March 21, 2005 @ 3:06 am

Online Exclusive: One Be Lo & His S.O.N.O.G.R.A.M.

by: Kellye Whitney

Opinions, beliefs, views. Not things that typically come up in conversation when discussing an artist’s latest music, but One Be Lo isn’t the typical artist. We all know who those are - the people who have four or five programmed responses to media queries and trot them out with minute variations in tone, smile, and clothing fabric. Few popular Hip Ho

Opinions, beliefs, views. Not things that typically come up in conversation when discussing an artist's latest music, but One Be Lo isn't the typical artist. We all know who those are - the people who have four or five programmed responses to media queries and trot them out with minute variations in tone, smile, and clothing fabric. Few popular Hip Hop artists today understand paying dues, or consider the affect that their music will have on the youth and the community at large. A typical artist's idea of going global is international exposure and units sold overseas, which is good. It makes sense, but is there more to this music game? One Be Lo thinks so. Tell me about album S.O.N.O.G.R.A.M Basically that's my formal introduction. That's me introducing myself to the listener like, this is what I'm about. This is the kind of music I'm on. This is what my views are on particular topics. It's an album I had to get off my chest before I could advance or move on in my career. It's kind of personal, getting people closer to what I'm doing and who I am as a person. I've been on projects before where I felt like I was being creative and making some pretty good songs, but I wanted to put out a project where people can connect with me more as an artist. Get a little more intimate. What are some of the revelations you're expressing? It's a combination of lyricism, MC, braggadocio type stuff. I'm spitting some views on the industry and hip hop in general. I got a couple splashes of personal experiences. I tell a lot of stories on the album and the overall message is I'm just tryin' to put a positive vibe out there. I touch on some social issues. Like what? One song in particular is addressing the black community. That song is called "Axis." When I do music I want to take some of the same topics that we hear over and over again and like, put a new twist to it. This song is somewhat political. I touch on some issues that deal directly with the black community. Some of the lyrics are, 'Before we had a problem we came from Adam's sperm / You see with plain vision we live in the same system / Cocaine victims once was able, can't even raise children / Where's the village when you need it?' Basically, some of the problems that we're dealing with and how can we correct that? The first verse is directed toward us as a people and the second verse is a little more global. I'm getting into the politics and the history of this country. I wanted to do a political, black song, without being on some clichéd fuck George Bush type shit, you know? I think it's all relevant, but I think that if you're gonna talk about the same thing, do it in a different kind of way where everybody can be open, or you're givin' it to 'em with new flavor. Or just listen because it's presented in a new way. Exactly. I try to slip it in there. You got different splashes of all of that and I basically try to stir up some thoughts, man. Some of us already know so it's a reminder. For some of these kids out here who ain't really thinking of things in that kind of way, I try to put it out there where we can think about it, you know? What do you think about the state of music right now? Do you think that there's a difference between rap music and Hip Hop? Totally. Totally. Totally. The difference to me is rap music, what we're hearing on the radio, is more of a business/entertainment type industry. And the people who run that industry, the corporations, the major record labels or whoever because it's a lot of independent companies that's jumping on that tip too so, it ain't just the mainstream thing no more. The people who participate in that, their goal is to make money and to sell a product. Just like cigarettes, they don't care who's buying it. They don't care how it's affecting people. They're in this business to make money, and we're in business to sell this product. They don't care if it's good or bad, how it's affecting the community, or how it's influencing the youth. They're selling a product and that product is rap music. That product is a product just like deodorant, just like a car, or just like rubber bands. It's just another product on the shelf. And it's wild because I believe that if the powers that be keep the people ignorant, ignorance breeds ignorance. An ignorant person will spend they money on anything. They'll support anything 'cause they don't know no better. Now, when you have some knowledge, you ain't gon' buy anything. You ain't gon' listen to anything, you ain't gon support anything. They not in the business of educating people and uplifting people and changing people's lives. They in the business of selling a product and marketing a product and they don't care about the artist no more. They don't respect the culture of the art form any more, and they don't respect the listener. They respect the people that's buyin' their product. If you want respect and knowledge then you have to listen to hip hop. Right. Now, hip hop can have a business twist to it, but it doesn't have to, you know what I'm sayin'? A lot of people say what is hip hop? Is hip hop dyin'? And in my opinion, hip hop, if you know what it is, hip hop is gon' always be around. Why is that? Hip hop was born in struggle and out of struggle, and it survived and grew in the state of struggle, and it's gon' continue to do that. That's what it is. That's where it came from. It's the voice of the people who struggled to put it out there. They created this form of music and this culture that help people escape in various ways, from that struggle. Hip hop for me? It was an educational tool. It taught me things. When I wasn't listening to my parents, my teachers, I was listening to hip hop. When I wasn't worshiping God, I was worshiping hip hop. When I wasn't working and supporting myself through another job. I was working to support myself and doing the same thing now with hip hop. I think hip hop is a tool that can be used for so many things so we gotta be careful because it's powerful. The same way you can educate kids about Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, the way I was, through hip hop, you can also teach 'em how to roll blunts and cook up kilos, and cocaine and crack and alla that. All kinds of crazy stuff. If positivity was in right now, you would see a whole lot of positive cats getting radio spins and getting' video rotation because it's selling. But I do believe that people control business. Business ain't about charts and diagrams and percentages. It's about the people who go out and spend their money or demand a particular supply. That's why artists like myself have to connect with the people because the people are the ones who say, 'Play this shit on the radio, yo. We want to know about this car right here. We wanna come to your store and buy this. Ya'll ain't got it, ya'll sleepin.' Then the radio station, the record stores, they get on the horn and say, 'Yo, who is this cat?' That's where the supply and demand comes from, but a lot of these artists today, they're lazy. They don't understand you gotta work. Nobody's gon' save your life and these record labels now, they ain't developin' no artists. You gotta develop yourself now. You gotta develop your own fan base and your own image and once you begin to do that, the industry will come to you. The power of Hip Hop is in the control of the artist. We say what Hip Hop is. Not no businesses, not no commercials, or corporations. The people, real people, like real shit. Excuse my language. People want to hear some real stuff. If you're real, whether that's street real or college real or Malcolm X real or Iceberg Slim real, people want to see some real shit. For all the underground heads who are familiar with your work through Binary Star, what happened there? As far as why we're not together? Yeah, 'cause if it's a secret you should definitely tell me and the Internet. I ain't gon' get all deep into the details, 'cause there's two sides to every story. To be a nice guy, I'll just say we had a lot of differences. In any relationship, whether it's a man and a woman or two MCs, we can live together and we can be brothers but that don't mean we can do business together. A lot of relationships go sour because of business. He had his own way of doing things and thinking about things, he had his own goals and ambitions and that's cool. That's what he was on, but that's not what I was on. Unfortunately we made good music together and a lot of people was under the impression that it was gon' always be like that but - Things change. Yeah, things change. He wanted to do some things a certain kind of way and I didn't wanna stand in between him and that, and ain't nobody gon' stand in the way of me and what I'm trying to do as an artist. That's my personal expression. If I'm gon' be in a crew where I can't be myself, then honestly I might as well go rap with Puffy and get paid to do songs with Puffy or somebody, you know? The reason I pick up a pen, and say what I say is because it's coming from the heart and nobody can tell me what that is, or when that's ready, or when it ain't ready, you know? The illusion of the fans, and oh, the music is this and everybody's popular, sometimes that can be an illusion. The best thing for me to compare it to is a relationship. You might be with a guy that everybody else thinks he's a wonderful guy but you know some things about him that everybody else don't know. And it would change the whole scope if they did. Yeah. He ain't good for you, and you don't want to put him out your life, but they don't understand why. It wasn't a good situation for me so I had to do what I had to do. Just imagine four years later, you done got married to somebody else and had kids and they still asking you about that one guy you was with four five years ago. What do you wanna tell VIBE.com readers that interviewers never ask about you, about S.O.N.O.G.R.A.M. or about Islam or anything? I just want people to know that this is the truth right here, you know? I speak on topics and talk about situations that you cannot deny unless you're on some other shit. I used to be real modest and humble as far as telling people to pick up the album. And maybe it's not for you, and if you get a chance check it out and tell me what you think, but now I got a different understanding. I just went to Mecca and Medina not too long ago and I spent a month in Saudi Arabia. That impact, it kind of changed my whole mission on the mic and as a human being period, you know? So the thing is, now I'm looking like this world is sick. This music industry is sick and whether you got full blown cancer or whether you got a sore throat, you're sick. We sick, you feel what I'm sayin'? You seem to be very conscious of music's impact on the youth. You mentioned that you went to prison. What kind of lesson did you learn that you feel comfortable sharing for young people who are affected by these rather sick rap things that we hear on the radio? What do you want to say to little kids? In reality, that's not reality. What? What a lot of people consider to be real. My man is real, he on the streets. But the cats who are really on the streets out there in the thick of it, they're trying to get up out of that. All of these gang members, eventually they're trying to get out of that. Some people are trapped due to circumstances, but a lot of these kids listening to music today, it's self inflicted. It's a lot of forces or powers that be or whatever you want to call it that's keeping the blind fold on a lot of people, and influencing them to do certain things whether its for political reasons or whether it's oppressive or whatever. The point is, if you an artist, you ain't gotta do this and sound like this and be like that to be popular or respected. We had guns and hustled and did dirt and been to prison and we don't even rhyme about that stuff. And when we do rhyme about it we ain't glorifying it, we ain't sayin' it was like this and it was like that. We want to let cats know that if you headed in that direction, you ain't gotta go because this is the result of it. If you are in that situation, you are in prison or you gotta record, or you a baby and you're only 16 years old, it ain't the end of the world. You can still have a career, you can still move on and have a productive life. You ain't gotta use that as an excuse. The man is holding you back. 'I can't get a job 'cause I got a felony' or whatever it is. Me and my peoples, we seein' the world and we seein' a lot of opportunities and taking care of our families, and we're moving on because that's what we decided to do. We used to hustle in the street, now we hustle in the studio and it's all legal. What we givin' back to the community, what we givin' back to the youth, we ain't feeding 'em poison. We trying to feed 'em something that's gon' get 'em off the poison and make society a better place.

Article tags: Online, Exclusive, One, Lo, His, S.O.N.O.G.R.A.M 

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