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spoke w him before he headed out on tour w Q and Isaiah Rashad.
http://larecord.com/interviews/2014/04/01/vince-staples-interview-shyne-coldchain-2
You mentioned that growing up you weren’t about rap like that. So when you first started rapping, was it an easy transition?
Not really. I didn’t know how to rap on beat and I really was monotone because that wasn’t my life. I’ve never been like an attention-seeking person. How it happened was kind of random. I had to grow into where I am now. It was all a process. But I could always write. I never got a paper that I didn’t get a good grade on and I never had a paper that I didn’t do the day before. I always knew how to write, I always knew how to get my point across. Translating that into rap music was the hardest part. I’ve grown to love it. My passion didn’t really sound like it was there at first but then as life goes on, you get sick of the shit you was doing and you gotta provide for your family—you want to get away from the bullshit. That really inspired me to take it as far as I have now. My hunger for it came over time.
Are you at your hungriest now?
Yeah. I’ve grown a love for it. My mom is proud of me. I can honestly say now that my mom is actually proud of me. My family’s proud of me, they call me on some happy shit. I’ve never had that before. It’s always been like, ‘How are you doing? Are you staying out of trouble? We love you.’ That’s always been my relationship with my family: ‘Stay out of trouble. We love you.’ Now it’s, ‘Oh, look at what he’s doing! Look at what he’s doing!’ That’s crazy for me to see. It’s more of a thing for them. One of my grandma’s sisters called me saying she heard my song—she’s 80 years old. That’s really what means a lot to me. I’m really telling the history of my family, things that we’ve been going through our entire lives. That stuff is generational. They really appreciate it more than anybody else.
Have you ever had second thoughts about being so personal? You speak in vivid detail about your life in your old tapes and the new song ‘Nate.’
At first I never wanted to talk about myself. I listened to the people around me: ‘You’re funny, just be funny when you rap.’ I never took it serious. I was kind of ashamed of it because coming up how I came up you don’t wanna be the motherfucker that’s like, ‘Yeah, I do this, I do that, I fucked this ho, I do that.’ It’s kind of embarrassing in a sense because I never grew up on some being proud of that type of shit—it was just something that we all did. I never really wanted to speak on it. It wasn’t something that I really wanted to put too much into. I didn’t want to be the person that was talking all the negative bullshit. I had a problem with it, but then I had to understand that it’s not negativity—it’s just who you are and there’s nothing wrong with being who you are. I came to that realization and my music benefited greatly from that.
I wanted to ask you about Ramona Park. What was Ramona Park like growing up versus what it’s like now?
It’s cameras in the park now. Growing up, I wasn’t pushing none of that. I was pushing my daddy and my mom and my grandparents’ neighborhood when I was younger. My parents is from Compton but I grew up in Long Beach—my friends were from Long Beach but I was on that until I got old enough and I started losing my friends. We used to hang out at Mayfair Park down the street. When Ramona Park was really, really active was kind of before my heyday. When we started, people was getting put on at the park—we were hanging out at the park, kicking it around the park but it wasn’t really hot on the park. It was hot on the street that I lived on. That’s when I really, really got into it. ‘Fuck it, this is where we at, this is where we from’-type shit. Me and my little brother were like, ‘We’re not from Long Beach, we’re from Compton.’ That’s obviously not true. Our parents moved us out to get away from that but you know, growing up looking up to your parents that’s what you’re gonna be on. Ramona Park was really hot before, when Joey and them were running around. They’re all older than me. I’m one of the youngest people from my neighborhood. When I got really into it, it was because they were shooting up my house so I was like, ‘It’s for real now.’ That whole gang shit is different. There’s always a bigger picture but it’s things that personally affect you that pick the way you apply yourself to it.
http://larecord.com/interviews/2014/04/01/vince-staples-interview-shyne-coldchain-2
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