Outlawz Q&A Feature
By Soren Baker
Murder Dog: Why is the Outlawz down to only three members?
Young Noble: It was seven originally. Pac passed away. Kadafi passed away right after him.
EDI: Kadafi passed November 10, 1996. Some shit went down in Jersey when Napoleon’s cousin – we don’t really know if they had a beef or it was an accident or what because really wasn’t no one there but them two. Kadafi’s girl was in the house, but the shit happened outside the apartment. She didn’t witness it, but she said she heard them two arguing and then she heard a gunshot. Kadafi’s cousin is locked up right now for that. He might of got out. He pleaded to a lesser charge. I’m not real clear on that.
Young Noble: Right after that, Fatal left. There was so much drama going on in California that he just really went into his own little zone. At the end of 2002, beginning of 2003, Napoleon left the group. We’re down to three now and now it’s time for us to be more focused. I think this is the best our music has ever sounded, as far as the Outlawz as a group without Pac.
EDI: The rap world don’t know about Kadafi. He’s just like some extra voice that was on a track, but Kadafi was the star in the Outlawz. You know how Nelly is with the St. Lunatics. That’s how Kadafi was. We already had Pac, who was a bonafied star, but coming right behind him was us and Kadafi was leading the way. He had the charisma, the looks, the swagger to go out there and be that star in the game. Not to say that the other Outlawz don’t have that, because we all have our own star quality, but we were put together playing different positions. That was a tremendous blow to us. It set us back in the game heavy, but we regrouped and moved on. We didn’t sit around and cry about the shit all day. We stayed down with Napoleon. We felt he was just as much our brother as Kadafi, even though me, Kastro, Noble, Kadafi, we all grew up around each other as little kids some kind of way. Even though we didn’t get to know Noble until we were older, Kadafi and Noble grew up together. Kadafi was a real important part of the puzzle. That being said, we still embraced Napoleon and his family after that shit happened because after Kadafi passed, we felt like we wanted to hold on to everybody. In the process of doing that, we alienated Kadafi’s mother because she felt like she wasn’t buying the whole, "It was an accident," theory. She was on some revenge shit. She’s from the Panther days. She comes from being a warrior and that’s all she knows and that’s how she felt. Being that she felt like that and a lot of other personal reasons, it ended up being that she was ostracized from the family and we just got tighter as a family and that made her even more bitter. Years go by, we do our albums and around 2001, Napoleon has this religious awakening. He goes and embraces his original religion, which is Islam. Him doing that and being really into it, he goes and does that. Dude went to Mecca a couple of times. He lives and breathes that shit and we take nothing from him. We wasn’t mad at it. In fact, we fully supported the shit, but at the same time, he stopped wanting to do certain types of songs that we were doing. He didn’t want to use profanity and I think he kind of expected us to move like he was moving. Everybody has to walk their own path. Just because you’re on a path and that’s what you want to do, that doesn’t suddenly mean that I’m turn around my life and be a follower. We’re all leaders. I think that was what Napoleon was hoping for and everybody wasn’t on that page, man. Niggas has already found themselves. We’re good right where we’re at and I don’t think he was cool with that. He wasn’t cool with the type of music we were doing, the direction we were going in. So niggas had to go their separate ways.
So what is he doing?
EDI: The last I heard, he was doing a reality TV show with rappers. The Outlawz, were a group once again and we took it back to basics, got our own studio and opened up our own spot and did the damn thing on our own.
Kastro: Everything that we do musicwise comes through there. Chair Krazy, who is on "Let It Burn," is putting his thing together up there.
With all of that, why are you still moving forward?
Kastro: We are Outlawz for life. This shit is really deeper than music. We made a bond with one another and we solemnly swore on the pact. We’re sticking to the script. Nothing or nobody’s going to change that. I’m going to die like this. This is me, the air I breathe and the blood flowing through my veins. I don’t see what’s better than what I’ve got going right here. We haven’t really accomplished what we set out to do. Pac introduced us to the world. He didn’t put us together, but he brought us together in one way or another. We feel like we have something to prove. A lot of muthafuckas don’t think we’ve got a shot now.
Yeah, some would say that with all the group members leaving that the group would be wack. With all of the departures, how were you able to make Outlaw 4 Life 2005 A.P., an album you feel very confident in?
Young Noble: The reason we can go on is that Pac really instilled something in us that we can’t let go. I’ve got so many platinum plaques in my house so it’s like Pac is looking at me every day. I still hear his voice ever day. He and Kadafi died for this. If we didn’t carry on, it would be like a disgrace to the legacy. He really passed something on us that’s way deeper than rap. That’s what Pac stood for: Never give up. That’s the shit that we be preaching in our music. Never give up. The harder stuff gets for us, the more focused and serious we become. Everybody doesn’t take shit like that, but that’s really what Pac instilled in us. When muthafuckas think it’s over, that’s when you step up even more and show them it’s far from over.
Noble, it seems like you in particular drive that message home on "These Are The Times."
Young Noble: That’s what we live by every day. That’s one of my favorite songs on the album because it’s really where it’s at in the world. Muthafuckaz need to show love. It’s just so much bullshit going on. It’s really time to open your arms and spread your wings a little bit. Us, as far as Black people, we’re like our own worst enemy. We hate to see each other succeed and that shit is lame. Black people, that’s our downfall if nothing else. We’re just trying to address all that type of shit on our album. We’re not concentrating on rapping for other rappers or rapping for the girls. We’re trying to make real substance with everything we do. We were taught by the best and we can’t have it any other way.
Why do you think Black people are like that?
I don’t know, man. I think that shit might be in the back of our psyche somewhere. Black people, we’re the strugglers. I think that shit might go back in history some time. It’s sad that it’s like that. Out of all the races, we really hate to see each other come up. A muthafucka would rather sabotage your shit than see you come up. That shit is ridiculous. It’s over my head. I’m trying to figure it out.
On "Ghetto Gospel pt. 2," you’re talking about people taking penitentiary chances for nothing. Why are people trapped into that mentality?
Young Noble: I don’t even think it’s a mentality. I think that’s more circumstances. Nothing is worth penitentiary chances. If you’re out here hustling and you make $100,000 in a month, if you get locked up, it wasn’t worth it.
EDI: What’s popular today in rap is the cocaine flow. Everybody is running around talking about the birds they sold and the weight they got. Selling dope, rappers give a distorted picture of that game. It’s almost like it’s a beautiful, like it’s a glorious thing. I’m not knocking nobody, being that I know that part of the game and I’ve seen it from the dope dealer side and the dope fiend side, I’m never going to get on there and paint a picture like that. I’m going to tell them that if they’re going to do that, stack your money. You better be reinvesting that shit in some legal businesses because the shit don’t last forever and when the FEDS coming kicking down your door and you’re ready to get out the game, you better be able to get out of the game with something. If not, you’re a fool.
Young Noble: Niggas out here will make you kill their ass, but I love my family and the joy I get every day is seeing my son. When I see my son smile, that makes my whole fucking day better. Nothing is worth me going to jail, my being away from my son and be able to provide for him and be a father to him. I grew up taking penitentiary chances every day. I was young, in and out the youth house and it was circumstances. My mom was a crackhead and all that type of shit. I just went that route like a million other youngsters, but it isn’t worth it when all the money is gone and you’re locked up. The niggas that’s locked up will tell you: "If I could have went back and made a different decision at that time, I would have done it. I might have gone to school and tried harder, or tried to go to college, or tried to get a job." Anything is better than being locked up. I’d rather be a bum on the corner than be locked up.
What made you wake up to that?
EDI: Just listening to other niggas’ music and waiting for them to say it. That’s part of the game, but I’m waiting for niggas on some part of their album to put that other version down there, to tell these little niggas that they were balling, but that they’re rapping for a reason. Everybody wants to make it seem like they was only on the block and that they’re rapping because, hey, why not. Fuck it.
It seems like people that make rap don’t even respect rap.
EDI: I think that’s kind of in because real street dudes don’t respect rappers. Street dudes only respect very few rappers and me and my niggas are one of the few. They respect us because we’re not stepping into their lane. I’m not rapping about their life. I’m talking to niggas, trying to get them something to start something new. I’m telling the niggas that’s in the game, you can start a record company, open up a cleaner, a laundry mat, get into this real estate game. So they respect us more since we’re not trying to emulate them. They know that those rappers aren’t really around. Most rappers don’t get no respect and when you’re a real-ass rapper and you’ve never really touched the game like that and niggas don’t respect you, then you want to put on that front like I don’t respect rappers so it will make me look more real.
Throughout the new album, it seems like you’re using rap to help you deal with all the madness out there. Did you see it that way?
EDI: That’s what we do. That’s what our music is. If I’m going through some shit, I need to go to the studio and I need to get with my niggas and I need to holler at them about the shit and I need to holler at this music about it.
Young Noble: Everything we go through, we put it into our music. We learned that from Pac. He was our teacher as fall as all this shit. We watched him. We’d be on the way to the studio and there’d be some bullshit happen and he’s putting that shit in a rap, right there on the spot. To me, that’s what music is about, experience. When you make music like that, it lasts forever. That’s why some people will rather listen to some oldies that what’s out now. It’s timeless when it comes from the heart if you do it right. We’re trying to make music like that.
One of the major themes I got from Outlaw 4 Life 2005 A.P. was that you were looking forward and thinking positive. This is the most I’ve heard of that from you. Why do it now?
Young Noble: Time. They say time heals wounds. Right after Pac passed, Kadafi passed. We were really young. I was just turning 18 when all that shit was going down. We were really traumatized at that time. I think as young black men, a lot of shit traumatizes us and we don’t even know, like it’s regular shit. We rarely go to the doctor. We don’t have psychiatrists and all that shit, but that shit traumatized us. If anything, we were probably really bitter and just unhappy. We had unhappy souls and that would come out in our music. We were going through so much, as far as our music situation, our niggas dying. It seemed like nothing was going right. But where we’re at now, we’re grown men. It would have been easy for us to come out dissing niggas and be real bitter. Niggas be stealing from us and Pac on a regular basis. Damn near everybody in the game. Pac is a legend. Everybody’s going to take from Pac. We had to let that rest in peace and keep it moving. Our music really reflects us as men right now. OGs that go through shit, they’re going to sit back and tell you what’s real instead of the bullshit. That’s where we’re at. I feel like we’re young OGs in the game and everybody’s got their music geared toward the hoes or dissing other rappers. We’ve got our music geared toward these young niggas, trying to give them a little information, like your life is serious and the choices you make as a young nigga are going to affect you when you’re older. We’ve been through a lot of shit and we’re still here and we’re blessed to be able to do this music. We’re trying to give muthafuckas a positive outlook because that’s where we’re at. We’re all fathers.
Yet on "Better It Get," you go after rappers who claim they’re tired of rapping. Why?
EDI: I wrote that part when there was a lot of niggas, like Andre 3000, who I’m a fan of, and a couple of other cats who were shitting on rap. They were like, "Yeah, this shit is wack. I don’t even want to do it no more." If that’s how people feel, I’m going to stay down in the trenches and try to make something that people feel and will inspire people to want to rap. I wanted to give niggas a reason to love the shit again.
But why do people always say that? Jay-Z, Ja Rule, Too $hort and others always say they’re going to retire.
EDI: I feel like niggas do that for a lot of different reasons, publicity, record company negotiations.
Then on "Can’t Turn Back," you’re also talking about the whole industry biting 2Pac. Why today, so long after he’s been gone, people are still pattering themselves after him?
Young Noble: There’s a lot of originality. There’s muthafuckas like OutKast, Kanye, but at the same time, Pac was the greatest rapper. We took the shit personal a lot of times because Pac was our nigga. He wasn’t just a rapper to us. We lived with the nigga and ate dinner together. On the flip side, niggas really studied Pac. It’s only right the people borrow from him. Everybody borrows from everybody and Pac borrowed from people. Pac had the stuff for the streets, the real stuff you feel in your heart and the ladies loved him. He was the total package, so hell yeah muthafuckas is going to take from Pac.
Kastro: Pac was a powerful man. He was much bigger than rap music. Rap music and entertainment was just his vessel. People want a piece of that and rightfully so. Everybody was influenced by somebody, whether you’re playing basketball or are a carpenter. You were influenced by somebody at some point.
So why don’t you have him on Outlaw 4 Life 2005 A.P.?
Kastro: Damn near every album he’s put out since All Eyez On Me, we’ve been on, so I don’t see what the point is of him being on our shit. Everybody knows what’s going on.
Young Noble: It’s time for us to stand up on our own. Pac did enough for us. Pac is still feeding our families. He gave us the blueprint. We’re talented and we don’t need to have Pac on the album. If niggas want to hear Pac and the Outlawz, there’s a million albums you could buy and hear that. That’s kind of old to niggas. People want to hear some new Outlawz stuff and they want to hear us on their own. We was on a million fucking banging ass songs with Pac. It wasn’t like we were creatively coming up with the shit. That was Pac coming up with the shit and telling us what to do on it. That’s easy. Anybody could do that shit. But it’s like, What could we do? Going across the country, we get love in the streets and people are like, niggas want us to come out and do our thing. It’s almost been 10 years and real niggas that don’t give a fuck about rap, that bust heads, are like, "Yo, ya’ll niggas need to come back with that real shit." A lot of times, we don’t want to take credit for that shit. They’ll play "Hail Mary" on the radio and they’ll never say, "2Pac and the Outlawz," they’ll just say 2Pac. We kind of felt the same way, that it is 2Pac. We were basically doing our little verses and that shit was like ad-libs. They would have loved it with or without us. But the streets is like, "Pac was doing his muthafucking thing, but ya’ll was doing your thing, too." That’s what really keeps pushing us, the streets. I think it’s the perfect time for us to come out.
That being said, why aren’t you on a major label? Why aren’t you with 2Pac’s mom, who has her own label? Why aren’t you on Interscope, which puts out Pac’s albums?
Kastro: We look up to Afeni, as we do all our elders. She’s our auntee. There’s a special place for her because she’s a unique woman. She looks out for us and she does her thing.
Young Noble: Amaru was really designed for Pac’s music. We support Afeni. That’s our aunt. Whatever she needs from us, she’s got it. She keeps us in the mix of all the Pac albums. She keeps supporting us and we keep supporting her 110 percent. But since 2001, when our last album Novakane came out, we’ve been basically shopping a deal and trying to get our album right. We’ve had paperwork on the table with a few labels and Napoleon left in 2003. We never got a fair shot. We’ve been on 40 million records and have never had a major record deal. That shit should be in the Guinness Book of World Records. The thing that made us go independent on this one was in 2004, I had called my man Gotti from Boo & Gotti to go and holler at Cash Money for us and see what was up. They basically wanted to do the deal. We knew them dudes before they blew up. We did a song with them niggas when we was fucking with Rap-A-Lot, like when Juvey had first put out "Ha" and it was getting hot. Lil’ Wayne was little as hell. Every time we seen them niggas, they always showed love and asked us what was going on and shit. When Gotti hollered at them, they was with it. They saw the vision. We were negotiating with them for like two months, from March to May 2004. The day before my man’s wedding, the contract came and we signed it and sent the shit back to them. We’re thinking we’re on Cash Money. The wedding turned a celebration. Pac’s mother was happy for us, like "Ya’ll finally did it." We were thinking it was going to pop off. Two months go by and we’re waiting on our advance money and seeing what’s popping. It took us two and a half months to realize we weren’t really on Cash Money. They never signed the deal. We never found out the reason why but we were just like, "Whatever." But when that situation happened, we were like, "Maybe muthafuckas just don’t see our vision and we’re going to have to make these muthafuckas see our vision." We could have been dropped an album out independently, but we weren’t hurting for money. We finally felt like we had a chance to put our music out on a major level and it kind of disappointed us. Disappointment is nothing new to us. We’ve fucked with a few different labels where that type of shit happened. But we never actually signed a contract and it wasn’t official. They just didn’t sign it, so we were like fuck it, we’ll drop some independent shit.
Since Still I Rise did so well, why didn’t Interscope come to you?
Young Noble: To be honest, Interscope was scared of Suge at the time. They basically told us that. When Still I Rise came out, we was basically just getting off Death Row. We were in the midst of that. EDI and them, they were fucking with Interscope back in the day when they were on Dramacydal. I don’t know. Maybe they didn’t see vision. But I don’t give a fuck about these labels no more. We’re not even shopping nothing no more. These muthafuckas are going to have to come to us from now on. We’re about to step the game up and put out better music than everybody so the streets is like, "Man." We’re about to turn our independent company into a major if muthafuckaz leave it up to us.
Kastro: Plus, there’s a stigma that comes with muthafuckas that come from somebody that was so great, that the group is probably a little corny or they don’t live up to the hype. They always wanted us to have a Pac song and that wasn’t the route that we wanted to take. We always wanted to add on, not take away.
EDI: I believe we’re blackballed in this industry, man. I never put it out there like that before. At least 10 different times, we’ve had signature copies of contracts ready to go, like this is a done deal, it’s a wrap and the shit will just miraculously evaporate at the last minute. For a minute, we felt like there was a hex on niggas. I feel like a memo went around the industry like, "Yo, them niggas come to your office, don’t sign them. They’re bad news." Whatever niggas had to say to make sure that shit don’t happen is what happened. That’s why we said fuck it and do it independently. The people are still going to hear the music.
How was the process of making the new album, then?
EDI: It was easier. The label is like a big-ass baby sitter for an artist. When a baby is born, everybody supports it and gives it love, confidence. That’s all a major label does. So we don’t have that. We don’t have the A&R niggas bringing us all the hottest beats from the hottest producers, getting us verses and hooks from these niggas. That’s all the rap game is right now. It’s about the A&Rs being like, "I got a relationship with Timbaland or The Neptunes and I can get you this beat with a Beyonce hook or a Jay-Z verse." That’s what niggas is doing and rolling with. There’s only a few niggas that are making their own hits and are self-contained. All the top niggas, they’re either affiliated with a top nigga or they’re getting the love from a top nigga. We don’t have that no more. When Pac died, that was our top nigga right there. That was our way into the game, so we had to start from scratch. All we had was our name. We were like Tina Turner and Ike Turner when they got divorced. We didn’t have no support from nobody, from Death Row to Interscope. Death Row came and shot us a record deal, but at the same time, they was like, "We’re going to sign ya’ll but we’re going to put ya’ll out when we feel like putting ya’ll out." At that rate, niggas could be 40.
Was that why there was such a delay between Novakane and now?
Kastro: We tried to do some other things. We had a record store, did some real estate. We tried to tighten up our screws and make sure everything was running smoothly with the ship. Everybody moved to Atlanta since Novakane, so we had to readjust to that and were going through the regular motions of life until we decided we were ready to put out another album.
Why did you end up moving to Atlanta?
EDI: First and foremost, my mother was down here and my mother’s diabetic. She was recently retired and I had to step up to the plate. I’m responsible for everything for her, her medicine, where she lives, the car she drives. I had to come down here to take care of my mother. But on the flip side of that, niggas in LA have a certain type of attitude on the music they think you should put out and how they feel about Pac and it doesn’t really coincide with how we feel about the situation. They look at it like Pac was a West Side nigga and he lived and died for the West Coast, which is not all the way true. Pac died at the height of the East Coast-West Coast thing, but how he died didn’t have nothing to do with the East Coast-West Coast thing. How he died was some straight-up LA gangbanging West Coast shit. Right there, they’re mistaken. We’re on a whole nother page. I’m not on a page where I’m trying to dis this rapper or that rapper and go down that same path that niggas done went down already. I’m trying to elevate the game to another level. It seemed like there was a lot of that going on. The music wasn’t really changing. Financially it really didn’t make no sense for me to stay there because I needed a house for my family. I needed to boss up on another level. In LA, it’s real expensive out there. For what I paid for a house in LA, you could get two houses out here and that’s what I ended up doing.
Young Noble: Plus, Atlanta was always like a home for us. EDI was the first one to move here back in the day, before Pac and them. For me, what made Atlanta special to me, we had stayed with Pac out in Calabasas, in a mansion and when he passed away, Afeni made us come stay with her in Atlanta, in Stone Mountain. She saw it and if he didn’t do that, we probably wouldn’t be talking to you right now. We were retarded after he passed away. She saw it, that if we went out there in the world that something would happen to us. We stayed with her and it was like a cover for us and we needed that. She did that for us and she saved our lives when she did that. I don’t know if she knows it or not, but she did. So I always loved Atlanta. It always felt comfortable to me. EDI and Kastro had moved out there. Me and Napoleon were the last two out in LA, so when he left the group, I was like, "I need to go be with my brothers." That was the best move I could have made.
EDI: When we came down here, niggas just accepted us with open arms. They looked at us like we were legendary for the shit that we did with Pac, the shit that we did on our own. They weren’t telling us who we should dis. That was good because I’m a grown-ass man and I’m not paying attention to what the next man is doing. I’m standing on my own two. It seems like niggas out here do that a little bit more. I take nothing from the West Coast because I became a man in LA. As a matter of fact, I miss LA and love LA like Pac loved LA. But at the same time, a nigga got to make a change, keep advancing, go to different levels. You can’t stay stagnant.
Kastro: Atlanta helped us get a better perspective on life. If we were living in the big city where everything is speeding, we probably would have gotten caught up in that whirlwind. Atlanta’s more mellow and it helped us calm down and appreciate life for what it is instead of going headfirst into everything.
The FBI just dropped the investigation into the Biggie killing. Why hasn’t his and Pac’s murders been solved yet?
Young Noble: I think they really didn’t want to solve the shit. If they solved the Biggie and Pac case, that shit would tie into them muthafuckas. It would be all types of shit going on. There’s certain shit I’m not going to speak about. We were young back then and there was a lot of shit going on that we were seeing that we were not really realizing what we were seeing. They don’t want uncover shit like that because that will start uncovering all different types of shit. They would rather Pac and Biggie be dead any muthafuckin way. They were two powerful, young black men that were rich muthafuckas. Pac had the potential to really get up in these offices and be a governor. They didn’t want that. Look at his history. His mother, they tried to give her 300 years when she was pregnant with this nigga. They know all that type of shit.
How does it not being solved impact you?
Young Noble: It matters, but at the same time it don’t matter. We got this from Pac’s mom. Muthafuckas think that Pac was smart and articulate and had the Art Of War, but his mother was the one. She’s our OG. That’s who fuck we talk to and she’s like, "It’s in God’s hands." Whoever killed Pac, he’s going to deal with God on that shit. God can punish him way more than we could punish his muthafuckin ass. Not saying a nigga wouldn’t love to punish whoever did that shit. But niggas like us can’t do nothing that God can’t do 1 million times more and that’s what’s going to happen to both their killers. God is going to take care of them. I don’t have any worries about that. He probably already took care of them, really.
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