CELEBRITY -- Kool G Rap Reflects On Selling Crack Before Turning To Hip-Hop

Kool G Rap, one of the early pioneers of the mafioso rap style that was adopted by rappers like The Notorious B.I.G., Nas, Jay-Z, and Raekwon, says he does not take pride in any of the real-life criminal activity he engaged in before embracing a career as an emcee. “I was never proud to participate in any of the street activities that I was involved in that I did back then,” Kool G Rap tells the Village Voice. “This is why when Eric B introduced me to DJ Polo, and the first time Polo took me to Marley [Marl's] house, I never went back to the block again to continue what I was doing.”
Kool G admits that he used to sell crack out of a Brooklyn Key Food store and an East Elmhurst motel when he was a teenager, but the Queens native feels that the drug dealer lifestyle is not one that should be glorified.
He takes particular aim at current emcees who he feels inappropriately sells the image of dealing drugs as a badge of honor.
“You get the rappers that brag about it and things like that, because we live in the day where the music scene and the records are cool when the artists are saying that, ‘I sold this and that, I flipped this into that,’ but they get that from us, the cats from my era… I was talking about things that were going on but I wasn’t really glorifying that. I was just saying what I was doing cause I was caught up in the street life, and I was doing this to put money in my pocket.”