LA Rapper Problem on the West Coast Renaissance

For the latest episode of Bizarre Ride, RBMA Radio’s local spotlight show on Los Angeles, music journalist Jeff Weiss welcomed Compton rapper Problem to the show. The two talked Problem’s collaboration with DJ Quik, the advantages of staying independent and why LA rap is on a legendary roll. Read an excerpt below.

Describe Rosecrans for someone not from LA.

Rosecrans is the only street that runs completely through the city with no stops. Like, no stops, you know what I’m saying? That’s basically what it is. This is the street that connects everything from different hoods, different everything. That’s the one street that you can say from left to right is Compton.

Now there’s a lot of LA beach bros, probably Manhattan Beach, that are repping it as well.

Let them rock out, because Rosecrans is yours too. From the beach to the streets, ride all the way up.

How did you first get into music? Obviously you grew up in LA, so was it just being in Compton–

The Motown of rap – that’s what Compton is.

Were you a rapper/producer from the get-go?

I was a producer first.

Just a producer?

Yeah, I just made beats, but they don’t get no girls at the time. It was like, “The dude in the front gets all the chicks. I need to do that.” That’s really the real reason.

Did you have a favorite rapper when you were a kid?

Eminem was very influential to me. Younger than that, it got to be like Quik, Dre – that whole tree, for sure, but them two. My favorite record, though, was MC Breed’s “Ain’t No Future In Yo Frontin.”

He was from Flint, right? He had the West Coast style beats.

He had that bop. My mom used to play that song so much, so much, and it bangs. To this day, it comes on, I’m going to stop what I’m doing and get cracking.

When you first started working on Ego Trippin’ what year was that? What did you learn from that experience? We look back and Terrace Martin’s obviously had a huge career since then.

Looking back at it now it was like going through rap college. I got to sit around my heroes for six months. I met Snoop, Kurupt…everybody that I grew up listening to. I was able to see Rihanna before she became Rihanna – I remember her sitting in there. I remember Fergie being around. I learned from Snoop especially to be you at all times, and to know if you weren’t supposed to be here you wouldn’t be here, so enjoy it and max out. That was big for me. I was able to learn what to take from each person and I got to see why some people didn’t get as big or didn’t get the recognition. I was able to pull from all these greats. They would do this for me if I got too crazy. I remember Kurupt saying, “Hey man. I don’t need you out here doing what we did, fucking up the coast.” You know there’s been times that happened and I needed that, because I was young and didn’t know no better. I just remember that time. It was so great. Looking back at it now I made a lot of great friends off just that one album.

You work with E-40, you work with Quik. There’s a lot of great artists where we respect what they did in, say, the ’90s, but they have trouble adjusting to the current climate, whereas guys like E-40 and DJ Quik, they’re timeless. From working with them, what have you observed?

Music and work ethic. They work like they’re 21 still, to this day. Quik hit me on the way here like, “Hit me when you’re done with that interview, I got this beat I just made.” 40, you see what he’s doing. He never sleeps. He doesn’t.

When you’re great and you’re talented, you will be here… If you’re great and not lazy, you’re here.

Snoop’s definitely in that category. I’ve been told Snoop Dogg’s schedule is to the minute. He has a presidential schedule.

Yeah, it’s very true. Even when he’s not working, he’s working. That’s what’s dope about him.

Your EP with Quik surprised a lot of people. You didn’t tell anyone about it, it just kind of came out, yeah?

Yeah, we kept it in the bag. We wanted to do a surprise attack with it. The funny thing is, really thinking about it, it’s like, “Why was it a surprise?” I feel like as a member of the west coast, there needs to be more projects like that. We need to uplift our veterans and our veterans need to give us the game. We need to show the world how united we really are.

Rock? Country? They praise their legends. We shit on ours when they get a certain age, which is crazy to me! It makes no sense. Honestly, him, he thought nobody was fucking with him, which is crazy to me.

The man has the key to the city. He’s not that slept on. People just want to go with the new, and they don’t understand there’s no new without that. There’s no us without that… I hope, I pray, that more of us do that with the vets. We need to do this a whole lot more. We really need to show the world how this shit really go, how it’s supposed to be, because we’re the strongest right now.

There was kind of a drought for a while. What do you think changed?

We decided to stop waiting on the deals. We all created our own movements. Every artist that’s out now, I have some type of personal story with them. With Nipsey, I would see him up at three or four in the morning putting up his posters while I was putting up mine. I remember Mustard coming to the house asking about compression and different things. We know each other a different kind of way. We all worked. We all took the independent mindset.

Odd Future was actually one of the first ones. They don’t get enough credit for really bringing a whole crew and branding thing that really came and just took over. They’re still doing everything huge, putting their own festivals on. We all got into the real business mindset of, “Okay, well, if you’re not going to give it to us, we’re going to go take it.”

At this point, radio has to follow the streets. The west coast started taking over the streets. We started dumping so much music out in the clubs and in the parties and in cars and different things. It got to the point where there was nothing else to play but us.

It’s always strength in numbers. You’ve got to come see what’s up. I’m going to organize some crazy shit, though. One of these hip-hop awards, we’re going to all be standing there, we’re going to all put up W’s and walk on stage. We gotta get cracking, man, we’ve got to really understand this moment. This is big right now. This is huge.