I remember first listening to "Bucktown" back in the 90's when I was in 8th grade. That was one of the joints that made me truly love this culture we call Hip Hop. At the time, that song spoke to rugged nature of the borough that KRS-One described for "taking it" and it definitely one of Hip Hop's greatest songs.

Well General Steele, one half of Smif-N-Wessun, the duo that put that song out is back and he's bringing y'all back to Bucktown, with his new album "Welcome To Bucktown" (out now) and actually went to the original "Bucktown", the blaxploitation flick from the 70's starring Fred Williamson for some guidance.

I recently spoke with General Steele and we spoke on the project, the next Smif-N-Wessun project, living up to his own legend and keeping it together with his PNC Tek. So General Steele is gonna welcome you to Bucktown, and he will be your guide as well.

The9elements: From what I've read about this album, the inspiration for it came from the movie "Bucktown". What was it about the movie that made you want to make an album that centered around it?

General Steele: The soundtrack is not solely inspired by the movie but I would say to clear it up, the movie re-inspired the mission to make the album. The motive to make the album was already preconceived before the album actually started to be worked on. It was at a time where it was not really together.

T9E: Oh aight.

GS: But the movie aspect just added on to the fact that "alright, you could put music into a sequence where it tells a story". So when I looked at the movie, I was like "wow, we pretty much do that when we make albums". But we don't look at it that way when we do make albums. When we make albums, we get into the "yo I need a hot beat, who can I call, who's the hottest artist, who's the hottest rapper, who's the hottest producer right now", it gets to the point where it's not your fuckin' song anymore (laughs).

But when you look at a vision, a movie per say because that's the easiest way or Television show, whatever. But when you look at visuals, which you could see why the game is going to such a visual expansion right now, it gives you perspective of what idea the individual had when they were creating. Sometimes you don't get it automatically when you listen to the song. A video or visual or even if it's me on the TV saying, "yo the album is by woo woo" and now you're watching me and now you're seeing my energy of how I'm comin' with it.

Anyway, the movie was out and because I'm a blaxploitation movie freak, this movie happened to come into my circumference after a certain single that me and my partner in crime Tek from Smif-N-Wessun made in '94. We put out a song called "Bucktown" in '94. We totally did not know that there was a movie out there called "Bucktown".

T9E: Wow.

GS: When we saw that movie, we was blown. So we young dudes and we travellin'. We see the movie and one word to describe like you said was "WOW"! (laughs). So it just made it seem like it was more esoteric than anything. I mean we kids from the hood. I'm from Brownsville, my partner is from Bed Stuy. So we didn't sit here and come up with no major masterplan. So when we said Brooklyn was Bucktown, we thought we made that shit up.

T9E: (Laughs)

GS: So as we travel around we're like, "wow, there's Bucktown everywhere". We ain't tryna say that we run everything everywhere. But you know what there's people like us everywhere.

T9E: True.

GS: But when we come back now and say, "Welcome To Bucktown" because after we done seen the movie and after we done seen the illustrations in the movie or the documentations, I say documentations because a lot of shit in the movie was real shit. A lot of movies be real stuff and a lot of music be real stuff. So it was just perfect, all praise due to the most high that it came to fruition like that.

Also when you get into who was on the actual album then you see why when you go back to when we put out the song "Bucktown" when that song came out, it was a particular time frame or zone so to speak and in that zone only a certain particular individual can really move around in the streets regularly like that. So that's what Bucktown means, the strong survive. Like to be out here you have to be that type of individual who was determined or who was patient enough or who was obedient enough in certain situations and put themselves in a predicament to prosper or to move on and to feed the family.

So it's important when you look at the album or hear the album, it speaks about or con notates that. We're not gonna preach to you "oh let's get the family together", we're just gonna make you feel what you're supposed to feel. So you can walk off and know what you gotta do and that's to go feed the babies. Or when you listen to this song, you'll know that what you gotta do is when police stop you, you carry yourself a certain way. Or when you you listen to another song, you gon' know that when certain homies say certain things, you gotta watch them a little bit more because they might not mean what they say.

But we're not telling you "yo watch this nigga blah blah blah", but we're giving you a scenario. Like "guess what happened, "Dah Shinin'" woo woo woo" so all the artists that's on here, put you in that zone. That's why I didn't put all the Boot Camp artists together. That would've been to ya know (laughs). I had to spread them cats out a bit. I know where I could put Ruck and Rock together, but not on the "Welcome to Bucktown" album. There would've been too much goin' on with that one.

T9E: Aight, even though you didn't copy the film or soundtrack per say, the production however had a real 70's feel to it. Being that I know you had major input on this album, was the 70's feel important in regards to the production?

GS: Very important because I knew when I said "Bucktown", people were gonna be looking for the hardcore boom bap beats. Like that "Bucktown, we kill niggas, rock Timbalands, smoke weed, kick your moms in the face", I knew they would be looking for that. But we like, "that's not what Bucktown is baby". We gotta know that where we live at is not like that all the time. So I wanted to create something that we can, you know when you go to a family reunion. It's a re-union. Re is a prefix nahmean. And Union is a word. You know what Union means. So you gotta re get with these niggas. We gotta re-union, we gotta re-member, or re-mind. So for me, this is what has to be done. I grew up in the 70's. My moms and pops grew up in the 60's and early 70's. So for me, all the music that we rhyme to now is kinda sampled from the 70's.

T9E: True.

GS: So when we listen to it, we like vibin' and we don't even know what we vibin' on. "That's Curtis Mayfield right there. That's Barry White baby", rest in peace to both of them. So you gotta know that you can't...I'm not gonna let them die no way. I'm not gonna just rap to they beats. I'm gon' let people know that if there's a hell below, then we all gon go. I'm a let em know that, nahm sayin'. But I'm a let em know that Otis Redding and artists like James Brown were people who were putting artists on. Musicians, singers. Smokey Robinson, Quincy Jones. These cats are monumental to what we doin'.

We cannot seperate our culture, we cannot. It's a music culture. It's not a Hip Hop culture, it's a music culture. But when you go to a rock show, you may see cats rappin' to Rock&Roll or Heavy Metal tunes. To them they may be like, "we do this already", but us, we'll be like, "we do this."

But who does that remind you of? "WALK THIS WAY, TALK THIS WAY!" That's RUN-DMC nahm sayin' and they in the Rock&Roll Hall Of Fame nahm sayin'. Holla back (laughs).

Come on baby we got work to do here. But when I put out a "Welcome To Bucktown", I'm tryna to re-mind you that we are of greatness. So we got nothing flowing in our blood but to do good. We gon' get that because we have to reminded of where you don't wanna be at. So we do the good because we know that we have babies coming behind us. We got the youngins' comin' behind us.

So I'm a go, I don't know what you're next question is but I'm a skip and say that the state of the game now, we watchin' these cats comin' up now and we like "how they comin', what are they bringing to the game.

I mean there's a lot of cats in Brooklyn, I'm a start with Brooklyn cause that's my hometown. Big up to Fabolous, big up to Uncle Murda, big up to Maino. There's a lot of cats that I'm not remembering right now but big up to all of them. We got a lot of work to do. All of em, all of us we got a lot of work to do. We got a lot of work to live up to the Big Daddy Kanes and the B.I.G.s, we got a lot to do.

It's good though. It's good that we got work to do because if we had no work to do and we was just sittin' around, I don't think it would be a good place to live. Everybody would get restless.

T9E: One of my favorite joints off the album is "Find My Way". That joint is crazy smooth and it features Stormey Coleman who smashed his feature on this.

GS: Good looks on liking that one.

T9E: No doubt. How did y'all link up?

GS: Stormey's my brother. There was a movement goin' on a few years ago called the Million Youth March. I met Stormey at the "Million Youth March" through associations. He was working Khalid Muhammad.

T9E: WOW!

GS: Wow is right because when I was meeting him, I was like, "why is this little nigga wit Khalid Muhammad". I was already rappin'. I was tryna figure out why he was hangin' out wit' Khalid (laughs). Khalid was comin' through Brooklyn. Khalid was WHOO! G G G G'd up. Khalid riding through Brooklyn in a white big six (Mercedes) and Stormey drivin' it. I was like, "who is this little dude"?

He stepped out, he like, "yo I'm wit' the OG yo", he was just a soldier and I gravitated to him. One day he was in Brooklyn being a soldier doing his soldier thing and he was like, "I need a place to stay." That's where we started rockin'. I let him stay in my crib.

Everybody can't do that. Listen children, don't try this at home.

T9E: (Laughs)

GS: You just can't let people stay in your crib if you don't know them. You gotta be able to do that if you wanna do that. So I dunno. Both sides sent the kite through, next thing you know we was rockin'. We meet at the crib nah mean, I'm tryna see where he at wit' his, he tryna see where I'm at wit' mine. We was just kickin' it, we was choppin' it up about Bucktown. Mind you, I was already out there, so he was kinda a fan. But he was humble at the same time. We went through a lot of different circumstances together, and then we went on tour, we did a CD together, because he wanted to rhyme. This was before I knew he was on some rhymin' shit.

But once I learned that he wanted to rhyme, I had a little situation where I'm like, "aight I got a little studio and shit, we gon' rhyme a little bit", I ain't really believe he could rhyme.

T9E: (Laughs)

GS: If you gon' talk to me, you gotta be coming wit'...you gotta have that next thing. Like if I gotta sit here and train you, you gon' get it hard man. You gon' get it really tough from me. That's why big up to P Diddy. You know I know a lot of people don't like Puffy, but what he did with Da Band, that's how you supposed to do it. You wanna be in this thing? Then you cross that bridge and come back and I don't even believe you yet. If artists had to do that, then we'd filter this shit out real quick.

T9E: True.

GS: Nobody don't wanna get on no stage and realize that they gotta have breath control.

T9E: Word cause I don't know how many time I done heard some dude on stage and just sound like he ran a marathon and dude ain't start rhymin' yet.

GS: Word. Also a lot cats don't know that you gotta go in the studio and be swift with they tracks. You can't punch-in everything. You can just put an auto-tune on it. I mean even the homie T-Pain, T-Pain is nice without the auto-tune.

T9E: That's what cats don't realize.

GS: Big up to T-Pain, he's nice without that. Y'all heard the auto-tune and thought, "oh I could put auto-tune on that and I'm good." No, nah mean. So, the pioneers have a problem because you always make that mistake and not credit them, that's why big up to the Zulu Nation because I'm sure they wanna drop kick a lot of people. I mean we stole electricity, but y'all not even passin' it along. You like, "yo I got 50 on my wrist, 50 in my pocket and I'm a burn 100 on World Star."

Meanwhile kids in Mozambique are dyin' right now. Big up to Jay-Z. At least buy a water well, one. At least buy one, "I bought a water well in Africa, what y'all doin wit' y'all money, you guy just got a watch." I'm tryna get there, and if I can't get there, I'm gonna at least have the forum where we can have a united Hip Hop nation where if nobody else is doin' the things for us to get things done, then we doin' it for ourselves, which is in the vein of Tupac nah mean. One nation nah mean.

T9E: On top of Stormey, you had BCC, Blahzay Blahzay, The Smith Brothers (Smooth Tha Hustla & Trigga Tha Gambla), Shabaam Sahdeeq and Sha Stimuli for this album. Now according to you, they did this out of love and respect for you and the project. How satisfying is it for to be able to get those kind of features?

GS: For me to be able to get these artists on this album, it humbles me extremely. I sat in my crib and I was wondering to myself if I would get answers to the phone calls. Yeah Smif-N-Wessun from you know...Brooklyn, Duck Down background whatever like, it still has to be something that makes us connect with each other. So when you hear a Boot Camp cat say "connects a connect". Sometimes our connects don't link up, so I have to give credit to the most high and I give credit to my team of comrades, big up to Cynical Smith, Manteka Music, my moms.

My moms would just sit here and we'd just go over and over and over, and I'll be here ready to just jump out the window, I'm serious. I'm like, "you know what, this rap shit sucks yo, I'm out", and she'll be like, "what are you talkin' about, somebody just told me 'Yo, your son is dope'". Then I'm like, "aight I owe these cats," nah mean. I can't bring them this far and then be like, "Yo, I'm out", like how you gon' do that, how you just gon' give up? Ride it out, just ride it out man. If you get on The Cyclone, there's no way you gon' get off The Cyclone before it stops, unless you just jump off that shit and kill yourself.

You jump off the ride that you on right now, that's what's gonna happen to you, you gon' kill yourself. So just ride it out. Ride it out till it stops, till they pull that brake off you, and once you get off, if that ride wasn't for you don't get back on that shit. Unless you like me or Sean Price like, "ONE MORE TIME! WHOOOOOOO YEEEAH! LET'S GOO!" We back on it baby, we love this ride man.

You gotta love this ride man. You got to, and now you got the information age. We can do whatever we want to do. But now, the light comes on because some of us don't know what the hell we wanna do. Which is why being with Duck Down and Boot Camp feels great because we done been workin' on this ever since of what we wanna do. So now we get to a point where we know what we wanna do, and now in a position to actually do it. We don't have the extreme overhead, of the last 3 major labels. But we the #1 independent label.

T9E: True. Y'all definitely been doin' it this year.

GS: Don't forget the year before that. Sean Price is on his third album, he's on his Heltah Skeltah album. All of Sean Price's albums have been successful. "Jesus Price Superstar" was successful, "Monkey Barz" was successful. "Monkey Barz" made everybody else realize that we not finished yet.

"Monkey Barz" made Smif-N-Wessun a "Smif-N-Wessun: The Album". That's why I'm sayin', it's important for the team to be one they thing. I mean you could say, "Yo I'm just doin' me" but what does that mean?

T9E: Exactly.

GS: You doin' you, you gotta make sure that "doin' you" means that all of us can get outta this shit. Because if you "doin' you" all day long and I'm tied up to you, then you ain't goin' nowhere baby. Buckshot is theoretically the leader of the Boot Camp. He's still in the same concrete slab as us, but the respect that he has in the game, none of us have. He has the ultimate respect in the game because of his continuity and his consistency. Like, he don't have no drama, with nobody. For what? Cause he said he smashed somebody chick, we ain't even gon' get into that (laughs). I'll let you interview him on that one.

T9E: (Laughs)

GS: But for the most part, what is it about? Murder and music don't mix. Cause if you doin' murder music, you gotta make it meaningful. You gotta make murder music meaningful. Or Maybach Music. I know how that sounds, everybody wanna be in a drop top, poppin through wit' blunts and weed nah mean. Everybody wanna be able to last in the hood, they wanna be tough like Jada. Big up to Jadakiss and The LOX, Jada been consistent and goin' through it, but he still can be Jada.

He got a video of him walking through HOT97. That's like, "this my home". I mean how much iller can it get as an artist. We have to be creative as an artist. So when I say "Welcome To Bucktown", this is my home. If I got cats that are sayin', "Bucktown, Brooklyn yeah", but me and Tek came through and we added on to that. So if cats is recognizing, they cosigning the shit that we said, like everybody speakin' the "thun lingo" like P said. We gotta know that this our thing, this Hip Hop, our la costra nostra right here.

But if you adding on then you good, you gon' have a great spot. But if you ain't you already know what happens to cats like that, concrete bed slab for you.

T9E: Even though you got quality features for this album, it's rare to impossible to get everything absolutely perfect. Were there any artists or producers that you couldn't get on board for this?

GS: Absolutely, you already know. I reached out to a couple of people. I reached out to Beatminerz first. They was talking, "I'm busy, I'm busy but I got you though". Meanwhile I got eight nigga, "nigga if you got me, you better come on in wit' it now". I wasn't waiting for no one or nobody to be like, "if I could just reach my utility belt", nah. We movin' baby, we gon' make it happen however we gotta do cause we live off the land like Johnny Rambo.

But in your heart, you know that you do not want it to go down like that because it will not make you happy. When I got Beatminerz on that album, I was good. I ain't need nothin' else. I could tell you about the artists that I reached out to and some of the artists that actually came to record a track for me, but because of time restraints, it didn't work out like that. But for the most part, it came out exactly how it needed to come out.

I promise you man, I was listening to tracks and I was like, "I need Buckshot on this track". I sat Buck down because Buck was doin' his thing, he was on the move. That's my P-N-C but he was on the move, touring with Black Moon and 9th Wonder and all kinds of craziness, so I couldn't get him, and he was doin' the thing with KRS.

So I had to sit him down and paint a picture to him. I'm like, "Yo Buck, listen this our thing. We celebrating Bucktown." He was like, "aight aight". I just presented it to him a certain way and he was like, "word word" (Laughs).

T9E: I heard recently that the next Smif-N-Wessun will be produced entirely by Pete Rock. With albums rarely being produced by one producer anymore, how did this concept come about?

GS: It's just time for albums to be albums and not compilations. Cats be doin' albums and they say that they're albums, but its not an album if you have 12 features on your album and there are only 15 songs on your album. Smif-N-Wessun put an album out back in '95 and the only feature that was on there was their family.

So what it did was give you a chance to know who Smif-N-Wessun was. So what's real is that for me, I'm grateful to know that people let me into this room because of that album, because if I didn't let you know what I was, if I didn't show my credentials I still probably be outside trying to get in.

But I charge up rappers comin' out now, even R&B artists like, do your album. Get a couple of features, maybe one or two but for the most part, do your album. Let us know who you are. Before we start seeing how you sound with this guy and sound with this female and this person or that person. We don't know you.

From that comes what we call a "microwave age". Everything quick, everything is pre-packaged. Put it in for 5 minutes and you good. We like soul food. Not that fuckin' bullshit they play on BET. We don't watch that shit. Original Soul Food was a classic, but that other shit? "BET clean your act up aight", and you can quote me on that nah mean. Clean your act up, I'm goin' on wit' homie that made "The Boondocks".

T9E: Aaron McGruder.

GS: Yeah.

T9E: With classic material under your belt, how hard is it as an artist to constantly be judged against it? Because no matter what y'all do, there will be people that will say, "their new shit is cool but its not as good as 'Dah Shinin'".

GS: It's very hard man, but I know that what got me here in the first place, is what's gonna keep me here for the long run. I don't trip off of it and I look at it like a facial wash. If anybody would say anything about you, whether good or bad, they payin' attention. They noticin' that you're doing a certain type of job. But if they say something good, then get that facial wash you know. Get that first layer off and just come back fresh.

You still there, you ain't gone nowhere. You just gotta get the dirt off. Get the dead skin so to speak. I love it, I can't go nowhere and not here about "Dah Shinin'", but I can't be mad at that. No way. Of course I want people to be like, "Yo 'Smif-N-Wessun: The Album', yo that PNC song, yo that Smif-N-Wessun 'Reloaded' album, that 'Rude Awakening' album, Yo!" I want them to say that, but they'll say that in due time.

They don't know it's all together. Some people like that "Black Trump" that off "Rude Awakening". Some people liked "Dah Shinin'". "Dah Shinin'" is a given, all praises due to The Most High. People liked all kind of songs on there. "Rude Awakening", you might hear 2 off of there. Then "Reloaded" you might be like, "Yo I liked that dead prez joint with y'all." Then on "The Album" they might like "Stomp Thru", which is dope because if you're giving them an album worth of stuff, that means the people see that and after a certain time they say, "aight, lemme sit wit' this", then they gonna get it, and what's crazy is that Smif-N-Wessun, we had an average of three years between each album.

T9E: Word.

GS: If it was more than that, I guess it was for our own purpose of making sure we ready to go and understanding what the situation is. It's crazy you know, but it works, because if we wit' the same family man, that do mean a lot.

T9E: You and Tek have been making music for about 15 years give or take. In that time, Tribe broke up, Wu-Tang has had their beefs made public, y'all battled a gun company in order to keep your name, which y'all ended up getting back. Through it all, how have y'all been able to continue to keep it together while making music that's still fresh and creative?

GS: I'm from Bronsville man. Tek is from Bed Stuy. We don't know about no silver linings and all that. So everything we get, we had to work for. When we first started, what people don't know is that Tek, my brother, his real name is Tekoleman. So Tek is his real name. That's not just some rap name.

T9E: Oh shit. That's wassup.

GS: Now Tekoleman's father was in a band, I don't remember the name of the band but they be jammin' every now and then, but his father played instruments and he didn't have a real relationship with his pops. So when we came with the rap stuff, whenever we was over there, we was tryna use his pops information, but he wouldn't give it to us because he ain't think that it was real. He was like, "oh y'all doin' that rap shit, I don't know what y'all doin'".

So when I go see his pops now, I ain't never seen his pops smile so hard man, when he see us now. Nah mean, we ain't pullin' up in crazy cars, we done did Lexus, Benz and Beams and all that though. We still got a lot of climbing to do you know. But at the same time, we went from not being understood to being understood to at least the point where we can have a barbecue together. At the barbecue, we can see where we gon' go.

That's what Hip Hop is about man. Big up to Serch, big up to NaS, big up to Large Pro. We live at the barbecue wit' it. We gon' cook up at the barbecue and we gon see what we can chef up. Some people eat beef, some people eat pork...still nah mean. I don't personally. Some people eat hamburgers still. We just gotta know how to chef it up for the people because all of us are good, all of us are gold.