I was gearing up to put a song called Jules
that I had leaked before a little snippet of.
Before shit had really hit the fan with George
and the pandemic and everything.
I was gearing up to drop that.
Everything started happening and I felt like,
"Wow, we need to kind of put that on hold
and I need to absorb and take in
what's going on around us right now."
And I'm glad I did that.
And then this song came out of that and we pushed to get
this song out first and I'm glad we did.
The day we made Lockdown,
I was in the studio with the co-producer J.LBS
with the writer Rae Kahlil.
And we was watching the news.
I think it was like off of Melrose.
And there was some like,
you know, there's a lot of chaos going on with the,
with the police and with some looting
and a little bit of writing.
The lyrics just started coming and it went through
different transformations,
but we started writing it on the spot.
And I remember Rae kinda just having a melody,
you know.
Right away. I just, I wanted the first lyrics to be
should've been downtown.
A lot of these protests were happening in the downtowns
in all over the world.
When a lot of these protesters or people out in the streets
are getting locked up, they booking them downtown.
Like, you know, that was the saying,
you going to the precinct, you going to the jail house.
Regardless of what's going on right now,
people are seeing it, and there's a higher consciousness
that's growing and I feel like this is the age of awakening.
They said it was a lockdown,
but they opening up fire on us.
Whether it's rubber bullets, whether it's real bullets,
you know whether it's pressing down on a dude's neck,
we're supposed to be in,
we're supposed to be safe and indoors.
We're supposed to be trying to get through a pandemic.
But for some reason,
people of color are being killed in the streets every day.
And there's still time for that,
even though it's supposed to be a lockdown.
"Time heals all but the nine heals now"
was a line that Rae had came up with.
And I liked it, but I wasn't, I didn't,
I didn't want to go straight to the, to the gun thing.
And I, I ain't got no straps.
So I was like, you know what?
I think it's better if it's like time heals all,
but you outta time now, 'cause again,
I felt like the consciousness was rising.
I felt like people weren't going for the okie-doke no more.
And then when they,
it's in your face all the time, and people are fed up.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, people are sick of it.
And so that was really what I wanted to get to on the,
at the top of this verse.
And I'm a real stickler about how I set verses off.
I really wanna have that opening line be powerful.
There was a lot of people not talking about the brutality
about racism, about why we are in this position now.
And they're only talking about why are they rioting?
Why are they alluding?
I'm seeing and I'm getting gathering more information that,
"Oh, okay. There's people that are going out there
that have no attachment to the movement that are there.
That just want to get off that anarchy vibe."
It's like, why are kids looting surfboards, bro?
Like, what are y'all doing?
You know what I'm saying?
Like this is something I had never seen in my generation
and that's like a clear example.
I'm seeing little white kids that look like
they should be at Starbucks spraying BLM on,
on properties like for what?
Just so that they can blame it back on us?
In every big movement, there's always plants
that are in there to help gather information
and help destroy the movement from the Black Panthers.
So on and so forth.
People that maybe thought this was trendy,
you know where they're going to just take pictures in front
of places that are destroyed and be like, "Oh my God".
But there's a deep issue that's going on for
years and years and years
and it's very strategic how it has been done.
And there's not enough people talking about that.
There is civil unrest happening
and that's what you're seeing
when people are going out to the streets and there's fires
and maybe people are breaking into places.
That's a sign of people that are fed up and that's the
language that they speak when they're fed up.
Covid affected me in a big way.
I'm a musician and you supposed to do an album
and then support it.
Go on tour, gone hit the road,
play shows, see the people.
I don't know when we're going to be able to do a show again,
you know, so a lot of musicians, including myself,
are just trying to figure it out now?
It's that uncertainty.
The first time I really got to see police brutality
and the concept of racism being introduced to me,
point blank when I was about my son's age
was when I was watching like Rodney King.
And when I seen how they beat his ass on camera and then the
trial went down and nobody went to jail and
I was just a kid, but I was frustrated too.
And I remember asking my mom like, "what's going on there?"
She was like "people are fed up."
Like they let that, they let them cops off.
And then she, she grew up in Compton back in the day,
she was telling me about the Watts riots and how that was
all set off with, you know cops, killing the kid.
People have become used to cops doing someone wrong and
breaking the law and getting to live lawlessly
and getting away with it.
My buddy Israel, who is my videographer for awhile.
He is where we got that little excerpt
where you can hear in the background
where they're actually shooting rubber bullets.
And he got popped, just, he was documenting a protest
and they were out there on the front line
and they gave them like a half a warning before
they started shooting.
They were on the, you know, heading back
and as they were backing up,
they were getting shot at and he got shot twice in the leg.
And I was seeing that on the news as well.
People getting popped with the rubber bullets.
And I was just like, man, this is crazy.
So I put it in the lyric
and I wanted that to be in also in the video.
Doing the song was definitely a good way to,
to get these emotions, these feelings,
these ideas out into the ethers
and not having them just sit within me.
But the prayer is like,
I need someone to pray for me right now because
I'm about to go and get the strap
and it's not going to be no peaceful protest
if somebody tried to touch my son,
you know what I'm saying? Are we in?
Imma do whatever I can, you know what I'm saying,
to pray for them. You know what I'm saying?
It's like, y'all gonna have to do it because
we fed up at this point. You know what I'm saying?
Like any given day, Imma have to go to the pulpit for
doing somebody in. It's like reaching that boiling point.
You know what I'm saying? Like, fuck it.
I'm going to have to get it in my name now because
they doin us dirty in the street.
So, you know, I'm not going to be lacking.
You know, when they,
when they pull up on me, Imma be ready.
When someone breaks their arm or something like that,
like they scream out,
they cry, they do a bunch of stuff.
And, but honestly none of that's going to help
until the bone heals. You know what I'm saying?
So I saw, I felt like with the looting, it's like,
that's people crying out, you know what I'm saying?
That's people hurting from that pain of the broken bone.
But what needs to happen is that
the bone has to heal in order
for the arm to work again.
And that's, that's what we really got to get to, you know,
saying, how are we going to heal this broken bone,
which is racism and the prejudice, you know,
the police brutality, you know,
saying it till then people are gonna cry out
in their own ways.
I was definitely happy to see that people weren't looting
their own neighborhoods as much anymore.
And they weren't destroying,
the hood wasn't destroying the hood.
You know what I'm saying?
In the communities, in the, in the,
I know some people were still hit and by that and stuff,
but I find it interesting how people were like really upset.
Like, "Oh my God,
they're going into the Grove and Louis and all this stuff
like they going to be okay." You know what I'm saying?