South Deuce stoop, Brooklyn, NY
Friday, July 11, 2003
Interview by Jackie Marinese
Illustration by Adam Walko


Although his first full-length album just came out, don’t get it twisted, C Rayz Walz is no rookie to the hip-hop game. This master of metaphoric freestyles has been creeping in the underground for years, putting out singles and blowin’ up open mics throughout NYC.

C Rayz’s album entitled Ravipops, named for his new son Ravi was released last July on NYC’s indie hip-hop label Definitive Jux. This debut project is a testament of a man making strides both as an MC and as a father. In the song “Protect My family” he talks about the change in his life since the birth of his son. In “’86” he reminisces about his life within that year in hip-hop history and how it impacted him. In “We Live” he tells a piece of his own story of struggle and talks about the murder of a close friend.

The content of his rhymes go to far reaching extremes and range from the somber stories of his days of hustling on the streets of NYC to some straight up silly and off the wall plays on words. In person, C Rayz Walz comes off with an equivalent, mystic personal style. A true artist, his mind doesn’t work in a linear dimension, and as he speaks he goes in and out of character like an actor who’s practicing a monologue and he also tends to throw rhymes effortlessly into regular prose. I caught up with C Rayz in Brooklyn to talk about his new album, where he comes from, and where he’s going; both physically and spiritually.

Where does the name C Rayz Walz come from?
Just life experience. I think when people tend to stray away from the regular ideals and concepts of society, they’re automatically considered crazy. Growin’ up I always strayed and I always asked a lot of questions and saw things for what they really were, so early on people started calling me crazy. Initially when I first had my locks in like ’92/ ’93 I started rappin’ a little bit and I had a rap name called The Crazy Dread. I was just playing with the words a bit. Then this one girl I had, wifey, used to say, “You c-ray-z,” and I was like, “Oh that’s an ill ebonics split up of the word crazy.” Walz was a nickname, so I just put it all together.

You have your own meaning too though, as far as what each element of your name means, right?
As my career goes on and as life goes on, I keep maturing into the meaning of it. ‘C’ is the best part, it’s the third eye, the child, and understanding things for what they are, not for what they appear to be. ‘Rayz’ is the math term, the arrow extending infinite. Where I’m going is infinite, my potentials are infinite and nothing can stop that. Rayz is also the energy of the sun. I’m emanating the truth and the light and shedding it on a dark culture in a dark world where people want to be regular. Walz is walls are all around you. Whether be it in your apartment, jail, work or studio, you gotta break down those barriers of self-hatred, injustice, prejudice, low self-esteem, ego, all those things that are gonna stop from really unveiling your path and getting it on. So that’s the whole C Rayz Walz story which means understanding life and breaking the barriers. I’m just really a reflection of everybody who wants to be uninhibited and themselves but are scared. Really C Rayz Walz is just that cat in the mirror, I’m no one.

There seems to be political content in some of your rhymes. Where in your life does that drive to rhyme about those topics stem from?
That’s real because “The Substance”, the subtitle of the album, is all a part of me from the earliest I can remember. My pops got murdered when I was still young, so my mother was a single black mother. She had a lot of knowledge. She used to hold discussions around the house and always tried to have positive males around me. She never had no boyfriends around the house that I ever saw, but she always had positive role models around me. They’d be in there talking about things that were going on like with Maurice Bishop and she’d always have WBAI [99.5 FM, NYC public radio] on. Politics were always around me so all that plays a part into it. As punishment, I was forced to read books like 2000 Seasons and Manchild in the Promise Land. Life is politics anyway and it’s gonna come out in my music cause it’s gonna come out in my conversation.

So your parents were both Muslim?
Yes, but my pops got killed cause he was a Muslim turned drug dealer. He was basically in my situation where I am, at this exact time. He said, “Yo I’m gonna be a drug king pin.” He had a good run, but all things come to an end.

There have been a number of artists coming out in hip-hop and talking about organizing politically. What is your take on the state of the hip-hop community’s ability to organize together on a social and political platform?
I think especially in New York everybody’s on some piranha shit. That’s why I love Nas when he said, “ Hungry ass hooligans stay on that piranha shit.” Cats don’t have that love in they self first of all. When you got a thousand MCs in the crowd looking at you and you nice, they still judging ‘cause you better than them. For that minute just be a fan and forget you an MC. Its like in the revolution, a lot of people don these outfits and the red black and green wristbands and shit. They talk all of that shit, but probably still got old issues going on in their own houses. You and your brother ain’t speaking three years. How you gonna be my comrade, and we strangers? Dead Prez is the most real example of that that I see, ‘cause they really live they politcs, they really active in it. I think a lot of artists just come out and use it as a platform to be different or because they can’t kick no shit as fly as Jay-Z. I could kick some shit on Jay-Z’s level and mash him out of the game. But that’s not the image I want to promote ‘cause I know what that does to the youth and the community. You gotta overthrow the government in yourself first. So before you topple the system, topple that bullshit that you on. Be real, say what you really mean and feel when you really feel it. Then we’ll make progress on a whole. And hip-hop , that’s just a sub genre of life that’s gonna keep evolving. That shit don’t even matter. Fuck hip-hop.

What do you mean by that?
I got a real phobia with names. Even naming an album. All that shit is really to distract you. I love hip-hop and it’s a dope name and that’s what it’s been, but like, yo, it’s either a part of you or it’s not. So be honest. I would never shit on hip-hop. I love the word, so personally I’m cool with that label but it’s a bunch of labels that gotta go away cause it’s just bullshit.

How important do you think it is that MC’s be responsible about their lyricism?
I think it’s real important for them to be responsible because these albums are the new Bibles. When cats is putting out this shit that’s fake, they know it’s wrong. They feel it in their stomachs. They’re like, “This is a lie. I can’t play this shit for my moms. I can’t play this for my children. I don’t want them listening to this. I’m gonna do it to get this money.” I know it sounds corny and cliché, but that removes your soul. So being that these shits is Bibles, I’d like to make my Bible real so that when my son reads it or anybody reads it, they can get a sense of the times; where we was out, what we was doing. Then I’m connecting it to real life.

You talk a lot about spirituality. How does that figure into your music and your life?
I believe that spirit is energy and the energy is just traveling in an unseen form. You can’t see your intuitive form, but you can feel it. When I got shot, something was like, “Yo don’t go around the corner dog,” but I didn’t listen to my mind and it was like “Boom, boom, shot, shot, shot!” The other time I got shot the shit was like, “Yo, stop arguing with this girl and go in the house. If she wants to stay here, fine. If she wants to follow me, fine. But it’s like 12 o’clock. We’re outside arguing. It’s loud. Chill.” I didn’t listen to my intuition and somebody came from the window and was like, “Pop!” I had to stay in the hospital for a week for the first one. The second one went straight through my leg.

How did you get involved with Def Jux?
Def Jux is family. Canibal Ox and me go way back. Just ciphers. I was on Ox’s album, Aesop Rock’s album and El-P’s album. Me and El-P have been friends for years. My music didn’t have any real direction before. I was putting out singles. It was song for song to pay my rent. In 2002 I think I dropped like eight singles. El-P stepped to me in September of last year and was like, “Yo we gotta make something happen.” That’s why now C Rayz is trying to be the best father I could be to my son and give him good support. Now I’m trying to become Ravipops. I was a man before, but now I’m somebody’s father. I was wild running around, and I gotta be there to support my son. I can’t be doin’ no singles. I’m growing with it. I’m still growing.

There seems to be some repetition of themes in hip-hop these days. What would you say are some experiences you’ve had that make your story a unique one?
There’s a couple. You know I used to be a stick up kid. I used to love doing it. I had a good run. Towards the end of my career, me and my OGs was gonna hit an armored truck, but you gotta kill armored guards to do that ‘cause they got guns, so there’s no other way to get them unless somebody that’s working with them tips you off. If you live after robbing an armored truck, that means you’re working for them or you’re gonna get caught up on some crazy shit. You gotta bust, you gotta shoot. You have to murder them. I didn’t want to kill nobody. I was feeling spiritual and I don’t know why. I went to my aunt who deals with the spooks and spirits and said, “I’m about to rob this armored truck yo. There’s some real cake and we got the plan and we got everything ready.” She goes, “Yeah you all ready? You got it?” She’s gangsta like that. I can’t tell my mother that, but my aunt gangsta like that. She was like, “Yo but it’s near the date of your father’s murder.” I was like, “Word?” We had planned to do it on the week prior to the year mark of his death. I was feeling like if I did that shit that I was gonna get murdered or I was gonna be doing life. I was like “Nah, I ain’t killing no one.”

So how’d you call it off?
I just told them. I was the main man since they had both already done like ten years. If they got caught, they would go back for life, so they left me in charge of the poppin’ off. I told them that I went to my aunt, what she said, and that I had decided to do this rap shit. They knew my pops was a gangsta for real and that I had to get out of the game. I was robbin’ big shit when I was fifteen. Like stores. Not like bodegas in the hood, but chain stores.

You ever get caught?
No I never got caught because the angels was with me. And I never had to shoot nobody either, everybody cooperated. It was all places where I didn’t really hurt nobody. Soon, like two weeks after that, my man got locked up for five years. Also earlier that year my man Dougie got murdered. On the same night I had to do a show I found out. That was a turning point for me.

If you weren’t rhyming, what other type of art do you think you’d be doing now?
I’d be painting, I’d be a visualist. I studied architecture when I was young so –

Didn’t you go to the High School of Art and Design in Manhattan?
Yeah it only lasted a year though, a year of terrorism. The entrance test is ill. They do shit like give you a page with two solid black horizontal lines and you gotta make a picture out of it. So I made a dude with a polo shirt slinging a gun. I tried to give niggas signs. I made a double cheeseburger with a roach in the middle, with worm lettuce. I got in that shit though. For the first three months I was focused. Then I met one of my brothers and we started robbin’ the whole school. Prodigy and Havoc (Mobb Deep) was in there. They was our right hand mans. That was the top of the food chain in the school. We were smashing the school out, stealing everything. I had just come from juvenile jail too.

When did you decide to completely cut crime out of your life?
In ’97 I did my last stick up.

What producers are you working with on this album?
Belief, DJ Sean One, Etch A Sketch, Steelo, 4th Pyramid, Wally What and others.

What are your plans for the future?
I just plan on growing. Definitely 360 to a 720, 1440. Just keep it going. I would like to add on and build. We gonna’ drop off the wall to Walz. Listen to that album for real. Try to hear things that you don’t hear. After you hear it, then listen to it. I would like to let them know like they say in Philly, “That’s ’Sup.”