For our first cover story Veteran, Hip-Hop Journalist Serena Kim interviewed Aaron Mcgruder, Creator of the Boondocks. He kept 100% treal 100% of the interview. If you missed it here's a piece of it.
...SK: Why can’t you be broke? Why is that such an issue for you?
AM: Because liberty in this country doesn’t happen unless you can free yourself economically. It’s just an illusion. The civil rights and all that stuff, not to say that it’s not important, but it’s only 50 percent of the game. The Bill of Rights says, okay you have the right to talk, and you have the right to go everywhere, and the right to happiness and all that stuff. But it don’t tell you how you’re gonna pay for it. America is a country where they’ll leave you dead in the streets. If you fall, people will walk over you! There’s no safety net here. So when you talk about freedom; and I’ve always been really interested in the idea of freedom and studying what that means. Freedom in America is a lie. Not just because of criminal justice system history and all that other stuff, but because, what freedom do you have if you’re not rich in this country? You either have to walk away from everything and be completely poor to be free. Or you have to have a tremendous amount of money. Everyone in the middle is ultimately a slave. They are a slave to an economic system. If you’re making 30-40-$50,000 a year and you got a family and you got a job and you work full time, can you go where you wanna go when you wanna go? No!
SK: That’s what you want.
AM: Most people can’t do that until they’re 65. That’s not freedom. What freedom do you really have?
SK: Why are humans entitled to that? From a Zen perspective, humanity and happiness is only fulfilled when you’re working.
AM: There’s something to be said in that. But you are free to work. Most people don’t work because they want to. They are cogs in a system. Given the chance to do anything they want to do, they might do work, but it might be different work. It might be something that is actually fulfilling to them. Some people would much rather stay home and raise their kids and work on a family than work in a fucking office. For somebody else’s dividends. When I think about freedom, I think: Can I sleep when I want? Can I eat where I want? Go where I want, when I want? That’s freedom! Anything less than that, you’re not free. And that’s why I said, if you’re one of those people that can let it all go, all material possessions, you can be a free person. You can! That’s not me. I wish I had that level of spirituality. I wish I was that type. That’s not me. So I gotta go the other way. I have to basically buy my freedom from the system. In America, if you don’t have a lot of money and you get sick, you’re fucked. Someone you love get’s sick, you’re fucked! Money can mean the difference between life or death in this country. Often, if I get in trouble for anything, whether I did it or not, money means the difference between jail and no jail. So it’s a very serious thing. The civil freedoms and liberties and all that…
SK: There’s just been a lot of writing and thinking about that, about how the hip hop generation, and what it does with the civil rights. And the things you’re demanding are precisely what the next level is.
AM: Yeah, I’m not trying to diss the Civil Rights Movement. We would all miss it if it hadn’t been there. They’d still be lynching niggas. That’d be bad news. Um. But, you can’t fall into the lie sharecropping vs... slavery is the exact metaphor, We’ve got a nation of people perpetually in debt. And they are enslaved because of it. They are not free people. And I’ve always kind of seen the two together. Comfortably middle class but without a dollar. Because everyone’s just in debt. Credit cards. No one’s going on vacation. No one’s doing anything they want to do. We’re eating. We’re in a nice neighborhood, but no one has a dime. We’re living check to check. It’s a stress on the family. Just seeing the stress that money problems put on my parents was enough for me to be like fuck that I got to be rich. I can’t imagine going through this my whole life. With a wife and kids and everybody’s mad because there’s no money and they’re all worried. Can’t do it. Won’t do it. There just has to be a better way.
For the entire interview, Get issue #1 now...shoot us an email at 21hustle@gmail.com
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