缔造嘻哈的人们终于得到了应有的认可

I think in life, it’s impossible to do anything great if you start with what’s possible. You have to start with what’s right.

Acknowledging and celebrating, and then bringing this group of people together, is something that the industry should have done a long time ago.

When people see me and they see my passion, this shit still got it. I’m still doing it because I have to. Hip-hop doesn’t have Social Security. You have to work.

The whole thing about hip-hop is about to grow to be better. And I think we are living our lyrics with Paid in Full.

I want everybody around the world to know what Grandmaster Caz looks like, to celebrate him and applaud this man for what he’s done, and to celebrate Roxanne Shanté, Melle Mel, The D.O.C., and everybody else who’s had these achievements. The thing is the honor. The thing is putting you in the light that you deserve to be in. If you’re watching this and love hip-hop—

1. Meet the Paid In Full Foundation

So, this is the first time this group has gotten together to publicly talk about the Paid in Full Foundation. Guys, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you. Yeah.

So, Ben, why don’t you introduce the foundation, and maybe let’s get into the origin story, as far back as you want to go, as to how this came to be?

Paid in Full is an organization meant to honor the legacy of the people who created one of the most important musical art forms of all time—hip-hop—and make sure that they’re paid in full financially, spiritually, and culturally.

2. The Origin Story: $5M in Value, $10 for the Album

The idea started with me, Steve, and Nas. It had always bothered me that I bought Paid in Full, the album, for $10, and I got, in my career—and those of you in tech know this—probably at least $5 million worth of value out of that record. But there was no way to pay it back, and it needed to be paid back.

So, I had the idea originally, and I called Steve. Steve and I have been friends for many, many years, and I said, “Steve, I have this idea. What do you think?” He said, “Well, it’s not only a good idea, but it’s a very timely idea, because people are talking about this right now, but they’re not doing anything.”

If you listen to the podcast, people are saying, “Oh, these rappers, these old guys, they don’t have any money. They’re dusty. They’re this, they’re that,” and all these kinds of things. These are very, very important guys, but nobody’s doing anything. So, I thought, well, let’s do something.

The next call I made was to Nas. Nas had a great insight, because our dear friend—all of our friend—Quincy Jones had a thing called the Jazz Foundation, where he would get money to the old jazz guys. I told Nas about it, and Nas said, “That’s not going to work that way in hip-hop, because in hip-hop you can’t just give somebody money. It has to be more than that. It has to be a recognition of what they did and who they are.”

That’s when we got the idea: let’s have a big award show, have this idea of the Grandmaster Award for the true greats of hip-hop, and invite everybody to honor these guys. We started it off with 2 all-time greats, Scarface and Rakim.

Before we even got to the first show, it was also timely because Scarface was going through a medical condition.

Yes. I remember I was in the south of France, and I called him. He needed a kidney transplant from his son, and it wasn’t the right doctors. Obviously, there was a lot of care and concern around that, but more specifically, it was the money and the doctor who was performing the surgery.

I called him, and I’ve known Scarface for years. But when I called him—literally from the south of France in June—and he got that phone call from me about what we were going to do, he was in shock. Just imagine a phone call coming randomly from a guy you hadn’t spoken to in 2 years, and I’m calling you about your medical condition and telling you that we’ve got you financially. We’re going to help you.

I remember calling Ben after that and saying, “Look, I spoke to Scarface, man, and he was in disbelief.” Early on, people were in such disbelief that they didn’t believe it was real.

Yeah. We had a hard time—actually helping people because they didn’t believe it.

Yeah. I have some stories on that. I don’t even know if I can mention the names, but we had people who literally didn’t get the award because they thought it was a scam.

Yeah.

They just didn’t want to mess with it. That’s actually what reinforced the belief that if you celebrated the artist and it didn’t feel like you were giving them something like reparations, but were actually celebrating them and giving them the honor and dignity they deserved—what they had not received properly—then that would be the way it would be accepted and celebrated.

It wasn’t until we did the first one, and we—like any other startup—duct-taped and wired whatever we had to do to get this thing going. But we had Scarface and Rakim, and obviously the support of the board, and having Nas on the board. All of that helped.

Then it started to go through the community, and there was something happening. That’s when it worked. But it was literally disbelief from the initial phone calls and the initial outreach: “Why would anybody do this? That’s how fucked up they’ve been for so long. Why would anybody come look and try to help us now?”

Yeah. And how fucked up the rap community has been—not showing love, being so divided, acting like it’s every man for himself. Rap is competitive, but at some point we’ve got to bring it around to what it’s supposed to be.

It was funny. Nothing like this ever existed. When you were talking to me, I was like, “Why hasn’t this happened?” I was in the right circle of people to be talking about the right thing, and it was almost daring for us to do something like this.

Yeah. It’s one of those things where I think somebody has to step up at some point. That’s the thing about history in general: people act like things are inevitable, but they’re not. Somebody has to do something.

Once it’s done, it’s very obvious, but until somebody steps up, it doesn’t happen. I met Caz in New York around the first year, and I remember because we had a great conversation. But then, going back and rereading how important Caz was, I thought, “Steve, let me ask you this: in a different circumstance, in a different kind of timing, how big would Caz have been?”

Caz, I talked about you after I met you. I speak about you. The fact that you are so charismatic—

Still right now.

Right now. You hold no bitterness in your heart, and you present yourself as a star. It’s clear: if you had gotten the credit you deserved from the beginning, we wouldn’t even have to fast-forward 12 years.

But I’m just saying, when you walk into a room, it shifts. You have that level of presence, talent, and star power. I think it’s definitely ageless, regardless of the time period.

It’s the original.

But it was shocking to me that everybody had known what had happened to Caz. Everybody.

Not enough people knew, though.

Not enough people knew, but the right people knew. The industry knew. The music industry knew that.

100%.

3. Grandmaster Caz & the Rhymes That Became Rapper's Delight

Yeah. I mean, the music industry knew.

Yeah.

I mean, Caz wrote the rhyme that became “Rapper’s Delight.” Those were his rhymes.

With his name in the rhymes.

The first hit.

Yeah.

And it was stolen. The first hip-hop hit was stolen from him, and he didn’t get what he deserved. Everybody knew it, but no one ever did anything about it. No one ever said anything about it. They didn’t give a shit about it.

When we were having our board calls and thinking about who we were going to honor, one of the privileges of having this group of people look at the cases and decide who we’re going to give the award to is that you say certain people’s names and it’s unanimous. It’s like—

It’s like everybody—it’s like, yes.

Everyone’s arguing why their yes is more yes.

Right?

It’s like, “Yo, Caz.”

But you don’t understand why I said yes, because everybody’s so delighted that we nailed the person.

Then you meet the person, and it’s so beautiful when they walk in the room. We’ve been blessed to have honored people who not only deserve it, but when they got the phone call, they didn’t come in with “About time,” or any of that kind of energy. They came in smiling, bright, and glowing.

I think about Caz and Shanté when I think about that—just glowing. When Roxanne got the award, she said her child never said, “Mom, you see all these rappers, these female rappers, getting all these awards...”

Don’t you ever feel bitter about that? Or don’t you feel anything about that? She said, “No, I didn’t want that award. I wanted the right award.”

“Yeah. Paid in Full.”

I was like, “Yeah, that’s awesome. That’s awesome that we were able to do that.” To be able to give these artists that recognition right now, and then have the artists be a part of voting for future recipients.

“Yeah.”

Yes—recipients, right? So Caz is now a recipient, and he’s part of the committee that’s voting for future recipients. That’s the gift that keeps giving about this foundation.

Shanté is one of the reasons I’m here. She’s from my neighborhood, the same neighborhood. When she released “Roxanne’s Revenge” back in 1984 or 1985, she was a kid—older than me, but still a kid.

When I saw that she could be on the radio rapping and going after men, it was like she was an activist. She was a women’s activist, because that was unheard of in hip-hop. When I saw her be that bold, challenge an established rap group, and change the course of this whole thing for me, that was incredibly inspiring.

To have her be a part of this, to me, is still crazy. I love it. For me, when I was kind of brought in, I had no idea what was going on. I just know somebody I knew from a while back reached out to me—someone I hadn’t heard from in years—and that was Quincy Jones III.

I’m like, “QD3, what’s up?” He was pretty vague, but he was like, “I want you to come downtown.” That’s when I met Ben and everybody. I really didn’t know what was going on fully, but I was being vetted to some degree: “We want this guy. Let’s see where his head is at. Let’s see where his attitude is,” because I’ve seen or heard about other people who deserve it but don’t have the right attitude.

I just came with my spirit and the fact that so many people had brought this up earlier: “We should give the old-school dudes a million dollars.” I think Swizz Beatz made it public. Shout-out to Swizz.

Not to interrupt you—but I just did. Sorry, but I had to say it. When you were saying that, you reminded me of something. I spoke about this in a magazine, I think in the ’90s—or maybe it was around 2000. They asked a bunch of hip-hop artists what they would do, and I described this to a T.

I just saw somebody point that out to me last month. I forgot I even said that. So we’ve all been wanting this type of thing. Sorry to cut you off again, because I just got excited at that memory. I would debate hip-hop with Ben.

“Yeah.”

I would debate hip-hop with Steve forever. Steve and I would stop speaking because we disagreed. Ben and I would analyze an album to death.

Ben got with you and sent me a video of your conversation about the Sugarhill Gang and everything. I couldn’t believe that you cared so much. Being from the Bay, you cared about the origin story of some of the greatest hip-hop history ever.

I shouldn’t have been surprised, but it was just the care that we have for the culture—it’s the same. Caz, I talk to you about history. Every time I approach you, I’m stalking you about what happened this year and that year, one way or another.

It’s not just the Paid in Full thing. It’s a way that we convinced ourselves that we can be together and get together, and not just talk about it from afar. We can actually talk to Caz. We can actually be in a room with Rakim. It’s not just this thing that’s so spread out; it’s bringing us together.

It feels like a class reunion.

Yes. Last year, when Dr. Dre heard about Paid in Full and decided to come, I was in shock that he asked me, “Could you introduce me to Kool Moe Dee?” He had never met him before.

Dre did this to me, too, in Vegas. He said, “Could you introduce me to Slick Rick?” He had never met him before.

4. What This Foundation Actually Does for Its Honorees

“Oh, my God. Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead.”

It’s just wild that it took this foundation to bring these types of people together.

And the bond is that strong. The bond is so strong that, 25 or 30 years removed, Dr. Dre—with all of his glory and success—is like, “Could you please introduce me to Slick Rick and Kool Moe Dee?”

At the same time, it took this celebration to bring these legends together in the same room.

“Agreed.”

To create that moment.

Yeah. I think the industry itself separates us by success, status, who’s hot, who’s signed, and all of that. If I see Nas, it’s by happenstance or something. All these years, there’s been mutual respect, but I don’t see him all the time.

If he reaches out, as he’s done in the past, and does a project and says, “Yo, Caz, I want you to be a part,” I’m on it automatically. I don’t have to see him or anything like that. Just say it, and I’m there.

Now I see him every year. I can call him on the phone. Steve Stoute—you hear about Steve Stoute, big businessman. He’s made this person rich. He’s made—

It’s a special moment that’s growing every year.

“Yeah.”

It’s growing every year. To Caz’s point, this idea of separating artists—I’m not sure why that happened. I’m not sure if it was the industry doing it on purpose, or if it was just the fact that rap was broken into old school, new school, this, that, and the third, so there was no connection.

The truth of the matter is that real artists have respect for the person whose poster they had on their wall, the first CD they bought, or the first tape they bought. That respect, whether it inspired me as a businessman, Nas as an artist, or Ben as a businessman, will never, ever go away. It’s like sports heroes—it never goes away.

The foundation acknowledging and celebrating these people, and then bringing this group of people together, is something the industry should have done a long time ago. There have been attempts, like the VH1 thing.

“Yeah, the VH1 Hip Hop Honors.”

Hip Hop Honors, yeah. And it’s cool.

It’s putting a light on these artists, but it’s not putting anything in their pockets.

“Yeah.”

It’s not investing in the artists. It’s not making them feel like they’ve been acknowledged for everything they contributed.

That was the point. It was 2 things: starting Paid in Full, but also Ben investing in UnitedMasters. The idea was, how do you contribute so much culturally, yet the financial take is so meaningless? How do you pour so much in and get so little out?

No respect, I’ll tell you.

Everybody became comfortable with that idea. They just accepted it: “Oh, that’s just the way it is.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s just the way it is.” Meanwhile, you’re changing the way people are dressing. You’re changing dialect. You’re changing so much in the world, yet your bank account or acknowledgment for what you’ve contributed isn’t even on par. It doesn’t add up.

That’s not inspiring, and it doesn’t incentivize creativity. It doesn’t incentivize anything. It incentivizes people to feel like they’ve been robbed and stolen from.

Right. Right. And not to cut you off, but in the lyrics of hip-hop, we speak about the total opposite. We speak about breaking down barriers. We speak about changing the system. We speak about love. We speak about being entrepreneurs, taking this thing into our own hands, and keeping it real.

But the action of keeping it real wasn’t happening outside the studio. You play a record, and this dude sounds like he’s the realest ever. Then you see him, and he won’t speak to you. You see him posted up, and he’s not talking to you. You see him, and you could be like, “Yo, I need some help,” and he’s looking at you and laughing at you.

It’s competitiveness to the max, and it doesn’t add up to what the lyrics say. You hear the lyrics of rap. Since the beginning, since Caz was talking and inspiring and putting his DNA into this thing, bigger groups would come from what Caz put down, bigger soloists would come, and the rap game would be shifted.

The lyrics represent one thing, but how are we going to be real and say we’re hip-hop, we’re real, and then the actions aren’t happening? It’s just going to be on record? It can’t just be on record.

The whole thing about hip-hop is about growing and becoming better. I think we are living our lyrics. We’re Paid in Full.

It takes the courage of Ben and his wife, Felicia, and that foundation to put the money up, to match the contribution, and to be able to fund something like this.

You would think—or you would hope—that it would come from an organization that benefited financially from it. If you asked who you think would help these guys, you’d say, “Oh, definitely the record company. So-and-so, this person.”

No, it takes somebody. It is hard for me to sell him a ticket.

It’s a crazy rap fan.

That’s a crazy name.

A crazy rap fan.

And Ben, who is an entrepreneur who has deep soul and belief in and respect for creativity, made this one of his missions: to help solve this and make sure the right guys get properly awarded and receive the respect they deserve.

I think this year is going to be a pivotal year for the organization. This is our fourth year, and we have a great lineup. It’s very well produced. You don’t walk in the first year lucky—you weren’t there. We were trying; we were feeling our way through it. It was a little long, it was a little this, that, and the third. We learned, like anything else. We learned, refined, got tighter, got smarter, and I think we have it now.

5. Celebrating the Legends: Melle Mel, Roxanne, D.O.C.

In year 4, it’s going to be our biggest year, and hopefully this thing—I believe that, as well-produced as this show will be, it’s something that we could take wider. At the same time, I want everybody around the world to know what Grandmaster Caz looks like, and to celebrate him and applaud this man for what he’s done. I want to celebrate Roxanne, Melle, the D.O.C., and everybody else who has had these achievements—achievements that have contributed so much to their culture—so that they get a chance to see their heroes on the platform that they respect.

I think when you do something big and important, not only in hip-hop but in anything, people are going to emulate it. People are going to want to follow. If they see a formula that works, Ben, you’re a testament to this. You see a formula that works, you want in, and you’re going to want to try to do something.

A lot of people lost faith or whatever because nobody had done it yet. Steve and I have conversations about this kind of thing all the time, but I think in life it’s impossible to do anything great if you start with what’s possible. You have to start with what’s right. If you start with what’s right, then you have a chance to do something great. It may not be possible, but at least you have a chance.

That’s always how I came at it. I was like, “Look, we ought to be able to figure this out. Hip-hop’s not that big. The guys who made the art form are not that many. Why can’t we honor them?” It just didn’t make any sense to me.

And then, by the way, you guys were very kind saying I wasn’t a beneficiary. I’m a big beneficiary of Caz, Nas, and Rakim. You all were the inspiration to my career and what got me through very difficult times in business—so hard that I wrote a best-selling book about how hard it was.

In the book, I had the rap lyrics, which, in Silicon Valley, I actually got a lot of criticism for. People were like, “What are you doing with hip-hop? Is that some kind of gimmick?” I was like, “No, this is credit where credit is due.” The ideas that I had in business came from those lyrics. That’s why the chapters, that’s why the ideas started with the lyrics, because that’s where the ideas started. It was just credit where credit was due.

It was my chance, in my mind, to do what was right and pay it back. I’m an entrepreneur. I know how to build things, so building a foundation didn’t seem that hard.

No, I haven’t. If I got pushback or people talked about it badly, I don’t listen. I can’t even hear it.

No, he doesn’t. He doesn’t hear it.

Well, you do. You bring people—you invite people who would probably have no interest in this topic.

And you bring them there, and you know what they do?

I’ve seen it convert.

Yeah.

They go there and they’re like—

“I’ll go for Ben. I mean, whatever. I’ll go for Ben.” [Expletive], it’s Ben. Then they go there and they’re like, “Oh, [expletive], I didn’t even know this. I didn’t know that.”

And it connects a lot of dots. There’s obviously a lot of empathy. How do you not feel empathy for somebody who invented something and didn’t get what they deserved?

But the theme of the night isn’t “Get What You Deserve.” That’s the underlying foundational truth. On top of that, we celebrate the fact that you are now getting what you deserve. You are getting the acknowledgment, and the light is being put on you in the right way by a bunch of people who respect you and chose to do it.

I mean, come on, man. Last year, I’ve known my man Grand Puba for so long. To see Puba out there—

Yeah.

That made me feel so proud. Why would you skip that? It’s easy to skip it. It’s just like, “Oh, no, not that.” And you got Grand Puba, at one point, the greatest rapper. By the way, he did it over 3 different eras.

It’s funny about rap. I don’t know if you realize how fast it changes. It’s not like decades; an era could be 4 years. It could be a 4-year period where everything just changed. If you’re not part of it, you don’t even realize how fast it changes.

Masters of Ceremony, Brand Nubian, Puba’s solo career—3 eras. He went through 3 eras and got through that and got to the other side. Very few artists have done that. The changes during that period of time were drastic. A lot of our favorite artists couldn’t jump that fence. They got stuck on the other side, and all of a sudden you’re considered old school, washed, or not dope anymore, whatever the thing was. Grand Puba did that.

No one else is going to sit and turn around and watch this man go onstage and get his props. No one else is going to do that, and no one else is going to put the time in to have the people who understand that nuance. It’s easy to write a check. People write checks to things and check that box, right?

It’s love. The check is being written, and there’s so much time going into making sure we get it right.

Yeah.

Because of the love. In the room, there’s love. Even if you didn’t think you’d be walking into a room like that, you think it’s going to be some type of typical award show or something like that. It’s genuine love. There are no egos. Nobody’s putting their chest out in front of anybody. It doesn’t matter if billionaires are over there and over here, at that table and that table. Everybody’s there to learn what’s happening on the stage. You’re being educated.

We’re talking about our man Quincy Jones, who I spent a lot of time with, with Ben, before he passed, and QD3 being there. We got to see a Quincy Jones Award happen through this because, if Quincy had been here, he would have been a part of this, right?

Last year, George Clinton came. He brought the Mothership. He did a Mothership thing for us, and it was mind-blowing to see him reciting Rakim’s lyrics to “Follow the Leader.” This is George Clinton. He is the outer-space guy. He’s the guy who shifted music. And then, at 83 years old, he’s reciting Rakim’s lyrics onstage. This is a room of love on another level.

Well, let me get to the Quincy Jones Award. Quincy Jones: obvious legend, the legend of legends, the triple OG, the foundation of it all. No disrespect, but the Grammys botched his—

Botched it.

Botched his celebration.

Yeah.

6. The Quincy Jones Award & Annual Tradition

The idea for the Quincy Jones Award was literally because of how badly the Grammys did it. It wasn’t like we thought we had to check that box. We couldn’t believe they got that wrong. They didn’t pay tribute to this man properly, to the point that his son, QD3, was like, “Let’s do this.” Now it’s part of what we do in the foundation on an annual basis.

That’s love.

Can we say who the new recipient of the Quincy Jones Award is?

Yeah, we’ve got to let Steve say it because he works so hard on it.

No, no.

Such a funny story. We’re not going to get into the details of the story, but—

But who?

Nile Rodgers, man.

Yes.

How do you not honor Nile Rodgers? He came up with a guitar lick that’s been used in “Good Times,” by the way. I mean, the hip-hop connection is Chic. Look at all the Sister Sledge songs. Look down the myriad songs he’s produced, all the way up to “Get Lucky.”

Yeah.

Daft Punk—I mean, Daft Punk. He’s that guy, you know what I’m saying? So, boom, we’ve got Nile Rodgers this year getting the Quincy Jones Award.

What we’re doing is, obviously, making sure, within our purview—whether it’s old-school hip-hop or Quincy Jones, who should have been celebrated a little bit more properly by the Grammys—that we’re making a contribution to make sure we get it right. We’re holding ourselves accountable to get it right. This is obviously a big thing to do because you’ve got families, estates, and other artists looking at this.

Do you know? I say, like, “Are these—is this real? Is this going away anytime soon? Is this another facade? What are they selling on the back of this? They must be selling T-shirts out the trunk, right?”

I called Kool Rock-Ski from the Fat Boys and said, “Yo, man, we want you in this.” I think for a second he didn’t think it was real.

Yeah, I heard.

I’m not going to lie to you: he was there at last year’s award and didn’t think it was real.

You walk off the stage not thinking it was real.

Right, right, right. What did Kool G Rap say? You called him? He was very appreciative. G Rap—I called him. I mean, one of the greatest MCs of all time, man. One of my biggest inspirations.

When people come, again, it’s love, man. It’s real love. It’s your time, your show. We’re here for you. I think it’s surprising for them to feel like it’s nothing. Like you said, we’re not selling shirts out the back. This is not for us. It gives us joy that we’re doing this, but it’s beautiful to see these people show up and be appreciated.

Oh, yeah. Y’all go crazy on the mic.

So that’s still there. Let’s be clear: it’s a celebration, but the park-jam part is not going anywhere. Because there’s so much ego in rap, at least in this moment, in this room, it comes down to the point where Ice Cube came 2 years ago.

He said, “I wouldn’t even put out an album until I listened to what Scarface had to say.”

Yeah.

I knew. You remember when he said this? He said, “I knew before I dropped anything, I’d have to make sure what this guy was saying.” You would know.

Scarface came after Cube.

Yeah, Scarface came after Cube.

But when Scarface came—

Woo.

To watch Scarface and Rakim acknowledge each other’s writing skills—

Oh, yo, dude. That’s like—if you love hip-hop, if you’re watching this and love hip-hop, you have to know that having Rakim and Scarface have a conversation about writing, and the respect they have for each other in a real, pure way, is something special. You’re talking about 2 of the greatest writers in anything.

Yeah.

I don’t give a shit what it is. Anything.

Yes. Anything. And every hip-hop guy in the world, before us, would acknowledge what you said.

Nobody would even—

Yeah.

Some of the greatest writers of all time—

Yeah.

In hip-hop, Scarface and Rakim. It’s not even a question. Nothing to discuss.

Nothing to discuss. And they’re discussing it for the first time at Paid in Full. That’s how special this room is.

Okay, let me give the plug. paidfullfoundation.org. You can come and be a part of it. Felicia and I match every donation two and a half to one, which means that all your money goes to the artist. There are no paid employees at the foundation. Everything is volunteer. If you want to be part of it, if you want to contribute, paidfull.org. And that’s my plug.

Caz, we’ve been talking about it, but as a recipient, what has it meant to you from an honor standpoint and from a financial standpoint? How did it affect you? Tell us from that side.

Yeah, I was definitely going to address that at some point, because it’s not about specifics. It’s not like, “This one gets that, this one gets that.” It’s like you get a grant, so to speak, and it’s over a 5-year period. It’s helped change my life.

I was on a path of self-improvement and trying to get things together. LL Cool J called me a few years back and was like, “Yo, it’s time. I want you on the radio.” But when Paid in Full called me, it was like, “Yo, now this is going to change your life.” I bought a house.

I moved out of the projects. I’ve lived in the Bronx all my life. I only did a 3-year stint in Cali for a while, but I lived in the Bronx all my life, and I thought I would always end up here.

7. Grandmaster Caz: "Hip Hop Don't Have Social Security"

My last thoughts in my head for the last 10 or 15 years were, “I don’t want to die in the projects. I don’t want to end here. I don’t want it to end here.” It didn’t, and it’s not. I got a nice house in Pennsylvania. Me and my wife—my life has improved drastically.

I’ve got a comfort, a cushion that I never had. Everything was day-to-day. Everything was run out, grind, hustle. When people see me and they see my passion, they see, “This shit still got it. He’s still doing it,” because I have to.

I didn’t have any—hip-hop doesn’t have Social Security. Hip-hop doesn’t have health benefits or any of that. You have to work. You’ve got to stay out there. For me, anyway, I’ve got to keep working.

When you see me on the radio, doing park jams, doing hip-hop sightseeing tours—all of that was to maintain, to keep me up and at it. I think my attitude, and the way that I deal with people, kept me in people’s consciousness, which I’m so grateful for.

I can’t speak for everybody, but I’m sure whatever it’s done for me, it’s done for everybody. I know one thing I want to say, and I don’t want to say which person, but a couple of people thought, “Yo, I don’t need this. I’m good.” You know what I mean? Like, “I don’t need anybody to give me anything.”

Yeah, like a handout.

It’s not about that. That’s not all it’s about. That’s a part of it. The thing is the honor. The thing is putting you in the light that you deserve to be in.

I’ve got to salute LL Cool J for that, too. He put me and Sha-Rock on the radio when he didn’t have to. He didn’t have to. He created a whole lane. He was like, “Now that’s y’all’s go. Monday through Friday, y’all are on the air.”

That kind of recognition resonates. When people see important people giving you your props, they feel obligated, like, “Yo, I’ve got to say that.”

What this does—how you just ended it—is bring recognition.

That’s the gift that keeps giving, because it’s done out of love. It inspires more people to think that we can do things like this, too. We’ve got to remember to take care of each other.

I’ll say this: I was getting reached out to by a few hip-hop artists from the latter end of the ’90s on. I would do things for different artists and wouldn’t say it. I won’t even mention the names. Even with someone who passed away recently—a musical hip-hop producer and everything—I was there.

I wonder how many more of us were doing that, but it was on the low. This is on the high—on an even bigger level. You can show the world that we’re taking care of our own. We’re taking care of the thing that took care of us.

In Ben’s book, he has pieces of lyrics. In one of his books, he has pieces of lyrics that inspired him. These things are important, because if we forget—if we sweep it all under the rug—if you don’t know that Grand Puba took Tommy Hilfiger to another level, if you don’t know—

Sprite.

Sprite. What did he—say this: the fashion industry, period.

By the way, that’s exactly why I wrote The Tanning of America. It was specifically so that all of the things that hip-hop created—

In your book, when you talk about the concert—about the Run-DMC concert—

Everybody holds up their Adidas. What that did for Adidas—

Adidas was kind of dead at the time.

Hold on.

Dead.

Oh, yeah: 2% market share in America.

2% market share in America.

Three-quarters of that 2% was coming from the Northeast region. All they knew was, “Why is everybody up there buying this one specific SKU, and why are they throwing away the shoelaces?”

Hip-hop, baby.

But Puba—“Obey Your Thirst” is his line.

“First things first: obey your thirst.” That’s his line. That’s their tagline.

Yeah. No one would ever pay attention to these things. These guys are pioneers above and beyond hip-hop. They created the culture around the music that lives on to this day: the fashion, the language, the brands that have only existed as a result of their contribution.

8. Tommy Hilfiger, the Culture & Who Owes Back

I love Tommy Hilfiger. Tommy Hilfiger is a great guy. He’s done a lot with artists. He should be part of Paid in Full if it wasn’t for—

Hip-hop, for sure. He was dead in the water. They were selling ties.

I mean, he says that he was actually selling ties. He was trying to be Ralph Lauren, and they were like, “You’re not Ralph Lauren, dog.”

On his way home—he lived in Greenwich. When you leave the city, you can obviously get to Greenwich by the traditional way, taking the highway, or you can cut through Harlem and get up to Westchester.

So he's cutting through Harlem, and he's seeing everybody wearing their pants low, with their Calvin Klein briefs showing. Literally, that's where he got the idea to make underwear and use that placement, where Calvin Klein would be at the top.

Yeah, and put Tommy there.

Whatever the top of the underwear is called—the elastic band. He put Tommy Hilfiger there and made the waistband bigger and thicker—

So that you could really see it.

And that's how the whole thing got going. Seriously, that's literally what he talks about—seeing it while driving through Harlem.

That's crazy. That's when the brand took off and went from selling ties, which wasn't working, to selling streetwear, the hottest fashion trend in the world. Streetwear that Louis Vuitton sells, designed by Skateboard P. You know what I'm saying? God bless Pharrell and Virgil.

Right.

These are the things these guys have been a part of and contributed to that they never got their fair share of. By the way, what we're doing is just trying to get momentum. We're not trying to solve the world's problems here.

Right.

We need others to either come and donate to the organization, for sure, or start other organizations that also have the same motive: to help celebrate and give back to the guys who have helped contribute to your business, contributed to you, and inspired you, on some real shit, with love and respect.

Yes.

With love and respect.

Yes, sir. Actually, on that, I want to tell a story, because the love and respect part goes beyond even the award. Scarface had a heart condition, and he comes from a place where people don't even really go to the doctor, let alone go in for open-heart surgery, which is what he needed.

He was on the phone with my wife, Felicia, and she knew he was scared. She flew out to Houston to see him before he went to the doctor. He didn't want to go in. He was like, “No, I don't want to go to the doctor. I'm not going to the doctor.”

She said, “No.” He calls her the bully. She's about 5 feet tall and weighs maybe 105 pounds, and she says, “No, I'm taking you to the doctor right now.” Right as they got to the doctor, his aorta burst. They got him in just in time and saved his life.

That doesn't happen without her caring so much about him. A lot of what the foundation is about—because she runs it and he's the president—is how much she cares about these artists and how committed she is to taking care of them, regardless. Forget the award, forget what the actual contract is, and all that kind of thing. She's going to do that work, and that creates the whole culture of the thing, which is why the feeling at the award is so different.

Agreed. I have nothing more serious than that.

Definitely kudos to Felicia.

None more serious than that.

She makes it feel like there's love involved here.

And it's beyond the award, beyond the check. It's not over.

Right.

You'll get a call: “How are you doing? How's your wife?” You say, “Oh, she's sick,” and Felicia says, “Give me your address.” The next day, flowers come. The next day, some Dior glasses come in. That's how Felicia is. It's not about what's going on—she'll randomly call you just to check on you and see if everything's good.

That's the difference between this and anything I've ever experienced in an award, grant, foundation, or anything like that: the love, the genuine love.

Steve, I'm curious: when was the moment you knew that you and Ben were going to be friends for life?

Steve invited me to a dinner years ago.

It was an interesting room of private-equity people. He put together a great room at a great restaurant.

It was Mr. Chow's downtown.

Mr. Chow's, yeah. That room was dope, right? He put this together, and I heard about Ben through him. I met Ben right there, and our love for music and love for food was what connected me and Ben at that point. We've just been cool since then.

Yeah. Some of my best times have been listening to Rakim with Nas. By the way, Nas hears things in Rakim songs that nobody else hears. It's unbelievable. We listen to Prince together, too.

And then break it down.

Yeah. Going and visiting the triple OG, Quincy Jones, together. We're just music fans. Nas is as great a music fan as he is an artist.

By the way, I was at Quincy's house when he had just moved into the house—or redecorated it, rather. It was me and Chris Tucker. He showed us the rehearsal tapes, the casting tapes, for The Color Purple.

The Color Purple.

Right. He's showing us, and there was Whoopi Goldberg. She's talking to the camera, just talking normally. Then she starts reading the script, and within a second she starts crying.

I was like, “Oh.” It was the first time I had seen acting like that, and I knew for a fact that this was a skill beyond anything. She was just talking normally, and then they said, “All right.” Steven Spielberg was holding the camera, and boom, she just starts crying.

Yeah, she was great in that role, by the way.

Yeah. So she just starts crying. Chris Tucker and I were both blown away by the fact that she could do that. We started talking about a bunch of different shit, and I brought up Nas and Nas's dad, Olu Dara.

Quincy Jones got up and moved very quickly. He went through a bunch of vinyl and came back with pictures. He showed me a picture of himself with Nas's dad in Saint-Tropez in the 1960s.

I was like, “Holy shit.” I knew Nas's dad was obviously a jazz legend, but I didn't know at what level these guys were operating. They were running around together in Saint-Tropez in the ’60s.

He would tell me stories about the people he'd been around, but I didn't listen. I'd be like, “Oh, yeah, okay, Pop.”

Yeah.

My pop told me about Biggie. When the song “Juicy” came out, he said, “Yo, that's my man.” I was like, “Come on. You probably met him in passing.” I wasn't thinking anything of it.

What year was that? ’83, ’84, or something. I got into the rap game and met Biggie, and he said, “Yo, your dad is my man.” I didn't believe him when he told me that—not that he was a liar or anything, but I didn't know that you all were like that. He was like, “That's my guy, man.”

I was like, “Yo, you understand? ‘Juicy’ was the biggest song in the world.” So how could I believe that at the time? I was a kid. I didn't know. I thought he was just trying to make me feel good or something like that.

But he knew a lot of people when he was younger, man. And Quincy knew everybody.

That's going to be everybody.

No, no, no. That's definitely going to be him.

Everybody knows everybody's kids.

Yeah, we know. But the fact that Olu Dara—

You have to understand: in anything else, it's the DNA thing, right? Your dad's a famous football player, and then there's the son. I obviously knew Nas was a brilliant artist, but I had no idea that his father was that level of brilliant.

I didn't know it was that level of brilliant that Quincy Jones could instantly go find a picture of them together. These guys were in Saint-Tropez in the ’60s doing their thing. The whole evening—from The Color Purple to Olu Dara, and then reflecting on the fact that Nas comes from this great lineage of talent—was profound to me.

Yeah, they come from Mississippi. My pops comes from Natchez, Mississippi, and his dad was in a band. It's just music in the family.

Yeah.

It’s crazy.

9. PaidInFullFoundation.org: How to Get Involved

So, one more time: Paid in Full.

Paid in Full Foundation.org. All your money goes directly to the artists. Two and a half times put up, and we’re matching two and a half times to one. Everybody who’s ever been to it will tell you it’s the greatest charitable event in the world. There’s nothing like it. I guarantee nobody’s ever gone and not had a great time, and a time that will be a memory for the rest of your life.

Oof. All right. All right. Thank you guys. That was great.