00:00:02 Enongo-Lumumba Kasongo
Okay, perfect. So Akua, I’ll let you–
00:00:04 Akua Naru
Please. No, no, no, please. By all means. You go first.
00:00:09 Enongo-Lumumba Kasongo
So my name is Enongo Lumumba-Kasongo. I am an MC. I’m an assistant professor at Brown University in the music department, and I have the honor and pleasure of being connected with Akua Naru, my sister and friend. Another incredible MC. And we met on campus, actually, we just happened to be starting at the same year. And, you know, after connecting, I learned about this project that she was developing to build something, some kind of archive or database to capture all of the works of women and girls in hip hop over the past, at this point, 50 years. So, as someone who had created a life through this amazing thing called hip hop, I was drawn to the project and knew that I wanted to be part of it. So we’ve just been working for the past– since 2020– to collect information. And we’re now in this new phase where we’re doing oral interviews, oral histories with some of these icons, including yourself, to get a better sense of like what it has meant to be a woman in rap over the past 50 years. So I’ll pass the mic over to to Akua.
00:01:29 Akua Naru
I thought I was muted. I’m Akua. So what can I say? I mean, yeah, I’m an MC. I’ve been writing my entire life, really. Sometimes, unfortunately, you know what I mean? Because the space has been so hostile for us for so long. And that’s what kind of led me to this work Because just as an artist, as a performer, as a traveler. Like, I have been on tour for a long time, and there was a period where I was at Harvard doing some research about women and hip hop. I said, like, if I had a moment to just slow down and get still, I wanted to see who else was there. And so I started sort of trying to create a master list of women’s recorded works throughout– at that time, it was like, when was this? 2018? For five years, it’s been about five years. So throughout 45 years of hip hop history, I’m sorry, hip hop music and culture. And I started finding all of these alternate stories, alternate to what I had thought I knew. And I feel like I think I know quite a bit about hip hop. Or so I thought. And I talked to other folks like other scholars, people who study hip hop, people who think they know a lot. Everybody was baffled. And so I have been trying to find support for this work, which was really– First, I wanted to build a database. And then that kind of turned into an archival project somehow, because I was finding stuff that kind of–
00:03:07 CMG
One thing led to another. Period, right?
00:03:09 Akua Naru
A sister led to a brother, you know what I mean? Right. So, all of that just to say that, then the pandemic hit and I was doing this alongside other creative projects. And then in the pandemic, it was like an opportunity for me to hit people up because we’re just sitting at home. So we had met on campus, but I was being shy and not really. I’m very silly, like, we’re going to have a lot of fun, because I’m a whole comedian. Definitely funnier than Tiffany Haddish. And I’m not trying to be funny. But I’ll be clear.
00:03:50 CMG
That’s how you should be thinking! That’s what I’m talking about.
00:03:50 Akua Naru
So we met and then we just kind of started a collective. And through the collectives, we started trying to raise money to build this project and ultimately got the attention of the folks at Brown who said, let’s permanently house it, let’s build it here. And so through getting institutional support, that was a huge– you know what I mean? Step for us to be seen and for the work to be respected. Unfortunately on one hand, but fortunately on the other. And so that’s what kind of led us here. So we’re like, okay, at this phase. I mean, we’ve been building it since November 2020, and we’re thinking to make it as a resource available to the public by like fall 2025. So ultimately, it’ll be like a resource that you could access through an app on your phone. Or you could log in and you’ll be able to just learn. It’ll be like a complete museum documenting women’s work throughout hip hop music and culture through the senses. So you could read, you could listen, you could see. And so this is what we’re imagining and this is what we’re working. It’s my greatest hope in life at this period point to just leave that legacy behind, because at some point I recognize the music is not enough. Right?
00:05:05 CMG
The stories are amazing, the stories around the music is really in the culture. It’s really something. I mean, me having been there since the 80s when it all started is amazing. It’s nothing like it used to be, and just how it grew and evolved. But I’ll tell you guys that you continue telling me your story because I can’t wait to see this. So I’m really excited. It sounds great.
00:05:27 Akua Naru
Thank you. So we have questions that we prepared. And I’m just excited to get into it. So can I– should I ask the first question?
00:05:39 Enongo-Lumumba Kasongo
Please, please, please. Yeah, ask. Ask everything.
00:05:43 Akua Naru
All right. So firstly I want to say it’s a great honour. Right? The first time that I heard your music. I’m from Connecticut. So we always was doing what was happening in New York. We wanted to be what was down with New York, like what they were doing. I saw y’all in the video. That was the first thing I heard. [SINGING] We rollin’ deep, you know, we rollin’ deep. You know what I mean. And for me as a little girl seeing girls like me rhyming, doing it, I was like, wow. But it wasn’t really at that time. I mean, this was, what, 93? So this is around the time of like, Boss. We was listening to a lot of what was happening on the East, right? I have a lot of questions. All right. Let me just start. First with you. So I read somewhere that you had a really interesting upbringing in relationship with music. Is it true that your father was friends with Frankie Beverly and Maze?
00:06:50 CMG
Mhm. Yeah.
00:06:54 Akua Naru
They lived in some apartment or something. Right?
00:06:56 CMG
Yeah. It’s crazy. So my father’s from Philadelphia. And just so that you know, my mother is a full blooded Native American woman from Yosemite. She was born and raised at the bottom of El Capitan. And my dad is from Philadelphia, and he was a crooner. So all his friends were singers, you know, standing on the corner just singing way back in the day in the 60s or 50s or hella long ago. He’s old. He’s 70 something now. So they used to sing on the corners and they had a band. So their band used to play for Mary Wells here and there. They just played local band stations and stuff like that. And he has several friends who would go on to become superstars. One of his good friends went on to be a Temptation. He’s now the lead singer of The Temptations. He was last one to be added on as the lead singer, Ron Tyson. And then him and Frankie Beverly were friends growing up, so they were friends. He has two other friends from the group Maze, and some other friends who would go on to become singers.
00:08:00 CMG
But what my dad decided to do was go to the Air Force. So he left Philadelphia. And he’s from the East Coast. So when when you go to the Air Force, they send you to the West Coast. And that’s where my mom was. Long story short, they met at like the Oakland Army base where all the nurses come, because my mom went to go be a nurse in Oakland. And then they met. And when they moved to California and got an apartment in Berkeley, all his friends started calling, you know, Frankie Beverly and Maze. We want to come to California, you know, to to become superstars. They wanted to come to California to follow their dreams. So about ten of them came to our two bedroom apartment and stayed at our house. And then they started playing the Berkeley Greek Theater. And I was just a little girl with two big old afro puffs and running around the stage, not paying attention to them. And they would just have jam sessions all day, and I would just be sitting there just with all the weed, you know, they ain’t no seatbelts in the car. We was old school, you know. So yeah, that’s very true.
00:09:03 CMG
And so that song, Look at California, that’s what that means. You know, when they were coming to California, they have a song called Look at California [singing] doo doo doo. So when they got here, they started writing in our apartment building and stuff like that. And eventually they would blow up. They didn’t blow up immediately, I was like five when they came to live with us. But eventually they would turn into Frankie Beverly and Maze.
00:09:33 Akua Naru
Well, and I had heard that in addition to that, you and Special One connected because she also had a very interesting musical background. Is it true that her mom was working in radio or something, or she had access to studio equipment? And like, y’all was young. I think I read somewhere that she was like 12 or 13 working all the studio.
00:09:55 CMG
Yeah. Little younger than that. So we met around 11 years old. 11. Yeah, 11 ish. And so her mom worked at the radio station called KDKA Out here, it was an AM radio station. It was very popular. They played all soul music. And the the director, his name was Bob Jones or Bob James, one of the two. He was real popular, but she used to take Karryl to work with her. So her mom had been there for years before I met her. So I think Karryl started going to that studio when she was like six or seven, I don’t know, she was a little kid. But she learned how to work all that equipment in there. You know, they had the reel to reels, the cassette tapes. She knew how to work the board. She would just learn all that stuff. So when we met, as we became friends through a mutual friend, and we really connected on our musical backgrounds. My dad had a record collection, and I would sit there all day and play all his albums from Isaac Hayes, Weather Report, I mean, everybody, The Doobie Brothers, just all the greatest soul singers in the world. And he drove me around in a car and just played the music loud all day long, and I’m five, six, seven, eight years old. So I had soaked it all up. Plus they had live bands, so I didn’t really play instruments, you know, I would play like the tambourine and hit on stuff, but I didn’t get into instruments. But that’s kind of where I got my performance attitude from. I was never afraid of a mic or to step up. They used to get high and tell me to sing and laugh and crack up, you know what I’m saying? You know, you’d be like, go over there and sing. Yeah, I couldn’t sing. But at the end of the day, who knew I had all that flavor when it was time to rap?
00:11:41 CMG
But we ended up going to high school together. We said, we want to go to the same high school. So when we got there, they had a radio class. Karyll signed up for it and she went in there and had her first day. A teacher said, I can’t teach you nothing, so you’re going to be my assistant. So she ended up renting the whole radio station ninth, 10th, 11th, 12th. I used to cut class to go down in there, and we just used to record, record, record and make cassette tapes and yeah, I used to copy the Roxanne Shanté, The Real Roxanne. Because when the Real Roxanne came out it was okay to be light skinned now. It wasn’t okay to be a cool, light skinned girl back in the day and just be rapping, you know what I’m saying? And because you had Shanté out there and all the…But then Sparky D came out and I was like, okay I’m not shy no more. Right? But at first I was kind of shy to step up to it. You know, I didn’t realize this until later, but it didn’t matter. We did it because we really loved the music and that’s what it was about. Long story short, that radio station at our high school had a ten watt radio station. So it reached from, you know, three cities in each direction around our school. And we had regular listeners. We had a radio show in 10th grade. Yeah, it was called the Special One and CMG show, and it was at our high school during her high school time. And I don’t know, the teacher didn’t never said nothing about me cutting class, that tripped me out. I used to be down there and he just wouldn’t say anything. He probably thought, these girls are into this. I think he liked it. You know, that we wanted to stay. Most people– I don’t know. So needless to say, her pictures are up in the school. She was a top athlete in high school. Her jerseys are hanging up in the gym. She’s like the superstar of that school. You know, so and there were some other athletes that would come after her that went on to go to like the NFL. Mostly guys, but as far as like females, we had like two famous dancers. And then, you know, Karryl was real famous, just for being an athlete, just being who she was. She was just amazing.
00:13:49 Akua Naru
Well, thank you for breaking that down. I have two other questions then I’m gonna pass it off to Enongo. So I’m wondering, you kind of hinted at– We were just talking before you came on about the Roxanne Wars. And I’m wondering, coming from California. Because we’re from the East Coast, so depending on where you were growing up, had to do with your relationship to hip hop, like, what sounds you were listening to and even to, to some extent, who you had access to, up until a certain point. So I’m wondering if you could tell us, what are your earliest sort of memories of hip hop culture? When did you start noticing that something was happening? Or at what point did you come in contact with hip hop and rap music? What did it look like in the Oakland area? In the Bay area?
00:14:47 CMG
Yeah. So in the Bay area it kind of came to us later. The reason how we really got introduced was through Karryl’s radio station. So her mom used to get all these records, because when you work for the radio station, they send you promo stuff, you get the stuff early, you get it. She had all of that. So when she started getting cassette tapes from WBLS and the Awesome Two show and we started listening to those cassette tapes. So the first thing we would turn it on to [singing] I want you, I want to, I want you. And then they had the mic shows and we started getting into all New York, straight New York music. That was the first thing, I mean, my idol is Sha Rock. Hopefully you guys will get to talk to her because she is a pioneer. This woman is amazing. When she came out, she was like [rapping[ Sha Rock is the woman with the magical touch. I’m like, burning fire. I love the way she was. And, you know, I’m just too much. And then when she used to go, you know, I did it, I was like, oh, she got so much attitude. I loved her. Her Sparky D, Roxanne Shante, all of those women. Really really. But it was guys who really, really influenced me. And it would turn out to be like the Beastie Boys were a heavy influence on us as far as their stage presence. Because they used to walk around and rap like this. [rapping] And we used to be like, oh, I like the way they move, you know? I used to watch them when they was spitting. It just was in their body. It was them and the UMCs and the Fu-Schnickens who would eventually become mentors of ours. Who knew? They came to California and saw us on stage.
00:16:33 CMG
But let me tell you how we got into the– So initially we got into the New York stuff, that was early 80s. So by the mid 80s we had Calvin T out here; of course, Too Short. This is how I got on to Too Short. My boyfriend used to ride around. He used to put me in the car and we used to ride around looking for Too Short all the time. Oh, he got a new tape. Yeah, I’m about to go try to find Short. He’s supposed to be on, you know, East 18th and this street and that street. So we’d be riding around looking for Short. And I remember he used to buy tapes from Short out the trunk. And then Short, he’ll make a customized tape for you. So he did a customized tape because you got a nice car. He’d be like, shout out so and so. But then they became friends. And so he started getting customized tapes with his name in it And that’s how we got on the Two Short. And when I first heard it, I was like, bitch. Then one week later I was like, biiiiitch out the window. It was the greatest thing ever.
00:17:31 CMG
So once the Two Short hit then the N.W.A. And the gangsta rap just started started happening. And that was in the late 80s, mid to late 80s. That changed everything. So as soon as the gangsta rap started coming out, the N.W.A. the Ice Cubes, the Ice-T’s, and, you know, it wasn’t really a lot of female gangsta rappers out. We did have one girl named Kimmy Fresh out here who used to rap with Two Short and so that right there, we just embodied that. So that gangsta mentality and that gangsta rap experience and this New York influence is really what brought us together. And I think people saw that because when we went to New York, right in the middle of the West Coast, East coast battles, everything, he didn’t even care. Everybody welcomed us with open arms. We went straight to, you know, all of the DJs out there. Evil D, he told me, he said, man, y’all are the only people, one of the few artists that we even play out here. But see, we were on Priority Records and Priority Records told them, if you want the new Ice Cube, you’re going to play the new Conscious Daughters. And so that’s kind of how we got love in New York. But we’re very much New New York influenced with the West Coast core. That gangsta shit with the authentic MC part.
00:18:51 CMG
One thing about the West Coast is they just stand there and rap, and we used to say, we ain’t finna stand on no stage and pace. Then all the dudes, they get on the stage and be like 100 people. I can’t see who the hell got the mic, right? So we used to be like, uh-uh, we brought security who was like, clear the stage, clear the stage. And we perform with the UMC’s. They used to lock knees and climb on speakers, and one of them be up there and one of them be over there and, you know, Kool Kim and Haas G. And then the Fu-Schnickens was also on tour with them, and they picked us up and took us, and they taught us how to really, really, really rock out. I’ll never forget it. They sat down and said, wreck every mic you touch. Always be ready. Bust a rhyme right now. You know the back in the day you had to bust something right off top. It wasn’t like now these kids be like, okay, hold on, let me pull up my rap. You know what I’m saying? And then they call that a freestyle. No that ain’t. That’s not where we come from. We was put on the spot so much, you know, so we were very well trained and ready for whatever.
00:19:57 CMG
So Special One she could freestyle. She was a mad freestyler. And I I’m putting out a documentary. I’m putting together some footage. There’s so much that I’ve already spent two months going through the stuff. We filmed everything. So I’m doing a documentary that will really show her ability. We would be in hotel rooms. We had this one dude come and bring his keyboard. He came and popped it in. We sat down. Back then we were smoking weed. We smoked some weed, had some 40s, and then Karryl just got on the mic and my nigga G. He started playing some some real soft shit and we was all high as a kite. She was like, he brought his new keyboard and you know, she was just freestyling amazingly. It was the greatest thing ever. And I want everybody to see it.
00:20:39 CMG
But yeah, that’s kind of where we come from. And I think that’s why people really see that this is different. Plus, we were best friends, which is hard to find because a lot of these female groups, they get put together and then they don’t get along. Or especially these young women, you don’t see no young female. Everybody’s by themselves. There’s no groups that I can think of off the top of my head right now. But we don’t have groups no more because these women can’t get along with each other and they don’t know the value of friendship and loyalty at all. And that’s what we were. Our whole basis was friendship and loyalty. There’s certain things I would never do without her. Certain things she would never do without me. We were just sisters and that’s it. We would fight, have argument. And the next morning I’d be like, what are you doing? You going down to get a– can you bring me a croissant from the hotel? You know, we’ll just call each other and it’s over. You know, that’s real friendships and real sisters do. I think it’s just an authentic recipe that turned out to be a damn good meal that I’m so proud of.
00:21:44 Akua Naru
Most definitely. My son is sick, so you might hear him crying in the background. I apologize for that. I’m wondering if you could give us a timeline real quick. So if I’m thinking NWA, we’re talking about, like, 88, right? 88, 89. So I’m saying when from the time that y’all started hearing these records to the time that you came in contact with Too Short. To the time where y’all started rapping and recording, to the time where, you know, you developed a sound and started actually recording music, can you can you tell us some years?
00:22:27 CMG
So in the early 80s, I would say 1980 to 1985, we were just connoisseurs of of East Coast music, really heavy into Furious Five, Grandmaster Flash, Sugarhill Gang, all the Sugarhill Music, Imperial Brothers. Special One was actually a DJ. She had turntables in the early 80s, so I don’t know, we were–I don’t try to tell my age, but we were young. So that was between 80 and 85. We graduated from high school in 85, believe that or not. So between 80 and 85 was a lot of, you know, Nas and just all of the Tribe Called Quest work and all the greats of hip hop, we were really connoisseurs of, including the women. But we got out of high school, so 1985, between 85 and 90, we started recording. Because Karryl had the equipment, we started buying equipment, we bought little track recorders and stuff like that. We started making cassette tapes right after 1985, we got our jackets and went to the mall, got our name put on the back where they used to iron it on the jacket, your derby jacket. And then we used to walk out around and pass out tapes at the 18 and over clubs.
00:23:47 CMG
And then by 1990, bam, we ran into Paris. The Black Panther of hip hop from San Francisco. Met him at a digital underground album release party. And he saw Conscious Daughters on our jacket. Now, this man is a really socially conscious, I mean, a really Black, political, conscience rapper. He’s very smart and extremely passionate about the power of Black people and the power of all things Black. And he is is a man who really respects women, especially Black women like I’ve never experienced in my life. It’s hard to find young Black men that were raised like that with so much respect and knowledge. And once we did meet him, you know, he came out, he saw our Conscious Daughters. So he had to come over and say, what’s conscious about y’all? Meanwhile, we weren’t really conscious like that. We were like, socially conscious. And we had got that name from one of my friend’s boyfriends at the studio. He was like, yeah, I call you Conscious Daughters. He was a reggae dude, right? A Rasta. And he was like, I call you conscious daughters because you’re always aware of where the clubs are and all this. And so we thought it was cool, but it wasn’t the conscious that we knew that we were going to become. You know what I’m saying? Like, so when Paris saw us, we gave him a cassette tape because we had demos on us all day in the pocket. We write our name and phone number on it, because it wasn’t no email and all that. You had to call. I asked, we put our name and our phone number on there, and he called us and said, I listened to your tape and he said, I love the lyrics, but the beats are wack, but I love the lyrics. So he said, I would love to work with you guys. You know, he was on signed to Tommy Boy, so he had that New York connection going. He was already doing the New York thing too, and he was very popular in New York as well as in San Francisco Bay area, because he was originally from the city.
00:25:57 CMG
And so he basically picked us up and, and armed us with the knowledge that he wanted to spread. And so for every album that we put out, there is one song on there. He said, I want one song on every album that is a message song to a Black woman, and I’m going to write it. He’s an amazing writer. So on our first album, we had a song about teenage pregnancy, and he wrote that whole thing and it was just amazing song. Second album, we had a song about AIDS because at the time it was “AIDS was out.” You know, it was an issue. We tackled that. Our third album, we had a song about domestic violence, you know getting your ass beat and not telling nobody this type of stuff. So he was just a genius on how to keep us street, but still put us out there to really represent women.
00:26:54 CMG
And then at that point, it just started getting into us, you know what I mean? And then when we started, our writing would grow into something that was really woman-empowered, to the point where we just talking hell of shit, like it was amazing, you know? And it just was so empowering to us to have somebody like him in our life who just educated us so well and was like, don’t bring no 40s in here. He hated 40s. Okay. So we came in with 40s and we this he was like, oh no no no no no no no no, no 40s, no. Karryl was like, she’ll walk outside, drink her 40 and then come in and she said, why I need a 40 break. Then she’ll walk outside, get her 40 and come back in. She was a comedian. The girl was hilarious. She had us rolling. He was like, forget it, just bring the 40 in. But, yeah, it was a great experience working with him.
00:27:45 CMG
So that was in the — just to get back on the timeline– that was around 1990. Right. So by 93, our album dropped. So 1990, we met him, by 91 we were getting started. He eventually left Tommy Boy and signed with Priority Records in Los Angeles. Then he got Priority to pay us. So that was great. It was like he moved. So it was a great thing. Our first album came out on his label called Scarface Records, which he set up through Priority. Then the next albums that we did were direct Priority albums, but it was just a great experience.
00:28:33 Akua Naru
So I just had two questions and then I’m going to mute. But Paris produced the Ear to the Street, right? He produced the whole album, right? Okay. So my second question is, do you remember how many girls and young women were there rapping around the same time? Was it, as you can recall, let’s say from the mid 80s onward or at any point?
00:29:00 CMG
So from the mid 80s, before our stuff came out. You know, Sparky D, MC Lyte, of course Queen Latifah, Monie Love, all these women, you know Lil Kim, everybody. The usual suspects were on the scene mostly– like the Lil Kim’s came out in like the 90s, but during the 80s those early MCs were a huge influence on us with Sha Rock. There’s more. I’m sure they can come over to my head.
00:29:29 Akua Naru
But I mean in like Oakland–
00:29:31 CMG
Okay, so in Oakland. Yeah. So let’s start with the 90s. We all came up. There’s a circle of artists in Oakland that’s amazing. I’m just going to go with the women, even though we are a lot more closer to the men. And there’s a lot more men. Right. So when we were coming up, my sister Suga-T was right there. Her and E-40 was been here. We all came up together. So we all know each other. So Paris had us, and Paris had his own self. So E-40 was right in the cut right there, working with Walter at City Hall Records, putting his stuff out. Suga-T was right there since day one, 1990, whatever day it was. We had Oaktown’s 357, popped on the scene. They were a little later because I didn’t really meet them until later. But they popped on the scene. And we’re good close to them, but not nearly as close to– they kind of came in a little bit later. Mystic. If you’re familiar with Mystic, that’s my sister, one of my best friends. She was on the scene in the 90s. The Dew Goddess working with Digital Underground. We had Silky out here who was working with Two Short. Silky has been on the scene for a long time. There’s a small group of us. There’s probably 6 or 7. We got Marvelous, who is amazing, from Sacramento. Marva is always been counted as a Bay area MC West. You know, that’s my sister. We were in the studio together in the early 90s. We all came up together.
00:31:04 CMG
Now as far as the Bay. You got the whole Hieroglyphics crew been there since the 90s, started since we started. You got rapping Forte. You got the Loonies, you got Digital Underground. You have Richie Rich. We got Two Short. We have so many groups out here. We had In Too Deep was right over there in Vallejo. There’s just so many more people that’s not coming right now. But there’s so much hip hop history in the Bay. It’s ridiculous. And then what happened was, we were the starters of the independent labels. So that’s why if you come to the Bay and you put out music, you can actually live off of it. Because the bay supports the bay. You don’t have to blow up everywhere. If you can blow up in the bay and LA, hey, you got an income, you able to pay your bills and do what you got to do, you know. But people are not used to that because this is such a self grinding area. A lot of the record labels came and tried to buy us. Like as soon as we signed to Priority Records, Def Jam called us. The next day we got a call from Lyor Cohen. And I’m like, damn, I wonder what would have happened if we would have signed to Def Jam, you know? Where would that have taken us? But either way, Napster came and shut everything down in around 96. That was a wrap. When Napster came out and ruined everything. The first MP3 was made and they said, no more. There’s somebody stealing music. They shut every damn thing down. They was like, oh, hell no.
00:32:37 Akua Naru
Was that as early as 96 when Napster came?
00:32:48 CMG
It was around 96 because we got a phone call saying that everything was halted. And that was in the year of 96, and it was because of Napster. So it might have been after some of the judgments were made in the courts. I don’t know if it was the beginning or– because Napster was a whole year of what the fuck was going on. But yeah, it was around that time, that’s when everybody got shut down. All of us here in the Bay.
00:33:17 CMG
But we still had our little independent record labels, and they were still pushing their own music. We had a guy named Walter from City Hall out here, this older white gentleman who has since passed away. But he was an amazing man. He’s put out. We had JT the Bigga Figga out here. He started Black Wall Street. He’s the one who discovered the game, you know. And this older white man was amazing. He loved Black music. And he was the first white man to step up and say, I’ll play your music, you know, I’ll put it out for you. Through his distribution channel, which was selling classical rock and all these things. And he added a rap category to his distribution. And then that’s why Master P moved out here. He heard about Walter, and he came out. Next thing I know, Master P is in Richmond. And everywhere I go, somebody give me a Master P tape or a flyer. He came out here and did his thing. Then he called the coach’s daughter and said, hey, I want y’all to do a song with Mia X, meet me at the studio. Bro, that’s a fat check. We was on our way. You know, the bay has always been beautiful, so hopefully that’s a good timeline for you.
00:34:34 CMG
I know I overtalk stuff because the story is so thick, you know what I’m saying? Like, it’s a lot around what was happening here in the 90s, and I just don’t ever see that being done again. And it really can’t be. But the geniuses and these boss dudes that’s out here, the whole High Road crew is a great example. I mean, they have a whole emporium of works and music and touring and merch and they’ve been ahead of the game for so long. And, you know, those are my brothers right there. And we all love each other. We all have recently been coming together doing a series of concerts with Soul Beat TV, which is an old school television channel out here. They used to put raps, interviews and rappers. And our good friend comedian Luenell started on there. She’s also one of my best friends, one of my good friends. She’s on our album as well. So with all the history here. everybody was all intertwined. Brunel was there. DJ Pam, the Funkstress, rest in peace. The first woman to scratch with her titty. I told her to trademark that. I don’t know if it was ever done, but [laughts] the titty scratch. But yeah, it was an amazing place to be. And it still is, even though gentrification came and messed everything up. It don’t look the same. Yeah, but if you can afford to still live here, which is a whole nother situation, it’s a great place to be. I’m sure the same in New York, because I know it’s hella expensive there, too.
00:36:13 Akua Naru
Right. Enongo, you had some questions, right? I’m listening. I’m gonna turn the volume up. I just want to go check on the baby. But I’m listening.
00:36:20 Enongo-Lumumba Kasongo
For sure. And I’m so happy that you mentioned Luenell. Akua and I often say that women in rap and women in comedy have a similar kind of path that we have to walk, just how we show up in this space requires a kind of spirit and a kind of energy that.
00:36:38 CMG
Yeah, very true words. Very true.
00:36:41 Enongo-Lumumba Kasongo
So I wondered actually, just to to take it back a little bit, I’m really interested in family life and family histories, and thank you so much for sharing about how this incredible musical family led you into your identity as someone who’s like, okay, I’m not afraid of a mic. And I wonder, did you have any siblings? If so, could you speak to just what else was going around? What else was going on around you in terms of family, friends and those kind of influences?
00:37:19 CMG
So it’s interesting because I’m an only child, so I tend to not like to do things by myself. Ever since I was a kid, I always had a friend come. My friends coming tonight! Can my friend to go too? I managed to have a circle of nine women, me and Karryl included, and we have been best friends for over 40 years. And Mystic is one of them. We have been so close for so many years and it’s just very hard to find. We’re all genuine friends. We don’t stab each other in the back. Nobody’s separate. Nobody’s man. Nothing like that has ever happened. We have just been blessed to be able to be this wonderful circle of women. And then so, you know how whenever you see an emcee, you know Rock Kim or you see Busta Rhymes and then you see Spliff, you know, that’s his crew. And Rampage. They all came up together. So wherever you see him, you see them. Same with Conscious Daughters. You see me, you see Jessica, Tanya. A Special One. That’s who’s rolling deep, you know. So I got my friend Kathy, Tanya, Jessie. Yeah, me. Jessie, Kat. Special one. You know, that’s five of them. And then Mystic, of course. She’s on our album.
00:38:38 CMG
And yeah so what’s been going on around me was really just a good time. Rent was cheap. I was driving five point oh’s. Everything was good. People weren’t getting shot up. If somebody was getting shot, it was one person, the one they wanted to kill. That’s who they got. Be a crowd of people. They shoot the one person not spraying up places and doing stuff like this. So it was just a different vibe. But it was a great time and everything around us was really good.
00:39:09 CMG
Our treatment. Here’s what I do want to say. The way men treated us. Amazing, amazing. We never got any disrespect. We got love. However, a lot of men on the West coast are stingy. This is how they are. They’re stingy. I mean this not in a not in a good way. I mean this in a nice way. Because they don’t know. They don’t realize it. But oftentimes, you know, they do things and they don’t invite the women to come be on stuff, you know what I mean? And we did get the car to do 5 On It. That was one thing. And I’m so mad we didn’t do it because we were in Japan or we were out overseas and they were like, they’re going to be recording the song 5 On It. They want you guys to get on it. And back then we couldn’t send the vocals and we couldn’t just say, okay, let’s go to this place and do it. We probably could have, but we just didn’t really trip. But I wish we could have been on that song.
00:40:08 CMG
But for example, a lot of the guys, they don’t normally invite women to be on the tracks. The West Coast is like that. LA and in the Bay. That’s just how it is now. You go to New York, all the dudes is putting the women on all of them. All of them. They all got a female that they put on. Thank God Paris did that for us because we probably would have never been discovered. Who knows? You know, he discovered us and he put us out, and now we’re a household name. And I appreciate that from him. But we don’t have a bunch of songs with, like, a lot of our brothers, even though we’re friends with them. And, we see them. We might hang out, you know, Shock G, Money, B we all hang out all the time. Not all the time, but we would in the 90s and we never really did a song together. Well, Money B is on our album. But it seemed like we would have more collaboration, is my point. You go to New York, all the women, you know, Jay-Z grabbed Amil. Who’s another good friend of mine. I love her, by the way. She used to say, Karryl, Karryl, where’s Karryl? Her New York voice was so funny. Hi, Karryl. That’s how she talks. She is just the cutest little thing. So, hi Amil. But you see examples of people putting people on. Lil Kim, for example. All the women are put on faith. And even if they sing or whatever– it’s just not the mentality of the West Coast men to think of that first. And I don’t think they’re intentionally not doing it because, you know, I grew up here, but these people are just stingy here. You don’t want to share nothing with nobody. We greedy, we greedy. It’s sad.
00:41:52 Enongo-Lumumba Kasongo
Thank you for even just giving us the the picture of this crew of friends and sisters. That’s such a beautiful thing to experience in this form. And one of the challenges you’re speaking to is– and we struggle with this even in this moment– that often what’s required to be accepted or appreciated is a co-sign from a man, right? That’s the ultimate legitimacy as an artist. And it’s frustrating because, I mean, y’all are spinning, like y’all are rhymers, y’all do this. But there’s still this kind of requirement tha somebody else has to put you on when your art speaks for itself. So I think it’s a challenge, a refrain that we’re very familiar with. I wonder if you could– and Akua feel free to jump in again if you have another question. But just thinking about your experience after putting out this project in 93, can you talk to us a little about what y’all were thinking. Was it like, our lives have changed fundamentally now? We’re on a different wavelength. We’re touring now. What the process of of coming into releasing a record at that time meant for you and how your lives shifted after that. It sounds like you were on the road a lot. You were touring, performing a lot, having a lot of different collaborations and conversations. So, yeah, just giving us a sense of what happened after that project.
00:43:27 CMG
I just want to make one mention about the whole circle of women thing. That really solidified our mental health. You know, as women. Today, I see so many young, beautiful women who think they’re ugly or I see so many young, beautiful women who just– their mindset is not let me move forward. Let me get over this anyway. Next, next, next. They sit and dwell on stuff and I just feel like the single woman is so isolated. These young women, I worry about them so bad. Because when you ask what was it like for us? We were living a dream. Every day was a smile. We weren’t having any issues. All we worried about was getting to the Western Union so we could send our money back to our mamas, because we had cash, you know, we would get a lot of cash. And we would be like, we gotta go to the Western Union, and we would go to the Western Union and send money home. But the mental health thing I had to speak on because having a best friend with me, the confidence that we had, the mental stability was a really big one. We weren’t intimidated by men at all because we had already been on the West Coast. And, you know, they’re all gangsters, so they already kind of treat you kind of hard, anyway. Some of my boyfriends were like that. But you know me, I was happy go lucky, like okay, all right!
00:44:48 CMG
But once the song came out, we were driving in a car, and we heard our song on the radio, and we stopped in the middle of the street and jumped out. We were riding in the car together. I don’t know where we was going, but the song came on the radio and we stopped in the middle of the street. And it reminds me of the Salt-N- Pepa movie. They did the exact same thing, and I was like, that is exactly what we did. And I cried when I saw that, because we were the right in the street and start riding around the street, and both of us got out the car. Each of us started dancing. We were by the Lake Merritt. It wasn’t like a real busy area, but I’ll never forget that day. And so ever since then, we were driving our little old cars around and stuff, we were still kind of hanging out at the same places. And it got to a point where when we would go places– “Oh, Imma call, Imma tell someone saw y’all over here.” Then they start calling people and people start coming over. Oh they over there. We going to stop by. So that’s kind of when I knew we were kind of getting bigger, but it was really the TV stuff, the MTV stuff, the BET stuff and all of that. That really started getting us recognized when we started going out.
00:46:00 CMG
Then it became a worry about us getting robbed, right? So it went from, yeah, we love everybody. This is Oakland. Everybody loves us, you know, to Karryl and all the weed she got. She was a weed connoisseur, so she got pounds of weed and shit in her bag. And, you know, we just being ourselves, and we never got robbed, but they had to sit down and talk to us and say, y’all just can’t be just going out like that. But we never really had any issues. It’s always been a great acceptance. Then after that, we were just traveling. We really weren’t here. We traveled a lot. Initially we got into a big old camper van and drove across the country. This was Priority’s idea. Saved money. I guess they were giving us a test. I don’t know, two girls in a damn camper. So we had to stop it. You know, we got a hotel every night we would stop. We would drive all day, stay in the hotel, and then some nights we would skip a night and just sleep in the car, do an overnight in the camper, and then we’ll stop at a hotel.
00:47:08 CMG
But it wasn’t nothing. We were like, we’re ready to go. We stopped. We used to go to all the record stores and just do a free show at their radio station. We went around giving away all kind of free products that would later be charged back to us. We should have been counting, but, you know, it’s all good. Everything works. And it was really when I saw the billboard on Crenshaw Boulevard that changed my life. I was like, I’m on a billboard. We sat in front of that billboard for about 30 seconds and sat down at the bottom of it. Eating Chips. Girl was like go stop at the store. So we got out. We stopped at the billboard and we just happened to have chips and sodas, and we sat on the on the curb eating popcorn. And Karryl was like, take a picture. There’s even popcorn. It’s like, I can’t see you down there. You way down there, the billboard way up there. But yeah, we had some good times, everything. It was all good, you know? We were accepted.
00:48:06 CMG
I can’t think of anything bad that happened to us during our– We didn’t get anything stolen, thank god. Only one thing happened. We was rushing to catch an airplane, and Karryl forgot she had, like, hella weed in her bag. And she left her bag on the turn thing. And we ran and got on the plane. As soon as we got off the plane, they said the police called, they got your bag, Karryl Smith. She had to pay $10,000 to get out of that case. I’ll never forget that. I was like you dummy. How’d you forget that? Feels like I just wasn’t tripping. I forgot it was in there. I don’t remember how much it was, but she just left the whole. But she accidentally left it. It seems to me like they would have caught it when she went through the thing. I don’t know what happened. We were in a rush. I wasn’t paying attention. That’s one thing that stands out in my mind. But other than that it was a great run. Everywhere we went, all the conferences they had, they had all these tons of music conferences we would go to. And it was a pleasure meeting like Boss and people like that. We were able to get out and meet our idols. We toured with Ice Cube and Nas and Simple E was out at that time. She had that one song, [singing] “smoking a blunt and sipping on a Heineken.”
00:49:32 CMG
Oh, I used to love that. So she was on our tour. We used to kick it with her. OutKast, A Tribe Called Quest. We toured with them. Method Man and the whole Wu-Tang Clan would become our best friends because Karryl had all the weed. Before the indica and all the good strong weed came out, she had it. So they would come to California and just beeline straight to my house. And be like, are y’all barbecuing? Because I had all my friends. There was like nine women. We all cooking and hanging out, you know, all different shades of whatever you’re looking for. They was like, we coming over there and y’all cook and y’all got the weed. We bringing the drinks. And we used to hang out with Wu-Tang all the time in my house. It was a great time.
00:50:16 Akua Naru
I know Method Man was fine even back then.
00:50:20 CMG
Girl. Mm. Him and Nas. When I say Nas. First of all I couldn’t believe how tall he was.
00:50:28 Akua Naru
Is he actually taller? Seems like he’s short.
00:50:31 CMG
That’s what I said, til I went on tour with him. And I was standing next to him and I was like. I gotta go change my underwear. I’ll be back. No, I’m just playing. No, but for real, though, he’s fine. Oh, good Lord, I couldn’t even talk. I didn’t know what to say. We we ended up doing a song with him. And that’s another thing. Nas came asking us to do a song before a lot of these men here. But I love them all, still, I ain’t mad at them. They don’t really owe me anything. But yeah, them two right there. That’s it. That’s all. Well not all, but the two top for. That’s a man. And he still look good. I’m like damn. Damn. Jesus.
00:51:22 Enongo-Lumumba Kasongo
Did y’all–when you were on tour, did you have any kind of, you know– were folks trying to get at you?
00:51:31 CMG
You know, it was kind of crazy. Mostly athletes. I was getting the athletes, which was cool. Hey, it was a couple. It was a couple rappers. One of them, one or two of them I dated. I ain’t going to say the name, but I’ll say that. And then because they were short, you know, situations. So. One of them longer than the other. But I managed to get in and out with only dating two of them out of the whole scene of the all the rappers. Yeah, I would have wished on a couple of other ones, but we was moving so much and moving so fast that it wouldn’t have worked out. You going that way? I’m going this way. I’m way too, listen, after I own you at this point, like, I need you to come with me. All that not being able to come, though.
00:52:25 Enongo-Lumumba Kasongo
Oh, that sounds like a good time.
00:52:27 CMG
It really was. And I’m just reliving it right now. I’m about to hang up with y’all and go cry in the corner. Like, why ain’t life like that no more?
00:52:35 Enongo-Lumumba Kasongo
Well, we gotta bring you over here.
00:52:37 CMG
I”m still having a good time. Don’t get it twisted. Now I do some old school shows, still, thank God. I just did one weekend before last.
00:52:48 Enongo-Lumumba Kasongo
So, Akua, do you want to jump in? I have another question, but, you know, go ahead.
00:52:51 Akua Naru
Go ahead with your question.
00:52:53 Enongo-Lumumba Kasongo
So you put out this record in 93 and then you put out the next one in 96. And I wondered if you could just talk about your kind of growth as writers, as emcees, in that in-between period. Going from Ear to the Street to Gamers, how you were thinking about what you wanted this next project to do?
00:53:15 CMG
Yeah. So when we sat down and said, what are we going to do next. Somebody said something about the sophomore jinx, don’t do the sophomore jinx. You know, you get the sophomore jinx. You want to sound like this? You want to make sure you make a sound like the last one. People were trying to tell us, and we said, you know what? We’re not going to plan it. We didn’t plan the first one. We’re just going to get in the studio with these amazing producers, Rick Rock being one of them, and Paris, of course, and just see what we come up with. What she and I would do is separately come up with ideas. We kept notebooks. I have a stack of them like this. Remember your writing book? You put all stickers on it and tape hella shit to it. We used to cut shit out of magazines and put them on our book and in our rhyme books. I still have a bucket full of all my original rhyme books since the 80s. It’s about 20 or 25 of them in there. I need to go back through some of those. Bring that beat back. But yeah we just said we’re just going to go in and do what we want to do. So Paris basically this time he said, well you need to have like a theme. So the gamers track kind of came up and we did that song and then we just kind of worked around that. Like what more is there to the game, of this game of life? And then that’s where we kind of wrote all the other songs. Female Vocalism is a song that’s on there that I really like. It has Suga-T and Mystic on there, and it’s just about female vocalizing themselves and being able to talk. We have a song called Woman’s World with Mystic on there as well, which I really love. You know, Welcome to a Woman’s World. It just talks about being a precious woman.
00:55:08 CMG
We wanted to tap into the woman thing because we had been dressing like boys. Okay, let’s just get that out. And then a lot of times, just us, Escape– if you look at all our pictures we had on bandanas and overalls and, you know, that was just that era, that time right around that 90s, when we wanted to be heard and not seen for our bodies. And that was the message that all the women were making by dressing like boys, I guess, and wearing bandanas and putting all this gangster stuf on. Needless to say, as soon as we went to LA, they was like Snoop Dogg and Daz and Kurupt. They waiting on y’all. We was like, what? We walked into this place and they were all up on the stage, and as soon as we walked in, they all went [stares] because they wanted to see who these girls were from the Bay. They had all this gangster shit on. We had on, you know, bandanas and stuff. Me and Karryl, we corny. She’s Karryl, I’m Carla, we got nerdy ass names and shit. So we walked in there. We wasn’t no punk, though. I mean, we still had it in, you know, we was ourselves. But we really were no gangbangers. On the real tip, you know?
00:56:20 CMG
So the whole thing is, it was just so funny to how people perceived us. But then when they got to see us, they were like, oh hella cool, because we’re so personable to people. And we’ll take a minute to talk. I’m not in that much of a rush. I’m going to answer your question and politely leave. I’m not going to be rude. Life is too good for that. Plus I got all this money in my pocket, so why should I be mad? That kind of mentality moving forward. But going back to what you were saying. It was just a smooth sailing for us during that time. It was really great.
00:56:56 Enongo-Lumumba Kasongo
And just really quickly, sorry. Akua you can jump in after this. I wondered if you could talk about your– you mentioned this briefly, but just like your songwriting process. So you all would come up with different ideas. How did you kind of come together to figure out, like, this is how we want this thing to sound? Or were you writing together?
00:57:16 CMG
We we both equally spend time writing at home. So this is what we started doing. We became very well known for not taking long to record in the booth because we rehearse, but a lot of times we just do it in our heads, but the delivery is already there, so we didn’t spend a lot of time on recording. Like some people, they do it over and over and over. Let me do it again. Let me do it again. Usually your first two times are going to be your best ones, you know what I’m saying? If it don’t get better than that, then, you know, you warm up a little bit and you put it out. So the way that we usually work is that we keep rhyme books and we’re always writing in them. So sometimes I just write random verses that mean nothing, but I keep them in my book. So when we get in the studio and we hear a beat, Karryl might come up with a hook. She would come up with hooks like faster than me. Or she might just say, oh, let’s go with this. And she might just start saying a rap. Then I would be like, oh, I like that. So we would start based off of her first verse, and then I would either write something to come right in because she would inspire me, and I would just come right in right after her with something. And then we’ll, you know, following what she’s saying. And that kind of makes the song. Right. Then we do the hook later, or we would come in and just listen to beats and flip through our books until we, like, found a rhyme that fit or until something came to our mind. Then because we just sit and go through the beats, we’d be like, okay, next beat. Then we listen to it. And then next we just go through the beats until we find something.
00:58:47 CMG
But then as we progressed in time, people started sending us beats. Once we got popular, they started sending us beats and stuff like that. So we was like, oh shit, I like this beat. So we’re at that point we were shopping for beats. And then we started writing to the beats. And then we would come to the studio prepared to write a song to this beat. And, you know, we would then collaborate on what we want the topic to be. We’d be like, okay, we’re going to pick this beat. Let’s whoever come up with the topic first. As soon as you get your first verse written, we call each other. And I would say, well, this is what I feel for this. And she would say, okay, I like that. We’re going to roll with that. Then we meet again and we pretty much finish the song like that, just kind of collaborate how we can. Most of it in the early days was in the studio because we didn’t have no kids. We didn’t have nowhere to be, we had no jobs. So we would be in the studio in pajamas and slippers all night, go home in the morning and take a shower and come back and do it again. But as we grew into becoming professionals, we really took more time to collaborate and think about the messages that we wanted to send.
01:00:03 CMG
But we knew that every hour we had to have party music. That was it. That was a must. It had to be some good feelings just talking party music in there, because that’s the whole character of who both of us are. So that’s kind of how the writings came– being ourselves and then, you know, pleasing the masses, not pleasing, sprinkling the masses with, you know, what we have to offer as far as talking shit to your man or being nice to your man, it might be making love to your man. You might want to kick his ass. We don’t know what the day is. So we want to deliver what is happening currently. And sometimes if I’m upset and I’ll be like, fuck it, I’m gonna write it down. Then I started writing as I was going through moods, like when I fell in love and then I got cheated on. Oh yeah, that was a whole half a notebook that I never actually ended up using because it was like directly towards that motherfucker. But I should probably do that now. I should go back for that stuff out, put it out like it just happened.
01:01:05 SPEAKER_S4
Mm. I mean, that’s what music’s for.
01:01:08 CMG
Yeah. So a lot of our emotions would come out, but most of the time it was all about, just, spitting. Like, we really wanted some. And our lyrics had to be dope. Karryll would be like, look, I’m going to come fire on this one. And then me, you know, Kurupt is one of my favorite rappers ever. So he inspires me. So when he used to say banned, you know, bombs blasting, kicking and ass and and da da da da. So then I that’s when I started getting the, you know, fireworks and lightning and feeling all Kurupt-ish. People used to call us a female dog pound all the time, but that was a huge influence on me. He was a really big influence. I finally got to tell him in 2021 or 2020. Yeah, 21. Last year when I saw him, I told him. I saw him at– Was it mount? I think Mount Rushmore. Backstage at Mount Rushmore, we were talking and I said, I never told you this, but you inspire me.
01:02:11 Enongo-Lumumba Kasongo
That’s a beauty.
01:02:12 CMG
He was like, oh, yeah, right. You know, it’s all good. I’m just happy I was able to tell him that because he was really a big inspiration.
01:02:21 Enongo-Lumumba Kasongo
Yeah, I love that. So my last question on this for a minute– So one of the things that we’re really interested in with this project is making sure that the the brilliance of the folks that we’re speaking to, shines through. So many of the questions that we’re personally asked are around like, oh, what’s it like to be a woman in rap? You know, very like broad questions that don’t engage with us as thinkers, as makers, as innovators. And so hearing these stories about the things about rap music as a writer and emcee that spoke to you, I think is really, really important. So my last question in that regard is, were there any moments when you didn’t necessarily see eye to eye on how a song should be, or it was like, oh, that’s wack. You need to redo that. Were you kind of always on the same wavelength, or were there times where you had to negotiate? I’m curious about that, in a group dynamic, how to figure out how the thing is going to sound.
01:03:24 CMG
Nothing that stands out to me, which means we didn’t have a bad disagreement. There has been some stuff that I would say, don’t say that. Well, she was talking about something, I don’t know, the tip of some n*igga’s dick or something. I’d be like, don’t say that. That’s too damn– you talking about the tip? Like, just say something more broad. She’d be like, ugh, okay. You know, we never argued with each other. And, you know, honestly, I was kind of bossy sometimes, and she just rode with it. She’d be like, whatever, she ain’t tripping, you know? But she was really the star of the show, so she really had to say something real raunchy for me to say, don’t say that. But she had a raunchy mouth. That’s just how she was. But light up the whole room. Most nicest person you ever meet. She’d be sitting at the airport. I’d be like, where Karryl? She’s sitting over there talking to some old white men. Been over there for like, ten minutes. What in the world are they talking about? She just loves everybody. She knows how to talk to anybody. I swear she was reincarnated. I’m like, do you know all these people? Everywhere we go, she can relate to whoever you are, whoever you are, you could be of any ethnic background from anywhere. And Karryl will talk to you and you’ll be like, okay, she’ll make you laugh. And she was just such a beautiful person all around and very much a comedian, which you’ll see in our documentary that I’m just now starting. That’s probably going to take me a whole year to do.
01:05:00 Akua Naru
That was your last question?
01:05:01 Enongo-Lumumba Kasongo
Yes. Yeah.
01:05:03 Akua Naru
All right. So my last question is really, let me see. What are your thoughts on how hip hop has evolved, where we are now in terms of women and hip hop? You know, because you’ve been able to see the entire arc.
01:05:19 CMG
That’s a great question.
01:05:22 Akua Naru
So I just wanted to know your thoughts from the West coast, from the East, wherever.
01:05:29 CMG
I am so happy that there are so many female rappers out, and they– Okay so here’s the thing. I’m very proud of all the women that are out and they’re able to come out and they make money like instantly. Like that took a long time for us to make. They can make that. And you know, one year they probably make what we made in three years. But I’m so happy to see that. What I’m not proud of is the women who really have the solid messages that these kids need to hear are not getting that shine. Your Rhapsodies. I mean, I’m saying Rhapsodies– not that she’s not popular. She’s not, you know, Latto popular. She’s not as popular as these other women who are out here really talking about things that are, you know, just not being creative. It’s the same thing over and over and over again. Can you pay my bills? I need a purse and my hair and my lips and my fake hair and my fake lips and my fake ass. That’s okay. That’s fine. And they’re good at it. A lot of the good news is they all can rap and rhyme. That’s what I love. They really got. They can spit, and that right there is like, okay, these little girls are bringing fire even though they’re not talking about– I just feel like some of the more eclectic women, I think some more cultural women, more, you know, even if it’s salsa rap, whatever it is, I just feel like it just does not get the same shine as the bad news rap, mentally depressive raps that are coming out and these little girls are looking up to that. I mean, oh, I want to get a big booty and some fake lips and fake hair when I grow up. I want to look like Cardi B or, you know, these people or whatever. Not to say– hold on, I gotta sneeze.
01:07:29 Enongo-Lumumba Kasongo
Bless you.
01:07:31 CMG
Girl. I felt it coming on. I’m not talking down on anybody. I just feel like it’s not enough coverage of all angles of female rappers, and it’s not fair. You know, I go on social media and I find these women that tear them, these girls that’s making all this money apart single handedly with one line and just kill them dead and they don’t get the same exposure. That’s my only thing. But other than that I’m happy. I just hope that it will just become more like it used to be. That we are all different. If you look at me, you look at Suga-T, and you look at Marvelous, and you look at Shanté. Everybody sounds different. Ain’t nobody doing the same thing the other person is doing. We’re not all talking about the same thing. Everybody’s in their own creative space and doing their art. But it seems to be streamlined now to a certain look and theme, and I just feel like it’s just limited.
01:08:34 CMG
So with these beautiful women and I love them all. I ain’t mad, you know? Latto is bad. I love her album. I was slapping the shit out of it. That’s her lane. She needs to stay right there. Like that’s her. That’s all her. And it’s authentic. I was watching her since she was 13, when she first started 12 years old on Jermaine Dupri’s show. So I’ve seen her come up and I’m just like, wow. I know her daddy. Like, what the hell? Because he was mentoring, I mean he was managing her. And then next thing you know, boom ass titties out everywhere she went from a little cute little teenager to a grown ass woman looking like a Barbie doll, which, you know, it was hard for her daddy. I think about him every time I see her. It’s so funny because he’s a nice little square dude. But anyway, yeah. So I just wish there could be a little bit more equality in the different categories and cultural types of music. Doesn’t all have to be trap. We have a lot of jazz rappers or, neo soul people who rhyme. Just different vibes. The menu is just the same. It’s just cheeseburgers and fries, you know? Where’s the other stuff? I hope and pray that that can happen one day.
01:09:55 Akua Naru
Sorry, I guess this is actually my last question. In ’93 y’all said, let’s face it, we was dressing like boys, which is in alignment with what the aesthetic was at that time. If you look at like Boss. Remember Boss had the lumberjack in the alleyway with the burning trash and the 4×4. [singing] You gotta, you gotta let the whole hope be your hope.
01:10:21 CMG
[Laughs] Yeah.
01:10:22 Akua Naru
But listen, if you think about, I can’t really say Latifah because, you know, she was coming from that little, like, the Nubian Queen African vibe type.
01:10:35 CMG
But she had her basketball days and her basketball shorts. She had her tomboy look.
01:10:40 Akua Naru
Right–
01:10:40 CMG
Escape?
01:10:46 CMG
Well they’re a singing group.
01:10:47 Akua Naru
Yeah, but I’m saying in 93. So did y’all change your image? So when you were showing up in 93, that was you. Like, y’all was like, this is how we want to show up. Because, you know, some people have some executives saying– I mean, even for me as an artist, I’ve had people say if you do this, this and this, if you change this or if you wear this or whatever. Not really suggesting that I wear something different, but like critiquing what I was wearing to plant a seed for me to think, oh, let me dress in this kind of way to get this type of– and I’m making independent music, right? So I’m wondering, by the time that y’all came to gamers, do you feel like y’all made a decision to change your image? And if so, what was that conversation like and where was that coming from? Because it’s true that 96 for women in hip hop was a big year. And I mean a tremendous year for releases compared to 93. And the aesthetic was totally different. I mean, by the time Lil Kim came out, even though I think between 93 and 96, you still had, what, in 96 you had MC Lyte, Act Like You Know, Mohammed’s Ear, The Collage. Remember Nonchalant? [singing] 5’o clock in the morning be outside on the corner–
01:12:06 CMG
Oh yeah I remember Nonchalant
01:12:08 Akua Naru
Then you have Lil Kim foxy. But it was more diverse. Like in terms of how women were growing up. So what was it like for y’all?
01:12:21 CMG
Well, with the transition of the gangsta rap era going kind of out, we wanted to be pretty. If you look at the Gamers album, our hair is done down. Lipstick, everything. You know, our second album, we definitely don’t look like we did on the first album, so we definitely wanted to be pretty. I don’t remember why. We were never told how to dress. The label didn’t say, be this, be that, be this, be that. They looked at us like, what are you guys going to do? Go do your thing? They were sitting back like, what y’all going to do? So they never really tried to pressure us. Priority records, Brian Turner and Brian Shafton and Mark Cerami and all the great people who work there, they didn’t do that to us. We had a great hairdresser. We took her on the road with us. We started wearing our hair down. Rest in peace, she passed away. But we started just wanting to look cute. We still dressed in sweatsuits because I can’t perform in high heels. I never could, never want to. I always had to have on my sneakers that the the whole MC thing came with a sweat suit and some sneakers and still does for me. I just had to be comfortable because when I get out there and be free, the windbreaker feels so good and you know, the wind is coming. We did a lot of outdoor concerts. I’m still a jeans and tennis shoe kind of girl, so maybe we just are really kind of tomboyish a little bit, but we wanted to be pretty and I don’t remember why. Probably because it was a whole bunch of fine rappers we was going on tour with. I was like, I’m getting my hair done, shoot, I see Nas, I was like, where’s the hairdresser?
01:14:12 Akua Naru
I want to thank you for your honesty and sharing this, because this is almost like– Throughout my time doing this work, I must say, this is the first time that I talk to somebody who had like a major release, right? Not like independent in the basement, in their mama basement, but like a real independent release working with as an icon, working with other icons and said look. This is how we want it to look. This is what we wanted to say. We put ourselves together. I just want you to know how rare that is. I mean, I’ve talked to Shante, I’ve talked to Sparky, I’ve talked to a lot of different artists who, if it wasn’t them, if it didn’t impact them directly. I mean, a lot of artists were not writing their own lyrics. I mean, going down to Lil Kim and Biggie. If you look at Salt n Pepah, how they were put together was pretty much somebody having a vision and being like, okay, let’s put this group together, just like you said. I think this might be the first time I spoke to somebody who, and maybe it is a Bay area thing, like you said that it was this whole culture of independent music hustling.
01:15:36 CMG
Togetherness?
01:15:39 Akua Naru
Maybe not having the pressure of reaching people nationally because your focus was like, look, we can make money locally and pop. And then it just happened to go national. I have to think more about it. But I feel like that that is– I applaud you. And you have my utmost respect. Even more so. I mean, I didn’t know that it could be higher than this, you know what I’m saying?
01:16:06 CMG
I love that. And, you know, it’s an honor that I’m still able to collect money and have my royalties and own my publishing. And that is a very rare thing, especially if you have that from the 90s, because they’re bringing it back now. And now it’s a whole nother thing. Luckily, we were able to get our song We Roll Deep on Grand Theft Auto Five, right? And so that’s some new money for me. And I see kids skateboarding to that, and they’re sending me videos and they’re 12 year olds skating around and we roll deep. “I’ve never heard of you, but I like you now.” And, you know, I’m just like, wow, these little inner city kids and outer city kids. And it just trips me out. So I’m honored to be able to have to have done what I’ve done. I’m not done yet. So I’m in the studio right now. I’m just about to drop. I have some vocals from Karryl. I just been sitting on them. I’m about to put it out and just enjoy, and just record some music and see how it goes. I would love to follow you guys too, if you give me your Instagram handles.
01:17:09 Akua Naru
Absolutely. Let me post mine in the chat. And you can post yours right here real quick. I’m sorry, one more question because you just giving me life and so much to think about. How did you– In order for you to negotiate those terms in order to own your own publishing? Because a lot of Black folks, whether it was hip hop or whatever, got robbed. And so I’m wondering, I’m just trying to put two and two together, like the zipper on the butter leather. That’s Black Thought that’s my baby.
01:17:48 CMG
I love Black Thought.
01:17:49 Enongo-Lumumba Kasongo
But was it because of your family’s relationship to music and all these brilliant artists? Like, how did you become educated to where you can negotiate terms that worked out for you in the long run?
01:18:04 CMG
Well, our parents told us you have to get a lawyer. Period. Do not sign a paper without a lawyer. Do not sign a paper without a lawyer. Don’t sign nothing. Don’t sign. Our parents were telling us that. So we went and got an attorney. And we got a Jewish attorney named James. James Malesky, called him Jim Malesky. Back in the day, they said, you got that Jewish attorney. Them Jewish attorneys get you. That’s what the word on the street in New York is. You get a Jewish attorney, like supposedly, I don’t know why, but we were like, we’re getting a Jewish attorney. So we found this guy, Jim Malesky in Oakland Hills called him up through a referral from our accountants. Because we had to get accountants because we had to better manage our money, like we were spending money. Karryl was just buying everything. I was like, why do you buy three goose down jackets? And how the hell are you going to get that shit home? She was like, I don’t know, carry it on the plane. I’m like, one at a time. We were just spending too much money. Right? So our accountants recommended him and he turned out to be great. So what he did, he sat us down and he went through every page of that contract and explained to us what each section meant. He said, first of all, there’s a lot of language in here that we don’t need, like unbeknownst and herein to and therein for and therein words like that he took all those out, started there, red line those out. Then he said, this means that whatever they spend on you, you’re going to have to pay it back at this percentage, at this rate. And here’s where they’re going to collect the money from. There was three streams of income. One was the royalties, one was the publishing and the other one was the mechanicals for like the CDs and stuff that you’re selling. So he said, right now they’re taking money from all three of those. We’re going to give them money from one stream, and you’re going to get paid from the other two streams so that you have income coming in. Like if we didn’t say nothing, they would have just been collecting that money back off top until until they get their money. Then we get money. And he was like no, we’re not doing that. You need to have income. Right.
01:20:06 CMG
So he went back to them and said, okay, you can collect money from this stream. And, well, they’ll be collecting from these two streams. And they said, okay, they agreed to that. So we were able to continue having money. And then as far as the publishing, we split the publishing honestly, like three people wrote the song. Three people get to share that. Half of that publishing. They don’t get any publishing. They are a publisher, but they didn’t write nothing. So, yeah. And then our royalty rates we we did a standard. We made sure that we were at the standard, if not a little more royalty rate, that they didn’t lower it. I don’t know what the royalty rate was back then, but there’s a standard rate, you know, a standard royalty rate of, it was like 2% or some dumb number like that. We got more than that. But the point is, there was a standard rate, we wanted to make sure that we were up to standard. How do we compare to other artists that are out? He’s an entertainment attorney, but he did all the television newscasters. He’s never done a rap group. He does mostly TV actors, newscasters, you know, stuff like that. So he went out and he investigated, got all the information on what the other comps– like buying a house, you know, what are your comp? Who do we compare to? What types of deals were these people getting given? So he tapped into his lawyer network and came back and educated us on the what our contract was about.
01:21:36 CMG
And thank god I kept that contract because it was later– Priority went out of business. Our contract was assumed by Universal. Meanwhile, Universal didn’t even have a copy of it. So y’all know you owe us some money, right? And they were like, no. I went in my garage. I pulled out that 1995 contract from Priority Records and sent it to the attorney. And they were like, oh, right, right. We didn’t have this in our file. So the transition of Priority, transitioning over to Universal, our contract didn’t make it over there somehow. So as soon as they said, we don’t know, we’re not aware, and this, that and the third I pulled that shit out and said, excuse me, you will be paying us. From this stream you’ll be getting money. These two streams you’ll be paying us from. Remember these two streams right here. These streams right here. Y’all get the money from here. Don’t just be taking our money off top. You think we still owe you? Because the balance. If there’s anything that we still owe Priority, it’s coming from one stream, not three. Get that together. Right.
01:22:36 CMG
So there was just stuff like that. I don’t know, we just lucked out. Our parents, basically. And then we just had a good attorney. So just get an attorney. And now you can go on Fiverr and have somebody read you a contract. These kids got it made. But I don’t know if they really do because there was authenticity in us driving across the country and stopping in these small places in the Bible Belt and, you know, just different places, Arkansas, North Carolina. And we got out and went to their club, rock their club. Then Karyll would get on the mic, go up there and be with the DJs, start hosting the party, and at the end, you know, she’s just that kind of person. She hosts the whole thing. She’ll walk in and grab the mic and start talking and everybody be like, oh, they just finished performing. So who wants to buy me a drink? Come on, meet me at the bar. She was just hella cool like that. But the authenticity of being able to be in the presence of people really, really, really got our fan base from. Because now it’s a lot of fake stuff on Instagram. But if people are really not what they appear to be, I mean, that’s not neither here or there. I’m just saying it’s hard to– you just like a person’s music, you don’t really know who they are. You know what I’m saying? You very rarely get to see them in a presence where where they can talk and you’ll see them interact. Or a live concert up close and impersonal. They just don’t do that no more, you know?
01:24:07 Akua Naru
So I was about to put a joke out there and say, I know that people are not who they say they are because I’m not who I say I am.
01:24:16 Akua Naru
[all laugh] I’m playing. I’m playing with you.
01:24:25 CMG
That’s hilarious.
01:24:27 Akua Naru
Thank you so much for your time and for this very robust and informative conversation. I have to really think– it’s a lot to process. And it’s definitely going to be very valuable for the work that we’re doing. I just want to say thank you. And I’m going to mute real quick before you start talking again.
01:24:54 Enongo-Lumumba Kasongo
Yes. And I want to echo what Akua said and just thanking you for spending this time with us. It’s been really special to connect with those who laid out this path for us. And hearing your stories, the joy that fills your your voice and your face when you talk about these experiences reminds me of like, why we do this work, why it’s important, and why I continue, why it is critical right now, especially to be broadcasting everything that you’re saying. I have three last things. The first is with your documentary, let us know if there’s ways we can support, if we can signal boost, what we can do to be in conversation. It’s really exciting that you’re you’re putting that together.
01:25:39 CMG
I finally found the time.
01:25:40 Enongo-Lumumba Kasongo
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I hope that this conversation will continue even beyond today. That we can continue to be in conversation and find ways to support and uplift the work that you’re doing. The second thing is we, as part of this effort, we’re hoping to also collect and share physical objects. So I know that you have rhyme books and and I’m sure you have flyers and other things. So we would love to be able to– even if it’s scanning things so that people can access them through the the archive. There’s not a kind of clear ask right now, but if there’s things that you’re thinking about like, wow, I would love to have this preserved or I would love to have this be accessed, we would be so overjoyed to be able to provide a space for you to share and/or save materials. And then the last thing is, hopefully, would you be able to share your birthday when you were born? We’re trying to make sure we have all the birthdays of everybody that we talk to, just to honor, and be able to include you.
01:26:59 Akua Naru
You don’t have to include the year, but just the month.
01:27:02 CMG
May 15th.
01:27:04 Akua Naru
Okay. So you’re a Taurus. Oh, Lord Taurus.
01:27:08 CMG
But I’m one of the good Tauruses. I’m a only child, so I ain’t going to lie and say I ain’t selfish, but I’m not the bull headed Taurus.
01:27:18 Akua Naru
Okay, well, you know Malcolm X was a Taurus. His birthday was the 19th. So it’s a powerful week.
01:27:26 CMG
And so is Two Short. His birthday is on the 17th.
01:27:31 Akua Naru
Is he really that short in person? Like, what’s his height?
01:27:36 CMG
There’s a picture of him standing right next to me. No, he’s I don’t know, he’s a little bit short maybe? I don’t know, he’s like, see, I don’t look at him and think that he’s short. He’s got to be 5’10”. Because I’m 5’11” and he’s just– Yeah he’s not short. I don’t know why they call him Two Short.
01:27:58 Akua Naru
Because I always imagined him to be like Kevin Hart.
01:28:02 CMG
No he’s not that short. I’m trying to find this picture I have with him. Let me see if you guys can see it. I’m standing right next to him in this picture.
01:28:12 Akua Naru
Because even if it’s just about sharing some pictures of things for the archive. Like she said, there’s no rush, but like if you think about it at some point and you want to just flag that you may have something. That would just be awesome.
01:28:31 Enongo-Lumumba Kasongo
Yeah. And I think when we when we share the transcript of the interview, it could be amazing to put pictures in there too, to kind of like…
01:28:40 CMG
You see this? He’s standing right next to me. I’m 5’11”. I’m not wearing heels.
01:28:45 Enongo-Lumumba Kasongo
He’s not too short.
01:28:46 Akua Naru
He’s not on a step or anything?
01:28:48 CMG
No.
01:28:50 Akua Naru
He’s not short? I’m shocked.
01:28:54 CMG
Maybe he was short on cash. I don’t know.
01:28:56 Akua Naru
If you a man at 5’10”, it’s not short. It’s average. It’s kind of low key, average height. If you’re like 5’5″. Okay. That’s kind of short.
01:29:10 CMG
Here’s another one. Yeah. We’re the same height. We’re just standing
01:29:15 Enongo-Lumumba Kasongo
That’s so funny. Wow. Well, this has been revelatory in many ways. So we’ll be in touch. I’m going to get in touch with my department on Monday so we can send you payment to show that we appreciate your time. And thank you for spending this this time with us. If you have any questions, feel free to follow up. And we’ll let you know if there’s any, any questions that we have.
01:29:44 Akua Naru
And also some of the people that you mentioned, like I remember Mystic. This sister, she had a video. It was like, light skin.
01:29:52 CMG
[singing] The life, the life, the life.
01:29:55 Akua Naru
Right. She was like a conscious rapper, right?
01:29:58 CMG
Yeah, she’s real peaceful. Long. Curly. Beautiful hair.
01:30:01 Akua Naru
Yes, yes, I remember that. I definitely know Silky. Marvelous. Of course. Oaktown 357.
01:30:09 CMG
[showing a photo] Mystic. My son is on her album cover. That’s my son on her album cover.
01:30:16 Akua Naru
Okay. Wow. Oaktown 357. [CMG shows a photo on her phone] Oh, yeah. Yeah, I remember her. I remember they came out through MC Hammer.
01:30:30 CMG
Yeah.
01:30:32 Akua Naru
So we probably will try to get in touch with some of them too, just because we want to just have a full portrait of the range of, like, women’s experiences across–
01:30:45 CMG
You gotta tap into the West for sure. And in 357 and Suga-T are probably a must.
01:30:52 CMG
[singing] I wanna be sad. Even though she’s E-40 sister, right. And most of the music that she’s done has been with him, but she’s a pretty big staple around here because she does a lot of women’s empowerment stuff. I don’t know if you guys, you can look on her social media and see all the stuff that she does. It’s too much for me. I can’t make it to all that shit. She’d be like, girl, come to the cosmetic show. I’m like, oh, I love my sister. But damn, she be doing so much I can’t keep up. I can’t go to everything.
01:31:27 Enongo-Lumumba Kasongo
I feel that.
01:31:29 CMG
You know, we’ve been best friends for a long time, since the 90s. Pretty much. 1990 was probably when I met her.
01:31:38 Enongo-Lumumba Kasongo
Wow. That’s special.
01:31:41 CMG
But thank you guys, I appreciate it. It was great. I’m going to follow you. Oh, I was going to say, have you heard of that book, The Mother Lode?
01:31:52 Enongo-Lumumba Kasongo
Yes.
01:31:55 CMG
I was just bringing that up in case, you know, if you wanted. There’s some good articles or topics in that book if you wanted to have something else to reference, I’m happy to be a part of it. And Clover, I think her name is, is the girl who wrote that book.
01:32:12 CMG
Yeah. She’s amazing. Okay, good. If you guys need anything, let me know. If you need to find somebody or whatever. I’m happy to help you do that.
01:32:21 Akua Naru
Oh, thank you so much.
01:32:22 CMG
If somebody doesn’t answer you. And specifically on the West Coast. Let me know. I’ll put a bug in their ear.
01:32:26 Enongo-Lumumba Kasongo
Yes. And I love your shirt, too. I’ve been looking at it. Solvem Probler.
01:32:32 CMG
Yeah, I’m the solvem probler. What’s going on in here?
01:32:37 Akua Naru
Thank you. I’m going to jump off because I gotta go and get this baby together.
01:32:41 CMG
I know, you’ve been so good and patient. Alright, you guys take care. Thank you for everything.
01:32:47 Akua Naru
Have a good one. Bye bye.
