Late afternoon before Independence Day. It’s ass-hot outside. Inside it’s like the seventh circle of Hell. The overplayed refrain of Nelly’s current chartbuster would’ve been prophetic and perfectly fitting for what was about to jump off inside the four-hundred degree hot Green Room of New York City’s Hammerstein Ballroom had it not been for the latest street heater, “You Don’t Really Want It” from KRS-ONE’s “Prophets Versus Profits,” a thirteen track heat-seeker strictly for the streets that was put together with the assistance of longtime associate Mad Lion. Shaking down the sound system and beating at the doors to the interview while construction crews loaded in pyrotechnics for that evening’s pre-fourth of July trunk full of funkfest featuring the Blastmaster himself.

“I’m not attacking, I’m defending,” toweling down his face, stressing to the circle of reporters and infrared camera beams sucking up every atom of oxgen hanging in the air, dangling on every word, that this isn’t a confrontation of his own choosing. “When people hear my response, they gonna say, Kris is picking on Nelly. That’s why I did a thirteen-track piece that explains my whole point of view.” His “whole point of view,” he elaborates, goes far beyond Nelly and takes aim at the recording industry. “The issue is about the commercialization of a culture. When I see corporations ripping off my culture, my people, I’m gonna sit back and just say, I want to concentrate on the music?”

That said, and knowing his tenacity in hyperalliterative combat, he doesn’t stray far from his first target in the food chain. “To me it’s so obvious. If you don’t have street credibility, you don’t sell records. You can sell records on the hype of being a street credible person but when you go to St. Louis they say, Nelly don’t represent us!” The more he perspires (he’s filling buckets beneath his dreads), the more some of the lyrics of his heyday come back to me in the form of a heat-induced hallucination particularly, “I take this rap shit too seriously!”

By his own admission, Kris has had three major battles in his long, prolific career