Wise Intelligent

In 1990 Poor Righteous Teachers released their debut album "Holy Intellect" selling over 500,000 records worldwide. The release debuted at NO #12 on the Billboard R&B chart and moved into the top ten in less than two weeks. The first video "Rock Dis Funky Joint" (which was shot in the Donnelly Page housing projects with scenes on the Trenton Makes, World Takes bridge) was such a success that the group toured the entire country twice staying on the road for nearly two years with the likes of Ice Cube, Kid Rock, KRS-ONE, Public Enemy, and Too Short to name a few.

HOLY INTELLECT AMG Review

"Holy Intellect is a sharp session, squarely in an Afrocentric groove, featuring dozens of intelligent lyrics on tracks like "Time to Say Peace," "Holy Intellect," and "Word From the Wise." Poor Righteous Teachers also illustrated they were capable of moving a party as well with "Rock Dis Funky Joint." - AMG Review

On the road PRT honed their writing and production skills in tour buses and hotel rooms while preparing Poor Righteous Teacher's 1992 sophomore effort "Pure Poverty" the record sold some 395k units and made PRT one of the most respected hip-hop groups in the country. The first video, "Shakiyla (JRH)" a sequel to Holy Intellects "Shakiyla" propelled the group to the forefront of hip-hops growing faction of conscious rap ambassadors.

PURE POVERTY AMG Review

"Rappers who take a strong moral stance were beginning to proliferate when the second Poor Righteous Teachers album came out, but this young trio had been "teaching the righteous way" since the beginning, combining hard, funky beats with culture-conscious didacticism. Their stated goal was to teach the poor to be emotionally, domestically and economically self-sufficient Wise Intelligent's lilting, reggae-influenced speed rap is especially fine, especially on the dancehall-inflected "Easy Star" and "I'm Comin' Again," an a cappella rap. There are occasional moments of self-contradiction, maybe even hypocrisy: though they solemnly preach respect for "the Black woman," they apparently see nothing wrong with using her orgasmic moans and groans to spice up a track or two. But the album's still a winner overall." - Rick Anderson, All Music Guide

1993 with wise still writing profusely the group embarked on their 3rd LP' "Black Business" an ode to black businesses, and first European tour. The first single "Nobody Move" produced by Father Shaheed took PRT and Wise as a writer to another level in creativity and originality. The reggae influenced hip-hop track and song lyrics became the identifying mark of the Trenton trio. This originality and skill took these young songwriter/producers from the low income housing projects in Trenton, NJ to the UK/Europe including London and Harlem, England, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Berlin, Wuppertal and Fribourg, Germany, Zurich, Switzerland and Holland, Amsterdam.

BLACK BUSINESS Billboard Review

"The strength of the album Black Business is the way that positive philosophy is poetically delivered over bold, intense music. Rap has always been about lyrical skills. Over the years many different styles have developed but probably none as impressive or distinctive as the lyrical wizardry of Wise Intelligent. Blending a unique style of Jamaican chatting and rapid-fire poetry Wise delivers an unparalleled vocal assault." - Billboard

In 1996 the critically acclaimed Poor Righteous Teachers were back in the studio working on their fourth and Wises' fifth LP'. Armed with what Wise considered some of the groups best writing/production to date and some recently educed music business savvy the Poor Righteous Teachers went back to the negotiating table to refine their seven album deal with Profile which was now in their opinion "extremely one-sided" the group received more creative control on the fourth LP and decided three more recordings on the Profile label was too much. Reducing the total time to four albums in 1996 Poor Righteous Teachers released one of the most sought after records in the hip hop community, "The New World Order." This album featured collaborations with Grammy award winning songstress Lauryn Hill, Wyclef Jean and KRS ONE amongst others.

THE NEW WORLD ORDER An Amazon.com Customer

"I think that wise is one of the best artist ever. His style is like no other. The way he fuses his pure poverty style is truly holy intellect. The way his lyrics just pour out flawlessly, is a true sign that he is all about black business. I hope that P.R.T. will release another compact disc."So the blind man sees and deaf man speaks, cause Wise civilized them."

- AMG, Billboard, Amazon Custmer

Wise Intelligence of Poor Righteous Teachers got some hot, brand new music!

By Toure Muhammad

When Poor Righteous Teachers hit the national scene in 1990 with the release of their first album, it was clear they would become Hip Hop legends.

Now, of course they can boast respectable record sales and a loyal following, and they didn’t have record-breaking CD sales, but that has NEVER been the criterion for REAL Hip Hop. If that were the case, then MC Hammer, with 10 million copies, Please Hammer, Don’t Hurt ‘Em sold, would be THE best rapper of all-time. And even Oaktown’s 357 know that’s not the case.

Yeah, what PRT represents is the BEST of the Hip Hop rap genre: lyrical excellence, powerful, thought provoking content, and some straight up head nodding beats. This trio put together a flavor that makes brothers like me proud of what hip hop means and can do when we have knowledge and love of self and knowledge of our enemy.

PRT’s music exposed the pain, poverty and destruction in the black community and always shed light on the hidden hands that fostered those conditions. They inspired me.

And now, the front man for PRT, Wise Intelligence is releasing a solo CD, Wise Intelligent is…The Talented Timothy Taylor. He recently gave an exclusive interview to Bean Soup Times. I told him the news of his new release was like water in the desert. Can you believe we haven’t heard from PRT since 1996 with the release of New World Order?

And After listening to A Genocide, it’s no doubt; the people are in for a cool and refreshing treat.

With this solo project, Wise is ready to stand once again, with the best Hip Hop has to offer. He knows how to put it together. "It’s about music, message, and flow all being up to a par," said Wise Intelligent. Wise brings it with "A Genocide" which has the melodic lyrical flow and head-nodding beat with some serious content, as he talks about the "birth" of the modern dope game in the black community.

In the rap, Wise talks about Freeway Rick and the whole CIA, Contra, Black community drug triangle that was exposed via the reporting of former San Jose Mercury News reporter Gary Webb.

Webb was crediting with breaking the story and doing lot’s and lot’s of legwork in Central America to corroborate the story initially told to him by Freeway Rick which was that he was provided drugs by the Contras with the CIA’s knowledge. Since then, Webb reported committed suicide by putting TWO holes in his own head with a shotgun. Makes you go hhhmmm.

Wise wants to make a point with A Genocide. "I want black youth to know, they’re not the cause of the problem. When it was over, Freeway Rick felt like a strawberry. He wasn’t the king pin, he was a runner," said Wise.

"Lotta innocent lives are lost, black communities paid the cost…
All the drugs and guns we bought we financed CIA dirty wars…
I’m just a young boy born down in a ghet-to…
Hanging out on corners cooling with my fel-la’s…"
--A Genocide

To get a sample of A Genocide go to http://www.myspace.com/wiseintelligent.

Many Hip Hop historians will talk about how conscious rap took a fall in the early 90s as record labels moved to promote gangsta rap. "I’m a ghetto political MC," said Wise who witnessed the attack on political hip hop artist like X-Clan, Public Enemy, Brand Nubian, KRS One and others in the early 90s.

Record labels began very deliberately taking money from the promotion of conscious rap to gangsta rap. "I witnessed it happening," said Wise. "They cut the money for promotion of PRT to spend more money promoting people like DJ Quick."

"Did you know that Easy E was the FIRST rapper to be invited to the White House?" Wise added.

Word? Imagine that.

One goal Wise has in mind with this latest project is that, "these rhymes were about change and getting a brother to see himself in that brother he’s pointing the gun at," he said. As always, Wise is about self-love, respect and unity.

Citing the huge void in lyrical content, outside of current rappers Talib Kweli, Mos Def, and Dead Pres, the "best thing about hip hop today is that poor kids from the hood are finally making some money," explained Wise.

Another must listen to cut on his myspace.com page is the classic Conscious Style featuring Boogie Down Productions’ KRS One. Both MCs remind you of what hardcore conscious rap should be.

Speaking on current events, Wise explained why black folks on roofs crying for help might be the best thing to happen in recent history. "When I saw it, I was like, hell yeah! That’s what needs to happen. Maybe we’ll begin to rely on self now! If nothing else, Hurricane Katrina will teach black folks to do for self."

This brother is deep. After you check out his new music on myspace.com, read his blog that gives and extensive list of books to read. It’s more than 100 books so before the interview concluded, I asked him which five would he recommend to Bean Soup Times readers.

"First, I’d recommend "A People’s History of The United States" by Howard Zinn

"Countering the Conspiracy to Destroy Black Boys," Volumes 1, 2 and 3 by Jawanza Kunjufu," said Wise. "OK, that’s three (laughs). And the last one, this may surprise people, but the last one would be "No More Prisons" by William Upski, because in that book he tells you how to organize."

"The last thing I want to say is get knowledge, get wisdom but in all of your getting, get the understanding." Yes sir, brother Wise. Yes, sir.







- Bean Soup Time by Toure Muhammad

Wise Intelligent is 'The Talented Timothy Taylor'

Interview by: Harold M. Clemens

Last week I had the pleasure of building with Wise Intelligent from Poor Righteous Teachers, a group that contributed to rap’s golden era, which took place from the late ‘80s to mid-‘90s. Based on his group’s past albums, I expected the 15-year rap veteran to convey in our conversation the same passion, wit, and insight that earned his group a reputation. The Trenton, New Jersey representer definitely didn’t disappoint with plenty of poignant things to say about the direction hip-hop has taken, since he first came out; why he has remained in the game; and how his new album, Intelligent Muzik, which drops on September 28, differs from his past work. Here are the highlights from our discussion:

Nobodysmiling.com: Younger cats might not know the group, Poor Righteous Teachers. For their sake, could you give me some background on the group, like who was in it, including yourself; how you guys met; and how you guys started?

Wise Intelligent: Poor Righteous Teachers [consisted of] Culture Freedom, Father Shaheim, and myself. We got together early. Me and Culture, we basically grew up together from youth [as] young boys in the projects. We were really close as youth, I’m sayin’ [so close that] our moms used to cook dinner for both of us. We later met Shaheim and put the group together. We were all dealing with math (doctrine of the 5% Nation of Islam) as youth, so Poor Righteous Teachers was the best name to describe us. We had been rhyming for a long time, making beats, and doing hip-hop for a long time. That’s how we came together in like 1989, the year we dropped our first single, “Time to Say Peace.” In 1990 we dropped our first album, “Holy Intellect.” We dropped “Pure Poverty” in ’92, “Black Business” in ’93, and “New World Order” in ’96.

Nobodysmiling.com: I need to ask you a stupid question about your new album, “The Talented Timothy Taylor.” Where’d you get the name from?

Wise Intelligent: That’s me. It’s the ‘me’ nobody knows. This is one of the most personal records that I’ve ever made as an artist, as a writer. That’s something that P.R.T. kind of shied away from [because] in all our efforts, all our records we never really allowed the fan an inside view of what we were dealing with as individuals. It was always about the ‘immortal self,’ it was always about rising above the ledge, about the ‘god quality.’ This record is more so about the struggle, what makes you see certain things the way you see them, your experiences, the things that you deal with everyday. I wanted to go back to what my mother named me because that’s personal. I wanted to take it back. [This record] is about showcasing the talent; taking it back to the day when hip-hop was about talent, when the best MC was determined by his skill level, by the level of his talent and not his marketing dollars, not how many records he sold. Because now we dealing with artists, who think they’re the best rappers just because they selling a lot of records. But if that’s the case, Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer would be [numbers] 1 and 2 because they sold more records than a lot of you dudes.
“The Talented Timothy Taylor” is just a talented MC because talent can’t be written off. Headz be like, “Aw dag, he’s from back then. I don’t know. It’s a whole different game. Does he still got it? Can he still do this?” Man, talent don’t go nowhere!
The Talented Timothy Taylor is Source Magazine’s number 111 MC in their top 110, number 51 in Blazin’s 51 in...(continued below)

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their top 50 emcees. I’m the cat that they don’t mention, I’m hip-hop’s overlooked and underrated. I’m that dude that ya emcees study. I’m not that guy that the fans study.

Nobodysmiling.com: There’s a lot of powerful images on the cover, if you look closely- large packages of drugs on a table, a lynching, shotguns on another table, a man showing his infant how to cock a gun in front of what looks like his wife, a heroin addict shooting up, among others. Who came up with the concept for the cover?

Wise Intelligent: I did. That’s something that I’ve been putting together for a minute. That’s the backdrop from which this record is being created. This is what I’m up against. This is what I’m dealing with everyday. It ain’t like I live in a house on a hill, I live on the murder block. That’s why I’m on a bike [on the cover]. I’m not zoomin’ through ya hood in no BMW. That bike is actually my bike, that ain’t no prop. [The cover] represents everything that we’re dealing with in this hood, the mentality that we’re dealing with. The girl on the bike is symbolic of course; she represents hip-hop. She’s delivering me back to the people. She got on the little booty cutters, the coochie cutters because that’s where she’s at right now. She’s bringing me back, she’s like, “I’ve had enough.”

Nobodysmiling.com: Definitely you’re an O.G. in the game, been out since ’90. After watching the game change so much, what’s been your motivation to stay in it?

Wise Intelligent: Not even being in the game. Not even playing the way they play. I’m not in a race with anybody. I’m not in the race with 50 Cent. I’m not chasing 50 Cent’s record sales. I’m not chasing Kanye West. I’m not chasing Jay Z; I’m not trying to become C.E.O. of a major record company. That’s not where I’m at with my whole thinking. I’m about these messages that I’m dropping. I’m about what I see. I’m watching what’s going on in Iraq. I’m watching what’s going on in North Korea. I’m watching what’s going on in Louisiana right now. And nobody analyzes it the way I analyze it. My understanding is very valuable I feel, so I put my understanding out there. [Rap] is just a hobby, I do it good. I ain’t out here trying to outpace the next rapper. The motivation is I see things that people are not addressing, things that hurt me, things that really make me upset, things that make me wanna grab my hammer and mount up and click up and say, “Look. This is how it’s gon’ go down!” on some Black Panther-type…

Nobodysmiling.com: The ‘Golden Years,’ ’88-’98, ya’ll were a part of the reason they were the golden years. As somebody that came out in the Golden Age and was producing in that era, how and why do you think hip-hop has changed from when you were flourishing to now?

Wise Intelligent: The change was the shift in the marketing by major corporations. Nothing more, nothing less. Major labels are trendy; they’re always trying to jump onto the latest fad. P.R.T. [itself] was signed on the strength of what they thought was a fad- pro-black, conscious, ghetto political music. Public Enemy was hot, Boogie Down Productions was hot, so, “Ok. We need us one of those groups.” That’s what happens.

Nobodysmiling.com: Do you think the labels are manipulating the music, or do you think the streets changed, the artists changed? Was someone hot, then the labels picked up and ran with that, or did the labels point the music in a certain direction?

Wise Intelligent: The labels put it in a direction. Poor kids don’t have the power to point it nowhere. Gangstas already existed in the hood, pimps already existed in the hood before they became rappers. Yet the major label creates the vehicle, he puts it out there and that’s what happened. The major label is definitely responsible because the poor kid, in the golden era, the aspiring rapper, was writing conscious rhymes because he felt that’s what he had to write to get paid. That era was mobilizing black youth to write consciously, to the bookstores, to libraries, making them study, making them ask their teachers questions that their teachers couldn’t even answer half the time. And now, when the major label shifts the marketing and started “Get Rich Or Die Trying” and so on, now the youth is sitting back saying, “That’s what I gotta write to get paid! That’s all I see right now- I see 50, I see Diplomats, I see the Lox, I see…headz that’s just out here talking like gangstas, so I feel like I have to write gangsta messages in order to get paid”…That’s how the major labels did it. And if the major labels shifted the marketing again and started financing everything that sounded like Kanye West or conscious music again, it would mobilize the youth right back to the bookstores all over again. That’s the power of this medium. What I like about this era most is headz are money conscious. They’re entrepreneurs. I’m glad that young black kids from the hood are finally making some paper. They’re finally getting some paper off an art form that they created. They ain’t get nothing off jazz. We watched that come and go. They ain’t get nothing off bebop. They ain’t get nothing off ska. We ain’t get nothing off country. We ain’t get nothing off rock ‘n roll. We ain’t get nothing off blues. Now, we’re finally getting paid something and that’s great for me. And that alone is what I respect from the younger artists. What they need now is a nice, healthy dose of political orientation to go with the dollars. If you don’t have the political orientation to go with the dollars, you’re going to lose the dollars. You’re gonna go and buy 52 cars…


Wise Intelligent’s new album, “The Talented Timothy Taylor,” drops on September 28. Visit www.intelligentmuzik.com to see the album’s powerful cover.

Shout out to Born Free.
- Nobody Smiling by Harold M. Clemens

Wise Intelligent: Heavy Mental
By Jarrod Miller-Dean


Knowledge is not something that can be bought, but rather attained. Over the years, Hip-Hop music has grown from a young cry of escaping the ghetto, to the booming voice of million-dollar-a-year money making industry. Through this growth and progression, the question, “Has Hip-Hop forgotten where it came?” has become a major issue.

In honor of Hip-Hop Appreciation Week, AllHipHop.com spoke with a true educator and survivor of the game. While Public Enemy seems to be the only “Conscious Rap group” to get any major media reverence, let us never forget the tracks laid by Wise Intelligent and The Poor Righteous Teachers.

Wise talks about his soon to be released solo album, Wise Intelligent is the Talented Timothy Taylor. He also comments on the lacking mental-nutritition in today’s Hip-Hop diet. Are we sending the wrong messages? To know you future is to know your past, so listen closely as present knowledge from the past brings it back.

AllHipHop.com: What have you been up to since the last Poor Righteous Teachers?

Wise Intelligent: I’ve been working on m independent project. I also went back to school. The teacher became a student again. I’ve also been working on a program called Intelligent Muzik, in Trenton. It was established to help facilitate the youth in the music industry. We teach them how to get a leg up in the business; how to own their talents.

AllHipHop.com: For all of those that don’t know, what is the name of your new album?

Wise: Wise Intelligent is the Talented Timothy Taylor. It’s the first period in a five CD box-set that I’m working on called, “Back to School.” It’s what Hip-Hop is seriously lacking right now. The album will be out in middle to late August.

AllHipHop.com: Who’s on it? Will Culture Freedom make an appearance?

Wise: No, he’s not going to appear on it. There’s a new vibe it than what I have previously done. I believe in always bringing something new to the table. That’s why I’ve got some cats from around the way doing production on it. It’s a crew called The Havknotz. It’s P.J., Masada and Madlib’s little brother, Oh No.

AllHipHop.com: What’s up with the Timothy Taylor reference?

Wise: With Wise Intelligent as The Talented Timothy Taylor, it’s more personal. It’s real. In the past, I had never really spoke about my personal life on a record, especially on this level. I wrestled with a lot of demons. [The album] speaks about the talent within me. I’m taking it back to my talents, the old school. It was a time when Hip-Hop was about talent and not marketing.

AllHipHop.com: Do you feel that Hip-Hop is sending the right messages to today’s youth?

Wise: All kids see today is materialism. You didn’t shoot your way out of the ghetto, you rhymed your way out. You made a transition. Now you do big deals, you’re a business man. They should help and guide the youth. Rappers and athletes make a lot of money. Everybody wants to be, “King of the Negroes.” The youth thinks that rims on an Escalade’s important. They should be focused on teaching the youth how they became successful.

AllHipHop.com: Do you feel that hip-hop that speaks consciously about the Pro-Black Movement? If so, who are some of the artists, still holding it down?

Wise: Definitely. You have the Roots, Erykah Badu, Talib Kweli, and Dead Prez to name a few. I don’t know what they’re doing out side of the music to reach out to the community, but that’s my ignorance. It’s like Prez said, “It’s bigger than Hip-Hop.” A lot of artists could be doing more than what they presently are. I’ve lived in just about every shelter there is in Trenton. I make it my mission to help the youth that are presently in the same situation.

AllHipHop.com: It is more than just Hip-Hop, it’s about society and the world.

Wise: Bush ain’t doing s**t, but cutting programs. Today’s rappers need to give back. It’s like a net at the bottom of the ocean. When it gets pulled up, a few fish wiggle free, but the ones that get caught… the youth are thirsty for knowledge. It’s sad because the inner-city introduces things like drug dealing first. Again, poverty and ignorance - they need to be eradicated.

AllHipHop.com: I agree, but what are the pro’s and con’s of the music?

Wise: Within the music, there are pro’s and con’s. The pro’s are that Hip-Hop has sparked an entrepreneurial spirit in the youth. They have become more aware of the value of their culture. At first it was only the wealthy White business men seeing the profits. Now the youth are taking it upon themselves to learn and progress. That’s good. The con’s are the negative images being shown. Right now they’re at an all-time high - no, I take that back, an all time low. They’re bringing the culture down. Little girls are trying to, “pop it like it’s hot.” Just today I saw a little girl wearing a pair of “daisy dukes” and a pair of “f**k me boots.” They don’t know. A lot of kids don’t have parents. A lot of rappers came up the same way. We are their parents, and we’re their influence. An artist can make whatever they want, but they and their companies need to find a proper way to market it. If you want to make stripper music to be played in the club, then do so, but right now it’s getting going to the kids. They need to listen to the more positive. Listening is an art. It unlocks doors. It needs to be about the realization of knowledge and the practice of observing. We need the proper people to lead and teach.

AllHipHop.com: This is so true. Right now you’re dropping some serious science.

Wise: Yeah, it’s ghetto political! As the first inner-city Black youth, we must combat poverty and ignorance against society as a whole. I’m anti-ignorance and anti-poverty. Where I come from, the youth live 50% bellow the poverty level. They don’t have a chance and that affects me personally. Whether it’s friends, friend’s kids, [or whoever], we need to help them before the gangs get to them. Here, programs are cut. The youth work hard, but have so little. My personal mission is to guide the youth in the right direction. That is what Poor Righteous Teachers was about.

AllHipHop.com: You once said, “You don’t have to sin to be successful…” Expand.

Wise: Down here in “Ghetto America,” we do the wrong things in how we come up. I argue that we can do the right things, but people need to know how to do them. We need people who will do the right things and lead. Some people say, “Conscious Rap doesn’t sell.” Public Enemy and The Fugees sold millions. They didn’t kill anyone or talk a bunch of mess like, “My gun clap.” “You don’t have to sin to be successful,” is about getting knowledge. What you build will become your reality. We are the product of our thoughts. If all you see is poverty and destruction, then that’s all you’ll be. See past your block or hood and succeed.

AllHipHop.com: Why isn’t the “conscious movement” still considered important?

Wise: It’s because of the industry being commercial. It’s capitalism, the American way. It’s like my block in the early eighties, originally every one sold weed. When crack hit, everyone followed. When conscious Hip-Hop came out, all the labels started practicing capitalism. It’s sad to say, but PRT was signed on it. Every label wanted a conscious rapper. They thought artists like PRT, X-Clan, Boogie Down Productions, and Public Enemy were a gimmick. When Gangsta Rap came out, all the labels followed. If the industry dealt with conscious rappers then it would get played and everyone would jump on.

Markets figure that they can sell anything. Liquor, cell phones, jewelry, it’s all become a consumer oriented world. I believe the term, “globalization” [which] comes into play here. It’s the new religion of the world. “Product placement” has become Hip-Hop’s new logo. It’s good for a lot of artists and companies. Hell, even video girls are getting awards and movie roles for shaking their asses on camera for five minutes. Marketers feel that they can’t get through to people on a conscious level. Education is the last thing on the youth’s minds. Kids drop out because they never learn to equate education with success. They’re escape is not to deal with theses issues. Right now, all the bling-bling diamonds are popular. What most people don’t know is that kids in South Africa lose their hands and other limbs just so that over here, people can look good. I want to teach the youth about putting the proper aim on the common enemy. The war against the poor has been waged for a minute. We need to teach the youth how to wage war back. That’s revolutionary to me.

AllHipHop.com: How did Poor Righteous Teachers deal in the aftermath of that?

Wise: We were just babies in the game back then. We were still learning, you’re always learning. We parted with our management and requested to be released from our label. Profile Records became a graveyard for a bunch of rappers. We understood that “Rock this Funky Joint” was a party song. And we wouldn’t have been put on if it wasn’t for that. It got us in the door, but we became frustrated with the label. Personally, I can’t work like that. We understood it for what it was and learned from the situation.

AllHipHop.com: If you can’t wake up in the morning and know why you do what you do, then it’s time to find something new. Where can fans find old music and videos? Few DJ’s or VJ’s pay proper respect.

Wise: Nowhere at the moment, but we’re going to re-issue the whole catalog of CD’s and videos in the future. People can find out more information on my website, Intelligentmuzik.com

AllHipHop.com: Who do you feel about Flavor Flav’s new appearance in the media? Do you feel that it tarnishes his past accomplishments with Public Enemy?

Wise: No, he was always doing it. He’s the reason why Public Enemy was accepted by “White America.” He had a comical personality. Chuck brought the message, and Flav took the edge off, so they didn’t put fear into the White public as much.

AllHipHop.com: What’s the one thing that is not being addressed in Hip-Hop that should?

Wise: Wow, there’s so much that needs to be addressed. There’s a lot of issues dealing with the community that really hit home for me. Black people make up 12% of America’s population. We also make up 48-49% of AIDS cases. 80% of first timers in the penal system are illiterate. This mirrors the same number of third graders that can’t read. Nowadays, they build prisons based on that statistic. If 100 third graders fail, then 100 prisons are built. TWA, Victoria Secret and Chevron all “out-source” prisoners to make their products. It’s one giant p**sy and everyone is f**king it except the ones getting f**ked over. This should all be discussed in Hip-Hop. We need someone more than Bill Cosby. We need someone to represent “us.”

Post Your Feedback.

- All Hip Hop by Jarrod Miller-Dean

It’s easy to say that you understand what Hip-Hop is “really” about. For many it has become as easy as reciting a short list of names. Just spit out the right names and you’re in; KRS One, Big Daddy Kane, Chuck D, Melle Mel. What, do I still not understand? Well, what about Kool Herc, DJ Hollywood and The Cold Crush Brothers? Am I in now? I said Kool Herc; I have to be in, right? Wait hold on, I know some graffiti artists too! Seen, Lee, Blade – wait, hold on, where you goin’? What about the Rock Steady Crew? Crazy Legs, Mr. Freeze, I know all them b-boys man, why you walking away for?

But Hip-Hop is not about lists.

They’ll never say it on MTV but Hip-Hop is about what you feel inside more than anything else. Hip-Hop is a mindset. Hip-Hop is ambition. Hip-Hop is the desire to rise above, the desire to be first in spite of circumstance. Hip-Hop is the urge to inspire and uplift those around you. No matter how many times MTV or VH1 pay homage to “Hip-Hop pioneers and legends” and no matter how many times you watch and memorize all the names, they’ll never tell you why those people did what they did. They can’t. If they did they would undermine their own campaigns of ignorance and exploitation. Today Hip-Hop is a tag corporations attach to business ventures, there’s money to be made. Shhh, not another word about what Hip-Hop really is, are you crazy?! Our advertisers will balk! We’ll lose our jobs!

MTV would like us to believe that Hip-Hop legends only exist in the past tense; but this is not Greek mythology. September 28th, 2005 will mark a day when authentic Hip-Hop music will surge forward against an incoming tide of heavily marketed and marginally talented artists. On September 28th, 2005 Wise Intelligent of the legendary Poor Righteous Teachers returns with his new solo album titled Wise Intelligent is…The Talented Timothy Taylor. The vast legacy Wise Intelligent has built with Poor Righteous Teachers is timeless and speaks for itself. So tell me, are you ready to go back to a time when talent determined who was the best MC?

RiotSound: At one point in the not so distant past, Hip-Hop brought awareness and for a lack of a better word, made it cool for the youth to rise up against the establishment and speak out against the injustices of our society. However, today kids seem content with keeping their minds in a dormant state. Throughout the history of music, from Hip-Hop to rock to jazz to blues, the message that always got the most attention was always about pushing the envelope and saying something that was not necessarily in line with the status quo. Why is pushing the envelope not cool anymore? It’s like Hip-Hop is becoming like country music in many ways.

Wise Intelligent: Well, it’s not just Hip-Hop, it’s society as a whole. There’s agendas being pushed right now and it’s just the dumbing down of the society at large, not just Hip-Hop. It’s the educational system, it’s everywhere you go and everywhere you look. Institutions of higher learning are now institutions of the lowest learning. It’s just sad and that’s what it is right now simply because you have people who are pushing an agenda and their agenda is to dumb down the people so that the people can’t see the carpet being snatched from under their feet. So that’s where we at right now and that’s what’s being promoted. Everywhere you look you see the agenda of ignorance and apathy being pushed on the people, no matter where it is.

Like for instance, you could take a group of people and you could ask this group of people a couple of questions. [One question you could ask is], how many of you know someone in your family or have someone close to you that’s in the penal system or dealing with the criminal justice system in some way? When you ask this question you would get a large percentage of people who would raise their hand. You could ask them, how many of you know people that are possibly dealing with drugs, whether using or selling? You would again get a large percentage of people that would raise their hand. You could ask them, how many people know someone dealing with cancer or something of that nature? And again you would have many people who would raise their hand. But when you ask how many people know someone dealing with a gay marriage situation, not many people will raise their hand, yet this was the number one topic for the Presidential campaign!

They were running on gay marriage and that doesn’t even affect the large majority of the people. There’s other issues that greatly affect a lot of the people all the time that they are not even addressing. So they took this one topic and made the topic look like it was so big of an issue that it needs to be addressed during a Presidential election just to keep us dumb as to what’s really going on in the world. It’s just sad. It’s just an intentional dumbing down of the people by the powers that be.

R: What about the corporate influence and the mass marketing being directed at our youth? Do you feel enough people are aware of how broad the corporate influence has become and the consequences of that; when we criticize the government do we sometimes let questionable corporate conduct slip under the radar?

W: See, in my opinion, government policy is created by corporate marketers. I believe that what we are seeing here is what I would consider the first really fascist government. Simply because fascism, in its proper manifestation, is in effect the complete and seamless merger of the corporation and the state. That’s what fascism is in its purest form. That’s pure fascism, the complete merger of corporation and state and that’s what we have right now.

You look at this administration and everybody is a billionaire and a gazzillionaire. Multimillionaires, everybody; from Condoleezza Rice to the President himself and everyone around him. Carl Rove, Dick Cheney, the House speaker Frist, all of these guys are millionaires, everybody is rich. All of these people are affiliated with some type of major corporation. For instance, Chevron; in 1967 Chevron was in Angola plundering all of the oil out of Angola and now we come to find out that Condoleezza Rice was on Chevron’s board. They actually named an oil tanker after Condoleezza Rice, it’s called The Condoleezza. So it’s crazy, it’s really crazy.

So right now, like I said, we have the complete merger of the corporation and the state, therefore the policies of the government are the policies of corporate marketers who are marketing to the youth and misleading the youth at the same time as they are taking over other countries and pushing their policy on the world. That’s just what it is. The war in Iraq, we all know that’s a corporate war. We all know it’s about the oil. It’s about the oil corporations taking control; like killing the Indians and taking their land, that’s what it is. With South America it’s the same thing. No matter where you go in the world it’s the same thing; it’s about major corporations plundering the manpower, wealth and resources of every square inch of the planet earth. That’s what they are doing and that’s what’s happening.

As far as marketing to the youth and things of that nature, it’s all a part of the game. It’s just like the Camel cigarettes with Joe Camel, it’s all the same thing. Now they have chocolate french fires and strawberry flavored french fries; it’s horrible, they marketing everything to the youth because they understand that the parents will want to spend based on the demand of the youth. Parents spend on their children, so they know if they can get the child to complain – it’s an age old trick. It’s the same reason why when you are in the grocery store all the candy is in the isle where you’re waiting [laughs]. It’s right there because they want the kids to scream and shout for that candy when you are waiting there by it for all these minutes. Your children are throwing temper tantrums because they want this candy and that’s why they put it there, that’s marketing.

That’s why when you walk down the cereal isle they have all the sugar coated cereal at child eye level and they have all the healthy cereal up at a higher level for the adults to see it, it’s all marketing. The eggs and the milk are always in the back of the supermarket because they know you need these things at least once a week, they expire every week. So when you go get the eggs and milk they want to send you to the back of the store to give you a chance to see everything else that you might purchase that might not be on your list. They know you coming for milk and eggs so in the process they want to try to get you to buy everything else. It’s just marketing and it’s just what they do, it’s capitalism, it’s America and that’s where we’re at right now.

R: Getting back to Hip-Hop, it seems like fifteen years ago major record companies gave Hip-Hop artists much more creative freedom. Do you find it ironic that as the music has gained so much more exposure, the range of subject matter reaching the majority of listeners has actually become much more narrow?

W: I don’t find it surprising. I kind of expected it to go this route and for it to end up where it is right now because that’s what always happens. It wasn’t expected for Hip-Hop to reach this level but when they realized that it would, [Hip-Hop] followed the same format as every other music genre. Blues, rock, they all had a political edge when they started but they eventually were overmarketed and commercialized and became what they became. And it’s necessary because, you have to understand, the powers that exist that are ruling the world, they can’t have too much influence in the hands of musicians. There was a time in Europe when it was the arts that actually educated the people. The people were being educated through the arts, through theater, through Shakespeare and so on and so forth. So they understand that science and they don’t want to let music expand and let the musicians have that kind of power. Just imagine you have a 2Pac or a 50 Cent or an Eminem with a political agenda.

R: You’ve made some remarkable music with Poor Righteous Teachers; what can fans expect from your solo debut The Talented Timothy Taylor, as I understand this record is meant to be a little more personal than your work with PRT?

W: The Talented Timothy Taylor is letting the fans know that yes I am a mortal and I can be wounded. I have dealt with a lot of things and I am dealing with a lot of things today. I am no different from you or anyone else; we are all one in this whole thing and I am just breaking everything down by getting a little bit more personal, a little more in depth. I got a lot of issues on the record that I touched and people will learn a lot. Nobody ever knew my name was Timothy until this record [laughs]. The record speaks to the personal aspect and that is what the entire album is. It’s a good record.

I’m speaking about things like my mother passing and how I dealt with that and how that affected me. There’s a track on the album called Passing The Time that kinda sums it all up and I dedicate that song to anybody that ever lost a parent or someone close to them. The song is a very moving record and even on that record the skill level, the lyrical assault on the track is damn near pathetic because it’s actually a sympathetic record and I am actually ripping out my heart on this record yet at the same time it’s Hip-Hop. Hip-Hop is still art to me so I didn’t just say “oh, I’m venting right here, this is a sad thing so I am just going to make it boring to hell”, it’s still a skill record.

And that’s what I think of Hip-Hop, I think Hip-Hop is art and an MC should bring something to the table when he comes. Those are the MCs that I respect, those who bring something to the table, something different to bring Hip-Hop to another level. Either lyrically or production wise or with your breakdance, your graffiti or your DJing skill, just take it to another level, even your journalism. Take it to another level, don’t settle for the same thing all the time, push the envelope, break the mold, be first! That’s what I respect and that is what this record is about, it’s about being first.

I tried some new things on there; there’s some songs on there that either you’re going to hate or love because they are definitely different and no MC did it before. Rhyme flow, beat wise, hook wise, it’s just some different things on there and that’s me, I’m always trying to bring something different, something that nobody’s done before. It’s a good record. It’s a very good record.

R: Your new label is called Intelligent Muzik; what are some of your goals for Intelligent Muzik in the years ahead?

W: With Intelligent Muzik, the goal and the mission statement of Intelligent Muzik is to give the youth an alternative; you can get with this or you can get with that. The alternate plan for Intelligent Muzik is to actually have 100% youth ownership. It’s going to be a community owned label, probably the first. It’s going to be like the Green Bay Packers in the NFL, the only team that’s owned by the state [laughs]. That’s where I want to go with it, I want to turn it over to the youth in the form of a non-profit and let the youth put their own music out, let them do the marketing, let them man every position at the label.

I want to set up an office in every major city and just let the youth run it as a non-profit organization where they’ll keep all the proceeds and proceeds will go back into their non-profit and help with the next office getting established in the next city. That’s what Intelligent Muzik really is, it’s really something that I want to give back to the babies so they’ll have a piece of Hip-Hop and own a piece of their culture. I want to give them a crash course in industry ownership, owning your art; teaching them the science of the masters and the publishing and royalties and things of that nature. So that is what Intelligent Muzik is striving for.

As far as I go personally; in the next five years or so I just want to travel. Pack up and hop on a plane with like twelve youths from the community and just take them and show them something different. Take them to Africa, take them to Europe, take them to Rome, take them to Italy and let them see things, things that they don’t see that really affect them; things that go on abroad that affect them at home that they don’t really understand.

‘Cause right now the condition of the youth where I live, they only concerned with what’s going on with the guy that live immediately across the street. Like “oh that nigga got new rims on his car, he ain’t all that” [laughs]. That’s the extent of their knowledge, that’s the only thing that they think affects them. So in five years or so I want to kick back and take a group of youths and just travel around the world and also set up some exchange programs with youth in other countries, China, countries in Europe, Africa, India and just work with the youth and build the youth.

R: I read where you said in a previous interview that you’ve lived in just about every shelter in Trenton; can you talk about that as well as your continued involvement and goals for educating and empowering poor people today?

W: Can’t nobody tell me nothing about being poor, I’ve lived everywhere man. I’ve lived in all the shelters man, nobody can tell me what it’s like. I’ve seen the welfare checks and the foodstamps. I’ve had pockets full of foodstamps on occasion. I’ve taken foodstamps and spent a quarter out of each dollar just to get the seventy five cents change back so I could catch the bus to the next spot and get where I need to go. I’ve been there. My pops left when I was a youth and I talk about all that on the album. I was a youngin when my father left and I had to deal with it. And it wasn’t just me; it was me and nine others. I have four brothers and five sisters. We were struggling really hard at that point and we were young. The large majority of us wasn’t even of working age. So we ended up in a lot of shelters, moving from one section to the next section.

Right now in my hood I can go anywhere, I live right on the murder blocks. Last night heads shot up the block and get caught in my yard. The police catch them in my yard. Last night at like 11pm they was shooting up the whole block behind my block. They just ran through busting through my gate, just destroyed the gate. It was a wooden gate, you know the tall wooden gates, like a six foot gate? They smashed the wooden gate down; they went through the gate like a cartoon, like in the cartoons when they go right through the wall [laughs]. But they get caught in my yard and I see all this transpire from the time the gun shots go off.

The gun shots go off and I turned off all my lights, you know, hood procedure; turn off the lights, make sure everyone is in a safe place before I check to see what’s going on. So I’m checking out my windows and see the youngins in the yard. They was hiding out in the yard, so then Police come crash through my yard and get the youth up outta there. I’m like wow, I mean, that’s what it is. But that’s where I live, I live right here. Right here man, and I’ve been living here for a long time. It’s really bad around here right now, gang activity is at an all time high like it never was before. Bloods, Crips, Latin Kings, you even got MS13 popping up around here, it’s a situation.

[I understand] that organizations are very necessary. Back when I was coming up, like I said, I was homeless. I was living here and there. I would have joined a gang early as a youth simply because they would have met me half way. They would have made sure that I had food, clothing and shelter. Even though I was eventually going to get sent on a suicide mission, but that’s not what I would have saw. I would have saw taking care of my immediate necessities, food, clothing and shelter. And that’s what’s happening with the youth and I see how it’s happening because a lot of these youth are going through the same thing that I’ve been through.

So it’s tough, I’m right here, I live right on the murder blocks, right on the murder blocks in Trenton, New Jersey; so that’s where I be. I can go from living in all these shelters and living from side to side in Trenton – there’s very few heads that can go everywhere and get love from everybody. So when you have that ability you gotta use it to your advantage and try to induce some political orientation into some of these movements around here. I tell them all the time, the Bloods and the Crips running around here in America with AK47s are the only group of gangsters running around with AK47s without any political orientation.

Go to South America and Africa, the youths with the AK47s are part of political movements; so they pointing they guns in the right direction [laughs]. Where [in America] with the black gangster or the black AK47 toter, it’s always spilling out in the community in the form of black on black violence where [instead] they could be a very powerful political force and they don’t realize that yet. But it’s tough, it’s a task. That’s why with my CD cover, I did it the way I did it. In the background I put everything that I am up against. In the background of the picture you see kilos of cocaine, triple beams, a kid doing heroin, another kid with her baby daughter and a gun in her hand, showing [the baby] how to load and shoot the gun. So it’s everything that I am up against, the mentality that exists down here. So it is what it is man.

R: For young kids that have not heard of Poor Righteous Teachers or Wise Intelligent; what would be the one thing you would want to tell them?

W: Never assimilate. I want them to know that you should never assimilate. Go against the grain, fuck tradition, really. Tradition is killing them, tradition has them scared to act and it’s putting us in a reactive mode all the time. Just be first man; I want the youth to be first. Don’t be afraid to be you. Don’t be afraid to be yourself. Don’t be afraid to say “look, I respect your Blood, I respect your Crip but this is me, this is who I am”. Don’t be afraid to rise above peer pressure. Don’t be afraid to rise above and be you. Develop yourself from the inside out not from the outside in; it’s not going to happen like that.

For all info and news on Wise Intelligent stay tuned to www.IntelligentMuzik.com - Riot Sound

Artist: Wise Intelligent
Interviewer: Alex Fruchter

As part of the Poor Righteous Teachers, Wise Intelligent helped usher in what is now known as conscious rap. Before Mos Def, before Talib Kweli, before Dead Prez, there were groups like Public Enemy and the Poor Righteous Teachers. Just as the name suggests, the Poor Righteous Teachers sought to educate as well as entertain the young black youth that were the predominant Hip Hop audience. They also served to shed light on the conditions that existed in the inner city, such a light allowed other groups to get a glimpse of inner-city poverty and pain. They also spoke of pride, and self-love, and promoted knowledge of one’s self and one’s history. While his group released multiple albums throughout the nineties, they were unable to capture and maintain the larger success they enjoyed earlier in their career. But, that is about to change as Wise Intelligent is back with his solo CD, The Talented Timmy Taylor. As Wise says himself, the time is right for his message to be received. And it is about more than just the music.

In part one of this two part interview Wise Intelligent speaks on his place in Hip Hop as it exists in 2005. He talks openly and honestly about anti-intellectualism, and the education system. Get ready, as Intelligence speaks for itself.

SoundSlam: Why are you coming back now, 2005?

Wise: Good math, it’s good math. 2005, that’s a seven I believe. That’s good math…

SoundSlam: The God number.

Wise: The God number, exactly. It’s good math. It couldn’t have happened no other way. The thing is, I don’t force it. I don’t force it. I let it happen. It will happen, so all I do is sit back. The universal God conscious mind creates. It’s time to create; it’s time to put something out there again. I had a lot going on in the years in between.

SoundSlam: Are you worried at all about how you are going to be perceived by today’s younger Hip Hop audience?

Wise: I’m not worried at all. I’m good enough to make them understand that I’m from where they’re from. It ain’t like I moved out and I’m living somewhere out on a hill. I’m still in the hood. I’m still right here. I’m in the trenches of this battle with the poor and oppressed. And that’s who this generation of Hip Hoppers is. I don’t care how young they are they all come from this demographic. They come from this mentality. This is where Hip Hop comes from, and they know that. That’s the motivation behind all Hip Hop. Regardless if it’s blingy or whatever, the design is to eradicate poverty. They want to get out of a state of poverty. That’s why a lot of rappers are rhyming about the bling and the drug flip. Because they saw that’s what’s selling. That’s what I’m from. The younger generation, I relate to them very well. They’ll be able to relate to me. I’m trying to make them understand why things are the way they are.

SoundSlam: Do you see yourself finding a place in the way Hip Hop is marketed where you could reach those people? They might not see your CD in the store to pick it up when they’re surrounded by other artists that they know. Do you find yourself being able to carve that niche out?

W: That’s the idea and the thing is Guerilla, Guerrilla marketing. That’s our style, keep everything street. Build it from the bottom up. Poor Righteous Teachers, before we were signed to a record deal we were independent….We would grind it out going the independent way. And that’s what spawned the deal situation. We’re familiar with this ground and we know this is where it pops off at first. The streets dictate what happens. The grassroots dictates what happens. And what’s going on right now, the impulse of the people, if you put your hand on the ground right now you’ll feel it, it’s warm right now. It’s bubbling. What’s bubbling underneath the surface is people want to hear substance. People want some of their questions answered. Everybody feels it’s a certain emptiness that’s throughout the music industry in all entertainment and all of the world in general. Politics, entertainment, whatever it is, the emptiness is across every industry. And that’s what I’m coming to do. I’m coming to fill that void. I understand that it got to come from the people first. That’s what it is. I’m from the people. I’m the people’s champion. I’m the person that the people are pushing to the forefront. I’m not doing this on my own. Like Martin Luther King, people say, ‘hey you can articulate what we’re feeling down here. We want you to do that.’ And that’s what happening with me. It’s not I said, ‘ok, I’m going to come back today.’ This is what the people want.

SoundSlam: You talked about being in the trenches and being right up close with what’s going on. Do you feel Hip Hop mainstream wise has grown up and are not really addressing those issues of where it comes from enough and to a wider audience?

Wise: I don’t know if it’s grown up. I think it’s grown down a lot. I think that Hip Hop is very immature. I think the major corporations now target minors. Like everything, everything is targeting minors. Right now you got chocolate flavored French fries by Ore Ida. They’re targeting the youth. Everything is targeting the youth, that market. I understand that. Hip Hop right now has kind of grown down to a degree in some aspects. But it’s grown up in its entrepreneurial view. It’s more conscious of the economics of the industry of Hip Hop. As opposed to a few years back when it didn’t have a lot of knowledge and it was predominantly wealthy white men getting paid off the culture. So, that’s a good thing. That’s something that Hip Hop has grown into. But, it’s definitely grown down substance wise. Substance wise there’s absolutely no substance in the emcees. It’s like, ‘come on, lemonhead you’ll end up dead.’ The rhymes are so minor. It’s parochial school. It’s for children to be able to….Ultra Magnetic said it best. He said, ‘You keep singing back and forth the same old rhythm/That a baby can think up and join right with’em/ Rhymes are pathetic/ I think they’re copasetic/ Using nursery terms/ at least not poetic.’

SoundSlam:…You’re name is Wise Intelligent, and I think you’re touching on this. But, it feels like there’s an anti-intellectualism present in Hip Hop. Where it’s cool to not be smart. The smartest kid in the class is ashamed that they’re getting the top grade and learning.

Wise Intelligent: Oh without a doubt. That’s one of the titles we’re throwing around for the new Poor Righteous Teacher’s record that we’re working on, the Anti-Intellectual Environment of the Black Community. It’s tough. It’s tough. The thing with education is, you have to make it relative like anything else. A lot of kids are in the schools today and the school system hasn’t figured out a way to relate education with success. Kids don’t know how education equates to success. They’re like, ‘yo, I understand how flipping this gram of coke, flipping this 8 grams of coke, flipping this key of coke, and flipping these ounces into a key, and flipping this key into two keys, they understand that. They see it everyday. And they understand one plus one is two. They see how it’s going to feed them immediately. I was just reading some information on dropouts, the high school dropout rate. It says the majority of youth that dropout, they have a higher mean IQ than the kids that go on to college. Simply because they understand that I can definitely make money here. It’s like the rational is, why put off for 8-12 years what I can do right now trying to get paper and try to get paid. A lot of kids in the hood are living below the poverty line. A lot of the kids in the schools in the inner city, predominantly black schools in the inner city, they’re living below the poverty line. They’re going to do whatever they feel is necessary to obtain the bare necessities. That’s what’s happening with a lot of kids.

SoundSlam: I know exactly what you’re talking about. I teach 2nd grade right now on the Southwest side of Chicago and it is a big struggle because I’m continually telling my class, ‘you can learn this and succeed.’ And I have college posters up but when they go outside they don’t see anybody that succeeded through going to school, through learning. What I hear them say, there’s older kids that will call the smartest kid in their class white boy and it feels like to them that route is a white thing that they don’t know. And it’s real hard to get passed. A lot of these kids are so smart and they’re turning themselves off.

Wise Intelligent: Right, right. It’s sad, it’s sad. You made that point that they equate intelligence, or not really intelligence, but they equate the proper articulation of words with being white, or acting white. They kind of shy away from that individual. The thing is, I think it’s the rejection of anything that resembles their oppressor. That’s pretty much what I get from it. Every trader that has ever come into the black community and sold the black community to major corporations for exploitation or to slave traders for eventual slave servitude in the U.S. they all spoke the language of the trader. That’s something that I believe personally that’s deeply entrenched in the soul of black people. I don’t care if it’s a little kid, a grown up or whatever, that’s how they identify. They’re not trying to hear the guy coming in suit and a tie and saying, ‘alright, this is what you have to do to be successful.’ It’s the same house n**ga syndrome. It’s the house n**ga mentality. That’s what they’re shying away from. It’s not that they’re saying, ‘he speaks proper English, he’s smart and he shouldn’t be smart.’ That’s not what they’re saying. They’re not shunning him off or shying away from him because he’s intelligent. But simply because he’s coming to him in a current that the oppressor comes and the oppressor sends the so-called house n**ga, the so-called Uncle Tom, the Uncle Tom and the house n**ga always spoke proper English. And always dressed like the oppressor. Therefore, when they see that they identify it instantly. They’re like, ‘oh, you want to be white.’ That’s what it is. It’s not that they think this kid is intelligent and they don’t want to be intelligent. It’s more so what he represents, what the proper articulation of European words represents to a black man. You don’t get that when a black man in the hood speaks Arabic. There are black men in the hood that speak Arabic. There are black men in the hood that speak Hebrew. There are groups here that speak Hebrew, that speak Arabic, and other languages, and there’s black people here that speak Spanish and when they come and articulate in Spanish properly, or Arabic properly, they’re not saying that he thinks he’s smart. When this kid is bilingual, tri-lingual, they’re not saying that he thinks he’s white. They’re not saying he thinks he’s white, or he thinks he’s an Arab, or he thinks he’s a Spaniard. But when a black guy comes speaking proper English and sounding like a white man to them, speaking the Queen’s English, then he reminds them of an oppressor. That’s what that is. That has nothing to do with a distinction between intelligence being related to whites, and ignorance being related to blacks as some people like to say. It’s more so what’s in our heart. Like I said, everything that we’re dealing with today is sort of the residual effect of 400 years of slavery. So, we have that idea, the house n**ga, that traitor that said, ‘Master they out there stealing corn. That n**ga right there stole corn. He’s giving it to the kids in the shack.’ And then you come out there and the master has the house n**ga whip this brother that was stealing corn. You remember that, ‘like, yo, look at this shit right here. This n**ga right here is out of his mind.’ That’s what gave birth to the t-shirt Descendant of a Field Negro. That’s what it is. That’s what that shit is. When they see the kid and he’s articulating his words properly. I’m not saying that it’s a good thing that they think like that, or a bad thing that they think like that. I’m just saying that’s the reason why that happens.

Be Sure to check out part 2 coming soon!!!! - Sound Slam by Alex Fruchter

Artist: Wise Intelligent
Interviewer: Alex Fruchter

Welcome to part 2 of the SoundSlam exclusive interview with Wise Intelligent. In part 2 Wise Intelligent continues to speak on his role in the war against poverty and ignorance. Please read on….

SoundSlam: I don’t even know how you could even solve these problems, and there’s no quick fix, but where do you see Hip Hop’s role in finding a solution?

Wise Intelligent: I think first and foremost the rappers that came from the hood, that came from those rough lives without their parents, without parental involvement in their lives like myself, the 50 Cent’s of the world, the Jay-Z’s of the world, I think rappers need to come and set up programs in the communities. Programs that are based on the eradication of poverty and ignorance. That’s where we’re at, that’s what intelligent music is all about. That’s our mission statement. We’re on the front line in the war against poverty and ignorance. Anybody that’s about that, that’s who we’re with, that’s who we’re running with. If you’re down with that, your organization, school teachers, police officers, fire fighters, whatever you do, rappers athelets, whatever you do, if you’re trying to eradicate poverty and ignorance amongst inner city youth, that’s what we’re doing. I think that rappers need to create programs to facilitate that. Rappers spend $50,000 on a lawyer for some bullshit that he did at a night club. Hundreds of thousands of dollars on a lawyer for some bullshit he did at a night club.

SoundSlam: I see exactly what you’re saying. And, it’s so wide spread in America in all communities that we need to buy these materials and we have these dumb-ass game shows, ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire,’ just give a million dollars to my school! That would help everybody way more. Just give me a million dollars I’ll figure out how to spend it, I’ll put it into this classroom that I have. And that’s going to help everyone, but we don’t think like that on a wide-scale level. And it’s ridiculous.

Wise Intelligent: Exactly! And that’s my thing. If the rappers and the Hip Hop industry, pretty much the brothers that come from this Hip Hop culture, I mean you were in this same situation that the youth are in today. Now you got your big house on the hill, your 11 bedroom house. You’re on MTV cribs every month. You bling-bling, you’re bling-blinging to death. You got all the things that the children aspire to achieve and have. I say come set up some programs to show the children how to do what you did, how to become successful. It took marketing. It took promotion. It took all kinds of stuff for you to get to that level. Publicity, teach them how to be a publicist. Teach them how to set up their own little upstarts, their own little businesses. Teach them how to do what you did. That way, when they decide to go to college, if they decide to go to college, they’ll go and know what they’re going for. They’ll take up a trade or they will take classes or get a degree in something that is relevant to what they’ve already been taught. And that’s not what’s happening. For instance Bill Gates was in college until the idea dawned on him. He was in college and then he was like, ‘ok, my thing is about to pop off, I’m outta here.’ Tommy Hilfiger did the same thing. Not a lot of people finish college. But go to college with an idea of what you want to do. And the programs that rappers could set up could facilitate that happening. But rappers don’t think that way. They feel like, I’m saying stunt, my GT Bentley got smoke grade windows, you stunting for people that can’t even pay their rent.

SoundSlam: It’s kind of like an idea that you gotta make money and get out of the hood, but if everyone that was successful from these communities stayed in and bettered the community as a whole, instead of taking all of the success out of it, kids like you said earlier, any successful people that grew up around my kids feel like they had to leave, so they don’t even see the people that worked hard and are successful. They aren’t there anymore to learn from.

Wise Intelligent: Exactly. I always say, the ghettos that we live in today before we moved into these ghettos, Jewish people lived in the ghettos in Trenton. Especially East Trenton, and then you had Chambersburg and area in Trenton by the high school where all Italians lived. Now it’s like black people and Latino people that occupy these neighborhoods. Where these people got up and left in mass it seems. There’s not a Jewish person living in this area no more in Wilbur Section Trenton. There’s not a Jewish person, an Italian person living around here. They all relocated and built up better communities out in the suburbs of New Jersey. It’s like all Italians. Now East Indians have come over and they’ve built their little communities outside of the hood but they got little stores set up in the hood. The Italians own all the properties, they’re renting them out to the blacks and Latinos. The reason that’s happening is because the successful people from the black community don’t come back, buy the properties, rent them out to your own people, fix them up, rent them out, and move your people up in mass to the next level. They don’t do that. Whereas, every other people, every other group, whether they’re Irish, Italian, Jewish, Trenton is a perfect example. It’s a microcosm of this idea. Everybody moves out. And now what happens is the black people have been in this community so long we haven’t made the step up to the next level to move into a community, a predominantly black community in a better atmosphere in the suburbs somewhere like everybody else that came through the ghetto did. So, what’s happening is we have a lot of Hispanics coming in now from South America and the Carribean and so forth and now the ghetto is overcrowded. It’s overcrowded with Hispanics and blacks because the blacks didn’t move out. We’re supposed to move out and rent the properties out to the Hispanics. And then the Hispanics rise up and move out to the next thing. But it’s not happening. For some reason we’re content with stagnant, right here in the inner city. And nothing’s happening for us now. Corner stores and bodegas once owned by blacks and Latinos are now owned by East Indians and Caldeans.

SoundSlam: Let’s talk a bit about the new album….What are fans going to get on this? What’s a brief theme or vibe going into the album?

Wise Intellgient: The record, how can I explain it? It’s called the talented Timmy Taylor, Wise Intelligent is the Talented Timmy Taylor. It’s the first CD off of the seven CD box called Back to School. This is first period. This CD is the first period. It’s the Talented Timothy Taylor. I’m taking it back to the times when the best emcee was determined by his talent level, his skill level, as opposed to his marketing powers. Today we have heavily marketed emcees or are very light on talent. I just want to go back to that era when the best emcee was determined by his talent not by the amount of records he sells. I want to put out a record based on talent. That’s why I called the record the Talented Timmy Taylor. Because if the amount of records sold determines the best emcee, MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice would be right up there with the 50 Cent’s and the so-ons and so-forths. So, we gotta be careful with these definitions here. I want to take it back to that for one. And, as far as the message and the substance, it’s a very, very ghetto record. I like to call it ghetto political. And, in that, breaking down the politics behind ghetto life. I’m touching on things like the prison-industrial complex and how that relates to us on the corner. I’m breaking down drug trafficking and how everybody flipping drugs in the hood wants to be a baller. ‘Oh, he’s balling…’ And the thing is I’m breaking down in reality the drug dealer in the hood, the black kid in the hood selling drugs, whether he’s selling 100 keys or 1 ounce, or 1 gram, he’s strawberry. He’s the dope dealer’s bitch. Because the real dope dealers are bringing in tons of cocaine on planes on boats and I break down on a song called, ‘A Genocide’ I break down entire gambit of crack coming into America, the Nicaraguan war that went on with the Contras and the Sandinistas, and how the CIA facilitate the distribution of drugs into the community. So that they could finance the little brouhaha down there in South America to overthrow the Sandinistas, and it’s called ‘The Genocide.’ I’m emceeing from a young black male perspective who’s just living in the ghetto. And this cocaine comes in here and he’s already dropped out of school. He’s disillusioned, couldn’t read, but he’s talented. He could play basketball or whatever. But he blew out a knee so he can’t play ball. So, he’s in these streets disillusioned. Nicaraguan guys come up to him with cocaine. He takes the cocaine he starts selling the cocaine. He’s not thinking the CIA is behind this. He’s just saying, ‘hey, I’m about to get paid.’ He’s selling this cocaine at very cheap prices so he’s like moving keys and keys of cocaine. And I break that down how it spreads and he gets locked up for life and gets all the blame for it. While you have the Nicaraguan Contras and you have the CIA clean. Never see no time, and it’s business as usual and they keep moving to the next thing. And you become the scapegoat. I break the whole thing down. It’s an incredible record. Because it’s a club record. It’s a party record. You’re going to think Lil Jon did the track. It’s ill. It’s a street record. It’s an ill street record, club record, and it’s ill. That’s where I’m coming from. That’s basically the idea of the entire record. That’s the mode of the entire record. I’m breaking down to the youth what’s really real out here, what’s really hood, the politics of ghetto life.

SoundSlam: Who did produce some of this album?

Wise Intelligent: My hometown crew, the Have Nots. They consist of Jamal Pierre also known as Msada, and my man P.J. For the other tracks I called on my man OhNo. He’s Madlib’s brother, and kid by the name of Trackzilla. He’s a beast. I think I got one track from Tony D.

SoundSlam:…Do you have any last words for everybody?

Wise Intelligent: Log on to IntelligentMuzik.com. Find out what’s going on with Wise Intelligent, the Poor Righteous Teachers, the movement, this movement against poverty and ignorance. We welcome everybody. Coca-Cola, Pepsi, all you cats that’s out here sponsoring this mayhem, sponsor something positive. Intelligent Muzik programs should be sponsored, heavily sponsored. They should be aggressive and we welcome all y’all to come in and lend a hand to this fight, this war against poverty and ignorance. Other rappers, you got your programs. G-Unity, Black Wallstreet, all you brothers that got programs, keep doing the programs. Get real aggressive, get involved, get your hands dirty with the program. Sit down with the youth. We’re right here, Intelligent Muzik is right here. We just want to let everybody know, it’s about eradicating poverty and ignorance. That’s it. We’re not clouding the precepts of our revolution against poverty and ignorance with religion or any type of racism or anything. It’s about poverty and ignorance and making us understand and understood. That’s where we’re at right there. Poor Righteous Teachers, Wise Intelligent, Intelligent Muzik, cop the records. Show that you really want some change. Show that you’re not buying music because the beat sounds good, or just because you want to imagine yourself as a gang banger or gun clapper. You buy that type of music, support the balance in Hip Hop. There’s more thatn one view in the hood. There’s a lot of different views in the hood and we represent that kid that lived that grimey life but saw that it was killing him. He decided to do the right thing. That’s it.

- Sound Slam by Alex Fruchter

Wise Intelligent: Deep Consciousness
Tuesday - August 16, 2005

— by Nooreen Kara


Dot Com Hip-hop is bigger than it's ever been, but is it better? It often takes a veteran industry man to make you look at hip-hop today and really think about what's missing.

Wise Intelligent is one of rap's first patrons. Throughout the '90s, as part of the group The Poor Righteous Teachers, he released some of the most shining music from the "golden era." But fast forward into the new millennium and look at the charts -- nothing but hip-pop and money-obsessed artists. Now see Wise Intelligent readying himself to put conscious rap back on the map with his new record, Wise Intelligent is the Talented Timothy Taylor.

BallerStatus spoke with the hip-hop teacher about everything from the new album to what's wrong with the rap game today to racism and religion. Sit down students, class is in session.

BallerStatus.net: For anyone who is too young to have heard of The Poor Righteous Teachers, can you tell me a little about what the group represented?

Wise Intelligent: We were a ghetto political group. We were always advocating an end to poverty and ignorance; we were anti-imperialism.

BallerStatus.net: Your latest record, Wise Intelligent Is The Talented Timothy Taylor, tell me a bit about what you're trying to say with that.

Wise Intelligent: This record is a more personal view of Wise Intelligent, whereas The Poor Righteous Teachers gave off a really immortal kind of image, as if we were unaffected by things that take place on a common level -- things of the flesh. It's an interview with Wise Intelligent, [I'm] saying, "Yes, I do have some weaknesses, I have temptations." I have things that I deal with everyday that I had to wrestle with in order to just present a new record. It's saying that although we are immortals, we interact and modify in this immortal world everyday, so at the same time while we are spiritual, we are physical.

BallerStatus.net: Any guest appearances on the album?

Wise Intelligent: I wanted to introduce Wise Intelligent, The Talented Timothy Taylor, to the world. I didn't want to do a guest appearance record in the tradition of the modern MC because, today, MCs are giving you these compilation albums. I could buy one of their records, and have all of them. There's no point. I wanted to take it back to that era of an EPMD record, a KRS-One record, where there were no guest appearances. It's about getting to know this particular artist.

BallerStatus.net: What do you think about the hip-hop scene today?

Wise Intelligent: The hip-hop game today is jaded. It's no longer art. There are no two people in the world that are alike, but all the artists are doing the same thing, writing the same idea and presenting it in the same exact way. It's not even music anymore. It's just an assembly filled with consumer-orientated material, and everybody's doing it.

BallerStatus.net: Do you think more artists should be sending out a message rather than constantly talking about bling, hoes, etc, like Chingy, Nelly and 50 Cent are now?

Wise Intelligent: I think the Chingy's, the Nelly's, the 50 Cent's, they are what they are. I don't think they should try to change and make message rhymes when that's not their outfit. I believe that the major radio stations need to create a balance so the consumers of hip-hop can get an alternative to the Chingy's, the Nelly's, and the 50 Cent's. There are just as many MCs with messages in their rhymes as there are without, but they're not getting heard because the establishment are feeling like "Well ,we can't cross-market this artist, so there is no need to promote him. If we can't sell Motorola flip-phones through him, there is no need for us to play his music." I think the media outlets should present the entire spectrum of hip-hop as opposed to just one side.

BallerStatus.net: How far do you respect conscious artists in the game today who are still attempting to create that balance, and how do they compare to the conscious music you made?

Wise Intelligent: I think they're doing what they do and keeping it positive. The Poor Righteous Teachers, we were a little more angry though. We weren't just coming at the rappers; I don't like to blame the victim. We dealt with the root of the problem -- the major corporations. Hip-hop is just a medium through which ideas are conveyed and the artist is going to do whatever he feels fits. At one time there was a conscious movement in hip-hop; you had kids being mobilised to book stores, wearing their conscious medallions and their positive T-shirts, and letting their beards grow (laughs), but what happened then was the labels shifted the dollars from the conscious MC to the gangsta -- enter NWA. We got the NWA's, the Ice Cube's, the DJ Quik's and so on and so forth, and thus the birth of gangsta rhyme. The MCs on the streets, they followed suit. It's like "Okay, I can get paid for this." If you had more conscious music blaring across the airwaves, you would have that same effect; you would have kids writing in a conscious format. But they feel they can't be paid for it, and it's the major corporations that are presenting that image to them.

BallerStatus.net: Do you think a balance can be created between commercial rap and conscious rap? A bit like with Kanye West -- he'll most likely go multi-platinum with Late Registration, but the "Diamonds" remix is one of the most political songs in a long while.

Wise Intelligent: I think the video is real good, yet the song never alluded to anything politically. With the remix, they went a little closer, which was beautiful. I think artists should address issues like that because the youth here don't understand that for us to be all icey and blinged-out, how many youths over there are having their limbs hacked off in the process. The hip-hop culture has really fueled the consumption of diamonds, and we don't pay attention to that. "Bling bling" has been added to the dictionary. We're only concerned about what goes on across the street, as opposed to across the ocean. And if you allow an injustice like that to take place across the ocean, it will soon be at your doorstep. Hip-hop should speak out against it, and Kanye West was brave.

A lot of rappers need to get some balls. Every rapper talks about how they can flip a kilo of cocaine, but no one talks about the corporations that facilitate the distribution of drugs into the country. Nobody talks about the big oil companies whose ships aren't searched by customs when they come across the border. Everybody's afraid, everybody's a coward. That's why Intelligent Muzik is not just a label, it's a movement. I think a lot of rappers need to get on that page -- if not lyrically, then economically and socially. You don't have to put all positive messages in your rhymes, it's so much bigger than hip-hop. You could set up a program in your community, teach the youth something positive. Set up some type of exchange between youth in America with youth in South Africa or youth in the Congo or in South America or Asia. Rappers need to be more pro-active in eradicating some of the poverty and ignorance that exists in the communities and societies from which they hail.

BallerStatus.net: What you were saying about the community programs, that's something you're quite heavily involved in. Can you tell me a bit more about what you're doing?

Wise Intelligent: We have a couple of programs: one is Intelligent Muzik Pro, which is used to enroll youth from the inner city into the music industry as artist owners, as opposed to an artist signed to a record label and then used and abused and robbed of their talent and exploited to no end. What we're doing is teaching them how to own their masters, copyrights, production rights, royalties, publishing, all that. So when they come into the industry, at least they'll know their worth.

BallerStatus.net: How do you think the new, younger generation of hip-hop fans will respond to your album, because a lot of them haven't been exposed to your style of music?

Wise Intelligent: This is one of the most clever, conscious records ever written. At first glance, it appears that this is what the youth wanna hear. Yet, when they finally listen to the lyrics, they'll see that it's a blueprint, it's a very strong message. There's a song I have on the record called "A Genocide"; it's about a young black male in the inner city, who's selling a lot of crack, yet it's actually how crack was introduced to the inner city. And I take it from the war in Nicaragua; the financing of the Contras with drug money. I break it all down, but in a way that they will relate. It's got a beat that they can play on the radio or in a club. It's definitely a conscious record, but at the same time they're gonna think, "That's gangsta, that's thug." It's so politically-orientated that just repeating the song alone will have them being political without even knowing it.

BallerStatus.net: That was based on reactions of kids in the inner city, but do you think hip-hop should be limited to black people in the inner city? Or do you think other races, people who live in the suburbs, can reflect on it and enjoy it too?

Wise Intelligent: It's a world thing. We can't stop it, it's going to grow. It's a human being, it changes, it has emotions. One day it might want to grow its hair long and one day it might want to cut it off! Hip-hop is neither black nor white, Christian nor Jew, it's what it is. As far as the songs I write, like "A Genocide," it's definitely targeting -- at first glance, the inner city youth. It's putting them in the right direction, it's showing them how they became a 5 gram worth of crack seller on the corner, how they became that thug. But at the same time, it's showing the greater community that genocide has been perpetrated on poor black youth in America -- a case that should be brought up at the UN. So it's definitely a worldly record.

BallerStatus.net: The Poor Righteous Teachers previous albums, to some extent, were all orientated around Islam. Does this carry on with your next solo record?

Wise Intelligent: Actually, with this record, I'm all things to all men. Truth is truth, and I'm just putting the truth out there in a way that Christians can get it, Muslims can get it, Jews can get it, atheists can get it. I need everybody to understand where I'm coming from on this record. What I did was put the songs out there without the precepts of my religion or philosophical ideas.

BallerStatus.net: You're part of the Five Percenters, right? Do you not think that the Nation of Islam and the Five Percent view is somewhat racist?

Wise Intelligent: No, not at all. What people fail to realise is that racism is structural. It's more institutional than it is personal and sentimental.

BallerStatus.net: I don't necessarily agree. I could say something like "all whites are stupid," or "all blacks are stupid," and that would be racist.

Wise Intelligent: See, but that would be ignorance, that wouldn't be racist. You haven't met all black people or all white people, so that would just be ignorance. It would be like saying "all black girls have ugly feet." What it is, is that personal racism has been induced in the people as a means to justify European imperialism. That's where all that comes from. Before Europeans set out to conquer the world, there was no such thing as racism. We have to know our history in order to come to that understanding, and that's why I think it's necessary for a re-education of the world. Racism is a structure that has been built up over centuries and induced in people to, as I said, justify imperialism all over the world. And it's working, very effectively.

BallerStatus.net: A number of original Nation of Islam members, like Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali, eventually turned to more fundamental Islam. What's your views on that and have you ever tried studying the Qur'an at all?

Wise Intelligent: Actually, I've dabbled into all sorts of Islam and I study frequently. My thing is, where I'm at in my life and in my study, I just want to cut through all the titles, your Quran, your Bible, your Torah -- all of your books...your Islam, your Christian, your Jew, your Five Percenter, your 120 degrees. I wanna cut through all that and get to the heart of the person. I wanna know what kind of person you are, because none of that makes you who you are. Who you are is deep buried, deep, deep beyond your conscience mind. And what all of the books and the denominations do is build a wall onto your conscience mind and store your life experiences -- positive or negative -- and this all becomes a part of what you think you are. Yet, we have to cut through all of that and get to the heart of the person because in essence, we are all the same. We are all one. And that's where I want to be. I want to separate your spirit from your soul. I want to go so deep into a person that we forget all about the superficial things we think make us who we are. In other words, I think we have to put ourselves to death; we have to murder our egos. Our egos have to commit suicide and our religions and doctrines and philosophies and the knowledge we think we have only served to build our egos further. That's where I'm at right now.

BallerStatus.net: The Poor Righteous Teachers, do you plan to make another record together?

Wise Intelligent: But of course. You're looking at fourth quarter, 2006.

BallerStatus.net: Any final words?

Wise Intelligent: Yes. Wise Intelligent is the Talented Timothy Taylor, September 2005. IntelligentMuzik.com; log on, get the latest on what's going on with The Poor Righteous Teachers, Wise Intelligent and the world. Open your mind up and let's teach each other. Send some emails, post a blog, whatever you wanna do at the site, just let us know you exist. And most importantly, love, life, literacy. And keep it moving.

- BallerStatus by Nooreen Kara

Hip-Hop Fridays: Exclusive Q & A With Wise Intelligent of Poor Righteous Teachers

There is no legitimate or reasonably justifiable argument to leave The Poor Righteous Teachers out of any thorough discussion of Hip-Hip's 'golden era' and the evolution of conscious Hip-Hop. With over four albums (Holy Intellect, 1990; Pure Poverty, 1991; Black Business, 1992; New World Order, 1996) worth of an unwavering contribution of knowledge, wisdom and understanding laid over wax, the group from Trenton, New Jersey has uniquely made tracks that rock the party and park, and form the basis for intelligent discussion in street ciphers and college lecture halls. Throughout, the group has consistently been a standard bearer for the Nation Of Gods and Earths, also referred to by many as the Five Percent Nation Of Islam.

To know Poor Righteous Teachers is to know its lead MC Wise Intelligent, the rare artist who can match a variety of lyrical flows, with substantive lyrics and an eclectic style and personality. As much as he is acknowledged for his creative musical works, Wise Intelligent may be even more deeply respected for his character, integrity and deep understanding of himself, others, the world and universe.

This week and last, Wise Intelligent built with BlackElectorate.com Publisher Cedric Muhammad for a wide-randing, in-depth interview. What follows is an only very slightly edited version of their entire conversation.


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Cedric Muhammad: Peace Wise. First I wanted to say thank you Brother for granting us this opportunity and I would be remiss if I did not bear witness to the impact that you have had, through your lyrics, on me personally, as a young Brother coming up. So the work of PRT and yourself has had an impact that is felt, even in the work that I am doing today, so I want to say thank you and bear witness to that.

Wise Intelligent: Thank you. Thank you.


Cedric Muhammad: Well my first question is how are you, and in a general sense, how have you been?

Wise Intelligent: I’m good. I am really good right now and have been doing well. You know, my family is growing (laughter). And I am just taking it easy doing the knowledge and building.

Cedric Muhammad: So what is the latest? And please tell us about your new project, Wise Intelligent Is The Talented Timothy Taylor (Click here to listen to Wise Intelligent's "Still Black").

Wise Intelligent: That’s what I am working on now, trying to get a late summer release on that. It is a record that kind of goes back to the era of Hip-Hop when the best MC was determined by his talent level. The skill level was what determined who was the best and not the amount of records sold. Today we have a lot of heavily marketed MCs who are light on talent and I am trying to go back to that era, where the MCs were heavily talented without the marketing dollars. That is the basic foundation of this record.

Cedric Muhammad: That is a perfect segue into my next question which is really from the time you came out – as far as the masses of us were aware, through the first Poor Righteous Teachers album, “Holy Intellect”, until now - what has been the evolution of Hip-Hop and what have been some of the factors that you think have determined the course of the culture and the industry from the time you first came out to where it is today?

Wise Intelligent: Hip Hop hasn’t really evolved. It has kind of digressed or regressed, so to speak. And at the same time, it is kind of stagnant in that when we look at this generation of Hip-Hop, the youth – everything that they do, from the sneakers they wear, the earrings in the girls’ ear – they all come from that 80s era. It is almost as if they haven’t created anything of their own yet. That is what gave birth to the throwbacks – the lack of creativity in this generation. They have to ‘throw back’ to that era when things were created and we were dealing with a more creative mindset. As far as the content that we are dealing with in the music today, that came about, in my opinion, as a way of redirecting or putting leads on the people’s impulse to pursue revolution. They put leads in the form of gangster rap, pimpism, and hustlin’ culture on the people’s impulse for revolution to direct them into a self-destructive mindset and that’s where we are at right now. We are in that self-destructive mindset that the people went into based on leads that were put on that original impulse and desire to seek revolution. And it was planned. It was definitely planned. I was there when the transition was coming forth. The Poor Righteous Teachers were signed to Profile Records and Profile Records had a couple of conscious groups and then they had Run D.M.C. and so on and so forth, but in the era of gangster rap we saw DJ Quik come in, we saw N 2 Deep come in, we saw Smooth Da Hustler come in at Profile Records, we saw these things happening right before our eyes. We saw the marketing dollars being redirected from the positive or socially conscious groups to the gangster rapper. We saw these things happening. One thing that the 10% know is that whatever a person thinks, that will become their reality. Whatever a person thinks and believes to be true that will become their surroundings. And the 10% knew that Hip-Hop was very, very powerful in that era. We had youth braiding their hair up, wearing Afros putting on their medallions, seeking out the Qur’an, and even the Bible. We were just seeking knowledge in all forms everywhere. And they saw this and they knew that they had to stop this, so Counter Intelligence Programs came into effect and we got what we got and we have what we have today. That pretty much is the process in what happened in Hip-Hop. We have to understand today, you know a lot of people like to say that ‘the artist is responsible, the artist shouldn’t say this’. I am not taking blame off of individuals that contribute to the self-destructive content in their music. But it is almost like blaming Jezebel for being born poor, but beautiful. It is almost like that (beauty) is the only thing she has to reach out and get the necessities that she needs. You know, the bare necessities. So she is using what she got to get what she wants, pretty much. And that is the science with poor people. Poor people can be controlled by the rich. There is a scripture in Proverbs that says, “It is the rich that cause the poor to sin”. Because the rich can make a poor man do anything for the bare necessities. And that is what the youth are. The youth are poor, living in poverty and want of all things. And when you are in such a condition it is easy for you to be led in the wrong direction. When poor youth thought that they could rhyme positive, socially and politically conscious lyrics, and get record deals and sell records like Public Enemy, like KRS-One, like Poor Righteous Teachers, like X-Clan, they were doing it. The large majority of rappers were writing in a conscious format. Yet when they saw the shift, the youth made the shift also. Because they felt, ‘oh I can’t get paid no more doing that, so I have to do this.’ It is just like how at one point in my neighborhood, everybody was selling marijuana, everybody was selling weed. Everybody. When crack came in 1982 and ’83 to my neighborhood, and they saw that crack was making more money, and there were more crack smokers, than weed smokers – weed wasn’t making enough money and they started selling crack. That’s what the poor kids do. They are going to do those things that they feel will get them what they desire.


Cedric Muhammad: You are right Wise, and even in some of the things that I have written on pertaining to the Congo, when the price of gold and silver went down, they started moving into mining col-tan and tantalum.

Wise Intelligent: Exactly!


Cedric Muhammad: So how much of this do you attribute to radio? For example, I was just listening to the song, "Freedom or Death" on the Pure Poverty album and Wise, I thought to myself, ‘this could never come out today (and be played on the radio)’. And today, we have seen, the lack of airplay for a song like Styles P.’s "I’m Black" and the phrase, ‘white man’ was edited out of the Kanye West song, "All Falls Down". We have written about that at BlackElectorate.com. So I wanted to know from you, what is your view on the role that you feel radio has played in the scenario you just described?

Wise Intelligent: Radio is the beast. You know, they definitely contribute to the dilemma in a very profound way. Their part cannot go unnoticed or ignored. They call themselves the home of ‘Hip-Hop and R & B’ and you know that they are targeting youth from the different shows that they have and I listen to the radio and there is absolutely no balance. There was a time where you could just take your record to the station and if the D J felt it, he just played it. Now, every radio station is playing the same ten songs, over and over and over again. Radio to me in large part is responsible, more so than anybody for the dissemination of the destructive influence into the Black community. They will throw their little token ad on saying, ‘stop the violence’ or whatever they have for Mother’s day, ‘yeah my baby got shot and killed at a party, everybody stop the violence’. And as soon as that goes off (they are playing), ‘my metal go clap, your head will go back’. They are playing Beanie Sigel, and ‘kill a nigga’ music (laughter). You know what I mean? But that is the radio. And you listen to the Black radio you do not hear anything based on entrepreneurialism. There is no business network (promoted through) Black radio, unless you go to an adult contemporary radio station that is 40-years old and up. There is nothing for the youth to listen to, to teach them how to invest money in the stock market or anything. Hardly anything other than, ‘clap somebody.’ That is all you get. Now, it is either ads for liposuction, plastic surgery, all types of this stuff on Hip-Hop radio stations. It is pathetic. Since Black radio sold its soul it has become a gossip column that contributes to the violence. – ‘a moment of silence for the dead Black race/ that measures life by the inches/ on the chrome set of spinners’. That’s where we are at.


Cedric Muhammad: I just wanted to know your view of - as you look at the evolutionary role of radio - the reemergence of the Star and Buc Wild show, which I find to be very important and interesting. One aspect of course is Star, who at his age of 41, operating in today’s Hip-Hop format, is one of the few good sources of historical information regarding the evolution of the culture and the industry. And then of course, I always find him to be very respectful of the Nation of Gods and Earths, and the 5% Nation Of Islam. So I wanted to just ask your opinion of Star, his show and what it represents.

Wise Intelligent: Man, I really enjoy Star’s show. I listen to it when I commute from Trenton, New Jersey to Philadelphia in the mornings. So I am checking it out. The thing is, a lot of people say they are just on that show acting ignorant. I have heard a lot of people say that in comments in reference to the show. Yet they make you think. If you are paying attention if you are doing the knowledge to the show, there is subject matter that is being discussed on there that is not being discussed on a lot of radio. I heard the term, ‘eugenics’ being discussed on his show. I am riding down the highway and I am like ‘oh’. I just heard the term eugenics come across the air, and they are discussing that, and they are breaking that down to a degree. And you don’t get that from a lot of radio disc jockeys. Some of them are afraid to be real and to be honest. And Star calls himself the original hater (laughter). But it is objective, man. It is objective criticism. And the thing is you can’t say you dislike something without first analyzing it, understanding it. Star has a serious understanding man. And I say this to any individual that takes him lightly, you know - don’t be mistaken, that is a very intelligent Black man on that radio. That is a very intelligent Black man. And if you (laugher) come sideways (at Star) you better make sure that you did the knowledge, that you did your homework before you come at that Black man, because he is very knowledgeable, very well-read, a very thoroughly educated Black man. And it shows. Some people they just don’t get the understanding. I like to say, ‘get knowledge, get wisdom, but in all of your getting get understanding.’ And that is what I get when I am listening to his show. You know even the personalities, the different characters he has on there, ‘Crossover Negro Reese’ (laughter), ‘White Trash Helene’ and so on and so forth. All of the characters contribute to a dialogue that is conducive to expanding your consciousness, point blank. That’s what I get out of their show. It expands your consciousness regardless to what your political view is, religious view or ethnic background. I really enjoy the Star and Buc Wild show, man, it is a good show and I think they touch a lot of good topics. Whether it is in passing or on the fly-by, things get addressed on there. That is the first radio show that I heard somebody even dare to mention eugenics, or dare to touch racial issues that they touch. They keep it clean. Star keeps it real clean and he don’t bite his tongue. He gets right to the point and lets the knowledge be brought forth. I respect that. You got to respect a man that stands on his square.


Cedric Muhammad: Now, about three years ago I wrote something on BlackElectorate.com called, "The consciousness of Suge, Jay-Z and Wu-Tang". And I directed it at many of the fans of many of the conscious artists that we all know and love. And the point that I was trying to make was that I feel that there has been a blind spot in the knowledge that we have had and the understanding of it because we have totally equated business and doing trade among ourselves and others as capitalism and exploitative behavior. So I wanted to know from you, in terms of the fall of the prominence of conscious Hip-Hop, do you attribute that to a lack of understanding in our consciousness as it relates to the science of business and doing trade among ourselves and others?

Wise Intelligent: It is tough to say. It is tough to say. But I think a lot of it has to do with our desire to become the oppressor. A lot of us envy the oppressor so much that when we get into a position of power we become him. I know a lot of rappers who have did their thing, sold millions of records and then, in turn got their own record companies and record deals and so on and so forth and end up oppressing the artist the same way. You had Puffy and the Lox, and the Lox are like, ‘yo we need to get off of here (Bad Boy Records), he is enslaving us.’ I mean, how is that even possible? That shouldn’t happen. But we envy our oppressor. But that’s what happens when the oppressed wants to replace their oppressor and become him. They don’t want to co-exist with him. They want to become him. And that is what the problem is. A lot of Black artists are living on a line, whereas our culture is a circle. European culture I define it as a line. Wherever you put your peg on that line, somebody is in the front, back or on top or the bottom, depending on whether that line is horizontal or vertical. That is their culture. Our culture is a circle. You put your peg on the circle, I put my peg on the circle and neither one of us is in front, neither one of us is in back, neither one of us is on the top and neither one of us is on the bottom. It is a community. It is a circle. And that is what a lot of rappers don’t see. They don’t have that knowledge to see that. They are trying to adjust to, adapt, and live in a culture that is not conducive to their spirit. So a lot of them have become the oppressor. They have become sub-human as I always like to say. Because any time a Black man has abandoned his culture, his language, his people, and all of the things that make him, him; whenever he puts off from being Black to adopt a culture, religion, language of someone else – then he is no longer what he was and he is not quite a European, so he is somewhere in between. He is a subhuman. He has demoted himself to the lower animals that he should not be respected, at all. There is no way he should be respected. He should not be respected. He deserves what happens to him in the world, when he refuses and rejects his own culture, his own people to be more like the European. And that is the problem right now with a lot of the Black leaders. They don’t want to turn us into a Black nation, they want to turn us into a sub-European nation. If they become the power and authority, they would set things up the same way. And we would have the same capitalist, imperialist structure, just ran by Black men. It is not going to be any change until this system is done away with. It is the system that is the problem. And until your leader is talking about changing the system and separating us ideologically from this system, then he is not the one to follow.


Cedric Muhammad: Tell us about your journey into the knowledge of self. I don’t know that many people know how you came into the knowledge of yourself - were you raised in it, was it introduced to you at a young age?

Wise Intelligent: Yeah, I was about 12, or 13 years old. My Brother’s name is Power. And he came in one day and he told me his name was Power. He told me not to call him by his government name anymore. And I didn’t understand. He was like “I’m the Asiatic Black Man, Maker and The Owner, Cream Of The Planet Earth, Father Of Civilization And God Of The Universe”. And I’m like, ‘yo, what are you talking about man? The Asiatic Black Man?’ I kind of laughed at him at first, because I didn’t understand. I thought he was on something. He was smoking a lot of weed then. I was like I didn’t know what he put in the weed this time. But after a while, he got locked up, as a youth, he was about sixteen years old and his Lessons are home (with me). One hundred and twenty degrees sitting on the dresser. So you know me, I am an inquisitive Black youth, trying to find out what is going on, so I get to reading and it started making sense. Because I just didn’t read what was there, I researched it and I studied. I verified and documented it. And it made me see a lot of things that I hadn’t been seeing and it answered a lot of questions. That one hundred and twenty degrees was like a launching pad. And that is one thing that I say about the Nations of Gods and Earths all the time. The Nation of Gods and Earths made it cool to read books. It made it cool to study, to want to be a master, to learn. So, with that said, that’s what started it and that is what put me on this journey. And then from then on it was a lot of open confrontations with teachers in the school system, when I was testing the knowledge that I acquired. It was at about age 13 years old that I really started looking into the science of self.


Cedric Muhammad: Now what is your overall assessment on the impact of the 5% Nation of Islam, the Nation of Gods and Earths on Hip-Hop? Positive and Negative. Because I think in one of your songs, “Gods, Earths and 85ers” you say (of some), “quoting some lessons but seeing no parts of understanding.” So there has been a wide experience there, but just in general if you could give me your take on the whole influence of the Nation Of Gods and Earths and then perhaps, on some things that went astray.

Wise Intelligent: The influence that the Nation had on Hip-Hop is overwhelming. Some of the top MCs, the first MCs were of the Nation Of Gods and Earths or they were heavily flirting with the science, or flirting with 120 degrees, in some way, form or fashion. And you can hear it when they speak. Right now the culture is all in Hip-Hop with phrases like, ‘word is life’. That is a statement that comes from the culture. Hip-Hop pretty much has used a lot of 5% wisdom or self-styled wisdom as they say. And it is a manifestation of itself. It was very influential, from Rakim, the Classical Two, and all the way back to the Supreme Team. Remember (the lyrics to "Hey DJ") ‘…the supreme team, supreme team show, show, show, show’ That was the Nation Of Gods and Earths right there, putting it down. And a lot of people don’t know that. When you look back at the original song, one of the guys called up and was like, ‘yo, this is Rakim, Bashar, Allah, I’m checking out the Supreme Team.’ So that influence has been there. The Nation of Gods and Earths was there when Hip-Hop was started. So it was impossible for it to have been started in the Bronx without the Nation of Gods and Earths being around. You had Just Ice, and heads that were there seeing it all materialize. That’s how it all came into perspective and that whole conscious era of rap was something that was lead by the Nation Of Gods and Earths and the Nation Of Islam. It was a lot of Brothers out there who were really putting it down on a serious level.


Cedric Muhammad: One of the things that I respected about you Wise, around 1988, ‘89, ’90, ’91, and ’92 was that you made it abundantly clear that the individual should master himself - and as you know, at the time, there were many people, and this is really the case in all belief systems and all of those who profess something and fall short for one reason or another, willfully or otherwise – and you put it out there that smoking, the abuse of alcohol, the destruction of the body and the mind was something that was not part and parcel of the Nation of Gods and Earths’ teaching what was in the Lessons. But yet there were many rappers at that time, as you know, who kind of walked hand in hand with both of those lifestyles. So I just wanted to know what was your take on that whole phenomenon and debate, about living lifestyles other than your self, mastering self, morality and the Lessons, and what do you think its effect was on (the overall) consciousness, even inside of the Nation of Gods and Earths and Hip-Hop?

Wise Intelligent: I think that the whole science of self mastery is taken out of context a lot. A lot of people don’t get the gist of what the purpose of it is. They say, ‘He’s crazy. How’s he going to tell somebody not to pleasure themselves?’ What people are not getting is that mastery is about bringing your flesh under complete and absolute submission to your mind. That’s what is wrong with the world today. The flesh is winning. That’s what the struggle is everyday. If you get up in the morning and then you go to rest at night and you look back, the next day, at everything you did the previous day, and if everything you did was based upon providing for your physical, you fell short of the glory of God, simply because all day you sowed to your flesh. All day. You get up in the morning, you eat. You go out you make money and pay your rent, make sure your bills are paid. You go have sex with a female. Then you smoke a cigarette, and drink brew. You hang out with your friends. All for the flesh. Everything you do, if that is your life, you basically are demoted to the lower animals. If that is what your life consists of. Going to the basketball game, watching a basketball game, those are all things for physical enjoyment, physical pleasure. What did you do for your spirit? What have you done for your mind today? Have you read a book? Have you meditated? What did you do today for your soul? Have done any charity? Have you went and helped somebody that couldn’t help themselves? Did you do any community service today? What did you do? We are gluttons, if we don’t understand that self-mastery is for our own benefit. Man’s mind is powerful. When the Nation says that the Black Man is God that is a valid statement. I find it not robbery to consider myself equal with God. That’s what Jesus was trying to explain to the heads. He was like, ‘Yo, the Kingdom of Heaven is in you.’ ‘Know ye not that the Spirit of God dwelleth within you?’ He said that the Spirit of God dwelleth not in temples made of hands. He said that the Spirit dwells in you. ‘So would you defile the temple, when your body is the temple of the Living God? He said, ‘We are all gods, for it is written in your law and the law cannot be broke.’ He said the scripture cannot be broken. ‘It is written in the law that we are all gods.’ That is the science right there. You are a god. But when you don’t sow to that you demote yourself to the animals and to the sons of mere men. There was a time when the Europeans held us in our proper light they worshipped us as Gods. Apollos, Zeus, Hercules, Thor – all Ethiopian Gods. All of them, and they were actual men that walked the planet. Venus, The Sable Goddess, Aphrodite, all actual women that walked the planet. Giants. I am not saying that you can’t go to a party and you can’t have fun. I am not saying that you can’t sip some wine every now and then. I am not saying that. Nor am I saying that you can’t smoke weed every now and then. What I am saying is sow to the Spirit. That’s all I am saying. I am not trying to stop or incarcerate anybody. I am not saying that. All I am saying is, self-mastery is the greatest thing. Even in the Bible in the Book of Timothy it says, ‘study to show thyself master’. If you don’t study you can’t show your self worthy. You have to know how to properly divide the truth, precept upon precept, line upon line in order to understand the mysteries of the Book. Many are called but few are chosen. Only the few are going to understand what the books represent. You have people right now wrestling with all of the books to their own destruction. You might have been called but you might not be chosen. The whole thing is about bringing your body under the submission of your third eye. That’s what it has always been about. That’s where the power lies. See, creation is thought plus conviction. Thought plus conviction equals creation. And you are creating everyday, whether you know it or not. Whatever thoughts you believe, with conviction, will be created in your physical existence. And that’s what we don’t get. That’s why self-mastery is so necessary. It is about mastering your thoughts. Mastering what you think. Controlling your mind. Controlling what you think and what you say. Thinking twice and speaking once. Like I said, even if you don’t know it every thing you think when you are walking around here, casually, is becoming your reality. If a poor person gets up in the morning and comes outside and all he sees is death and destruction, that’s what he’s going to believe and that is what he is going to respect. If all he sees is violence, that’s all he is going to perceive that is all he is going to respect. That’s what is becoming reality. He is going to think that this is what’s real, giving birth to the statement, ‘keepin’ it real’. And that is where we are at because we don’t understand that what we think will become our reality. That is the power of your mind. Everything in existence is a thought. When broken down to its lowest compound it is energy. Everything from man to a soda can. That’s why you have some men on the planet that can move a can, and they say he is moving it with his thought. But what he is doing is moving it with the energy that is in him because that same energy that is in him is in the can therefore it’s more like a partnership, an inner connectedness, with everything that exists within the world. That’s why they say that self mastery is the ability to see yourself within everything. When you can see God in everything that is when you are reaching that state of self-mastery, because now you see the inner connectedness of the universe and how we all share the same universal subconscious space.

Cedric Muhammad: Now, Wise, even the name, if you could just speak briefly on the power of the name. I was with Wu-Tang Clan from 95 to ’98 so unfortunately I had the experience in November of going to say peace to Ason Unique, you know, O.D.B.

Wise Intelligent: Indeed.


Cedric Muhammad: And I don’t know if you heard what RZA said, but when RZA spoke he spoke really, in a sense, in an act of repentance for giving that name Ol’ Dirty Bastard to the Brother who was Ason Unique. And he spoke at some length about how sex, drugs, and alcohol are the things that many of us turn to, when dealing with this world and ourselves. And he felt that once he gave him that name, it contributed to the Brother gravitating toward those things…

Wise Intelligent: Indeed. That is exactly what I was just manifesting – how the thought becomes a physical existence. That’s why in the Bible there is also a proverb which says, ‘a great name is more precious than all of the precious diamonds and stones in the world.’ Choose a great name because you are going to become that name. That is why in Hebrew culture, African culture, they didn’t name the baby until the eighth day. Build (‘build’ the meaning of the number 8 among the Nation Of Gods and Earths) is to add on. Build to add on. They knew that the name they gave that child was going to add on to his existence, whatever that name was. That is why you have to be careful about what you are naming your child. You have to be very careful because that’s a thought. And words make a way in the world. And a name is making a statement, like saying ‘So Be it’; its like saying ‘Amen’. It is like saying that’s it, ‘It is done’, as Christ said. That’s the word. The word makes a way in the world in an instant that’s why He said in the beginning, ‘…was the Word and the Word became flesh’. The word, the name, the idea, the thought became flesh. Because whatever we think, or shout in existence will become a physical thing. Everything that you think and believe will become your reality, whether it be positive or negative. That’s what happens when you take on those names. You become what that name is. You become it. So think long and hard what you name your babies. (laughter) That’s why back in the ancient world we used to let the baby marinate for eight days. We used to watch that baby for eight days, before we gave him a name, to see the kind of characteristics we were going to see in the child. You wait to see how the baby smiles, see how he laughs, wait to see if he is going to be sad and cry all of the time. If the baby was going to make the mother sad, they would name the baby based on that. They never, ever, ever, named the baby something that did not have some meaning or relevance to that baby’s existence. And then the name would change later on in life. When you go in the Bible you see that Jacob was born Jacob, but what happened was, when it was time for him to do the work that he was called for they changed his name to Israel. Abraham, his name was Abram but when it was time for him to do the work he had to do he became Abraham. Because they knew the power of a name. Like Jacob’s son Benjamin, when he was born in the Bible his name was, Benoni, ‘son of my sorrow’ and his father changed his name to Benjamin, ‘son of my right hand’, the son that I am going to give the blessing to. So the names are very powerful, they mean a lot. A name is what you dwell upon, it is what you believe and what you respond to. If somebody calls you gangster, and you respond to it? It is not what they call you, it is what you respond to. When you respond you are making the thought real. That’s why I say thought plus conviction equals creation.

Cedric Muhammad: Now, Wise, because of where we are going I want to move up a question I was going to get into later. I want to now deal with the view of the female in Hip-Hop and the language that you have used (in reference to her) over the years, as we know through the Shakiyla songs you recorded with Poor Righteous Teachers. So in the context of what you just said what is your assessment of where we are in terms of the female in Hip-Hop – through the lyrics and I guess through their advancement in that field.

Wise Intelligent: Sex sells. Let me tell you. Hip-Hop right now, all of it, the way the woman is viewed, the way the man is viewed, everything in Hip-Hop now is based on the flesh. It is based on something that is corruptible. Everything. Violence, drugs, sex and money, that’s what it is. And the woman, she is responding to these titles. This is what I am saying. The D. J .puts the record on, and when the record comes on, (you hear the Ying Yang Twins hit record, "Wait, The Whisper Song) ‘Wait ‘til you see my dick, (hey bitch), wait till you see my dick’. And who is on the floor? It is not a bunch of Brothers on the floor dancing with each other. It is the Sisters running out there responding to that. So it is becoming their reality because it is what they respond to. Chris Rock joked about that. He said, the Brother will say, ‘Beat her with a dick, kill her with a dick, poke her in the eye’; and the woman is (listening to it), dancing, shaking her ass, saying, ‘He ain’t talking about me, girl!’ But she responds to that. As a matter of fact, I was down in North Carolina with an associate of mine, a while ago, five years ago, we are in a gas station and the sisters come up in the gas station while we are getting gas. The Sisters come up, beautiful Black Sisters, and my associate, he lives down there, he said, ‘Come here hooker.’ Just like that. He knows me, now. He knows what I am about (laughter) and he looks at me and says, ‘They don’t respond to nothing nice’. That’s what he said and they responded to him and before we left the parking lot, he had her phone number. They responded to that. And I don’t see any guns to any of the Sisters heads in the videos. The Sisters follow the male lead, they are going to respond to whatever he says. Whatever he says, that’s what they want and that is what he is gonna do. Their desire is to be drawn to the man and have him dominate her. That’s her whole nature, to submit to their man. Whether they are lesbians or whatever they cannot deny it. Their natural self knows it, that all they want is to be dominated by their man, and their man is leading them down that road, because of his confusion and his lack of understanding, and his lack of knowledge and self-mastery.

Cedric Muhammad: Now Wise, back then you were rapping and speaking of women as Queens and in your Shakiyla songs you referred to the women you closely related to, more specifically, with the term ‘wives’ or the term ‘wife’. And I know from my experience with the Clan, that is how we referred to the main focus, in terms of the women in our lives - she was referred to among us all, as the ‘wife’. Now, out here, in the music we hear and otherwise, it is ‘bitch’, ‘ho’ or whatever. So speak a little bit on that as to how men relate to women in terms of them being objects of pleasure (without a title) that indicates responsibility (and commitment).

Wise Intelligent: It is heavy. It is really heavy. I told a Sister the other day, I said, ‘Your problem is all you all want to do is have sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, and never have any babies and be responsible women. You just want to have sex.’ And that is the same thing with men. This, what we are dealing with, is a society without God. That is what we are dealing with. Let’s look at it from a Biblical perspective for a minute. Let’s cross over there for a minute and go into that culture and mindset. Sodom and Gomorrah was a city of lesbians and homosexuals. Sodom and Gomorrah was burned off of the face of the planet earth. I always say that if America and the Western world is not burned off of the face of the Planet Earth then the God that burned Sodom and Gomorrah is going to have to dig Sodom and Gomorrah up and apologize. This is absolute wickedness we are in right here. You can watch the commercials on television tonight after this interview, when you are kicking back tonight watching the game, just watch the commercials, everything they sell they sell it based on sex. Everything they are selling is based on sex. Now BET even got it, ‘BET Uncut’. On Power 99 FM (in Philadelphia), at 12 midnight, all the words are left in the songs. It speaks for itself. Check this out. I am in the car with my man, driving down through all of the neighborhoods in Trenton and it is like three or four young girls on the bus stop, and they are like 11, 12, 13 years old. They are standing on the edge of the curb dropping down and getting their eagle on. And you know how the girls are wearing the thongs coming up out of their low riders?


Cedric Muhammad: Yeah.

Wise Intelligent: This is what they had on. At least two of them. So my man said, ‘Hold up.’ He said ‘Stop. Hey, come here!’ to them. And he really scared these young girls because he put them in a position where they felt that there security was going to be threatened. He made them feel like this could happen to you out here running around dressed like that. I said, ‘Rap songs and America’s Top Model/got babies wearing thongs and they are barely off the bottle.’ That’s what it is. America’s Top Model, they got these girls getting naked painting their bodies, telling ‘em this is what you have to do to get down with Tyra Banks. And you’ve got the rap videos. Remember when we used to call them video hoochies?


Cedric Muhammad: Yeah. ‘Video- Hos’.

Wise Intelligent: Yeah, we used to say, ‘that’s a video ho’. Now the Video- Ho has gotten some esteem now! (laughter)


Cedric Muhammad: (laughter)

Wise Intelligent: She is even up in movies. She is moving up now, in this era that we are in. She is on the front of King magazine, Smooth magazine, all of those magazines. So it pays now.


Cedric Muhammad: Yes. Now this is a real serious issue of concern with me, at BlackElectorate.com and in my travels. The division amongst those who claim the Lessons – and that is many people out there. But I am seeing more and more groups, sects, divisions, and I see increasing disunity. But yet I also see the basis for unity and reconciliation. So I wanted to know what was your opinion of the state of those of us out here who claim the Lessons and what would you like to see in the way to finding a path to unity.

Wise Intelligent: I say, he who gathers with us, is not against us. But he who gathers not with us, scatters. I am not going to point fingers and say this guy right here is not with us or this guy over here with this whole sect is not with us. If you are gathering with us, then you are with us. If you gather not with us then you scattereth. You divide the people. And when the smoke is clear the A-alike are going to stand forever. The A-alike are going to be together whether they are here or in the Congo. Whether they are in the Congo or the middle of Mecca, or India. The A-alike is going to stand up, regardless and that is how I build with that. I can tell who is gathering with us. You can say whatever you want but what you do, especially when you are in that position of power is what I value.

Now think of Jesus, and I like to use him because he was a revolutionary in its purest form. He had a crew of men. The one thing that he understood was that revolutions take finance. Joseph of Arimethea was a wealthy man that was running with Jesus. And anything that was needed Joseph of Arimethea provided it. Any man who is blessed with this world’s good and shuttest up his bowels from his brothers is a liar and a devil. (Read 1 John 3:17) Straight up. He’s a murderer and a devil. How can you be blessed with this world’s goods and not open up your bowels to your brothers? That’s what gets me. There is enough finance in Hip-Hop right now to really do something revolutionary in Black communities throughout this country. It don’t take a lot. But nobody is thinking like that. They are all thinking like Caiphas, the High Priest - if Jesus rises up we are all going to lose our position. It is expedient that he die so we live. That is how a lot of them are thinking. And it is sad. So that is how I really look at the different divisions. I am not with all of that. All of the different denominations and all of that, I am cutting right through that down to the natural law. I am cutting right through all of your titles, all of your different nationalities you think you are, Black, African, Muslim, Christian, Jew, whatever you think you are I am cutting through that and going straight to the natural law that is in the heart of every man, since creation. Since the thought became flesh, the natural law is in your heart, man sometimes goes astray from it and therefore it is necessary, sometimes, to put it in stone, so that he could see what is supposed to be in his heart. That’s all the law is for. A law is for a lawless people. Moses brought the law because the people went so far astray. They went so far astray, that’s why prophets come. Prophets come to people who are lost. Prophets come to people who have went so far away from the natural law that they need to be brought back. They need righteous leads put on their impulses to do negative, to bring them back to the positive. That’s why prophets are necessary. But the natural law is in your heart. That’s why Jeremiah in the same book, said that the time was coming when we would do away with this old law. There is not going to be a law written on no stone or tablet. It is going to be written on your heart the way it was in the beginning. All these superficial things we got that we think give us power? That is why Paul was saying you have to give up everything that you are. That is why Christ said you have to die to live. That is why he said you must be born again. You have to die. You have to put your self to death. That’s what self-mastery is. Putting the self to death. Can you kill yourself? Can you pick up your cross? Can you murder your ego? That is what it is. Your self is the ego. Can you kill your ego and check it at the door when you come in the temple? When you come in the cipher can you check your ego and come in the cipher as God? Skip everything else and come into the cipher as God. Nothing else matters – your long name, fancy outfit, how many Lessons you can quote, it don’t matter. It is about what’s in your heart. And they don’t get it. That is what’s wrong right now. Nobody gets it. The law is already in your heart. It is there in every living thing. It is just that the poor people are more receptive to doing negative because they lack the resources and the means to support the heart’s desire to do what is naturally right. Therefore the rich cause the poor to sin because they know this. The devil is very wicked and wily. He knows these things, he studies and he knows the law. He knows what is right. That is why he knows what to do to keep you away from it. That’s the whole science. Man needs all of these books of law now, Qur’ans, Torahs, Bibles and he needs these 120 degrees, and all of these Lessons, and he needs the Theology Of Time, because he has went so far away from what is in him.


Cedric Muhammad: His nature.

Wise Intelligent: Exactly. It is in you. That is what all of the books are trying to tell you. The Kingdom of God is within. Christ said don’t seek great wealth and riches in this world. He said ‘seek ye first the Kingdom of God and all of these things shall be multiplied unto you.’ Don’t get it twisted. He is not talking about going to Mars. He is not talking about heaven up in the sky. Then later on, in the same book, he says, ‘the Kingdom of God is within you.’ And it has been there since before creation, and the earth was formed. It is in the natural order of things. In the energy, you see it in the protons. You see it in the neutrons. You see it in the electrons. You see the order of balance. You see the scale – the positive and negative charges being allowed to exist together based on a neutron. That is a scale, a balance.


Cedric Muhammad: Now for the record, and I think this deals with some of what we are talking about, how did the whole situation evolve where I believe you confronted Brother KRS-One at a lecture. And then how did your relationship evolve and grow to the point where you were on tracks together, the Poor Righteous Teachers’ “New World Order” album in particular?

Wise Intelligent: What happened was I never had any beef or problem with KRS-One. That’s not my nature. That’s not how I operate. I go to the lecture. I was with my Queen. We are sitting in the audience and she is with seed, she is with child, so you know I wasn’t coming for no confrontation. I am coming in peace because I feel this is a good environment for me to bring my pregnant wife. So, what happens is when I came to the lecture, I just happened to be with 30 other heads from the projects. And you know what kind of current they come in. They usually come in a cold current – these particular individuals. So, we are listening to the Teacher (KRS-One) speak and one of the Brothers with me, asked him a question, he said, ‘Why does your speech change when you get in front of White people? Why does the overall message change to a more euphoric, utopia kind of unity in a melting pot, and everybody getting along, and then when you speak to us, you are more revolutionary, speaking to our emotions?’ That’s what the Brother asked him and he (KRS-One) said, ‘No, even Jesus taught come in peace, he was against violence.’ And that’s when I said, ‘No. Jesus wasn’t against violence. He said if anyone of you that’s following me had any valuables and any money he said take it and buy yourself a sword.’ ‘When the Romans came to get Jesus,’ I said, ‘they sent a cohort of men, that’s some 600 men, you don’t send 600 armed men with swords and bucklers to come and get a man that is talking about peace and throwing flowers around.’ Jesus was running up in the temple turning over tables. It wasn’t really me doing the speaking, it was somebody who was waiting, that was doing the large majority of the speaking but the people over here in the crowd – I was who they noticed. I am the familiar face. So they were like, ‘Word. Wise Intelligent. Word!’ And then the Sisters from the other side of the crowd were like, ‘KRS-One, you are a sell out!’ And then he (KRS-One) was like, ‘No, the only thing that is selling out is my records in your neighborhood.’ So it just went on, and on, and on. It was a big brouhaha he said a bunch of things about us in The Source magazine before the lecture. So Culture (Culture Freedom of Poor Righteous Teachers) was with me and hey, he is a cold current – an official project baby. (laughter). And he is like, ‘Yo, what’s with all of that? If you feel that way about us I think you should say it, man up, and say it right in my face.’ And (KRS-One) was like, ‘I didn’t mean it like that. See, we come from the same place.’ But it was childish to me, the whole conversation and what led to it. But that is pretty much what started the whole thing. And a lot of people were like, ‘get at him on a record’. And I was like, ‘No, that is not me. I’m not going to say anything about him on a record, I would rather get him on a record with me. And we just put something down and do it like that.’ And my thing is I paid him to do the record (‘Conscious Style’). It isn’t like I didn’t pay him. I paid him some $15,000. And I am not ashamed to say it. I am not ashamed to put out there what he was paid. He was paid $7,500 for the track and $7,500 for a vocal. I paid him for that. It ain’t like he came and did it for free.


Cedric Muhammad: I didn’t know that.

Wise Intelligent: Yeah exactly. I didn’t have no problem paying him for the track. I paid him $15,000 for that. And that’s what I mean when I say when you get into a position of power how you delegate that power is what determines whether you are with me or not. And that’s why I do that man. I deal with people on that level. I’m like ‘yo I wanna see what kind of person he really is so I know how to write him off or not.’ My thing is I would rather not deal with you ever again than to keep going back and forth, and back and forth with you on a record – dissin this guy and that one. I would rather do a record, showing Black men moving in accord. Give the people something as opposed to keeping the beef escalating. Keeping the beef escalating would have been the monetary thing to do, the capitalist thing to do, but that is not me. And I could have easily made 100 records. I could have easily made a 20 album catalog just about the situation but that is not me man. That’s what happened with that whole thing. I thought it would be a good idea to get with KRS-One to do a record to say it ain’t even like that and I am not holding a lifelong grudge with this Black man. That is not how I operate, let’s move forward.

Cedric Muhammad: Now I am going to get your take on some figures in Hip-Hop. Ok, four rappers today, and you can do this for as long or as short as you want Brother, but I just want to get your opinion on four individuals that are prominent today. Would you like them one at a time or altogether?

Wise Intelligent: One at a time.

Cedric Muhammad: First, 50 Cent.

Wise Intelligent: 50 Cent. Get Rich or Die Tryin’. Wow. 50 Cent is a great talent man. And he comes from that demographic, peasantry. That is where we all come from, peasantry. We come from where if our immediate necessities are not met, we are going to do whatever we have to do to get those necessities met. I like the business acumen that I see with G-Unit and the way he has snowballed that thing into a little corporation. G-Unit is now an official corporation. And like I said, 50 is a talent. He is good at what he does. And I believe that he can take a rhyme wherever he wants to take a rhyme. I believe that he is doing what he has to do right now to make some money. It is like what I was saying earlier about switching from selling weed to crack. That’s what it is. 50 is selling crack now, but 50 can also sell weed (laughter). He knows how to sell weed also. When weed comes back in he will sell weed.

Cedric Muhammad: Next one, Eminem.

Wise Intelligent: Eminem. When I first heard the White boy spit, I said, ‘Elvis has entered the building.’

Cedric Muhammad: (laughter)

Wise Intelligent: And Eminem is to the average Black MC what Elvis Presley was to Jackie Wilson – a god damn rip off. That’s how I feel about Eminem point blank. Culture bandits. He can’t speak to me. He can’t speak to my struggle. He can’t give me nothing.

Cedric Muhammad: Alright, Jay-Z.

Wise Intelligent: I really want to say that Jay-Z is the best MC, lyrically, skill level, I have probably heard in the last ten years. Jay-Z is a phenomenon, lyrically, to me. He can take a rhyme where he wants. Jay-Z can tell a rhyme sit, and it sits. He says, ‘get up and go’, and the rhyme will get up and go. Jay-Z is definitely a talent. He can rhyme about anything he wants to rhyme about. He’s rhyming about what works for him right now. That’s it. He is more than just a rapper too, I see more than just a business man in him as well. There is something else there. I don’t know what, I ain’t trying to figure it out, but, hey, that’s Jay-Z to me.

Cedric Muhammad: Ok, the god Nas.

Wise Intelligent: Shew. If Nas had it within his power to emancipate the people in a day, it would already be done. Nas got some love for his people in him. And I rank that very highly, higher than anything that a rapper could ever say. Like I said, when you cut through all the stuff that is on the surface – ‘Oochie Wali’, the lyrical skills, the Jay-Z battle, Illmatic and right down to the core of a person, Nas got some love in him. I see some serious love in him for the people.

Cedric Muhammad: Ok, I am going to now give you some of your contemporaries and some that came a little before you. Big Daddy Kane.

Wise Intelligent: Shewww. Man. Big Daddy Kane. King Asiatic Nobody’s Equal. Big Daddy Kane set it off. That’s my thing. I like rappers who come to the table and bring us something different. Hip-Hop from their perspective. Their way of saying it, delivering it, walking and talking it. I don’t care what you are talking about and what you say, as long as it is you. Big Daddy Kane was one of those. He was one of those rare commodities in Hip-Hop. There are only a few of them. It is only every so often that you get rappers that come out that are just so themselves and bring something new to the table. If you are an upcoming MC and you are listening to your walkman writing your rhymes, listening to Big Daddy Kane, when you take those headphones off you will be a better MC than you were when you put them on. That’s what Big Daddy Kane was and what I look for in an MC.

Cedric Muhammad: Kool G. Rap

Wise Intelligent: Another one. Word connection? Kool G. Rap was the first to connect words. He would rhyme with one vowel sound through the whole verse. ‘Marley give the slice I get nice, and my voice is twice as horrifying as Vincent Price.’ (laughter) Man, he did word connection. He gets top of the class with the word connection, the wittiness, and honestly – the gangsterism. Kool G. Rap was the gangster rapper! He proved that gangster rappers don’t have to be corny (laughter). You could have some skill with your gangster. G. Rap was the original gangster.

Cedric Muhammad: Here’s one that I feel people have a problem being honest about and I’m going to throw it at you – Treach.

Wise Intelligent: Treach. Wow. ‘Ghetto Bastard’ is like one of my favorite songs of all-time. I love Treach, man. Skill level off the meter. I think Treach is kind of overlooked sometimes.

Cedric Muhammad: I totally agree.

Wise Intelligent: But that is with a lot of Jersey MCs. I don’t know why, but it seems that a lot of rappers from Jersey just get overlooked in the whole grand scheme of things. But Treach would chew a million rappers today and he was doing it back then. And he is doing it now. I heard him recently at a Zulu reunion. I’m saying, he hasn’t lost a beat. He hasn’t lost a step. I didn’t expect him to lose anything. Anybody with that kind of skill level – it is like the NBA , when you watch Reggie Miller, the experience is starting to set in. He’s just got it. Treach is another one who can take a rhyme where he wants to, do whatever he wants to with a rhyme.

Cedric Muhammad: The last one, Rakim Allah.

Wise Intelligent: Shewww. Rakim is the envy of all rappers. To me, Rakim was the first Ghetto kid rhyming, to me. Rakim brought math to the game. Rakim was saying things like, ‘My name is Rakim Allah.’ He was saying things like, ‘Knowledge won’t begin until I finish this song.’ I’m saying. He was God on a mic. He was a ghetto scientist man, on the mic. With knowledge and skill level- ridiculous. Flow – sickening. Production – crazy. Rakim is real close to me. I was raised by Rakim as far as Hip-Hop in theory goes. Rakim was what every god was in my projects, in my neighborhood. I knew a million Rakims they just didn’t rap. That’s why he was so relative to me. That’s who he was. You know the Louie Vuitton with the flag on the back? The gods around the way was wearing the same thing. Rakim, it was like he was from my projects, I just didn’t know him.


Cedric Muhammad: What do you make of the recent efforts to get the Hip-Hop community involved with politics? You saw ‘Vote or Die!’ with P. Diddy, you saw what Russell did with the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, and now Rev. Sharpton, to a degree, is addressing that. What do you think of all of those things?

Wise Intelligent: Vote and Die. That is what is going to happen. When will they realize, man that ‘When will you realize that Body needs head and its more than what’s said when a leader lies dead’ – Brother J, one of my favorite rappers of all-time, X-Clan. We can sit around here, and you can vote and vote until the vote machine collapses, and the chads from the paper floods the earth, it’s not going to change anything for the poor, oppressed, conquered, enslaved and captive peoples all over the planet. It is not going to change anything. What we have got to understand is that Mayer Amschel Rothschild the famous Jewish banker from Germany said, ‘Give me control of a country’s economy, and I care not for who makes its laws’. Why do we think that voting, and voting and voting means anything? Where do we get off believing this? It doesn’t work for you. Some people come back, and say, ‘The Constitution, and the right to vote and the Declaration of Independence.’ Blah, blah, blah. All of those documents were signed by wealthy White slave holders. All of them. All males. There was not one middle class or poor or indentured servant or slave there to sign their names on that paper. Those documents were signed and brought into existence for the elite that are ruling the planet today. The whole vote thing is a scam and what Black and oppressed people all over the world have to understand is that America did not get anything that it has from voting. America did not become this great from Democracy and voting. It didn’t get here that way. The Civil War was violence. That’s what America respects, that’s what America knows, that’s what America was built on. That’s what all Western world powers know – that violence is power. Violence is their power, that is what they use and have always used. Violence, conflict, war, that’s what they do. The Civil War. What was that about? That was about the shifting of the balance of power from the South to Boston, New York and Philadelphia. That’s all that was. The Revolutionary War. What was that about. That was about shifting the balance of power from London to Boston, New York and Philadelphia. That’s all that was. But when America felt that Britain was being a tyrant and imposed a heavy tax on their tea and all of that, they didn’t say, ‘let’s have a vote’. They said ‘let’s bang’. In order to shift the balance of power from the South to the North, what did they do? They banged. Whoever got the strongest bang, wins. That is how it is with them. That is their mentality. Voting is not going to do anything, seriously. It is a ridiculous posture for an apathetic people. It is a pacifier, luring you to sleep. (They sell it with) ‘Come on to the polls, vote. Vote for this guy, vote for that guy.’ You are voting for the same guy especially if George W. Bush and John Kerry both graduated Skull and Bones. You are voting for the same guy. You are voting for the same bottle of bullshit with a different label on it. It is a waste of Black people’s time. Think about it. Black people themselves should know – how did you get the right to vote? Open confrontation. Through conflict, that’s how you got it. Voting doesn’t change anything. Conflict does. Confrontation does. Change comes from revolution. Revolution is change. The wars are what brings about change. Alright, let’s take the revolutionary war in Cuba. Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Raul Castro, all of those guys, 1959, took over, ran Batista out of power. They didn’t sit around and vote for it. Revolution is what makes change in the world. Che Guevara said, ‘One well aimed shot at the right person is far more effective than a billion peaceful demonstrations.’ That’s real. Stop bitching and start a revolution. That’s my quote there (laughter). Stop bitching and start a revolution, man. That’s the problem I have with today’s leaders. Don’t have me out there talking about going and voting. Think about it the same people, who went out here and got all of these voters – Hip Hop Summit Action Network, Citizen Change with ‘Vote or Die!’, and Al Sharpton and these other cats mobilizing Black people to go and vote, these are the same people right now who have got a whole rally going to save the chickens from Kentucky Fried Chicken. They got a website, kfccruelty.com. It is Russell Simmons, Al Sharpton. These Brothers are hustlers man. I ain’t knocking their hustle but don’t hustle the people. Don’t hustle us or hustle me. Hustle White man. Ain’t nothing coming about from voting. They control this thing.

Now there were White slaves in America also. They came over as indentured servants. Some of them were even in a chattel form of slavery. They started to unite with the Black slaves. So then you had the White slave and the Black slave uniting to solve their common problem. Everything was broken down to the common denominator – we are being oppressed by this guy. So they got together and insurrections started popping up. A unified front started popping up. And the rich real White man said, ‘Hold up. White man, what are you doing uniting with this Black man? You are one of us. This is what we are going to do. We are going to give you forty acres, a mule, some corn to grow and a rifle to protect your land from the niggers.’ And that is the middle class. That is what gave birth to middle class America. Middle Class America is a bunch of indentured servants who think they have power but don’t have any power. They were given that middle class status by that same elite, White, wealthy slave owner who enslaved them all – the White and the Black. Dick Gregory said, ‘when I talk about White people being devils and evil, I ain’t talking about all of you all. Because some of you all are impersonating real White people. I am talking about real White people,’ Dick Gregory said. There is a big difference, you are running around here like a racist, you are a peon White man. He is about to get rid of you too. And that is where your open confrontation is going to come. When Middle class White America notices that all of the jobs are gone. When they notice that they can’t get in their pick up truck anymore and go to the factory to go to work, because all of the jobs have gone to China, the new manufacturer of the international community. When all of your jobs have gone to Taiwan and India and unemployment escalates to unbearable levels, and oil prices get so high, and bread costs you a day’s pay, when things get that bad that is when you are going to see that the vote don’t mean anything and middle class White man is going to regress to that violent demonstration of power that goes way back. He’s going to say look, ‘its time to bang’. We are going to get another civil war in America, White on White crime which leads to bloodshed. When middle class White people realize the vote is a hoax and you have been shammed and America is really an egg shell that had the yolk sucked out through the size of a sewing pin, and the egg shell is touched and crushed, they will realize and grab their guns and you will see Civil War, part II. American verse American. America lost more people in the civil war than in any other war. The whole thing is a scam. Think about it, all of the laws they have in America are designed to stop the poor people from doing the same thing that the elite did to get the power. None of them follow the law. How about the Saudi prince? They just stopped his plane in France with two tons of cocaine on it. The Saudi prince. I got the article from ABC News. I got the transcript. He’s scheming like a demon on the couch with his feet up, his Brother was just visiting the president.

Voting is only about making you think you are part of a system that you were never part of. You think the same person who enslaved you is going to give you the right to change the system? No way. The person who oppressed you, hung you, lynched you, raped your women, castrated you, burnt you at the stake, sent his kids to school with necklaces made out of your ears. You think this man who hates you that much is going to give you a chance to change his system? Martin Luther King was good until he said we need to redistribute the wealth. And then, ‘pow’. Good day.

Cedric Muhammad: And I just wanted to say that you were well ahead of your time with the Poor Righteous Teachers album, New World Order. Let’s be clear, all you need to do is listen to the outro, and that was 1996 I believe.

Wise Intelligent: Right.

Cedric Muhammad: I just wanted to know, in light of your foresight, what do you make of the surveillance of Hip-Hop artists, that they (law enforcement )have even acknowledged in 2001 and 2002 in New York and certainly in Miami last year? Do you make any analogies between that and COINTELPRO?

Wise Intelligent: Oh no doubt. That is exactly what it is. It is COINTELPRO. And right now COINTELPRO has made the 5% a gang. Well they are attempting to do so. That is their move. Right now in Trenton, there is Bloods and Crips now all over the community. They stay in the front of the newspapers, shooting each other, young kids, 14, 15, 17 years old. Shooting each other over red and blue. Now, I get the newspaper the other day and they got the faces, and a chart up. It has all of the mug shots of Bloods on one side and Crips on the other. And in the middle they got, “5%”, with one guy. Now, what kind of gang is this with one guy? The 5% are a gang. When? And that is COINTELPRO. It is not even about stopping the Bloods and Crips it is about eradicating the 5%. The thing with Hip-Hop is that there has never been a revolution or effective demonstration that took place in the history of the world that wasn’t youth-driven. The youth are always on the front lines. And Hip-Hop speaks to the youth. What’s gonna’ happen when the rappers say something of value? Something that could change something. And the artist is already selling 10 million records? That’s power. Lloyd Banks said it. He said, ‘Man you know how much power we got?’ He said ‘If I went out there saying something all political man, please they are gonna’ take me out. I got too much power.’ He said, ‘But they don’t care if ‘Afroman’ go out there and say it, because they no Afroman is Afroman. And the people have already been taught not to respect Afroman. But if I do it’, - Lloyd Banks was making the point – ‘with this fitted (cap) on and this forty inch cable, bling blinging and the world dropping down getting their eagle on, talking about G,G,G,G,G-Unit!’ songs, I am in trouble if I say something positive. If I start trying to mobilize these people.’ Think about it, Hip-Hop has mobilized the entire Black community to gang culture. Joe Buddens said, ‘If all of these niggas are gangsters, where did all of the punks go?’ Cause everybody’s a thug now. You even got Beyonce and them – girls from Church – saying I want a soldier with his camouflage, tattoos and smoking his weed, with his car and all this is the kind of guy I want. And he can knock me off with his timberlands and boxer draws off. And kick me out his house or my own house. 'That’s the kind of nigger that I want. When I see him I am going to salute. I need a soldier.'

That’s what they are saying and that is what they are promoting – gangsterism. The entire Black community is mobilized around this. When it was conscious rap on the radio, the White man saw that. He saw the entire community being galvanized and catapulted into something positive. He saw them locking up their head, twisting their head, joining the Nation of Islam, he saw this. He said, ‘Wow, this is power.’ Did you see the movie Malcolm X? In the movie when Malcolm X went to the county jail and he gets the two Brothers that were locked up.

Cedric Muhammad: Yeah, they said he had too much power.

Wise Intelligent: They said, ‘That’s too much power...

Cedric Muhammad:: for one man to have.

Wise Intelligent: Exactly. Hip Hop has that power multiplied by one hundred. And that’s why Hip-Hop must be surveillanced. It must be shut down, because it is not going to be long before these so-called ignorant Black man from the ghetto getting all of this money develop some kind of political orientation. It is not going to be long before they put some politics behind that money. And that’s what the problem is. It is a serious issue. They can’t let that happen. When they get some political orientation it is going to be over with. It is going to be over when one of these athletes wake up, one of these Basketball players, one of these rappers, it is going to be an ugly situation man. And the White man is smart, so what he has to do is, he has to kill all possible seeds. He has to sterilize every seed that is capable of giving birth to a revolution. He has to spray all the soil with some kind of herbicide to kill off the seed. That’s what he is doing. Hip-Hop is fertile soil for the propping up of revolution. So they are spraying the soil right now. And hey, are we going to stand around and let it go down? What are we going to do? I don’t know, I don’t know what the people want to do yet. But one thing that I know for sure is that revolution is something that is not planned, there is no way to stop a revolution it is like a tsunami. It comes when nobody expected it, like with the Rodney King riots. It just comes. And the reason that it just comes, is that when you have got an oppressed people, within that oppressed people, they have internalized that oppression and they have internalized that impulse to murder and lash out at their oppression. But not being able to confront their oppressor outright publicly, that impulse to murder spills out in their own community in the form of Black on Black, Blood vs. Crip, so on and so forth. But that impulse to murder isn’t going anywhere so that is what is driving the music. Hip-Hop has always been the music of oppressed people. That’s why it is so aggressive. The music is so aggressive listen to the drum that is a war drum. I don’t care if it is the ‘Candy Shop’. When you listen to the music, the ‘Candy Shop’ and a White boy made that beat, and he is influenced by Hip-Hop culture and Hip-Hop culture is oppressed people’s culture, regardless. You can’t make R&B and say it is Hip-Hop. Because it has a certain thing theme that drives it, a certain aggression. Even the love songs. Even the slow songs. There is a violent undertone in Hip-Hop. There is a violent undertone in the Black community. I don’t care, you could be the most peaceful Black man in the world but when justice is served, even if it is violently, that person will say, ‘Well, hey, the chickens come home to roost. What comes around goes around. That’s what you put out, that’s what you get back.’ Like when O.J. got off. We didn’t give a damn about O.J. Realistically, we just wanted to see a Black man finally beat an unjust system. That’s all we really wanted to see. When the police got off for beating Rodney King right before our eyes like that? That impulse to murder that is dormant in the Black man, that is being pacified by ‘drop down and get your eagle on’ and ‘give me some ass girl’ and ‘drop it like its hot’ and ‘give me your bling nigga’ and the White man putting leads to distract and misdirect it, eventually it is going to come out. There is no way to get away from it. And hey, it is going to be a bloodbath, once the right lead is put on that impulse. And that is why Malcolm X had to be killed. He was putting the right lead on that impulse to murder. And that is what Che Guevara did in South America. He put the right lead on the poor people’s impulse to murder. He was showing them, ‘hey it is the imperial West that is coming down here taking all of our resources and exploiting them.’ Patrice Lumumba, he was putting the right leads on the people’s impulse to murder in the Congo. He was showing them who was the enemy and they had to kill him. Laurent Kabila, they had to kill him. Kwame Nkrumah. It goes on and on. And that is why the radio is playing what it is playing, it is redirecting the impulse. When the conscious era was here, the impulse was given political orientation and it was starting to go in the right direction. It was saying, ‘Fight The Power!’ Point blank. I just finished a song right now where I am talking about that. It is an aggressive record and I am on some Franz Fanon (mentality). And in the intro I am saying ‘this song is dedicated to that 50% of the Black youth that is living below the poverty line. That pitch rock, flick cops, wrist glock, while the Black leaders sit, watch, and blame that shit on Hip-Hop.’ The song pretty much sums up how you are blaming the youth when they are turning into Bloods and Crips when you neglected them all of these years. You can’t blame the youth for being neglected. One line in the song I say, ‘Black leaders, teachers, preachers, blaming the youth for self destruction/Look let me break down something/You niggas know little to nothing/they cutting the social programs, they stopping the aid to the youth/ they moving the jobs to Taiwan, they build more jails than schools.’ It is simple but Black leaders act like they don’t see it because they are eating off it. They are getting paid to sit up on these panels to go and talk to White man. All of these Black caucuses to talk to White man about what is going on in the community. They hold these big meetings in White man hotels, big conferences on what to do about the Black youth problem. Stop neglecting the youth. That’s what the problem is. What ever happened to the CIA Crack issue and Gary Webb? How did that get swept under the rug Maxine Waters?


Cedric Muhamamd: And now he’s dead.

Maxine Waters: Yeah he’s dead with two shotgun holes in his face. And they say he commited suicide.

Cedric Muhammad: Now to add some righteous humor. Wise, have you updated, or revised, or have you tampered with or diluted, in any form, the Wise Intelligent dance?

Wise Intelligent: (laughter) The what?

Cedric Muhammad The Wise Intelligent Dance. You may not have known it but that is how it is being referred to on the street, Brother.

Wise Intelligent: Oh Word?!?

Cedric Muhammad: Any of your videos – in ‘90, ‘91, ’92 you can see the dance. The Wise Intelligent Dance, Brother, has it been changed?

Wise Intelligent: Wow. I never even did the knowledge to that. I was just doing what felt good at the time. That was a moment. I probably could not repeat that if I tried to. It is like an ad lib. You are in the studio laying down vocals on a track and an ad lib comes out. You know you felt it. It might not be rhythmically correct but it was emotionally correct so you keep it (laughter) that’s all. I don’t think it can be repeated or something. I am not sure.

Cedric Muhammad:: Well when we meet and build next time I might bring some people with me who have perfected it.

Wise Intelligent: Alright.

Cedric Muhammad: Well, Wise I appreciate this very much. Is there anything else you would like to add on?

Wise Intelligent: Yeah. I want to say that Wise Intelligent, Poor Righteous Teachers, Intelligentmuzik.com. Our whole little movement that we have going on right here – we are down with whoever is down with fighting against poverty and ignorance. That’s where our fight is. We wrestle not with flesh, or blood. We wrestle not with that. Poverty and ignorance is what we are at war against. And our whole movement is on the front line in that movement against poverty and ignorance. So don’t think that we are on some racist hate the world thing. We don’t have power to be racists and if we did have the power that the racist have, we wouldn’t delegate our power in that way. We are righteous men. Intelligentmuzik.com, log on. Get knowledge, get wisdom but in all of your getting, get the understanding. The 5% is not a gang. A lot of newspapers and police precincts around here are going around saying Wise Intelligent is proliferating gang violence throughout the world, from out of Trenton. So, as a Poor Righteous Teacher they are trying to put me under that microscope, to find a way to eradicate me before I even get the next thing going. They are trying to include me with the whole gang bang - with the Bloods and the Crips and so forth. So understand that I have never been part of the nonsense. With me it has always been Freedom, Justice and Equality for oppressed Black people all over the world. We are about what gets you killed in the Western world. We are about freeing oppressed people. That’s a no-no. Ask Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Patrice Lumumba, Kwame Nkrumah, Che Guevara, Nat Turner. Just ask them. Freedom costs. So we are against poverty and ignorance because that is the first enslaver of the people right now. It is an all-out war. We are bringing knowledge, trying to shed some light on some things and put some proper leads on that impulse to murder that the youth have right now. We are trying to show them what put them in this situation. Why they are in it and how to get out of it. And if you are about that, for oppressed people all over the world, then get down and gather with us, and we’ll see you at the table. Peace.

Cedric Muhammad: Thank You Wise.

Wise Intelligent: You are welcome Brother. Peace and Love.

Cedric Muhammad

- The Black Electorate by Cedric Muhammad

WISE INTELLIGENT – INTERVIEW FOR GRIND MODE MAGAZINE

Grind Mode Magazine: Welcome to Grind Mode Magazine – can you start by letting any readers who may not already know into a little background on yourself?

WISE: Well I come in the name of Wise Intelligent, I am the lead MC of the ghetto-politico hip hop trio Poor Righteous Teachers. I am #51 on BLAZE Magazines top 50 MC’s list, I am #111 on the SOURCE Magazines top 110. “I’m who your favourite MC tell his kids about…./Then try to front like he ain’t bite me when my shit come out…..!”

Grind Mode Magazine: You have recorded several albums with The Poor Righteous Teachers but the last one, ‘Declaration Of Independence,’ did not see a release – are there any plans to release this?

WISE: Yes, this album will be released through INTELLIGENT MUZIK and will be available shortly at INTELLIGENTMUZIK.COM

Grind Mode Magazine: Before we move onto your solo work what can fans expect from the Poor Righteous Teachers as a unit in the future?

WISE: Well we are just anticipating everyones personal projects to run their course. Culture has the youth mentoring piece that he’s commandeering in TN, whiles Shaheed is running Fugitives Production out of Brooklyn and as for myself I up to my eyebrows in this new solo project, a youth program and a book called CREAM. 2006 will most likely be the year that PRT gets back into the studio as a unit. One thing’s for sure; whatever we make will be as literary as it is musical and we will continue to chop away at that great wall of poverty and ignorance that seems to have gotten thicker since our last release

Grind Mode Magazine: You are gearing up to drop your solo record, ‘Wise Intelligent is The Talented Timothy Taylor,’ what can we expect to hear on that?

WISE: Talent, absolute talent. In this era of under talented but highly marketed MC’s/rappers I wanted to put together a record in the vain of early hip hop records which made it clear that it was the talent level that determined who the best MC’s were and not the marketing or how many records he has or has not sold. So expect more original flows, a variety of production styles, quality and substance. This was also a personal album, it brings the listener a lot closer to Wise Intelligent than PRT ever allowed. I am usually “as embraceable as anything jagged ever was” but I actually opened up and gave listeners a glimpse of “the me nobody knows.”

Grind Mode Magazine: Who did you work with for this album?

WISE: Production wise I worked with one of the illest crews on the east coast “tha Havknotz” these brothers are incredible Masada and PJ. I also worked with Oh No from out Cali (Madlibs brother), he’s a beast. Traxzilla out of Jerz also hit me with a few tracks as well as Ambush over in the Oakland/SF Bay area. The album is PATHETIC in a hip hop way!

Grind Mode Magazine: Of course you are known for bringing thought-provoking Hip-Hop, with that in mind, how do you feel about the state of Hip-Hop and the messages that are being fed to listeners through the mainstream?

WISE: Its good old fashion American Capitalism, nothing more, nothing less! With the influence that hip hop has over, not just the youth, but the entire 13-35 year old demographic, major corporations marketers see this and use the culture to position products for this demographic to consume. Just watch the videos, commercials, billboard and radio advertisements Hip Hop is selling everything from hamburgers to automobiles, cell phones to clothing, firearms, diamonds, gold, breakfast cereal, you name it, Hip Hop sells it. If an MC seems to be “commercially defective” to record labels there not going to sign him simply because he does not allow for the cross marketing of products and/or the crossing over into that mainstream market that thrives on consumer oriented materialism. Even radio, they make their money when corporations advertise their products on their stations. So when you have an artist who’s talking about “pass the Courvoisier” he’ll get play, Clear Channel will get paid from the Courvoisier Company for ads, and the Courvoisier Company will in turn get paid from the Hip Hop community.

Grind Mode Magazine: Do you think, as an artist, there is a responsibility to offer something of substance to an audience?

WISE: Why yes, if you’re an artist. What we have today is not a lot of artist but a lot of assembly-belt rappers put together by labels and production companies to facilitate commercialism in Hip Hop. Most MC’s I know come from poor if not very poor backgrounds and I know, cause I’m one of them, when your poor and someone offers you $100 - $250,000 to “walk this way” you don’t think about what you were taught in Sunday school, you take the money. Today labels give the impression that you have to be a gangster and/or thug, been shot and/or stabbed at least once, or convicted of a felony to get a record deal, so young poor rappers from the hood are going to write in that “gangster” format because they’ve been induced with the idea that “this is what sells.” There was a time when labels were signing and marketing socially and politically conscious MC’s and young poor rappers from the hood were writing in this message oriented format because they felt that it was “what sells.” So we had everybody wearing African medallions, black fist necklaces, black hero tees, and locking their hair. Today we have everybody wearing platinum and diamond medallions, tattoos and piercing, ScareFace tees, and coloring their hair because they feel it’s what sells.

Grind Mode Magazine: When you first broke through with Poor Righteous Teachers Hip-Hop was more openly embracing the 5% philosophies than it seems to be now – why do you think there has been a decline in such lyrical content?

WISE: Everyone is more dollar conscious today. If it’s not about money niggas do not want to hear that shit! I don’t care if it’s 5% philosophy, Muslim, Christian, Jewish, metaphysical, academic, scholastic it does not matter, if it’s not about getting money, fucking, spending money, fucking, killing someone over money, fucking, or just fucking money, its not interesting to this generation of zombies. Its kind of weird because Hip Hop still reeks of 5% lingo; word is life, indeed, true, word bond, etc. The most interesting of the all is the term “G” and how it went from representing “God” to representing “gangster?”

Grind Mode Magazine: In a climate that seems obsessed with clubs, drugs and thugs what do you think it will take to get people to once again take to a more positive lyrical stance?

WISE: It will take what it has always taken; relevant messages that address real hood issues. Nobody has aimed their AK 47 or placed the blame in the right direction. Everyone seems to want to point their AK at the rappers, the street corner drug dealer, the gang-banger, you know, the “victims.” No one says anything about the major corporations that make these life styles possible or about the lopsided laws that keep black youth in prison disproportionately. The CIA, United Fruits, Zapata Oil’s and Halliburton’s who we know help facilitate the flow of drugs into the country. The MC or MC’s who successfully merge this information with street life rhyme has a shot at injecting today’s Hip Hop heads with some much needed political orientation.

Grind Mode Magazine: With your experience in Hip-Hop what one piece of advice would you offer to those looking to make their own way in the industry?

WISE: Never assimilate!

Grind Mode Magazine: Thanks for taking the time to connect with us here and good luck with your new project. Before we go is there anything else you would like to add?

WISE: Cop the new album “WISE INTELLIGENT IZ…The Talented Timothy Taylor” September 2005. Get at us at WWW.INTELLIGENTMUZIK.COM for the latest on what’s new with Wise Intelligent, Poor Righteous Teachers, the Love, Life, Literacy movement as well as solutions for problems facing the community at home and abroad. HOLLA!
- Grind Mode Magazine