Sitting down with Hip Hop Wired, Pooh discusses the art of lyricism, the division in North Carolina hip hop, his relationship with Kendrick Lamar and where he currently sits with 9th Wonder and Phonte.
At an earlier point in Kendrick Lamar’s career you two did a song together, “Thanksgiving.” Also, the first time he came to perform with SchoolBoy Q at Greene St. he brought you on stage at that point, did you know TDE would take off as fast as he did?
No, I had no idea. It was crazy how we ended up connecting. This was back when Myspace still had a little pull. Their people hit me up on Myspace and they wanted myself and Phonte to do some work with Jay Rock. He was on Warner at the time, and I had went and did my research…I had never heard of them before so I went Googled them, heard a couple of songs, I liked what I heard so I hit them back, I was like Yo, I’m down.
Me and Phonte did some stuff for them, but I kept in touch with them. I ended up going out to L.A., I went to their studio and checked them out. That’s where I ended up meeting Kendrick and AB-Soul. SchoolBoy Q wasn’t part of the picture yet. That’s when I started hearing all the records that they had over there and I was a fan instantly. I kept in touch with them, and we were passing records back and forth. I made sure I always checked them out when I went their way and vise versa. We formed a working relationship and then we would just hit each other up like Yo, you good?
I had no idea what it was going to become, I didn’t know all this was going to happen I just saw the talent. I didn’t care what their names were, I just wanted to work with the talent. You can be MC Joe Blow with 10 fans…if I think you’re dope, I’m working with you.
The full interview is quite dope and can be read in it’s entirety over here. And for those of y’all that jumped on the Kendrick bandwagon a little late and are scratching your head at Thanksgiving, grab the Kendrick Lamar EP right here.
