NEWSLETTER

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Beanie Sigel popped out of nowhere in 1998 on The Roots’ “Adrenaline” track and spit one of the first raps he ever wrote. His crude depiction of taped-up snitches in a drug deal gone wrong was just a teaser. A few months later, the demo-less Philly native freestyled for Jay-Z and got signed on the spot. His critically acclaimed debut album The Truth was a collection of more murderous lyricism over dramatic keyboard beats. His nasal tone and unique phonetic manipulations put him in a class all by himself. He sold millions alongside the Roc-A-Fella camp and is considered one of the greatest lyricists alive today. All the while, Beans kept beating up radio hosts, acting rowdy at every show and maintaining that he is nothing but an ugly-ass, grimy-ass street cat that got lucky.

VICE: All over your first album you seem to be stressing the fact that you don’t consider yourself a rapper.

Beanie: I don’t look as myself to be a rapper, or an artist. I just know how to do it, I just took it and ran with it. I paint word pictures on the canvas of life. I don’t control the brush, I just keep the colors in order. But I ain’t ever looked inside my mind. I can’t explain how I make a song. I just talk, man.

Do you at least listen to hip hop?

Nowadays niggas is weak! I ain’t feelin’ none of these new MCs. If I ain’t going back in the crates to get an old Biggie album or Scarface, man I ain’t listening to nobody. You know what I got in my tape deck right now? I got Michael Jackson, Thriller album. Or you might find Teddy Pendergrass in there, you know, classics. What? I’m keepin’ it real man. I got Illmatic by Nas when he was Nasty. But now he’s big willie Esco, man, he’s manicured. “I can tell by your nails you’re frail,” Redman said that.

Damn, you said Nas is manicured?

Yo, man, I put it how it is. If you don’t like it you know where we be. Take the address. Come see me, 21st and Sigel Street. You coming’ from New York? Take the Jersey turnpike and get off at exit 4. No turns, stay on Route 38 West, till you get on the Ben Franklin bridge. When you on the Ben Franklin, you’re going to go Center City and get on 76th. Get off at South Street exit. Make a left on South Street exit, to 21st street. Make a right on 21st street, keep going ‘til you see Sigel. You might see like two Bentleys out there, a couple of ‘Burbans, Benzes and all that, you know I’m there. Get your gun, or you better have on a bullet-proof vest or you better have your back up a couple of blocks away. It ain’t sweet like that. This ain’t a candy store.

Word? Like, what goes on out there?

The shit I got to tell you, man, I’m a plead the fifth. ‘Cuz I might incriminate myself on something. See I don’t just be in no little smack-up scuffles man, no little skirmishes man, no little fall-off-the-bike scraping me, man. I just got picked up by homicide a couple of weeks ago, you can put that in there. You want to know what happened? Shit, the same thing I told them: I don’t know. It wasn’t me. Like Shaggy.

So you can’t tell me anything?

Nah man, what are you, the police? Is you wired? It’s like, you name it, I done it. You want to know if I ever killed somebody, man? You scared to ask me that? That’s what you want to know, if I’m capable of killing somebody? Listen. I squeeze the life out you, man. With my bare hands.

BUSTA NUT
Beanie’s sophomore LP, The Reason, is out on Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam.

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