Your music always carried a peaceful aggression. How did you go about making music this year at a time when things are often aggressive but not always so peaceful?

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I find order out of chaos. That's just kind of where I come from, the type of hip-hop I came up on, it's making the worst situation better in a way that it's like, "so what?" I can't even put a face to who I may have gotten this spirit from, but I think it just dwells deep in the roots of hip-hop. You give your testimony, and you give it to them like, "We did that, we overcame this, and this is how I feel about this, eff what you think," or "Let's talk about it." I always try to find the order out of chaos. So these things open up a dialogue for me, which I think we all should do. I mean, that's politics in general right? These are conversations that we should be having, and with hip-hop originally being the ghetto CNN, these are things that we need to discuss. This is my time to speak.

Why make “Huey Knew” right now?

I think he [Huey Newton] knew then these times were approaching, even then. If you do your research on Huey Newton, if you look at him, he kind of carries a smirk. He was a light skinned brother at that time, too. All of these mechanics play into what I feel like he was trying to get us to avoid today. The Black Panther movement was really of community, revolution, and progress. If that could really had happened and it wasn't tainted by the powers that be, I think we wouldn't be having so many of these issue that we face today like police violence and Marshall Law. They were prepared to face these things back then. They took it to the White House steps. So I just wanted to make sure that we remember those times and see how history repeats itself a lot. The producer Willie B came through with the beat and I just wanted to blackout. That was the reason we just called it "Blackout," at first but then as I dwelled on the times all of the different pieces fell in place.

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When you say "Black Out" is that meant to have multiple meanings?

It's not a racial thing. Make that clear. The Black Panther Party was not about Black supremacy, it was about equality. There's duality on the song, white and black, and night and day. So to punch these things and I try to emphasize these things, “Even White lives matter when I blackout." It's not a Black supremacy song, it's not a Black Panther song. It's about let's all be aware of what's going on right now and how we're all affected, black or white or brown or whatever.

