KRS-One wants the hip-hop community to give the culture’s stars their flowers while they’re still here.
The 59-year-old spoke to Houston-based radio station 97.9 The Box in an interview published on Tuesday in the wake of Fatman Scoop’s death.
The beloved hypeman and media personality, known for hits like “Be Faithful” and his collaborations with Missy Elliott and Ciara, died after a sudden medical emergency while performing onstage last Friday. He was 53 years old.
While a slew of tributes and eulogies have poured in from the hip-hop community at large since Scoop’s untimely passing, KRS-One said that the community needs to stop waiting until artists die to celebrate their legacies, especially because of the example it sets for other genres.
“That energy should be on the radio. It's a shame that now that he's passed it, we're talking about him in this way. Hip-hop gotta stop doing that,” said KRS-One.
“Like, only when dudes pass, that's when they get on it and stuff like that. We should have been looking at Fatman Scoop when his career was blowing up. He never got played on those stations and that. Only DJs that knew would throw his music on,” he added.
When asked about other genres commemorating their artists, the NYC rapper merely said, “Other genres suck. They don't give a fuck. We don’t give a fuck about them.”
He continued, “Hip-hop runs shit, okay? So fuck all these other genres really. Hip-hop runs this whole music industry. So if we don't get it right with hip-hop—I'm sorry, reggae, I'm sorry, jazz, I'm sorry, gospel, I'm sorry, rock. We're not gonna get it together with nothing.”
“These other genres [are] putting hip-hop down when we rising up and that's what I'm saying. These other genres, they could do that to their artists if they like—we don’t give a fuck about them. We can't do that to our artists, okay? Fatman Scoop? That's the way a hip-hop DJ sounds,” he added.
The Teacha seemingly also had some words for the radio station, whose tagline is “Houston’s No. 1 Hip-Hop Station.”
“So dudes on the radio talking about they ‘number one for hip-hop,’ you should take a listen to the real dude who is number one for hip-hop,” he concluded.