rap city.

words.

Pitchfork: There certainly can be a disconnect between fans and artists in terms of backgrounds and being able to take something as seriously as it might be in real life.

Vince Staples: Listeners don’t take a lot of rappers seriously because rappers don’t take themselves seriously. And, to be honest, the majority of these dudes are lying. It’s not even that they’re just lying—because you can lie all day in your music and tell a story—they’re assholes who walk around like they don’t have any connection with the people. A lot of music comes from a selfish place, but there’s no sense of self within it. With rap, everyone’s fit in the same mold. And that’s one thing that you have to know about these people: They’re trying to portray this image because they’ve seen the prototype, they’ve seen what everybody thinks that community is, even though they’ve probably never been in it. So they feel like they can’t be themselves, when in reality those environments are made up of every single kind of person. I got homies whose parents have money that live two streets over. They did everything that we did. They don’t have to act like they don’t have anything, and they never will. Are they to be taken lightly? Hell no. They don’t have to pretend. There’s too much pretending within this music, and that’s why we get treated the way that we do.

PITCHFORK: Rising: Vince Staples