“With the gangster shit… Death Row? You had to earn it man. If you ain’t earn it, you pay for it.”
On the newest episode of People’s Party, set to release this coming Monday, Talib Kweli and Jasmin Leigh sit down with legendary West Coast rapper Kurupt to talk about his early days grinding it out in the West Coast hip-hop scene and how he first got signed by Death Row Records.
If you know anything about Kurupt, you’re no doubt familiar with his vivid wordplay and gift for storytelling — which is on full display here as he runs Talib and Jasmin through a hilarious story that involves a shit-talking older sister egging Snoop Dogg into hearing her little brother rap, which then leads Snoop to introducing Kurupt to Dr. Dre, who brings him to Suge Knight who forces him into performing a freestyle rap for a person he has never met before or risk being thrown into a pool. It’s a tale deserving of its own song.
“’Make a birthday rap for BJ, if you wack we throwing you in the pool…’” Kurupt says, quoting Suge. “I said ‘Well shit, what happens if I’m good?…’ He said ‘you got a record deal.’ Boy, it was the rap of a lifetime because otherwise, I’d be in that pool. And I have a feeling if I got out of the pool they were going to try and mop me… They were into that type of shit, it was a real gangster environment. Throwing in the pool was just the first part.”
We haven’t even mentioned that Kurupt does impressions for every character in this story, and they’re f*cking golden. Watch the full story above and check out the newest episode of People’s Party with Talib Kweli when it drops here.