How B-Real Handled Becoming Famous | Joe Rogan

So when you first start rapping, like you rapping with kids in your neighborhood, are you like aspiring to be a rapper and writing shit down and trying things on your friends? Like how do you get started? Well the way that I started I was writing you know like poetry first. Really? Yeah. Like what kind of poetry? Just like you know like hood stuff you know just stuff that rhymed but like just sort of writing it down. Like it was almost like writing raps but it's just you know it's without saying it right because you read it and shit like that and whatever but I would just write poetry about you know everyday shit. You know what I mean? Nothing you know it wasn't like doing like the I don't know if there's like categories of poetry but you know it was just stuff that would happen from day to day you know. And I had a knack for writing and I realized that and I always wanted to be a journalist. That's you know what the thing that I thought I was going to be at school right. Do you write now? I was for a while but I looked at it. What kind of stuff? Just again everyday stuff or you know I'd like randomly pick something to write about. So if it was about the cannabis industry I'd write something about that. If it was about the music industry I'd write something about that. Every now and then I would there was a back in the early 2000s there was a magazine called Industry Insider Magazine and occasionally I would write articles for that. I wasn't really that great because you know I was so spotty in school that you know my you know it needed work you know but they left it raw the way that I would put it out there and people got my point and that was cool. I looked at it in the way that the music that I've done in a lot of the songs serve as a certain form of journalism for me. You know like bringing up certain issues that people don't necessarily hear like throw your set in the air is a song on Tebbles Boom and it's a song about how you would get you know inducted into a gang. How you get put into a gang. How you fall into it. And some people might think you know by hearing it that it was glorifying it and praising it but it wasn't. It was basically this is how it is. This is so you know the signs to look for if your kids are you know fucking around with the wrong people you know and that's you know I took it like okay you know maybe I'm not a journalist like I intended to be but this is my way of it. You know I can enlighten people with certain things and you know like anything somebody's going to read something or hear something and maybe misinterpret what you say but you know it's all about who's listening and who's reading and who's watching and stuff like that and their interpretation of it. Some get it some don't and that's just the nature of it but like most people get it and I've come across people that have come to me and come and said hey man your songs on Temple of Boom man you know they helped to get me through these times or these songs raised me they taught me this and that. That's awesome. And to me you know that's the impact right there. That's the shit that means more than anything. Right because I'm sure you remember songs that got you through right? Oh yeah for sure you know those songs from KRS 1 and Public Enemy that you know got me through and fired me up you know and inspired and stuff like that. KRS 1 is another one people forget about man I'll be in my car just going boop boop that's the sound of the police. Yeah I mean he taught me how to be a bullhorn you know what I mean like tell you know like tell the truth you know your truth get the word out and not be fearful of what might happen because he could have been one of the biggest stars in hip hop. He chose not to be. He chose to be a voice and sometimes in being that voice you know you get objects put in front of you and certain opportunities don't you know get put on your table because. He says some great shit man he's talking about getting mad at the president it's like being mad at the manager at McDonald's. Yeah. You know for the way the corporation's being run. Yeah it's it's he he is very insightful in the shit that he says and he is very unafraid to state it and state his opinion. For you to get like people coming up to you when they first started coming up to you telling you that your music got them through things that it means so much to them when that first start happening that must have been surreal. You know yeah it could because as an artist as especially as a young artist you that's not something you think about all of these songs are going to well it depends on on the artist you are right. You guys hit how old were you like 23 or something like that how old were you when. I was like we released in 91 and it really started going for us in 92 so I was 22. You're a kid. Yeah. That's so crazy. There goes the baby fro. Wow. Wow. Look at the baby fro. Yeah. But I mean think about that man that is so crazy for you to go from the guy who yo MTV raps. Yeah. Who remembers that. I did a bungee jump at this spring break with Tretch from Naughty by Nature. Was that the one that was in Cancun? No that was Daytona Beach right there. Oh okay. When MTV was still when MTV was still allowed over there. Back when MTV had music. Yeah when they had music format. MTV was MTV was music videos. Yeah. Good luck finding a fucking music video now. I guess they still have. You got to go to YouTube. Yeah exactly yeah. Wow that's wild. What was it like when it first started popping off and you were 22 years old. Did it feel real? It was a crazy thing because it's not something that I had ever envisioned happening. I didn't think that the music would blow up like that. We were doing it to obviously try and make a name for ourselves and make music that people like but fuck we didn't see that coming at all. Especially with Insane in the Brain when they told me when Killer Man started going it was like surreal because we didn't think that song would take just because of the chorus itself. Fuck what the song is about. We knew that the chorus was what they were going to hear more than anything. We thought we were going to have a good underground album. We didn't realize it would blow up. We didn't think they were going to put Killer Man in the Juice movie and that would blow that song up even more so than it was getting. Because we had released Funky Phil ones first and it was a double A side single, Funky Phil One and Killer Man on the other A side. Which means at that time the DJs had the option of which song they wanted to go. Whereas most of the time you had an A side, B side and the A side is most definitely the one that the record company wants you to push. We gave it a double A side because we thought maybe the DJs would like Killer Man more. They went with Funky Phil One, the record company because they figured it would be easier to market. Then the DJs started flipping the record. We started getting traction behind that. Our record was out like six months, had dropped off the chart and they flipped the record. Our shit slowly starts to go back up the chart. We got back on the chart and started climbing. We were getting a whole lot of mix show play. Then we started doing a lot of promotional shows, that being one of them. It started going and Killer Man started getting us going. We toured for probably a year and a half. Just a lot of promotional shows not getting paid. Sony having us out there promoting the record. By the time our record got back up into the middle of the chart. It was still rising and they saw that. We got to get them off the road in making a new record. That's when we got out there with Black Sunday. With Black Sunday and Insane coming out, again, that's not a song I thought would blow up when they chose that for the single. I'm like, all right, there's better songs, but fuck it. That's the one. It comes out, boom, it explodes. Now we have our Black Sunday charting at number one coming in. Our first album had come all the way from the bottom to hit number five. We had two albums in the top 10 of the 200 songs on the chart, which no one had ever done in hip hop before. We had one in five slot. We definitely didn't think that was going to happen. It was all a surprise. It went from one minute you could go to a mall and be unassuming and nobody even knows who the fuck you are. You're getting about your day to now you go to the mall and the whole fucking mall is swarming on you like fucking you're like Paul McCartney or something. It was the craziest shit. They would ask us to leave the malls. Really? Yeah. I used to go to this one called the Montebello. It was in Montebello. I can't remember what the name of the mall was, but it was in Montebello, the only one down there at the time. We knew everybody there as we're coming up because that's where we'd go shop. You make friends and people in the shop and stuff like that. When we come back off a tour this time and try to go to that mall, one of our friends fucked up and wore a Cypress Hill jacket. That's like a fucking billboard when you're standing next to one of us. Before you know it, boom, we get swooped. It was a pre-cell phone too. The mall security goes, hey man, I know it's fucked up but you guys got to go. Really? It's like, yeah man, it's a commotion. You guys got to go. They're telling me. They think someone's going to fight. I'm like, all right. I never went back to that mall after that. I was like, yeah, all right. Cool. Because, one, I didn't want to cause them problems. Two, now it was tough to go somewhere at that time and not get swarmed. Not get swarmed, yeah. It was quite an experience, man, because you only ever hear about it till it happens. If you have friends in the industry and it's happening for them, you might see it indirectly through their shit. We had friends in the business. Kid Frost was one of my friends before we got out there. Is he still around? Yeah, yeah, he still does stuff. I don't know if he's putting out so much new music these days, but he's still here and there. He's doing some of the cannabis industry stuff too, because he's a big connoisseur. I got to tell you, my man used to smoke like a train, man. Him and I would trade joints off left and right. But for a time, I would go hang with him at his gigs. I'd be his bodyguard, because I was the one that was not afraid to carry the hammer, meaning the Magnum in my waistline. We were cowboys, man. We were always armed at that time, from 89 to probably 97 or 98. We were holding pistols on our hip like cowboys, and he knew that. He would ask me to go to the gigs, double as his bodyguard. I wasn't his bodyguard, but I was his bodyguard. You know what I mean? Right, right. I'd see the way he handled it, and I'd see the way people crowded around him. I learned how to deal with it, watching how he would do it in a negative way or a positive way. He would sometimes embrace the crowd, sometimes he's like, fuck off me. Like a lot of artists are. That sort of prepared me so that when we got in our lane, I knew how to sort of deal with it. I was always courteous and cool and respectful and never the guy that was like, nah, man, fuck that. Get out of here. Because I see it, and some of my homies were like that. I hated the feeling that when the fans would walk away, just totally fucking wind out of their sails and shit like that. Now they don't like this artist ever again. I saw that, and I never wanted to have anyone walk away with that experience. I always embraced it, even when it was a pain in the ass.