BUSTA RHYMES: I was from East Flatbush, Brooklyn. I thought Long Island
was soft. My mom told me we had to go. I was vexed. I ain’t even gonna front. I
got to Long Island, I saw flowerbeds and shit, the newspaper boy in the morning.
I saw dew on the grass when I came outside. Shit I ain’t ever seen in BK, nigga.
You know what I’m saying? That type of shit was a lot more intimate than
Brooklyn. So at the end of the day, I just felt like this would dilute my rough and
tough edge and shit.
CONRAD TILLARD: We playing a role from the time we’re seven years old. We
walk down the street in the neighborhood and somebody calls us a sissy, a
sucker, church boy. We start playing that role. When I see young fathers with
their children, I’m always happy. But when I see them punch their child in the
chest and say, nigga you got to be ready for this.
DMX: [Rapping] The streets, the cops, the system, harassment, the options get
shot go to jail and get your ass kicked. The lawyers the part they’re all of the
puzzle, release, the warning, try not to get in trouble.
CHUCK CREEKMUR: I just think in general our society limits the range in which
men can express their emotions. [Rapper in background] “I ain’t neva scared. I
ain’t neva scared” We just have to have a game face on all the time, like you
can’t cry in front of your boy. You just can’t do it.
JACKSON KATZ: If you’re a young man growing up in this culture, and the
culture is telling you that being a man means being powerful, being dominant,
being in control, having the respect of your peers, but you don’t have a lot of real
power, one thing you do have access to is your body and your ability to present
yourself physically as somebody who is worthy of respect. And I think that’s one
of the things that accounts for a lot of the hyper masculine posturing by a lot of
young men of color and a lot of working class white guys as well. Men who have
more power, men who have financial power and workplace authority and forms of
abstract power like that don’t have to be as physically powerful because they can
exert their power in other ways.
KEVIN POWELL: The hardness that you’re talking about was accelerated as the
stuff that was happening during the Reagan-Bush era was taking place. The
whole crack thing, proliferation of guns, a lot of us going to prison, and you got to
be harder than the context of prison. A lot of the mentalities that you see come
out of these forced environments; the gang environment, the prison environment.
Sooner or later, all of the stuff that we saw happening on the streets was going to
begin to be reflected in the music and the culture.
[MC Battle] ANNOUNCER: Link to Link Entertainment, straight from New York,
Harlem.