Crucial Conflict

Interview, Sept, 1996 by Dimitri Ehrlich

In a genre that's already spawned rapping born-again Christians, rapping potheads, and rapping prepubescents with their pants on backward, coming up with an original shtick in hip-hop is no small feat these days. Enter Crucial Conflict, with the oven-fresh fusion of rap and rodeo, which they call RODEO (Rhymes Of Dirty English Organization).

While sounding "country" is anathema to nearly all tappers (largely because hip-hop is so relentlessly obsessed with urban landscapes), Crucial Conflict has confounded the purists and struck gold. The group's first single, "Hay," from its debut album, The Final TIC (Pallas/Universal), has sold almost a half-million copies. Living out their creation to its hick extremes, the group smokes "hay" rather than weed, their social club is "The Barn," and the dance style they spawned is called "The Giddy-Up" (which Pallas Records head Fab 5 Freddy describes as "brothers moving like they're riding a bucking bronco").

But after meeting the group on its own turf, it becomes clear that the neighborhood they come from isn't exactly Mayberry. Driving along the backstreets of their neighborhood on Chicago's famously tough West Side, signs of an entrenched urban decay are everywhere. And as Crucial Conflict rapper Coldhard begins to describe the territorial menace of his home ground, he also reveals a sinister cast to the band's spurs-and-saddles credo. "It ain't even about gangs anymore," he said. "It's about this nigga got a Glock, then I got a hand grenade. Nigga's got a hand grenade, well then I got a rocket launcher. If you think about it," he adds, "it's just like cowboys and Indians, and these cars are our horses. Wyatt Earp was a muthafuckin' pimp, too."

DIMITRI EHRLICH: These days, it seems like every rap group needs a press angle to cut through. But obviously people here in Chicago really relate to your music and even dance in the style you invented.

KILO: Yeah, it's easy to do!

DE: Many rappers would never want to be called "country." Could you talk about why you've embraced this rodeo concept? Is it because Chicago was where so many Southern blacks first emigrated to in the North?

COLDHARD: All our parents did. My mother was born in Memphis. My father was born in Tallulah, Louisiana, you know what I'm sayin"? So that's down South! As far as our accents and the voice we use, that's not really on purpose, that's our voice for real. It's the way we talk. People say we sound country, but the whole vibe of it, as far as the rodeo with the rap goes, we tryin' to format a whole different style of hip-hop. You remember the way ['70s funk group] Parliament used to have characters and wild concerts? We trying to bring something exciting back for people to look at, man. People need to be amazed, you know? And Chicago is a real tough place to please people.

DE: You call your sound RODEO, which stands for "Rhymes of Dirty English Organization." What do you mean by "dirty" English?

COLDHARD: It means we ain't trying to hold back on nothin' we feel. We cryin' out our pain from how we came up in our 'hoods and we puttin' it down on our tape, bringing the humor out of it, too. The idea is to have all the pain, the drama, the laughter, the excitement. It's a wild life.

DE: If you ask a lot of rappers why their album is negative and violent, they'll say they're just reporting the way things are in their neighborhood. Whereas, even though you've obviously grown up in tough conditions, your record isn't that grim.

COLDHARD: We trying to be just absolutely the way we are. Part of our life is peaceful, and part of it ain't. And that's with every human being on earth. Everybody got an up-and-down life, and your down be the part you always talk about because the bad stay with you for life. But to be a strong individual, which all of us in Crucial Conflict trying to be, we got to be special, man. I ain't sayin' rap is the only thing we coulda done to try to better ourselves, because that would be untrue. We coulda been anything we wanted to be. We coulda chose the doctor, we coulda chose the lawyer, we coulda chose any profession on earth we wanted to be. But with the rap talent, you could actually talk out the way you feel and things you see, and how they've been explained to you. It's crucial out here, and it's a conflict with the whole planet.

DE: How are you doing with your mission to express all of that?

COLDHARD: If you sit down and pay attention to our music, then everything we saying is gonna be self-explanatory. In order to say something on tape that's wild and rambunctious, you gotta watch what you say. There's freedom of speech in this world, but you can never say everything you wan-na say. Like we got a song on this album called "Life It Ain't the Same," and Wild Style's verse, what he's saying, is that he know that [begins rapping] he need to make his life right because nowadays things ain't nothin' nice / People in the 'hood wanna take his life, with a knife / So he got to strap up every night / The game in this world it ain't no joke / And he prayin' to God that he don't never get smoked. That's feelings, man. That's cryin' out feelings. That's saying that you ain't scared to die, but you don't want to neither. In that song, Kilo says, "Bein' a chief can get you shot." Bein' a chief can get you shot. Being president can get you shot.