Rapper Jay Rock: So how do you rap?
Dope-head rapper Frank Ocean: I make shit for real. I just keep it clean. It’s not like the other people out there who get caught up in the shit that it seems to be about. It’s about finding out, that the world isn’t made out of sugarcane and honey and all this fuckin’ bullshit. And I don’t want to have to keep telling it to the white people, so I’m using that as an avenue to do it.”
Is there a difference between good and bad rappers? Is there a line-to-line relationship?
“I’m a fan of every rapper, whether it’s good or bad. My friend was saying something like what you are doing on ‘Blonde’ is so much better than something you might do on a mixtape.”
Frank Ocean: “I’d say the line-to-line relationship in hip-hop is different from what it looked like when I was doing it back in the day. Back then, you were able to say whatever you wanted and get away with it. Nowadays, you have to play the game — you have to have a song that’s good enough to get people to give you their money. Or else you might as well just give it to somebody else and have that be a record anyway. In many ways, it’s all the same thing. It’s not really about rap anymore — it’s about music and what it gives people.”
Who are your heroes, artists or music critics?
“The best people I think that I admire are RZA [The Wu-Tang Clan co-founder], the greatest producers that any one of us will ever hear. I love what they do. But I always feel the need to be like, You gotta stop with the ‘Yea, yay, you can’t have shit.’ What shit? What is the definition of ‘shit’ when it comes to your music, your lyrics?’ I don’t think any of the people that I respect really care about that crap. I think about what I wanna do when I’m in life, and I don’t just want to be remembered as a dude that’s saying a line.”
Is it safe to say that Frank didn’t really want his name on his music when ‘Nostalgia’ came out?
“I think it’s safe to say, but the truth of it is that I don’t
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