On Thursday, Vince Staples tuned in with everybody’s favorite afternoon sports trio — Dan Le Batard, Bomani Jones and Papi — for an interview on Highly Questionable. And rather than discuss matters related directly to his recent album, Summertime ’06, the interview went in a much more informative and eye-opening direction.
When asked about his childhood, Vince said with a smirk (because “when you look back on something, you think ‘that was stupid for me to do'”) he did some things he doesn’t regret — like almost any other child — and he’s thankful he’s thankful he had the people around him to shape him into the man he is today. The conversation later flowed into gang life, which he inevitably joined because “it’s something a part of the community.”
When asked how he was able to remove himself from the lifestyle, he said you either leave the community or make an effort to make the community better. The conversation always came back to how systemic the gang life is: “These things aren’t based in crime or wrong, they’re based in being part of a certain community. … The gang is a product of the community, not a product of the people.”
As Dan said, Vince is a bright dude. Watch the whole interview below.
