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Loaded Questions with Bun B :: Hip-hop’s most technically sound rapper sounds off on the world at large

By Rob Heppler   Photography by Mike Bertino

02/19/08 :: URB 152

Who cares about politics? You think this country is just being run by one person? A president is just someone to blame when you’re not a millionaire after four years. So who is it this year? Will Hillary make you rich? Will McCain keep you out of military prison camps? Bun B seems like the only hip-hop artist that could possibly give any sort of intelligent insight on these topics.

URB: This is a crazy voting year. Do you know who you’re voting for and why?
Bun B: I don’t know. This is the first time where the whole thing is up for grabs since ‘52. We don’t have either the sitting president or the sitting vice president actually running, which is unique in itself and I think reflective of the state of an “up for grabs” country right now.

When you go back and look at all the sealed files and all these different shenanigans—Watergate, Kennedy’s connection to the mafia—everybody has some kind of bullshit going on, which usually the American people aren’t lucky enough to know who’s full of shit ‘till later. Now, it’s kinda crazy because, to a certain extent, everyone is full of shit. You have these candidates that are truly reflective of America, as far as a soundbyte goes. Hillary Clinton is a female candidate, but is she really reflective of the struggle of the American women today? I don’t think so. It’s the same for Barack Obama. I find it very hard to blindly vote for anyone right now without really studying what anyone is really about. I’m not too sure about Barack’s voting record. I kinda know a little bit about Hillary. The Mitts and the Huckabees, a lot of these guys are popping up out of the blue and a lot people from my part of America, or most of America for that matter, you really don’t know who these people are.

Everyone is really going out of their way to sell themselves to America right now, but of course they are not gonna sell themselves with the bad side. The American public doesn’t know who to trust. Everyone is looking at Hillary and Obama as these great instigators of change, and at the end of the day they’re already part of the political system that is tearing down America, so you don’t know how much “change” they can actually bring.

You’ve lived through a few wars now, were you ever tempted to go into the military, asked to go in, avoided going in?
Actually, in high school my friend Nolan Davis and I had every intention of going into the navy. Our senior year we were like, “Let’s go in the fuckin’ navy.” Just one day me and my homeboy were like fuck it. We went down there, took the test, did everything except take the oath. Then realized, I don’t want to join the fucking navy!!! They can’t make you go, they will make it seem like they can make you, but unless you committed up to a certain level, they can’t. They told us the only way we couldn’t go was if we got a scholarship, so we busted our ass trying to get any bullshit $500 scholarship and then I got a real scholarship...It was like, whoa.

Do you think religion has a functional role in politics?
I have no problem with a candidate having his faith intact, by all means. But I don’t want to live in America according to Mormon rule. I wouldn’t be excited about that, just as if this country was a Mormon majority and they tried to put a Baptist president in, or a Catholic. I think it’s good for a president to have a solid foundation in faith of some sort, but I would hate for his religion to define him so much that I would not be able to separate it. We have that problem now. We have a president that is doing things “in god’s way” or “for the sake of god.” He doesn’t sound any different than the radical Islamic extremist killing people in the name of God.

What Does Bun B’s stock portfolio look like?
It was pretty good, for a while. From 2003-2005, I was doing real good; I had to liquidate a lot of stuff, make some different moves. I invested a lot of that stuff into real estate. Now that I’m looking where a lot of things are going, shit is wide open. My investments and I, we don’t play. I tend to buy Wal-Mart during the holiday season. Utilities prior to the summer and the winter, ‘cause people are gonna use their AC in the summer, heat in the winter. That kinda shit’s not gonna change. I would not advise anyone to invest in real estate right now, unless they have capital. The market is starting to bottom out and you are in a perfect position to buy property like you never have been before. Because, whether or not the government wants to admit it, we are in a recession! Make no bones about it, the country is fucked up. It would be one thing if just the value of the American dollar was down worldwide, but the value of the “AMERICAN” is down worldwide. The public image of America, this land of prosperity where everything was all good has died with this administration.

We used to set the stage and the tone for all things cultural in this world—be it music, art fashion, television, anything—we set the standard. But now we’re taking our cue from other countries. We are dressing like the Japanese now. If you’re not dressing like the Japanese then you’re dressing like a fucking mod from London. You either have crazy colors in your outfit, or you’re wearing tight jeans and a dirty fucking t-shirt.