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Naughty By Nature
offical website
articles/contests
"The way I see it, you can go too far to the right or too far to the left. You can over-thug it or you can over-preach it. Either way, you are going to turn people off because they don’t want to hear that all the time."
"I just want to communicate to the kids in the hood that you don’t have to be the person in front of the camera all the time. Find what you like to do and make a career out of that."
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5.23.02
Isn't It Iconic? Naughty By Nature Returns
...continued
One thing that hasn’t changed with Kay Gee’s departure is the upbeat party vibe that has always been Naughty By Nature’s trademark. The change liberated Treach and Vinnie, allowing them to invite a variety of guest artists to coincide with their new production. Redman and Method Man, Pink, 3LW, Queen Latifa, and Carl Thomas all share love on IIcons.
Due to a three-year lull between albums, a lot of work was needed to promote the return of Naughty By Nature. Performances were lined up all over the country and abroad, most notably, a stop Vinnie and Treach made in Nigeria. NBN became the first rap group to perform in Africa. Their experiences while there reaffirmed much of their beliefs about the state of hip hop music, and offered them some new perspective on life.
Vinnie: We had an offer to go to Nigeria. We get feedback from people all over the world because of our Web site. We had people telling us for years that we have to go there. The year prior to that we went to South Africa, and that was a beautiful experience. It was great to go to another market over there that no one else had been to.
Mt: What was the most memorable experience for you?
Vinnie: Just being able to see all of those African males out there showing all the love and really knowing and appreciating hip hop culture. They were totally entrenched in the culture out there. We brought our boys Rotten Raskalz out there, and the people were singing all the words to a hook of one of their songs that came out in 1995. There was, like, 60,000 people singing the hook, and we didn’t even expect that. That is just how knowledgeable they are about hip hop culture.
Treach: Just to show you how deep they are into hip hop, when you get on the elevator, they don’t have that Frank Sinatra-type music. Every song is hip hop in the elevator, even in the five star hotels. One thing that I learned from Africa is that you have to learn to appreciate everything that you have. The projects here look like condominiums in comparison to the ghettos in Africa. People have to walk, like, ten miles for fresh water. People walk for miles with pounds of stuff on their head. My daughter is three years old. Over there, you can see kids as old as five on the side of street selling whatever. When I come back home and hear people complaining because they don’t have a job or can’t find work…after you go over there, you really appreciate what we have here.
Mt: Did the trip change your perspective of how much American hip hop means to the people over there?
Vinnie: Yeah. The rest of the world either loves or hates American culture, for whatever it’s worth. The people over there that love it get sick of a lot of the stuff that we get sick of. Lately, the whole “bling bling” phenomenon has been huge. The people over there really take heed to that stuff and really and truly believe that stuff. You realize that this stuff really influences a lot of people. The good in it is good, but the bad is really bad. I remember in ’99 when we went overseas and the West Coast stuff was really hot. We were in Germany and cats were there with blue and red rags wrapped around their heads and wrapped around their arms. They really knew nothing about the American gang culture; they were just feeding off what they saw in videos and heard in the music. That made us very aware.
Mt: Do you think that in general rap artists understand the responsibility they have towards these people?
Treach: Not really. Time really tells who has an understanding of it. We came from a huge talent pool. We used to do talent competitions and parties, and we had the hard-core street records. We wanted that party vibe, so when we released records, we had songs like “1,2,3” and “Guard Your Grill,” but we chose as a second single to release “Everything Is Gonna Be Alright.” That song was saying that you could be a ghetto bastard to the tenth power, but at the end of the day, you gotta hold your head high, handle your business, and keep the faith. You gotta give these kids a positive outlook so they can get through the s**t they handle every day.
Mt: Often times, responsibility with your music doesn’t translate to album sales.
Treach: The way I see it, you can go too far to the right or too far to the left. You can over-thug it or you could over-preach it. Either way, you are going to turn people off, because they don’t want to hear that all the time. You want give people a full perspective. I think one of the people who does it the best and has sold more records than anyone else is Lauryn Hill. She had the grimy tracks, but she was harmonizing on them. She had the song about homey who was murdered in the street, but he deserved it…
Vinnie: Another artist that has been doing it is Nas. He is very clever with the way he mixed the street elements with the consciousness. The people really respond to that. They are both great examples of being able to attract a mainstream market, but still be able to drop that knowledge in there.
Mt: You’ve been making records now for thirteen years. What would you say the pinnacle was, or do you believe that you have reached it?
Treach: Having come from where we have come from and having done what we have done with odds stacked against us…I just want to communicate to the kids in the hood that you don’t have to be the person in front of the camera all the time. Find what you like to do and make a career out of that. Don’t go do what someone else is doing, because you are not going to be happy doing that for a long time.
Vinnie: The overall success, in general, has been a high point for me. People show love for us wherever we go. Things like that, and doing things like starting our own clothing line and record label when we first came out, and seeing artist take heed to that and do the same to expand their business. Just knowing that we have the influence to impact our peers means a lot. But really, I think that our career at this point is really just starting. It’s all about doing what you came to do, and we were fortunate enough to have people respond to it along the way.
Vinnie and Treach continue to expand their horizons beyond music. Treach has spent the last few years working in film. Already, his natural talent on screen has landed him roles on HBO’s "Oz" and "Soul Food," as well as big screen credits in Jason’s Lyric, Who’s The Man, Love And A Bullet, Meteor Man, and the cult film Juice, in which Treach co-starred with the late Tupac Shakur. Vinnie has taken his influential pull as a musician into the political arena, becoming actively involved in community programs around his hometown of East Orange, New Jersey. He runs a program called The Block, which is encourages young inner-city youth to use their time wisely through discussion forums, leadership seminars, and athletic programs. From East Orange to Germany to Nigeria and back again, the two stars of Naughty By Nature have shown everything it takes to be considered true icons.
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