Vince Staples and Mac Miller spoke about White rappers with The FADER. The two rappers, who released the Stolen Youthmixtape in 2013, address the phenomenon of Eminem as one of the first White rappers to be critically acclaimed.
Mac Miller says that he could relate to the Detroit rapper, especially when he saw the “Real Slim Shady” video.
“I definitely had a moment of being a young White kid rapping every lyric in the mirror,” he says.
Staples says he didn’t share the same sentiment as Miller when he first heard Eminem. He remembers hearing a D12 song from the group’s 2001 album, Devil’s Night.
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“I ain’t really fuck with Eminem at first,” he says. “I saw ‘Purple Pills,’ and I was like, ‘What the fuck is these niggas doin’?’ But I didn’t really care about rapping. I was trying to hear some Ja Rule, like, ‘Nigga, where Ashanti at? Don’t nobody wanna hear you rappin’ about your momma.’ That’s how I was feeling in my younger days. Eminem was too aggressive for me.”
Staples says that there is a clear difference between White rappers and White people who rap.
“White rappers are corny,” he says. “White people that rap, it’s like, ‘Oh, that’s wassup. You white, you rap.'”
The Long Beach, California rapper says that he doesn’t mind having White people in Rap because he himself was influenced by White rappers.
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“Without the Beastie Boys, there’s no Vince Staples music,” he says. “So I don’t care about some White rapper shit. My music don’t sound like traditional Rap music in that sense. It’s not all Black people where I live at. It’s not all White people where I live at. Color has nothing to do with the socio-economic background. That’s a different conversation. Being in a certain social situation and being of a certain kind of class has nothing to do with what color you are.”
Mac Miller details some of the guilt he has felt for being mainstream-friendly and becoming quickly successful because of what he attributes to his color.
“I remember touring and doing shows, and I was the first Rap show ever in all these colleges,” he says. “Six thousand kids, and I’m the first Hip Hop show because I’m White-college-friendly. That was always a demon for me. It was hard to sit here and know that, because I was a White dude, I was able to sell easier and be more marketable. That wasn’t tight to me. I wanted to go through the same shit that everyone else did. But I did that shit, and that shit was huge for me. Recently, I’ve grown up. This is my job, and I’m going to do it. It used to be so difficult for me being a White rapper, but now, it doesn’t eat at me as much.”
For additional Vince Staples coverage, watch the following DX Daily:
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