We started off just making a few records.
It wasn't even about the money.
It wasn't about nothing but just making some records
that we like to do, and now, a movie 26 years later
with the saying "Straight Outta Compton,"
it's just, it's amazing.
Do you think that the the problems
that you were singing about that you were performing
and writing about when N.W.A. began are still around today?
Yeah, I mean, it's amazing.
They're still the same.
I mean, it still raised something
that's gonna always be around, but it's just now people,
'cause everybody got cell phones,
so now they can witness it.
Every day something new was popping up,
and it's just amazing.
The cops got body cams, car cams, and they still doing this.
I'm just like people in the back running away.
They're not a threat if they're running away.
I don't think they are,
not if they're shooting backwards or something,
but it's amazing it's still going on.
When you think back
to when N.W.A. was formed,
and you think back to what you were writing about,
what was the source of the anger toward police at the time?
I mean, the source was outside our front door.
You can't even walk down the street
or just drive in a car with two or three people.
You know, black.
You're gonna get harassed.
You're gonna get pulled over.
We in front of the studio and "get on the ground,"
like we're not supposed to be in Torrance,
'cause our studio was in Torrance,
so if we go to the store right down the street,
we're gettin' harassed, all the time, and it's just, why?
That's our anger.
It's just like, why are you messing with us?
Were you surprised
when you started 26 years ago
that you really hit a nerve with people,
and you spoke to their anger as well?
I mean, we was really surprised,
especially when we got the letter from the FBI.
I'm like, wow, we really did something.
What was the letter from the FBI?
It was saying about we incite violence against the police
or something like that, but then what happened
was another agency sent them a letter.
"You can't tell us."
"It's our rights, we can say what we want."
We ain't saying go on out, kill cops.
No, that was not our message.
Our message was just what they was doing to us.
What do those words say to you
when you listen to them?
It just says we're tired of the BS.
You've been harassing and beating on us
for so long for no reason.
I see if we was doing some kind of crime
but we ain't been doing nothing, and a lot of times,
back in the day in the ghetto, they weren't doing nothing.
When you look at the stuff now, the people,
some of 'em may do a little something,
but you got to shoot him eight times in the back?
I'm like, come on.
I mean, I just don't get it.
I don't know what's going on.
It just seems like it's just building up for something.
I don't know what.
Do you have kids?
Yeah.
As a parent,
we always want our kids to have a better life.
Yeah.
Does it make you sad to think
that your kids could experience some
of the very same issues that you experience?
Oh, yeah.
I mean, it's even closer,
so the best advice is do what they ask.
They say stand on one leg, stand on one leg.
It's that simple.
You'd be embarrassed for a minute,
but you get to walk away and go home.
That's what the key is.
The music world is numb today,
stunned by the violent death
of gangster rapper Notorious B.I.G.
The tragedy happened here outside
of the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles,
where the rapper, also known as Biggie Smalls,
was attending a Vibe Magazine party
for the Soul Train Awards.
Now shortly after midnight Saturday,
Notorious B.I.G. left the party and got into his car
when another car rolled by and shots rang out.
At least five bullets ripped through the door,
killing B.I.G., who was sitting in the passenger's seat.
Dozens of heavily armed cops arrived on the scene
as word of the shooting spread.
The bullet holes in Biggie's vehicle are mute testimony
to the gang style drive-by shooting that took the life
of the Brooklyn-born rapper,
whose real name is Christopher Wallace.
(siren blaring)
Smalls was rushed in his bullet-riddled vehicle
to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center,
where he was pronounced dead on arrival.
Dozens of fans, many overcome with grief,
held a vigil at the hospital.
They've got a number of individuals
that they're speaking to right now,
and we're hopeful that we can resolve
this matter relatively soon.
These are pictures of the 24-year-old Biggie
at the Vibe party just hours before he was killed.
Eerie images of a man who had no idea of
the violent fate awaiting him.
Biggie Smalls was larger than life.
The robust rapper was six-foot-three, almost 300 pounds.
He was loud and boastful, known for talking trash.
His music was apparently a reflection
of his real-life experiences.
Biggie made no secret he once lived a life of crime,
even selling crack on the tough streets
of Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant section where he grew up.
♪ That you rolled dice with, smoked blunts ♪
His debut album, "Ready to Die,"
was an immediate platinum hit,
selling more than a million copies.
The CD thrust Biggie into the stratosphere of rap music.
Batari Kawana is the editor
of the hip-hop magazine The Source,
where Biggie appears on the current cover.
Definitely as an artist,
he is at the height of the game in terms
of his understanding of the art form in terms
of his popularity, not just in New York, but nationally.
Biggie Smalls was also embroiled
in a rivalry between East and West Coast rappers.
His competition: Tupac Shakur,
who once accused Biggie of involvement in a 1994 robbery
in which Shakur was shot several times.
Biggie denied those charges.
More recently, the two men battled verbally over this woman,
singer Faith Evans, estranged wife of Biggie Smalls
and the mother of his child.
Shakur claimed in his music
to have had a steamy romance with Evans.
She reportedly witnessed Biggie's murder Saturday night,
almost a carbon copy of Tupac's death in September.
Ironically, Biggie Smalls' upcoming album
is titled "Life After Death."
A startling ad shows Smalls posing
in a graveyard near a tombstone reflecting his likeness.
So far, no arrests have been made in the killing
of notorious B.I.G, and the murder has shaken the rap world,
which has once again lost a star to violence.
The music business is just one of my businesses,
but my main business is trail blazing
and getting people to believe in themselves
and think for themselves,
which is the opposite of most constitutions and traditions
that we've been taught.
♪ N-now th-that that don't kill me ♪
♪ Can only make me stronger ♪
♪ I need you to hurry up now ♪
♪ 'Cause I can't wait much longer ♪
♪ I know I got to be right now ♪
(upbeat hip-hop music)
On my albums, I'll have controversial ideas,
funny quotes, anecdotes and everything,
and people really enjoy it and dance to everything.
Second, I come with
this non-media trained unconventional thought,
and sit and do these interviews and speak to these cameras.
Editors love to chop it up and make me look
as crazy as possible whenever it's an idea that's not
what everyone else is thinking at the same time.
They try to make me look crazy, like it says,
would you believe in what you believed in
if no one else believed in it?
Now this is the opportunity to take my quotes
for the first time
and package them the same way I package my music,
and people read this and they're like,
"Wow, I kind of understand where he's coming from,"
and where I'm coming from is not to just tell people
that I'm the greatest.
I want people to say that they're the greatest.
I want people to believe in themselves
and have confidence and believe in their flyness
to conquer their shyness.
That's my point.
That's, I think, the greatest thing
that my brand will bring to the world,
for people to believe that they can do it
and be more than just in black and white,
or a sheep in a herd.
♪ Excuse me, is you saying something ♪
♪ Uh, uh, you can't tell me nothing ♪
When people would ask me questions about myself
when I first came in the game,
what came off arrogant was the honesty of the answers.
Think about me six years from now predicting
that I will be who I am now.
It's delusional to the mortals.
It's the mortal mind is to be beaten to the mortal mind,
because in society and culture,
we've been beaten into these mental prisons.
It's that idea where people don't want to go
to certain neighborhoods because they're afraid of this.
I'm not gonna travel to Brazil because I'm afraid of this.
I'm not gonna travel to Cuba 'cause I'm afraid of this.
It's like the whole everything is based on fear.
The recession is based off fear,
and this book is not about fear.
It's about confidence.
It's about believing that you can overcome.
What is it like to prove people wrong?
I mean, now it's just the norm for me.
(Reporter laughs)
What I realized, it's like, forgive them
for they know not what they do.
I wrote in a blog.
I came back from Paris, and I was like I forgive people
'cause they're basing their thought
off the things they were taught
and that making an opinion based on themselves,
like color comedy,
and I realized that certain colors represent things.
Everything represents something,
and people want to drag and click people into folders:
black rap, black, this guy and stuff.
Woman, she's this type of girl.
Americans are like this.
Okay, well, now Barack's President,
and all Americans are cool again,
so everyone wants to classify,
but I can't be defined by any profession or genre
that I'm in, and people aren't defined.
People are dynamic and it's more to someone.
You can look at a stripper or something,
and it's more to that person than just that profession.
You can look at a rapper.
It's more to that person.
♪ My name is ♪
♪ Slim Shady ♪
His music is confrontational and controversial,
poking fun at gays, demeaning women, ridiculing the likes
of Britney Spears and the endless array of boy bands,
but Eminem saves most of his vitriol for this woman.
It does hurt.
And God knows I don't deserve it.
Marshall Mathers, aka Eminem.
In song he imagines raping this woman,
calls her a druggie, and according to her,
has made her a pariah in the eyes of his fans.
When you can't go to the mall for being spit on,
or being called you disgusting pig,
it's sad because people are passing judgment
by listening to Marshall's songs.
And this subject of Eminem's scorn
is his own mother.
♪ 99% of my life I was lied to ♪
♪ I just found out my mom does more than I do ♪
He is musically demeaning me.
He needs to quit making attacks on me.
I mean, you don't do this to your mom,
and it is so hard.
Now, Debbie Mathers is talking publicly
for the first time
since her famous son skewered her in song.
And she's fighting back both in court,
filing a $10 million slander suit against him,
and with her own music.
We have a problem, Marshall.
The past two years something really went wrong.
In a new CD called "Set the Record Straight,"
Debbie Mathers, more of a reader than a rapper,
delivers a message to her golden-haired son.
Will the real Marshall Mathers please stand up
and take responsibility for his actions?
With the release of the CD,
it was one of the ways for me to get my feelings out there
to my son and the public.
This is the house right here?
Yeah, that's the house, and it's changed.
His is a classic rags to riches story.
Marshall Mathers' parents were divorced.
He was raised by his mother
in this working class neighborhood of Detroit.
He was spoiled rotten.
Anything he wanted,
I made sure that I'd take my last dime and get it for him.
I mean, he was my only child for 14 years.
Marshall Mathers has a half-brother
who hopes to follow in his footsteps.
Eminem honed his skills as a rapper in his teenage years.
His mom thinks much of the anger in his music is an act,
aimed at convincing the hip-hop world
that he's not another privileged pretender born
with a silver spoon in his mouth.
I think Marshall wanted to portray this really bad image
of we never had a place to stay, we lived off relatives,
I never worked a day in my life.
But what of the other nasty things he says
about his own mother?
He says you were neglectful.
No.
Pill popping.
No.
Welfare collecting.
No.
♪ I'm so sick and tired of being admired ♪
When you hear his lyrics, though,
it's hard to believe there was no dysfunction
in Eminem's upbringing.
But Debbie says she's at a loss as to
why he says the things he does.
I wish to God I knew why.
I really do, 'cause it is really heartbreaking.
But in response to the slander suit filed
by his mother, Eminem's lawyer has said, quote,
"Eminem's life is reflected in his music.
"Everything he has said can be verified as true."
But despite her lawsuit against Eminem,
his mom says she'll stand by him in spirit and in song.
Someday you're gonna fall,
and I just hope to God I'm there to help you.
I want to just get him in a room
and sit down and say look, you've gotta stop this.
I mean, your anger and your hostilities towards me,
what have I really actually done to you?
Where'd I go wrong?
♪ Please stand up, please stand up ♪
♪ Please stand up ♪
♪ Ha ha ♪
♪ Guess there's a Slim Shady in all of us ♪
♪ You can't, you won't, and you don't stop ♪
♪ Mike D, come and rock the sure shot ♪
With their unique, eclectic sound,
the Beastie Boys took hip hop in a new direction.
♪ Mr. Zu Zu ♪
♪ I'm a newlywed, I'm not a divorcee ♪
♪ And everything I do is funky like Lee Dorsey ♪
After years of blasting the airwaves
with their urban ear candy,
these New York rappers have taken
on a bigger agenda: human rights.
Something has to be done immediately.
(people chanting in foreign language)
Their specific target is Tibet.
In 1949, China invaded the country,
driving out more than 100,000 people.
A million Tibetans were murdered in the upheaval.
It's, for the most part, a nonviolent struggle
and in the tradition of Martin Luther King or Gandhi.
I sat down with Beastie Boy Adam Yauch
in Do Kham, a Tibetan craft store in New York City.
His interest in the Tibetan struggle dates back
to a trip he took to neighboring Nepal in 1989.
I wanted to travel somewhere where people were more open
about religion and spirituality.
I just felt like, in America,
there were a lot of strange ideas surrounding it,
and I was just interested
in visiting some other cultures,
just seeing what it looked like.
I don't really know exactly why.
Just go and check it out.
The thing that was scary to see is just
how oppressed they are by the Chinese,
how they're not freed.
They don't have freedom of speech.
They don't have freedom of religion.
What can I do as an individual to help free Tibet?
Well, the first thing is just getting educated on it.
Educate is exactly what the Beasties did.
This summer, they staged a two-day Tibetan freedom concert
in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park.
The mega concert drew more than 100,000 young people,
featuring acts like The Fugees, Smashing Pumpkins,
and the Beastie Boys.
I think the things that are really significant
about the struggle is the non-violence
and just that the Tibetans' understanding and culture,
the way they conduct themselves.
I really believe it's what the rest of the world needs,
and so by focusing on that,
I feel like I've learned a tremendous amount about myself.
I enjoy my life more.
There's really only a couple years left
that Tibetan culture is going to survive
unless something starts changing that.
I mean, at the rate that their culture is being destroyed,
there's very little time left,
and I think we all have a responsibility to do that,
'cause it is part of our world and we do affect it,
and to ignore it is to contribute to it.
♪ So how we gonna kick it ♪
♪ Gonna' kick it root down ♪
♪ Yeah, how you wanna kick it ♪
♪ Gonna kick it root down ♪
♪ So how you gonna kick it ♪
♪ Gonna kick it root down ♪
♪ Gonna break it on down, gonna' kick it root down ♪
I guess my hope is that somehow through focusing
on Tibet and through Tibet becoming free,
we'll start to see through that misconception,
and we'll start to realize more of our interdependent nature
and that this world will become a real different place.