I’m sitting down to eat lunch with my family at this Chinese buffet when the phone rings. It’s the publisher of HipHopDX, Tommy. He’s calling about the interview I did with a rapper out of Chicago named Naledge. I’m way behind on delivering it.

“Where’s the piece… Just Blaze… at least 4 to 5000 people need to read it,” he fires off. We’ve spoken, maybe, four times in the last 2 years. Always the same.

I used to run a site back in the day, so I feel him. However there’s a problem. This kid Naledge has no relationship whatsoever to David Mays, Ray Benzino, Reginald Dennis, the SOURCE, the Game, 50 Cent, G-Unit or Eve’s sex tape. It’s not about Fat Joe jacking “Lean Back,” Cassidy jacking Joe Budden’s track or Jay-Z jacking Biggie’s lyrics.

No… it’s not about any of those things. So you couldn’t possibly want to read this story. This story is about Jabari Evans aka Naledge – a kid from the Windy City who didn’t grow up on the wrong side of the tracks. It’s about a brother that saw the well documented ghetto reality all around him and chose not to fall in the trap.

“People don’t understand Chicago,” explains the twenty-year-old. “Chicago is one of the most racially segregated cities in the country. Middle class black people and poor black people all live together. I grew up, basically, a middle class kid with both parents in the home. Still, [in Chicago] as long as you went outside… as a kid… you seen a lot.”

Shorty didn’t want to be a thug. See… told you wouldn’t be interested.

No… this kid Naledge isn’t a Black P-Stone, Vice Lord, Latin King or a Gangster Disciple. He didn’t attend the school of hard knocks. He went to the University of Pennsylvania. In those Ivy League halls, an impromptu freestyle would lead to a meeting with a New Jersey deejay named Double-O and a group, Kidz in the Hall, was formed.

“School is a hustle,” Naledge points out. “If being intelligent is a hindrance, there’s something wrong with our society and us as a people.”

Blah, blah, blah…

Naledge is not flossy, icy or jiggy. In fact, he openly admits he’s broke. the rocks in his ears are cubic zirconia. He sells blood to keep his account balance up and crashes conventions for a free meal.

NOTE: You can press the back button at any time. There’s bound to be a story about groupies comparing Jay-Z and Nelly’s genitalia posted somewhere. Who wants to hear about some snobbish backpacker talking that conscious mess?

“It’s a touchy subject,” says Naledge of the “conscious” tag. “I’m aware – not conscious. You have to subscribe to a social code when you’re labeled a conscious rapper, but you don’t feel like one thing all the time. People freaked out about Jesse Jackson’s sex scandal. You think Jesse Jackson doesn’t have sex? Martin Luther King was having orgies, but that doesn’t take away from what he did. People put you in the box. Now I’m in the Kanye West box because I’m from Chicago. My box can’t be boxed in.” Continued on page 2 »