Scarface: The Reunion

00:00:15 Speaker 1: Pushkin. I sit alone in my four cornered rooms, damning a candle. What I should let me dropped from shoodlike this field. Scarface is a Houston rapper with a gruff baritone. He's one of the most recognizable, respected voices in hip hop for decades now. He straddled the line between commercial and authentic, a dynamic that was once rare in the culture. Day by day is more impossible the cold. I feel like I'm the one that's doing dope. I'll often drift when I drive, having fatal bolts of suicide. Scarface's appeal was his vulnerability. His graphic depictions of hood life, paired with a psychological toll that environment took on its residence, was groundbreaking. It got the attention of Rap a Lot Records CEO James Prince, who recruited Face to join the Ghetto Boys when he was only seventeen years old. The group, which also included Willie D and Bushwood Bill, were one of Rick Rubin's earliest rap signings for his post def jam label, Deaf American the main national news in nineteen ninety when Deaf Americans distributor Geffen Records refused to release the Ghetto Boys music because of its violent lyrical content. Already square in the middle of the gangster rap era, the group's lyrics pushed the genre even further. They were tagged at the label Horrorcore, the rap version of an eighties slasher film. On today's episode, Scarface and Rick talk about how Face's recent experience with COVID was eerily similar to his classic verse on minds, playing tricks on me, and surprisingly, Scarface also talks about the Miranda Lambert song that makes him yearn for his childhood Texas home. This is broken record liner notes for the did You to Age? I'm justin Richmond. Here's Rick Rubin with Scarface. How are you feeling, man, I'm good man. How you doing good? It's so good Toe. You've been such a long time. I know it's been too damn long. Man. Looked like time been kind to you. Man. You're getting nice right either. Thank you, Thank you? You You look pretty good to yourself. You look healthy. I'm getting there, man. I understand you went through a physical transformation. Tell me a little bit about it. I just decided that I didn't want to be big no more. I just like forty four years old. Rick and I decided that I didn't want to. I didn't want to go through those health risks though, mars hart and congestive heart failure and and just being overweight old beasts. Man, it's a lot of things that come with you, you know, not taking care of your body. You're eating crazy. Yeah, how heavy did you get up to? I got up to two ninety one. Wow, I'm one hundred and ninety five them. But I also do die. I was just four days a week now because the COVID knocked out my kidneys. When did you have COVID? I had COVID February March of twenty And do you know how you got it? I have no clue. Man, Wow, did people around you have it as well? Or no? Nobody else had it? They wanted to keep me in the hospital in the small room when no, life's kind of like a solitary confinement. And I ended up, you know, just after down a stand in the hospital. Man. They had to toilet up under the sink and the you know, inside the cabinet. And it's just like I was in depending attention and I like being in jail, So I just scratched it all together. Were you able to go out, like did they let you out? I don't know how any of that stuff works. Okay, so you can leave on your own recognizant, I guess, but you have to sign a letter saying that you left against the doctor's orders. And I left and I just said, you know, well, if I'm gonna die, and I'm gonna die at home, man, I definitely don't want to die in this box because that you couldn't even have visitors and not you can't even have this the hospital now. So these people that's dying, they died by theirselves and I don't want to do that. Mand So how long we sick for it? I was sick from the beginning of March until about April the seventh. I went to the hospital for my kidneys after that, but I ended up fighting the COVID. So when I first caught COVID, I couldn't breathe, and then as time progressed, I couldn't breathe and it felt like I had the flute, and it was like the flute times twenty thousand, and then my lung still up with water. And then they fight you the pneumonia. So that's bilateral pneumoonians, so they fight pneumonia. When they killed the pneumonia, then then the fluid arms around my heart. And then when they you know, fight that off then and then it attacks my kidneys and then it gets it knocks my kidneys. Wow. So how are you feeling in general now since that? If you ask me, how do I feel? You know, just in general, I'm cool. But the last and effects of the covid man, you know, like I hallucinate, Wow, you know, yeah, I see things that aren't there when I was sleeping. You know, I could be in a dream, wake up and go get water and come back, go back to sleep, and be back in that same dream, in that same spot. Well, that would segue easily into us talking about a song. You always thought I was crazy man, but just a serious man. But seriously, you wrote a song a long time ago that tells the story you just told for real. It's unbelievable, Like it's it's it's coming in, it's coming to life. Yeah, tell me the story of mis playing tricks on me. So like my grandmother would always walk around in the house and miss play stuff, and she said, I guess my mom must be playing tricks something, you know. That's when a title came from. The song came from. You know. I wrote all three verses except for Willie's right, and originally it was the it was my two verses and didn't the one that Bill raps that was the original song that was supposed to go on to mister Scarface's back album, I don't you remember that? Yeah? And I wrote it because, you know, that's what I was feeling. That's where my mind state was. I wrote a lot of music about dying back then, Rick, and it was because I guess I was a troubled kid, and I think that I think that writing was the only out that that I had, you know, because I couldn't talk to my mom. She didn't understand that. My dad, he didn't know what I was going through. So I just wrote io songs. It was therapeutic. I don't know how therapeutic it was, but I did write it. And it's interesting to talk about that song and that kind of song because it really was nothing like that before. In the early days of hip hop, the subject matter was different. And then when gangster rap came along, that was the next kind of level of hard was gangster rap. But then what you did was different than that and beyond that, and I guess people would refer to it as horror rap, you know, like it's like gangster rap was more real life, street stories was yours were more violent dreams that were you know, more more like like horror movies and just showing, not showing, but just actually putting how you felt, the vulnerability that you felt, put that in the words and recited that and put those feelings you know, behind it. When Wow on the mike, you know what I'm saying, Yeah, but I felt about it. I didn't realize I was doing something new, but I really felt like I was just writing my heart Rick, That's about it. Yeah, what's beautiful. You also have written emotional lyrics that you know, I listened to the lyrics sometimes that can make me cry because you could feel the emotion in what you're saying. And it's different than you know. For for the longest time, rappers were just presenting, you know, a hard face. You know, it was a front basically, and there was great power that you found in being vulnerable. And it was new. It is new. It's still new. Am Wow, that's heavy man, And you know, chip to be coming from you know, number the number one producer hip hop producer of all times. Do you realize you you rock the bells? Do you realize you run? Do you see this ship? Rick? Like you're a bad dude and you're a beast boy, You're a beastie boy, the game man. Like for a statement like that they be coming from d Ri Rubin. Wow, it's big man. Thank you for the kind words, sir. Well. I I love I've always loved music, and I've always loved your music. And I remember when I first heard the first thing I heard was the Ghetto Boys when it was still g h E T t O. Yeah you changed that, yeah, Rick Rubin actually changed our name from g h E t t O t g E t O Boys. Yeah, And I remember hearing it and feeling like this is the next Like this is a progression. This music hasn't gone to this place yet, and it felt revolutionary. And that's what always excited me about music. You know, I always try to make I always trying to make stuff that was the most interesting thing in that moment, you know, and as a fan and look for the and you know, look for that where's this what's exciting about music? And it's always when someone takes it to the next level. And your writing did that, And tell me if this is great. Always was of the belief that you were. Were you the main writer for the Ghetto Boys? I feel like you wrote a lot of lyrics, not just your verses. I wrote a lot for the bill. Will and I wrote a lot the bill. I see. You know Bill didn't write at all. Rick. Yeah, you know, he may have had a few ideas, but you know, mainly those ideas came from James and ourselves, you know, but Willie and I wrote the mass majority of the larrus f Bushwick. How did you meet Willie? By accident? James had heard of record from me caused scar Face, and he wanted me to do a few songs with the group Ghetto Boys. So we all went out to James's ranch. I don't know if you've ever been out there. We went out there and we were locked into the dance with no transportation, no nothing, for like weeks at a time. He would just drop us off out there and leave right and we'd be like, damn, we don't even know what we had, dude, how we want to get back to well, you know where we lived, so we were forced to record together. And when we started, it was Willie Bill billing the rapper. Yet I'm sorry it was Willie. It was myself, and it was a guy named Jukebox because Johnny C had left the group and we just started making music together and all of a sudden it was no more juke Buck, so it was just me and will and then we had to write the bill, so it was us three. Now that's the ghetto boys that you ended up getting into an agreement with and distribution for YEA. And they called you Action then though I remember they always referred to as Action. I was a DJ. I'm probably a better DJ producer than I am a rapper. Rick I don't know about that. I mean, I don't know how good you're all the beats, Ricked, I did a lot of those beachs man. A lot of people put their name on my beach, you know with me. But a lot of those beats, I do those beech Man, Yeah, yeah, I did a lot, a lot of those beats. Incredible. Did you know Mike Dean back from those days too. Mike Dean came in on this song that I did call street Life, and if I told you that I think that Mike is the best producer, i'd be lying. But if you ask me, is he the best engineer, mixer musician by far? I don't know old body better than Mike and mixing, engineering and and and master and all that that's seen him. Yeah. But as far as like your vibe, like the vibes didn't come from Mike Dean, Like the grooves and and everything, those came from Mike, It O Joe and Beato and Tone Compone and mister Willie a few more people and myself. But Mike Dean made it sound great. Yeah, he's and he still does. He still does. I still work with him. He's incredible. He is incredible. Noe better. But I met Mike Dean back in nineteen ninety three through Beatop and then from nineties and the ninety four album we worked Throw together with Ino Joe, Mike Dean and I worked with n O Joe on that, on that Diary album and then the Untouchable album and then a couple more albums after that. We'll be right back with more from Scarface. After a quick break. We're back with Scarface. You meet DJ Screw, I did meet Dj Screw, but we were more friends than we were music partners, you know what I mean. Like I used to listen to his tapes that he would make, but I never wrapped it in their ciphers, you understand, because it was a totally different cipher from from from when I grew up jumping in. Yeah, you know, this was slowed down top and screwed. And I could say screwed because Crew didn't. Yeah, I put you up on something rig If Screw didn't do it, then it's not screwed because Screw is a human being. So if somebody's saying it it's chopped and screwed, it's not chopped and screwed. It may be chopped, but it's not screwed because Screw didn't do it. Yeah, if someone else did, it would be chopped and slowed down, but it's not screwed. Yeah, chopped and whoever his name is, but it's not screwed. Yeah, you know. And we took that real personal when people said, yeah, man, I got sore and so so and so screwed, and I'm like, well, how did you get his screwed and screwed? In here? Like now, we're from the South Side we take screw Real series down here. I loved it. I remember that. What was it one am or three am? Three am? Yeah, three am, that's the one. It shout shied to kit Ki and fat Padding, big hawking is she and the whole screwed up click? Yeah that was good music. Yeah. For me, it wasn't about the rapping. It was just about the groove. The roof was crazy. Yeah, the gruel is crazy. Tell me about how did you come to write your book? You know what? I would say that the first part of my life was still on my shoulders at the time that my book came out, But once the truth about my life came out, I felt like everything was lifted off my shoulders, if that makes sense, Beautiful. It felt like I told you or I told the world everything that needed to be known about me, Like that was the first half of my life, and it weighed heavy on my weigh the heavy burden on my shoulders because it was a lot of stories that needed to be told. That's like the theory of confessional, you know, in church pretty much it was a confessional time, you know. Yeah, Beautiful, do you have any kind of religious or spiritual beliefs or connection. You know, I'll just believe in God now. I believe it. You know, you can. You can break it down into a gang if you want to, because it's all religion is to me as a gang, you know, whether you Baptist, a Christian, or Muslim or whatever you as also there's always somebody that's willing to take that to the extreme. But are you willing to take God to the extreme? Like, I just believe it's bigger than me. I believe it's God, period, regardless what denomination you want to call yourself belonging to it. I just believe it's God, you know, Like like if you can see suspending in space, spinning on the ball with water stuck to a life growing from it, if you can show me a person that can make this happen, then you'll change the way I'm thinking from right now. I just only believe in God. I think more people had that relationship, the world would probably be a better place. Probably so beautiful. Tell me your first memory of hip hop period? Any any memories of hip hop? Originally, my aunt moved to New York in the sixties. She brought a brownstone in Harlem, So you know, I'm a kid getting take from my cousin are going to New York when I'm a little when I'm a youngster and actually being a part of the original hip hop. So I know all about hip hop, you know, from Cool Hurt to Red Alert to all the casts that were DJ and Molly Mall and just all of that. So I think that my earliest visions a hip hop had to be like Curtis Blow Mode and what's the Battle and classic Battle busy Bee busy Bee, that Battle Breaking B Street. I think that when everybody was doing the Sugar Hill Gang, I was on Curtis Blow or something. You know, all kinds of stuff. Man, When did you first start the idea of writing instead of just listening? Had to be in a sixth grade man, you know what really turned me into really wanted to rap When Criminal Mind became out. That's when I knew I wanted to be a rapper. When six in the morning, when I first heard six in the morning by his tea, I knew I wanted to rap. That's amazing, you know, I see, I see inspired a lot of people to rap. It really did. Man, and he don't even know it, but you know, he to me, Ricky talked it and he spoke about our life. You know, six hit in the morning, police said at my door, fresh should be just across the bathroom floor. But you know what I mean, You're like you saw that. I was like, Oh, take him a lot, let's go. You know we saw that. Did you see the movie he made. I think it's called Something from Nothing. I ain't see that highly recommended. It really Something from Nothing. I want to check that out. Yeah, it's a story of hip hop. He interviews mcs and everybody raps a cappella and it's magnificent. Everybody. Wow, it will blow your mind. I wanted to take it out. Another early rap for me hip hop for me, Oh my mind, big Time was a song that he did called Reckless Incredible. It's different for IC because musically that felt like more of a It felt like more of a New York kind of beat, like New York club beat that eventually would have led to like Miami bass was sort of a derivation of that style. Um, but I don't remember a lot of IC's records having that kind of tempo. Yeah, that's way back early iced Tea. That was back when hip hop sounded like that. Wow, you know, and that's early hip hop for me. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that sounds like when you think of breakdancing music. It's that kind of music that was nice to break dance too cool. Yeah, but I don't anymore. Did Bush with Bill joined the group originally as a dancer? Yes, he did, from what I understand, I wasn't in the group when he was a dancer, I see, no, But you know what, when I came to Houston and you guys performed for me and that we were in this little club and I remember he was dancing. Yeah, he was a dancer, man. You know. Back then, we just did what we thought was the best way to do our side of the story. You know. Yeah, let's talk a little bit about that, because coming from New York, it felt like, at least for a period of time, all of hip hop music being made was coming from New York early on, and then the first records I started hearing from outside of New York were coming from the West Coast. But those had a different sound, and we didn't really like him so much in New York, kind of like Egyptian Lover, you know, that that kind of stuff, And I feel like ghetto boys might have been the first group I heard from the South might have been. That's possible, not unless you you know, you had the Two Live Crew that makes the surface before the Ghetto Boys did. But for the most part, we were one of the first acts to come out of the sound for sure. Yeah, Like I was aware of the Two Live Crew, but their music felt more like party music than I wouldn't call it rap music, Okay, do you know that? That's how I heard it, Like, I heard it as like more like party music, whereas Ghetto Boys seemed like serious rap. Okay. And then I'm in agreement with you one that Rick. We wanted to be respected by everybody, you know, New York, especially because we knew how difficult it was to break into that New York market, Like you could never get to record played in New York, you know New York rappers. I remember the first time we did the New Music, said Minard, back in the late eighties early nineties. We got booed. And we didn't get booed by the audience. We got booed by the other rappers that were in the audience, you know what I mean. Wow, Yeah, it was rappers that were there at the New Music seminar. I gonna say no names, but it was rappers that were booing. And then you turn around and those same rappers, you know, a couple of years later, they was talking about getting money too, you know, those very same rappers. Yeah, you know, we talked about our life as ghetto boys. You know, we didn't we didn't have the five degrees of knowledge or you know, I didn't want to rap better than nobody else, to show my skills or compare myself to a to an anvil coming down on your head and and and cracking your head with this rap. We was talking about robbing your ass, breaking in your house and still in your card or you know what I mean, because that was our life in sixteen seventeen years old when you met me. Uh Rick, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, that was my life. We'll be right back with more from Scarface. Here's the rest of Rick Rubin's conversation with Scarface. Was there much other hip hop music going on in the South that you were aware of? Not that I'm aware of, But I will say that I was the biggest Juice Crew fan ever. You know, I was the biggest LA fan ever from the biggest ice Cube in wa fan ever, Public Enemy fans ever. And then you take those all of those rappers, all of those influences, and you molded into one character, and that was me because I wanted those skills. I wanted that delivery, but I wanted my street rawness. Ye. You know, you take all of those mcas and then put a little bit of yourself in there, and you become one of the greatest mc is known to the hip hop culture. And I'm grateful for that. A lot of people say that about me, and I appreciate it. Yeah. Also, the also the lyricism and the content felt like you were coming from somewhere else, like you could feel it. And the fact that you were willing to talk about emotional stuff that other people weren't willing to talk about, and that was interesting. What do you think you found the I'll call it confidence to talk about really personal things. I have no clue, but I I you know, when I was in the fourth, third or fourth grade, we used to have I was in a writing class and reading class and the lady was teaching a speech and drama and teaching us how to rate. And she always said that you had to write your heart you know. And I add to that that if you write your heart and you're not crying when you're done writing your heart, then you didn't write the right ship. Wow, so you learned that in school. I learned how to write my heart in school. Thank God for school. If that's the case. I'm saying, if that's where you got the idea to do that, I appreciate that I got the idea of writing my heart from school. Man. Yeah, it's funny thing. I never had a good relationship with school, but there are moments where the right teacher says the right thing at the right time, and it elis. I had a kindergarten teacher by the name of Missus Silva, and I was just talking to my buddy Marcus Reese about her. I was in the kindergarten. Man. I'm fifty now, okay, but this maybe had such an impact on my life when I was in the kindergarten until I still think about her from time to time. She used to come to school and she played the guitar for the class, okay, every day, and she would get out in front of those kids, man, and she would sing those songs that I had never heard before. But she would play the guitar, and I just knew that. I just knew I wanted to be a guitarist. I knew I wanted to be a musician. She had our attention for the first fifteen twenty minutes of class fam just by playing and singing to us. Beautiful, Yeah, beautiful. So you started playing guitar when you were young? Very wow? Yeah? My uncles, all my uncles played guitar. You know my cousin Johnny Nash, Yes, yeah, he just passed. I can see clearly now that Johnny Nash, that's my cousin. Wow. So we Channy grew up watching those people do their thing. Wow. And yeah, and all my uncle's a musicians. My mother is a singer. Musician, you know, my dad is a DJ, and my grandmother's a singer. So I just come from a whole music family. Did they understand when you got into hip hop? Because I know there was always a line where a lot of musicians didn't like hip hop. Yeah, they thought it was a passing phase you would eventually grow out of. Let the truth be told is still growing though. Yeah. Let me ask you a question, how do you feel about the new I always like I like new. I like new things. I love new. I like new, I like to I like to be surprised. I like to hear something I never heard before. If I want to hear something that I heard before, I listen to my old records. But I don't do a lot. I don't do that often. I'm much more often listen to things I've never heard before, whether they're new or where they're old, things that I never heard before, which which there's an endless you know, you can go back. I go genre by genre and just learned about whether it's classical music or jazz or just different kinds of music that I never listened to when I was a kid. It their whole new world's to enter, you know. I just found a new as not new as extremely old, but but it's it's new to me. I've been listening to a lot of country music lately, great, and I figured, like, if you ever had to listen to something that someone they really wrote their hearts, it would be country music. Yeah, this lady would play his name. Miranda Lambert just got a song rig that's uh, the House that Built Me is the name of that song. That's that song right there, and it hit me so close in here, Yes, like I really understood that. I was like, Oh, I feel like that. I want to go to where I grew up. Oh, listen to what she's saying. That's the power of music. That's what it is. Yeah, that's what it is. Like someone who you might feel like you have absolutely nothing in common with is sharing their truth and it could even be a personal story that has nothing to do with you, and you can just hear the humanity in it and resonate with it and feel like this is all of us. Yeah, it's incredible, Rick, and I love music that that pulls that out. Unfortunately, I'm not really hearing any great good and let's understood. I'm hearing good yeah music, hip hop rep. But I'm not hearing great yeah. Well I don't. I don't look for it specifically, So the only reason I would hear it is if either someone turns me onto it or just come across it. And I would only notice it if if it excited me. So other than that, I listened to uh as they said, like trying to learn about other kinds of music I've never heard before, right, the rock the Bells, you know, both versions, the album version in particular, you knew you heard something great when you heard um Run DMC, dumb Girl, or something like you knew you heard something like phenomenal rock box, like oh damn. Like I'm looking for those records that the charist one uh nine millimeter goes bang the public Enemy, I'm looking for that. Yeah, you know what I was thinking Rick since the room and had it that Rick Rubin didn't like Face and the Ghetto Boys. I think that we might just need to do a Face Rick Rubin record together. You never know anything's possible. Man. You do the production man, and you're not gonna play all the instruments too right, amazing. I didn't know that. Yeah, I can rock out too amazing. You listen to my rock music, man. I love Megan Devi, I love Metallica, I love UM. I probably know more about rocking music than anybody you ever come in contact with. I go from Judas Priest to Molly Hate Too, Yeah, Boston, I go, you know, yeah, led Zeppelin and all of that. How did you get turned onto it? So my uncle were in the rock and roll. So when I go to my grandmother's house, I hear a lot of rock and roll. Wow, back home to my mind's house. You know they were disco and jazz and stuff, reggae and all of that kind of stuff. My entire family is musicians, all of them. So you got it from all sides and from different kinds of taste. It's nothing better than that. Yeah, all kinds of music. Man from Andrea's bolling Wine. Did to you name it? Yes? When do you last? CEO? Willie D I see Willie all the time. Man, great something my love when you speak to them most definitely will feel well. I love seeing you and I look forward to talking to you probably this week then to see your bro. Thanks to Scarface for catching up with Rick. You can check out all of our favorite Scarface and get a Boy songs at Broken Record Podcast doc. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast. We can find all of our new episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at Broken Records. Broken Records produced with help from Lea Rose, Jason Gambrel, Martin Gonzalez, Eric Sandler, and Jennifer Sanchez, with engineering help from Nick Chafee. Our executive producer is Mia LaBelle Brooken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin Industries, consider becoming a Pushnick. Pushnick is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content an uninterrupted, ad free listening for four ninety nine. Look for Pushnick exclusively on Apple podcast subscriptions, and if you like the show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app. If the music spect candy Beats, I'm Justin Richard