans and we are big Public Enemy fans, and we’d never seen it done.

DX: You mentioned Black Mafia Life. So many people ask you about Eazy. My question to you is about Tupac. At that time, Tupac was entrenched in Northern California. Above The Law chose him as a guest on that album, ushering him into Los Angeles. Go back with me and tell me why that went down…
Big Hutch: Yeah! The first record he cut outside of Digital Underground was “Call It What U Want” [click to read] One thing about it was ‘Pac was always around us, even when he was comin’ up. We had the road manager at the time. We used to always have ciphers. Dude was just so off the hook, and we were like, “Man, we gotta get him on this record.” It wasn’t no doubt. [Digital Underground] did “Same Song” [click to read], and we [knew it]. He did “Trapped” [click to read] and all that shit too. He was just so vicious.

It’s funny, at the time, like you said, nobody was checkin’ for ‘Pac in L.A. like that, not for real, for real. We put him on “Call It What U Want” just based on his skills. We always hung out and did shit together too. ‘Pac was our partner, he was in with us like that. As we were comin’ up, he was just around us like he was around Digital.

DX: As a producer, you brought a true talent into the game in Kokane. As a producer, did it or does it frustrate you to see him go find successes with Dr. Dre, with Snoop, with G-Unit and you not really get the credit as somebody who helped polish that diamond?
Big Hutch: Yeah. It’s like this: one thing you’re gonna learn about me is, I’ma be real with you. I tell the truth, man, and hopefully it’ll set you free. My point is this: when people take something that I brought to the game – and I brought the Kokane theory to the game, he delivered it as the artist – but it gets kinda disturbing to me in the fact that no one pays homage to me. He do a record with Snoop. The fact is, that sound’s been here [when it’s considered groundbreaking]. Give me my props. That’s the only thing I have a problem with. Everybody likes to look like they’re the king of the hill, but don’t nobody want to say who helped them get to the top of the hill. There’s a lot of people in Hip Hop who don’t know the question you just asked me – they don’t know where the hell Kokane came from. Because guess what? Ain’t nobody ever said it. That’s what’s bad. I ain’t got no problems with anybody using him, this or that, but when you start addressing those kind of questions, just don’t act like you’ve all of a sudden got it at the truck stop on the bathroom wall. Continued on page 3 »