Bun B recently sat down with The Tanning of America to build on his recent European tour, his relationship with Travis Barker, his love for Radiohead, growing up in Port Arthur, TX and much, much more. Peep an excerpt below then head over here to read the entire thing.
Let’s fast forward a bit in your career to your hit record with Jay-Z, “Big Pimpin’.” Did you notice the demographic of your fanbase start to change after that song and video was released? Did you start getting recognized more on the streets?
Yes, but it wasn’t a racial thing. I think it was just because it was [a big video]. UGK never really had any visuals. “Big Pimpin’” was the first time that anyone had ever really seen us. We had a lot of people that knew our music, but had never seen our faces because we never had any real videos. Ridin’ Dirty went gold, and we didn’t shoot one video for that album. They even shot a commercial without us.
Statik Selektah, Bun B and Mac Miller hit Shade 45 and formed like voltron during “Toca Tuesday’s” to speak on Mac’s first time in New York, their respective albums and more.
The underground king headed up to Detroit to work with 14KT – who was named the Red Bull Big Tune 2010 Champion – to collaborate on a song together. That song, titled “The Life.” is set to drop soon. I definitely can’t wait for this.
The underground king teams up with streetwear clothing lines DGK and Diamond Supply Co. for their collaborative, limited-release line. I need both that varsity jacket and scarf in my life, like, yesterday.
Something tells me Beans was the most comfortable there out of everybody during the making of this video. Anyways, Travis’ Give The Drummer Some is available now.
Yesterday, the unofficial Mayor of Houston joined Occupy Houston (an offshoot of Occupy Wall Street that started in NYC last month) at City Hall to show his support for the community.
I think it’s important that Bernard Freeman be here as a citizen of the world. And I think it’s important that Bun B be here as a person of influence who has a voice that can bring attention to a cause. It’s very important that someone from the hip-hop community is out here supporting Occupy Houston, simply because of the fact of how hip-hop is represented in the world. I think a lot of people look at us as being these flashy, fly types of people who are just concerned with spending money, but that’s not all of us. That’s not what hip-hop is here to do. We have individuals that represent that, and I represented that from time to time, but that doesn’t make me who I am. I understand how real this world is and how real things can get and that’s what Occupy Houston is about. It’s not about what we do on the clock — it’s about being off the clock and supporting people who can’t even get on the clock right now.
The effects of the Enron collapse in Houston are still felt today. Not everyone who had strong jobs in that sector were able to find replacements for those jobs. A lot of people had to take positions in companies to do things that they didn’t necessarily train for in order to support their families and that’s kinda what we’re standing for at Occupy Houston. The misconception about Occupy Houston is that it’s a bunch of jobless people who don’t wanna work and just want the rich to give them their money. Well, that’s not true. The majority of these people are educated — not just high school, but they’re college graduates, they have degrees, they’ve done what it takes to get into the workforce. Unfortunately, corporate America is not affording enough opportunities for people to go out get jobs and support their families. Instead of hiring more people, they’re firing more people just to keep the numbers up. A company that makes $3 billion a year, it’s still gonna function if they only make $2.8 billion a year in order to keep a couple people employed.
So that’s what we’re here fighting against, you know, corporate irresponsibility. The fact that we in Houston and America — even though we’re the people that vote, we’re the people that pay our taxes — we don’t have the voice that we should have in our local state and federal governments, and that’s another stance that we’re taking.
Naledge and Double-O head down South for the first single (now available on iTunes) off their upcoming album, Occassion, dropping November 22nd via Duck Down.
A radio rip has made its rounds earlier, now the official tissue is out for everybody to enjoy. Statik’s Population Control drops October 25th, but you can pre-order it now via iTunes.
While I can’t recall liking anything from Jackie Chain since his contribution on Smoke & Drive with Mike Posner, Big Sean and Donnis; he does manage to nab K.R.I.T. and Uncle Bun for his latest offering. Ride out.
This is a pretty nice line up; so nice that Donny decided to make it the first single off his upcoming Success Served Cold project, set to drop November 11th.
HQ Shade45 radio rip of another heater off Statik’s upcoming album, Population Control, dropping October 25th (pre-orders available now) via Duck Down/ShowOff.
