VT Union's Nastee w/ Immortal Technique on The Radiator
VT Union's Nastee, Dakota & Keenan stepped in to host Big Heavy World's 'Rocket Shop' program on WOMM-LP 105.9FM 'The Radiator' July 2, 2008. Here's the transcript of Nastee's conversation with Immortal Technique. Tech was playing a Halogen Records show the next week and phoned-in:
Nastee: It’s 7-11, that’s not tomorrow but next Friday, your boy Nastee, A-Dog, and a whole bunch of Hip-Hop celebrities, we got classic as well as brand new. So, this Friday, not tomorrow, but the eleventh, we’ll be at Higher Ground. Immortal Technique, Black Sheep, Scratch from The Roots, I think Poison Pen coming in.
Guy: Poison Pen and Diabolical.
Tech: Yeah.
Nastee: What’s up son, how you?
Tech: Chillin’ man.
Nastee: Alright. So basically man, we just trying to hip the people to what it is. You know what I mean? I mean like, certain people are awake, certain people are asleep. But, they need to awake for their Immortal Technique. You know what I mean?
Tech: It’s gonna be a beautiful thing to come down there. I haven’t been down there, I should say up there, in um,
Nastee: It’s like three.
Tech: Three and change.
Nastee: Yeah it’s been a minute.
Tech: I look forward to returning. I got a great response last time I was in Vermont. People from all different home bases, ethnicities, him/her, everybody seemed to love the music so, you know it made me easy to come back. It was just a question of logistics, cause I was working on this album.
Tech: Now they got something new to bump. Now they’ve got the album I just put out June 24th.
Nastee: Talk about that, talk about like, cause Green Lantern, right?
Tech: Yeah yeah, I did a collaboration with Green Lantern. He cut up some of the stuff on there. He cut it together like a mixed tape.
Nastee: Right.
Tech: It came together pretty well. You know, it got a lot of positive reception from it.
Nastee: So how did that exactly come together? Exactly like, did Green Lantern step to you, did Viper step to Green Lantern, I mean like what exactly was it?
Tech: I’ve known Green for years, we’ve been talking about kicking around ideas doing a tape. And then this came up and I was like ‘Yo, you know what, been working on these instruments you gave me and while they don’t fit the conceptuality of the middle passage exactly, they still heart and songs. Like the Harlem Renaissance talks about ethnic cleansing, economically, and justification in the third world, which relates to trouble that we see in the third world to what we have here. And it makes people understand that as bad as we think we have it in the hood, no matter where you look, it’s ten times worse. Like South America or the Middle East or in Africa or something like that.
Nastee: Go to Haiti real quick.
Tech: Ah no man, might not come the fuck back.
Nastee: That’s what I’m talking about. But no, you see, that’s a big point of it, cause a lot people don’t realize that, as much as America is messed up, you know what I’m saying? Go to some country that don’t have no shoes and see what messed up is.
Tech: Right, and they’re like that cause of the specific policies that we’ve implemented over there and the way we’ve controlled other governments. And it’s not just our fault, it’s not America just being the great Satan, it’s America finding little Satans all over the world like Saddam Hussein, the Taliban, and they’ve used them in particular for political purposes, you know it ain’t like we’ve never done business with the terrorist organization. We do business with them all the time, cause it benefits us. That’s just the reality, that’s how you run an Empire, you model down government.
Nastee: Yeah Terrorism, they’re terrorist themselves.
Tech: We’re a Roman republic style of government, we’re not a democracy, we’re a federal republic.
Nastee: Indeed.
Tech: We meshed the ideas of ancient times with the idea of a federalized system of government, based on the Iroquois league. Which is something that Congress gave credit to Native Americans for. But, you know when the Senate meets, and Paul Bremer, the pro counsel of Iraq, you look at early Rome, that title exist then too. When you see the fasces, which is the sticks and the hatchet and the string stuck around it that was given as a symbol of victory in conquest over the enemies of the Empire, you’ll find those two symbols on either side of the Senate chambers. So, this isn’t a conspiracy theory, this isn’t just talking high at like 4 o’clock in the morning, with people like, ”Oh guess what, I found this crazy video on Youtube that points out that aliens have put microchips in Coco Pebbles and they wait for you to swallow it and then they plant a microchip in your butt.” I mean, come on man, this is reality, this is exactly what it is. If you want to look it up yourself, do it. If you want to live inside the Holy Book and not understand the history that created that religion. If you want to live inside the idea of America but not understand the history that created America, then you’re doing not only your country but your religion and yourself a great disservice.
Nastee: That’s what’s up. Cause as a person that’s always trying to expand on things with people, I find that most people get trapped in the story and don’t really investigate and I’m like, “How you calling yourself a Christian and I can tell you more about your Christianity than you and I’m not a Christian?”
Tech: Lots of people do that, they do it with Islam, with Judaism, or lots of other significant manners of addressing something. It’s unfortunately the way that people operate when they have no other mechanism of understanding. And really those people don’t need to be chastised as much as they need to be brought in and say, “Hey let’s have this open dialogue, let’s have this discussion about this, because that’s the only thing that’s gonna help us grow and help us come to terms with different people’s perspectives.”
Nastee: Right, a forum in other words.
Tech: We could do that or just kill everybody. That’s how it’s gonna end up, you know, people don’t do talking, people are gonna be like ‘oh you know what, we can just use this as an excuse to conquer and kill these other people.’ It’s what traditional has happened.
Nastee: Right, it’s kinda like they’re building their story so they can too do that. Well, let me ask you this, what do you think about the election this year? We’ve got Obama versus shaved Santa Claus John McCain who needs to go find himself some elves or something.
Tech: I think Black Caesar has a good chance of winning.
Nastee: Expand on that cause me personally, I really feel that the dude might be trying to do some good. Expand on that from your point of view, with Obama.
Tech: Like I said, he’s not Black Jesus, he’s more like Black Caesar. I think he’s perfectly capable of expressing himself. Mind you, he’s a very intelligent dude and he’s incredibly articulate and he’s a lawyer, which means even if that nig***’s wrong he can articulate a position which makes himself look good. You know what I mean? He could be defending someone who’s so guilty it’s disgusting. He could pull some sort of argument out of left field to try and at least mire the way that things are looked at. I think it just got so bad under Bush, so much of that Emperor’s clothes, that people were like, “You know what, the people that run this government behind the scenes were like, we tried doing this with an idiot, lets try doing this with like a really smart person, who can try and justify the Empire and from the left wing so that they will still be forced to deal with all the issues that America likes to have in its backyard and likes to keep under control.” Such as the support, the blind support, of Israel, the plan in Colombia, the neo-liberalism extended into Latin America and Africa. And in terms of the war, I think that we throw that word “change” around a lot and it makes me wonder: can Barack Obama stop the war? Or is he just going to change the war?
Nastee: Right, like change the face of it or whatever?
Tech: Yeah.
Nastee: I dunno, because like, I see certain things, I’ve been studying certain things about contracts, and it seems like certain contracts are up and that’s why Obama is here.
Tech: Well, I know McCain isn’t going to change the war.
Nastee: I don’t even think he has a chance, do you?
Tech: I didn’t think Bush had a chance either. I think Bush had a chance back when Kerry was running you know? But then Kerry had the charisma of Herman Munster, so, nobody really wanted to vote for him because of that.
Nastee: Well, plus though, the voting it seems like it don’t matter who vote for who they just put in whoever they want you know what I mean, because like Kerry, like the dude before him, what’s his name? Gore or whatever, it seemed like it was a close race and they just gave it to Bush. Kind of proves they’re on the same team. It’s very interesting, cause if certain contracts are up between certain people and here comes Obama, Obama seems to me like he’s down with us, did you see him when he was brushing his shoulder off? Have you seen that footage?
Tech: He’s a funny character.
Nastee: But is that, in your opinion, is that him trying to be down with us or is it him being down with us?
Tech: I mean, I think, whether he admitted it or not he’s down with us. I put it like this, I’m not voting for him.
Nastee: I’m not voting at all.
Jim: I’m not voting either.
Tech: I’m voting for his wife.
Nastee: Nice, I be telling people for a minute that America is not really ready for Michelle Obama.
Tech: I like Michelle Obama. I’ve got to be real with you, I like Michelle Obama a lot better than I like Barack Obama. I think that she’s a lot more straight talk than her husband. I think she’s a tough lady.
Nastee: That’s why the media hates her.
Tech: I like her. I really like her.
Nastee: The thing is, I like her too, you know what I’m saying? But it makes me wonder where if Obama is just playing certain roles to make sure he gets into that office because it seems like once he gets in there things could change. In other words, if he got in there, he could change certain things without making that part of his…
Tech: Right, but we always say that, son. How many people say that in Hip-Hop? Like, I’m just going to make this commercial album and then go back to where it’s real. And then when all that money starts rolling in and you like, “Man, what the hell was I thinking? I don’t care about none of this. I don’t care about no open mic, or no B-Boy battle. Get that off my schedule. Lets get up with some naked hoes in the Caribbean. I’m gonna cheat on my wife with like a nineteen year old dancer from like Czechoslovakia.”
Nastee: Czechoslovakia?
Tech: You know what I mean. Going somewhere where you can afford to like…The funny thing is bringing up the sentence that Czechoslovakia was split apart into so many different countries. I think that a lot of people have also said that Obama has come in to further the new world order, to complete the bringing together of Canada and of Mexico, but I don’t think that’s going to happen.
Nastee: But this is a big part of it. Did you hear about this North American Union business that Bush signed in like, 2005? Which kind of erased the borders I feel. Like, up here in Vermont, we live so close to the border, and they still got a border patrol, but yet he signed this deal that made it a North American Union. So sometimes I wonder if Obama knows who they think he is, but yet, he’s ready to step up and be like, “Whatever, you think I’m like Uncle Tom? I’ll be like Uncle Tom.” Kinda like, some of these mainstream rappers, if you listen to their interviews and then listen to their music, it’s two totally different things.
Tech: Right, that’s why I’m saying, that’s why to me he’s Black Caesar. He’s the Emperor.
Nastee: It’s kinda ill because, as the deal expires into the whole Willy Lynch and all that, like as that deal expires, here he comes. And that makes me wonder who’s team he’s really rolling with? It’s easy to be like, he’s down with them, but what if he’s got an agenda that, I mean, we know the truth that you can’t always put your agenda on the block. The Black Panthers got stopped because they came onto the block with shotguns. We kind of knew, and government knew what they were about and that’s why they stopped them, whereas, maybe we learn through history that we have to put our agenda on the back burner.
Tech: But nowadays you really can put microchips in Coco Pebbles. So I’m sure if he has an agenda he can’t keep it from people.
Nastee: You eating Coco Puffs right now, son?
Tech: No, I’m eating dinner right now, I’m laughing, and I’m thinking about how, if he has an agenda, they probably know exactly what it is. The government is so intertwined in this spy program, that they probably know the websites of everybody that’s listening to this. They know exactly how long you’re watching this and that site so that when they look at what the site is they know, “Oh this is a porn site, this dude was jerking off to this and this and this and this…” So, at the end of the day, they monitor what books you read, what you order off the Internet.
Nastee: It’s kind of like what the Internet is for.
Tech: All this information is built to plug everybody into the system and start documenting them and counting them. I don’t know nobody that’s not plugged into the internet. I just can’t imagine what it would be like to shut down the internet.
Nastee: Yeah, it’s the Inter’net’ on the World Wide ‘Web’. Net and web are the key words, you know? Well listen man, there are certain regulations they demand, we’re going to go on to another joint. Scratch is on the show, he’s gonna call in in a few minutes, but, I’d like to go back to you after the song, yes no? Is that cool? Which one do you want us to play? What three we got there? Hold on.
Guy: We got “The Payback.”
Nastee: We played that one.
Guy: Okay, “The Third World War” and “Reverse Pimpology.”
Nastee: Which one you want us to play?
Tech: Know what, you played “The Third World War” already, so play the “Reverse Pimpology.”
Nastee: Alright word. Then we’re gonna come back and speak a little more, okay?
Tech: No doubt.
Nastee: Alright. This is 105.9 WOMM right here in Burlington, VT. Immortal Technique, Halogen Records, VT Union, Big Heavy World, our man Dakota, everybody in the building, let’s go to that joint. Jim, hit them.
[Song: “Reverse Pimpology”]
Nastee: Tech, you there?
Tech: I’m here.
Nastee: Yeah man, so we just got off the rolls of the “Reverse Pimpology.” So we just got a few minutes before we move on to whatever we got to do next. What I want you to try and expound to people is why we’re talking these politics on a music show, you know what I’m trying to say? What is the meaning behind that. Why would we go there. Most people want to hear music to party or whatever, you know what I’m saying? Why would we go where we go? Cause you know where we go. So what’s the relationship between the vibrations of the beat versus the vibrations of sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
Tech: We’re on now? I was gonna say, listen, everything in pop is political. You know, whether you like it or not. The fact that somebody got signed to a contract and you didn’t, that’s political. The fact that both songs are under the same label and this dude gets put out, that’s political. Anyone who doesn’t understand that is either fooling themselves or they just want to be a failure. I think that the reality we have to accept is that when you be coming through a record store, because you see somebody’s poster or somebody’s album position in a certain way, that’s not because it’s the record store’s favorite artist. It has to do with the fact that they’re paying co-op at whatever price they have to pay for that. That’s a political thing too. So politics rule in all aspects of what we live and what we see, so I include it because to me, it wasn’t so much ‘politics’ as it was reality. That’s the reality of the world we live in, whether we want to accept it or not. I know that Hip-Hop used to be a diverse art form where we would have people that were writing about partying and things that they didn’t have because they wanted to aspire to that, cause they didn’t want to think about the ‘hood. And then there were people that reminded them, like, we have to get this together. We have to organize our troops, we got to get our soldiers to stop killing one another and to focus on rebuilding what it is we once had. So I guess that’s my role. I be more in the streets, I don’t pretend to be in the streets like some artist that just rhymes about having a good time and all that. Or some gangster so that people don’t think they’re a hoe.
Nastee: Right, because like, that’s funny, because when last time I seen you when we was at Fordham, and we were laughing about like, “Yo man, how many dudes come to Fordham and do a show for five dollars?” Because so many artists claim that they are the streets but when was the last time they did a show in the streets?
Tech: Right, I definitely got paid a whole lot of money though. Cause like, it was through the University. And Styles Creek was there too.
Nastee: That was a hell of a show man. I was like, people were talking to me, I was like You can’t tell me nothing man, we’re at this show. These are the three MCs right now to me that are trying to bring that to the next level. Let me ask you one more thing before we get out of here man, cause we gotta go to the next thing. What do you think about when you hear Jay-Z’s material? Like, do you think he’s on our page or that he’s totally blind to what we’re dealing with?
Tech: There’s no way you can get to be that high and in that position and not know exactly what’s going on. I think that Jay is an incredibly intelligent person and that he knows much more than he likes to reveal. And that’s just the type of person he is. He likes holding his cards. He’s got a poker face, you know what I mean? He holds a lot of cards. Whereas, someone like the emperor of rap, like, Fifty likes to flaunt his cards.
Nastee: He even called himself Black Caesar on his movie.
Tech: He want to hold his cards a little and be like, “Look, let me make sure I can weed these individuals out that are all around me.” Because he knows exactly what the industry is. I mean, mind you that man has been in the game for like, how long now? Almost twenty years.
Nastee: He was in Original Flavor and all that.
Tech: So he really understands about what it is to mix with the wrong group of people or to invest in the wrong aspects of this game. So I mean, I think there’s no way he couldn’t understand what’s going on. I’m sure he’s really weary of just believing whatever he reads or whatever, but I know a lot of people like so, in terms of Jay and other individuals that are on that level, that have built a million dollar franchise for themselves outside of Hip-Hop, I think really that’s one of the smartest thing you can do, I don’t think how someone could be exposed to that much information and not grasp a lot of it. He did a customary move, he took it from Hip-Hop and built something all that in order to make money. Look at Puffy, same thing. He didn’t make no damn money off that “Bad Boys No More.” But that Sean John paid the bills for the rest of him and his children’s children’s lives.
Nastee: Yeah, that’s the Empire, Sean John. Word up.
Tech: I’m not a millionaire but, I got viperrecords.com and Immortal Technique, and then, I’m building all this right now, like the Green Lantern Project and then, we help out a lot of charity groups, we raise money for children’s hospitals in Palestine. So, we do our revolutionary duty based upon what we can muster here. It’s hard to fight a war with nothing, but that’s what groups do. In the world of Hip-Hop and the underground, we go the distance and we fight to the death. That’s all it is.
Nastee: Meanwhile, the third world, that’s Earth. They’re really speaking on what is the current state of Earth, because the third world is where the Earth is really at. So listen man, we got to move on, you got one more thing to say and just drop whatever you need to drop. You’re in Vermont next Friday.
Tech: Tell people come through to the show, I’ll see you all later, and definitely in reference to the album, you can pick it up on viperrecords.com, amazon.com and then come check me out, viperrecords.com, and myspace.com/immortaltechnique.
Nastee: That’s what up man. We want to thank you for calling in man. Unlike most artists, you called at like, 7:59. Most cats can’t even get the time right.
Tech: I appreciate that a lot. I thank you all for having me on your show. I’ll see you all next week.
Nastee: Make sure you highlight me when you get here man, cause I got whatever you need, you know what I mean?
Tech: Alright man, I’ll you there on Friday then.