Eric B. is not one of the most talkative characters I’ve encountered in my days as a bloke who rings up rap music legends. Considering that I was unable to verify anything he told me, the whole thing was an exercise in frustration and bewilderment. Our conversation in 2009 included a declaration that Queens invented hip-hop, casually bankrolling a series of unidentified restaurant chains and enjoying dinner at the White House with Nelson Mandella, Robert DeNiro and George Bush. In this 1988 interview with British publication Blitz, Mr. Barrier shows utter disdain for the author, a fellow by the name of John Hind who may or may not be the same guy who was writing the Life On A Plate series for The Guardian – although to be fair the questions all seem to center around the interviewer being appalled that anyone would want to own more than a single car and is concerned that the idea that making brag rap seems ‘quite tiresome’ (a common thread in British music journalism of the era).
Wasn’t the Eric B and Rakim contract from MCA rumoured to be $1Mill US? And, that had to have been for their two final albums, before UNi records reverted to the MCA.
The journalist’s tone is quite annoying (also coming from an English person – funny) but he asks himself the right rhetorical question, one that still rings true to this very day: all of them multi-million-selling rappers are just middle-class Americans or wanna-be so, riding with the same system that oppressed them.
Ironically, too, they also served as poster boys for the same Reaganism and capitalism that killed and jailed many of them brothers.