Fresh, Clean Water:
An interview with
One Be lo

The Michigan-born, Egypt-based hip hop artist spoke to us
about his artistry, his attitude toward fame, his time in prison, Islam, moving to Cairo, and the political crises affecting Pontiac, Flint, and Detroit.

//mark jay

Nahshid Sulaiman, a.k.a. One Be Lo, a.k.a. One Man Army, a.k.a. General Subliminal, a.k.a. Mr. Hyde, a.k.a. The Anonymous, is an artist from Pontiac, Michigan, who has created some of the most revered music in the history of underground hip hop. In the late '90s, following his release from prison, Lo formed Binary Star with his high school friends Decompoze and Senim Silla, and their 2000 album, Masters of the Universe — produced on a $500 budget — was immediately hailed as a classic that "represents everything that's right about underground hip-hop." In 2005, his first solo album, S.O.N.O.G.R.A.M. (Sounds Of Nahshid Originate Good Rhymes And Music) was released, and it was also met with universal acclaim, both for its profound lyrics, as well as its "transcendent" beats, several of which Lo produced himself.  S.O.N.O.G.R.A.M. was followed by a number of equally compelling conceptual projects — Project F.E.T.U.S., S.T.I.L.L.B.O.R.N., R.E.B.I.R.T.H., L.A.B.O.R., K.I.C.K.P.U.S.H., and the double album L.I.G.H.T.Y.E.A.R.S.A.P.A.R.T. In 2018, One Be Lo produced, wrote, and recorded his first book, The Looma (The Legends of One Man Army). He now lives with his family in Cairo, Egypt, where he homeschools his children and continues to build towards his magnum opus, L.I.F.E. (Lo Is For Everybody).  

Mark Jay spoke with Nahshid Sulaiman in April about his artistry, his attitude toward fame, his time in prison, his conversion to Islam, his secular and spiritual influences, his move to Cairo, and his reflections on the political crises affecting Pontiac, Flint, and Detroit.

[editor’s update, 11/7/2020: since publishing this interview, One Be Lo has released his long-awaited album, Baby]

Q: The first thing I wanted to ask about is your reception as an artist. You've made it clear from the beginning that fame and money is not what you're after. I'm thinking of “Reality Check” off the first Binary Star album, where you say, "It ain't all about economy / So the fact that all these wack emcees is making G's don't bother me / Honestly, my number one policy is quality / Never sell my soul is my philosophy." Can you talk about your attitude towards fame and critical reception? 

A: I love what I do. I believe in what I do. I believe in people. I believe in hip hop. I don't believe that I have to exploit nobody to get on top. I don't believe I got to steal, I don't believe I got to lie. Fame — some people are famous. They don't want to be famous, they just are.

I don't sit behind a desk, I don't make music in the basement and look at the algorithms and the analytics and try to figure out who's listening to me. I'm not in control of who wants to hear me. I'm not in control of who wants to interview me. Because if I'm looking for that, then who knows what I'm going to do to get attention. Maybe I should dye my hair black because I'm getting gray now. Or, Yo, I should do push-ups. I should wear tighter jeans. Oh, everybody's into whale sounds; I should go to the ocean and sample whales. Gospel music. Oh, I should chop up some gospel choirs because Alchemist did it. No. What do you like to wear? What do you like to eat? Who are you? 

As far as fame, I was talking to this one guy and he was like, "One Be Lo, I'm gonna be honest, not a lot of people in my generation know who you are." And then he started telling me his mission and what he's trying to do. And I'm thinking to myself, if I said that to him, I'd sound like an asshole. If I said to him, "I was in Australia, and nobody knew who you were. Yo, when I was in Egypt, nobody knew who you were. When I was in New York, nobody knew you. When I was in Orlando, nobody knew about you."

The truth is, everywhere I go, there's somebody who knows who I am. But what does that mean either? No matter how many people are with you, you got to be the light. When you walk in a room, you want the lightbulb to shine the same whether there's fifty people in the room or one person in the room. You don't want that shit flickering because you're in the room reading a book by yourself.

Q: On one level, I identify with what you're saying. When I write, I don't want to change my style just because I think more people will be interested in it. But at the same time, to be honest, I do worry about what people are going to think about my work. The thoughts are there, whether I want them to be or not, and they probably do affect what I produce. So I'm wondering how you got to this point where you could honestly say, “Look, I'm just expressing myself, and I don't care what people think of it”?

A: So here's the thing. I've got this water. If I know that this is fresh, clean water, I'm not wondering how people are gonna receive this water. It's not even mine. It's clean, fresh water. I know it's good for you. It's almost impossible for you to be allergic to it. I don't have any problem with offering people water. 

I'm not worrying like, Aw, my voice sounds weird. You know why? Because I grew up listening to Erick Sermon rap with a lisp. I'm not thinking like I got to be a skinny boy, because I grew up listening to the Fat Boys. I grew up listening to the Ghetto Boys. I grew up listening to the Beastie Boys. There's all types of boys. You can be Beastie, you could sample reggae, you could sample rock 'n' roll and do a song with Aerosmith, you could wear a bulletproof vest, you could wear your clothes backwards. That's what it's about. 

Now, if you're thinking, Jay-Z doesn't wear his clothes backwards, and he has a lot of followers. Maybe wearing my clothes backwards is wack. Nah, man, that's not the kind of hip hop we grew up with. We grew up on being yourself and having your own ideas, and being comfortable in your own skin. Like, Busta Rhymes could write, "vo-ca-bu-lary's necessary when digging into my library. Oh my gosh, oh my gosh." Das EFX could say, "bumstickity bumstickity bum hun." Michael Jackson could say, "Mamasay mamasa mamakusa." 

I'm trying to build my vocabulary, but then I read Shel Silverstein, or I read Dr. Seuss, and these are best sellers. That's when I realized: there's no rules. There's no rules to this shit!

If this sandwich is delicious to me, it's delicious. I don't have to get nobody else to approve it. That's how I feel with my writing. I mean, am I curious what people will think? Yeah, I'm curious. But I'm not gonna let that direct my recipe. Me being true to myself is me being true to my ears, being true to my mind. Does it feel honest to me? Does it taste good to me? Does it smell good to me? If it smells a little musty, then it's a little musty. I don't care what nobody else says. I'm just talking about what I produce, and I don't have any time to think about what other people are doing.

There was a time, maybe back in '98 or '99, when I was like, Man, if I'm gonna get noticed I got to think of something dope, something clever. Then I was like, No. Everything you need is already right here. You just got to Rubik's Cube this shit.

Q: But how can you make art that is true to yourself and still manage to make a living? For example, on "Sleepwalking," off the S.O.N.O.G.R.A.M. album, you say: "Hard work, sweat and blood stains, did it for chump change / I didn't really complain 'cause it was a love thang / That's when I was a kid, black, now I know this fact / That love is gonna get you evicted from where you live at." So how do you balance your art with the realities of the economy?

A: It has a lot to do with lifestyle. How do you want to live? If you want to drive two Cadillacs and wear a Rolex all the time and wear platinum gold and your wife wants to go to the Bahamas every weekend, you got to be able to support that lifestyle. 

So, maybe my house won't have a fence around it. Or, you know what, maybe having a car is problematic. But if I've been so indoctrinated to think I'm supposed to have a condo, I'm supposed to have this, I'm supposed to have that, then now I'm trying to support someone else's reality instead of thinking for myself. 

For twenty or thirty years I've been sleeping on the floor. I sleep on the floor. Not because I can't have a bed. I look up to Muhammad. He was the Prophet. One of my favorite Hadiths [the traditions and sayings of Prophet Muhammad]: Somebody came to visit Muhammad, he was sleeping on the floor. When they came in the room, he sat up, and he still had the imprint of the mat on his face. Somebody saw him and said, “Muhammad, I see the Christian Kings, they live in castles, they sleep in these beds, they have this.” Muhammad looked at the person and he said, “Do you doubt?” 

We live in a society that says you got to live a certain way. You got to have a watch. You got to set your alarm to like seven or six or five or four. You have to go to work for this many hours a day. You're supposed to get your check on Friday. We have all of these ideas, like, This is what it means to support myself. I'm on a landlord's schedule. I'm on the record label's timetable. I'm on the teacher's schedule. I have so many other people's schedules in my brain I can't even eat my lunch comfortably. Living on clock time rather than event time. 

When I got locked up, I lost my freedom. I lost some friends. I lost some approval. Then I realized, yo, I don't even need that shit! I get to write my own story! They're telling me that I'm number 244 or 144. I'm gonna cosign that? Somebody's telling me I'm in prison right now. But I'm in chapter two right now. I'm in my bunk in chapter two. The same as you on campus. I'm in chapter two right now. Now I'm in chapter three. Or am I in Ionia? Or am I in parole camp? Or I am in Narnia? I get to define that.

Capitalism is not the context of how I frame what I'm doing. The music industry is not the context of how I frame what I'm doing. When we talk about hip hop, I don't care how many panels I'm on — it always goes to the music industry. But are we talking about the music industry, or are we talking about hip hop? You're gonna tell me you got to be rapping or making beats to be hip hop? You can't be a garbage truck worker and be hip hop? You mean to tell me you got to wear your hat to the back and you got to be sagging and your pants got to be baggy to be hip hop? You're telling me that cowboy boots ain't hip hop? If you're being honest with yourself, and you're being authentic, that's hip hop. That's hopping to whatever you're hip to. If you're hip, and if you know it, then you can hop to it. 

Q: So, okay, whether people like you or not is one thing, but does it bother you when people listen to your music without paying for it? 

A: Everybody's not gonna pay you! Here's the thing. I have a listener fan base. And I also have a consumer fan base. 

You know, it's sad. I see people posting online: “If your friends don't buy your album, you got to find some new friends.” Like, damn. How many friends you got? Some of my friends are refugees, man. Am I gonna say to them: You didn't buy my album, you're not really my friend? 

I got a lot of friends who rap. Do I buy all their albums? No! It's impossible. But you know what, I can share their music. I can shout them out in the interview. I can listen to it, I can play it for other people. I can make beats for them. I can wear a T-shirt. There's all kinds of ways that we can interact with each other. 

One rapper told me once, "Lo, we're not like your crew. You guys rap and make your own beats. We got to have a big budget just to hear dope beats." So, okay, maybe I'm saving money by forming a production team that makes all the beats."

But what's money though? My neighbor has tomatoes. My other neighbor cuts grass. My other neighbor is a babysitter. My other neighbor has a car. I mean, do we all got to get cash? Why do some people make oatmeal cookies for free at home, and why do some people have Fortune 500 cookie companies? Why is that? So what's your capital? Do you have community? I don't want to keep saying dollars because that's not all there is. But if you're so programmed — like, without the money, ain't a damn thing funny — then you're lost. 

Q: Can you speak about your creative process? Do you have a set process for writing lyrics or producing music? Has that changed over the years?

A: Nah, man. I don't have a process. I'm just following my heart. There's no planning. 

Some people, how did they do it? Well, I went in this million-dollar studio, and I had my million-dollar mixing board, and I had my $300,000 mic, and I had my big budget, and I had my record label doing this, and I had my manager doing that. Nah, bro. I recorded this in my friend's living room. I recorded the vocals in the hotel room. I did that in the car. You could do this right now! Can't sleep on the plane? Then write a book on the plane. Make a beat on the train. 

The records in my mom's basement — that's my sound. I'm not looking for Pete Rock's records. I got a record that's cracked in half. I'm thinking, whatever I get off the half crack, that's my sound. You could call it serendipity. You could call it being in the moment. I'm trying to be true to that moment. 

It's hard to know where I'm going. I'd lie if I told you I knew because I don't. Kool G Rap said a long time ago, one of my favorite songs, “I’m right in front of my footsteps, thinking of a plan, looking like Raggedy Ann I need some papers in my hand.”

Sometimes I don't know what I'm doing. When I got invited to Cornell University to speak, I was thinking, what can I possibly offer these people? And they were like, "Your social commentary, bro!" And I'm like, what is social commentary? I never heard of that. And my point is, you don't have to know. You don't have to know that it's a 4/4 count. You don't have to know you're truncating sounds. If I would've read the manual, I would have been confused as fuck. You got to read sheet music — if that's true then how do you explain Stevie Wonder? 

It's all around us, man. That's why I'm naming songs after fruits and vegetables. That's why I'm getting inspired by ants, by bees, locusts, the moon. That's why I'm getting inspired by oxen and goats and wildebeests. 

I'm an ant. I'm underground putting in my work, whether people see it or not. I'm carrying my crumbs. These are crumbs! But guess what, they're also skyscrapers down here.

Q: When you say you're following your heart, it makes me think of Sufism. For example, Rumi, or Ibn 'Arabi, when he says, "My creed is love. Wherever its caravan turns along the way, that is my belief, my faith." Does that tradition of Islamic spirituality play a role in your music? 

A: One guy tried to ask me who's your favorite hip hop artist. And he's like, "Don't say Muhammad. It's got to be a rapper. It's got to be from the '80s." So now you're telling me, I got to pick somebody from New York, and I got to frame it in the context of the industry? 

Here's what I'm trying to tell you: this spoken word oral tradition is bigger than hip hop, man. It's bigger than America. It's bigger than capitalism. The Quran, I believe that it's the revelation of Allah. Yo, tell me: Why does it rhyme? Why does it have rhythm? Why is it metaphorical? Why is it poetic? Why doesn't it say, if you do wrong, you're gonna go to hell, and you're gonna burn. Why does it say, when the mountains crumble, when the wind blows? Why is it so poetic like this? Why is the messenger of Allah coming with the recitation? The Quran is supposed to be recited, not read. 

But even if we're not talking about spirituality, even if we're talking about just being inspired in general, the question is: when does inspiration come? Does it come at 3:00 on Mondays? Does it wait for you to wake up? Does it care if you're sleepy or not? The real question is, are you gonna open the door and let it in? Or are you gonna say, “Let me ignore that because I'm busy right now”? 

You know how many people got pissed off at me because I sat in the parking lot and never came inside the house? I never went to the party. I was there, but I was outside. I didn't mean to do that, but when it's coming to me, I got to write it down. 

Q: Can you say a bit more about your time in prison, your conversion to Islam, and how that's affected your music? 

A: I learned my Islam in prison, reading books.  So, I don't have the cultural baggage that a lot of people have, and I don't have the political baggage — like, people have baggage. If you love basketball, and you're not attached to the Detroit Pistons or the Lakers — you just like basketball, you just like a good game. And so, the reason why that's important is because when I think of people, I don't think of those Mexicans, or those Africans, or those White people. We're all brothers and sisters; that's how I understand it.

I learned Islam in prison from murderers and rapists. So they weren't coming at me with this arrogance. They were humble. There are some people who committed crimes that only Allah will forgive them for. And that's hope right there. You know how it feels to know you got to go home and your mom is never gonna forgive you, your wife is never gonna look at you, and your community is gone. But guess what, if you sincerely change, in your own heart, you don't have to walk around guilty. Like Malcolm X said, to have been a criminal, that's not the problem. It's to remain a criminal, to remain evil. People make mistakes. 

Allah, The All Forgiving. So you're gonna forgive big businesses and all their debts, but you're not gonna forgive the debts of college students? You're gonna overlook the misdeeds of your uncle, but not somebody who got out of prison?

When I was one year old, my mother's baby brother went to prison. He was 17 years old. This guy's been in prison for 40 years. He had natural life, but he went back to see the judge and she was gonna let him out this year, and then the COVID-19 virus jumped off. So he was supposed to get out this summer, but now they're like, “Ah, we don't know anymore.” We hope that my grandmother makes it until he gets out. But I grew up visiting my uncle in prison. And I wasn't looking down on him. So when I talk about prison it's from a lot of different perspectives. 

One day I'm driving down this street in Pontiac, and I see this guy crossing the street by my mom's house. I said, “Yo, man, where you going, you need a ride?” He said, “I'm just walking over to my girl's house.” I said, “Come on, I got you, let's go." So this girl lives on the other side of the city, and I was like, “You were gonna walk all that way?” But this guy says, “Yeah man, I just did three years in prison for something I didn't even do.” I said, “Oh yeah? What you gonna do about that?” He said, "It ain't nothing I can do about that." I said, "Yo, man, let me tell you something: 

We was handcuffed, in the back of a bus, forty of us
The road it was rough, plus nobody I could trust
Headed upstate, no chance for escape
Barbed wire and guards in the gun tower secured the gate
My uncle's fate, was life without parole
Thank God I was blessed with an outdate, I can't wait
But I got to, you probably wouldn't have did what I did
To catch a bid, but I'm not you
I got a crew still on the street, they don't write me letters
No time to visit a brotha, or bother to send me cheddar
Never did I sweat it, I know they got a life to live
My man J had a wife and kid
And these are the consequences, my actions committed
Some cats that I used to visit, now I live with
Along with swillas, killas, drug dealers, some rich brothas
Crackheads, con artists, child molesters, dick suckers
All types of individuals, sorta like a melting pot for criminals
The system is designed to stock it plentiful
This old cat from the hood
Told me, 'Out of every bad situation comes some good'
It's understood, prison ain't good for my health
Lookin' in the mirror, introducin' me to myself
I studied my thoughts, my ways, the routes I took
Though I read daily, it ain't all about the books
It's all about the lessons you learn, through your experience
Applyin' it in a positive way, period
All praise due to Allah, I used to scheme
'til he showed me the straight way — Sirat al-Mustaqim
Now I'm on the V-I, tellin' Moms about Islam
She called me a blasphemous fool, I stayed calm
The world wasn't ready for the changes I made
They was waiting for the nigga I was in twelfth grade…"

I spit it all the way to the end. And I said, "Hey man, I've been telling that story for 20 years. You're saying there's nothing you can do about that? You can tell your story, man. I'm not saying you can get that time back. I'm saying you can go into the elementary schools, the middle schools, the high schools, the juvenile detention facilities, you can make a living, you can serve the community just by that." 

I'm not here to tell people, "Don't go to jail, don't do crime." Some of the kids I talk to are 15 years old and they've already been there. I'm here to tell you: when you hit the fucking bottom, bounce the fuck up! 

Q: Can you talk a bit about your thoughts on the political situation in cities like Pontiac, Flint, and Detroit, with respect to the Emergency Managers, the water crises, gentrification, and the rest of it?

A: Now, somewhere like Detroit, here's the problem. They made that place for workers. There's a lot of segregation, and all that's by design. If you want to keep making an issue about race and color, you got to understand the only difference between a poor white person and a poor black person is white supremacy. Ah, yeah, I'm poor, but I'm not black though. And all of that's on purpose, because if you think you're the same, man, you're gonna rise up, you're gonna work together. 

So in places like Detroit, Pontiac, Flint, there's not a lot of places for whites, blacks, brown people to just share space and get to know each other. You don't even know, these white kids, they like hip hop too, but their parents are telling them "Don't go hang out in Pontiac." If I go to Bloomfield Hills when I'm a kid, the police was pulling us over: What you doing crossing Telegraph?

One day this lady comes to me in Pontiac, we got this space called Lyrics on Vinyl. And she's like, "I don't like graffiti. These kids out here, they're tagging the elementary school by my house. All this graffiti on the buildings, it's destroying the property value. I own property there."

Anyway, I said to this lady, "There's rules to graffiti. Everyone spraying on the wall isn't graffiti. Real graffiti artists aren't tagging churches. They're not tagging schools. Now you got to keep in mind, the building you’re talking about is an elementary school that's been closed for thirty years now. They're not tagging the front of the school, they're tagging the back of the school. You also got to remember there's no art program in the schools. You also got to remember there's no public walls."

I said, "Hey, why don't you take this book right here." I gave her this book called The History of Graffiti. It started all the way back on cave walls, where people were just painting hands and cows on walls. I mean, people have been painting on the fucking wall since the beginning of time, since people could fucking paint on the wall. We wouldn't even have half the historical knowledge we know now if we didn't find somebody painting a moose or whatever on the fucking wall. 

Anyway, two days later, the same woman comes in and says, "Hey, I want to commission someone to paint my garage." What I'm saying is, she came in to vent her frustration, but there was a space to do that. And there was a space for her to learn something, versus just going to a town hall meeting and talking to other property owners about how the property values are coming down. 

Q: It makes me think of Antonio Cosme and William Lucka, who sprayed "Free the Water" on the water tower in Highland Park. And the government arrested them on a felony charge, a post-9/11 anti-terrorist law. Or Mayor Duggan's anti-graffiti task force, and how the police in Detroit are tearing down all this art. And the people were saying, "Hold on, this is a mural!"

A: That's sad. I used to go down Grand River, and that was a beautiful trip, man. I couldn't even drive a block without getting out and just walking around for hours just taking pictures. All of these burned buildings that people are painting and making beautiful, and you're telling me you're gonna fine the building owner? Murals of Rosa Parks, murals of Malice Green. And then you allow artists from New York to come in and get commissioned and paint. It's like, what about Sintex, he's from here. What about FEL3000ft? This is how you know the gatekeepers aren't connected to the community. So when we talk about gentrification, I'm not just talking about Starbucks and Whole Foods coming to town. I'm talking about Shepard Fairey coming to town to paint the whole side of a skyscraper and local graffiti artists are being overlooked. Or getting arrested. 

It's happening everywhere though. I'd laugh in Seattle. I'd go there 20 years ago and people were complaining about gentrification. The gay people and the hippies are taking over! Now, all the frat boys are coming in and they're gentrifying the hippies. It's gentrification on top of gentrification on top of gentrification. But guess what. I went to Instanbul. That used to be Constantinople. And then the Turks came in and were like, Fuck that. We're gonna take the Hagia Sophia and we're gonna plaster over all these Jesus murals. That was gentrification too. This is not a new thing. 

That's when you realize we don't own the newspapers. "New Detroit." "Detroit is making a comeback." And it's like, okay, there is some new shit happening. But who's it for? Who gets to participate in that? After they rebuild New Orleans, who lives there now? Who can afford to live there now? Same thing in Ann Arbor. University of Michigan's buying up all the buildings downtown. The rug is getting pulled out right from under us. Do we know the storm is coming? 

Or take Flint. You talk to these school kids, and they're like, "Yo, everybody's making jokes about us." Like, "The girls are dirty, they don't take showers." Can you imagine going to school and you're getting teased for your water being tainted, and it's not even your fault? Can you imagine watching celebrities come into your city and shoot film and say all kind of shit and then they drop off water bottles and then they leave and then it's just the same old shit? Can you imagine living in a city where they're saying we don't have money to fix this problem, it's gonna take forty years, and then all of a sudden you find out there's like a trillion dollar bailout to Wall Street? It's just a mindfuck.

Q: How is gentrification impacting the music industry?

A: I grew up listening to Ice Cube. You know what he said? "Soon hip hop won't be so nice / No Ice Cube, just Vanilla Ice." I thought I knew what that meant until one day when I went to this open mic in Minneapolis. I see this crew up there going back and forth on some Run DMC shit, and I see this other guy, who happens to be white. He's talking about the struggle, and then these black rappers are talking about, "You don't know nothing about the struggle." And then the other kid's talking about, "Hey, my people are Jewish, I know about the struggle." And it just turned into this thing. Whose struggle is the struggle? Whose struggle is the struggle struggle? 

And then I thought, ah, there was a time if you wanted to get some real hip hop shit you had to go to the block. You had to go to the block to find the Biggie. You had to go over here to learn how to do those dance moves. You had to go sit down with a Cuban guy to learn how to play the congas like that. You had to sit down with an Indian dude to learn how to play the sitar. Now, I got this machine over here that got all of these sounds. I don't got to go nowhere. I don't got to know no cultural context. I don't got to sit down with nobody. Listen, I got tablas, I got sitars, I got congas, I got all kind of international instruments. And you might say, Wow, that's amazing. But you know what you did? You just eliminated me having to go and work with people from other cultures and tribes. 

It's bigger than music because when we get over there we start sharing our food. You start seeing this guy pray. You start seeing this guy chant. You don't have to be like them, but you respect it. Sharing these spaces is so important! 

When I was in Riyadh, I was at this basketball court by where my wife lives. What I thought was interesting is that, on the basketball court, when the call to prayer comes in, everybody stops playing basketball, and the Muslims, they go and walk to the masjid to pray, and all the Filipino cats, they just sit down. Nobody's dribbling, nobody's shooting, nobody's practicing their layups. They stop. Everybody stops. I thought that was really interesting. And then after the prayer, the Muslims come back  and everyone starts playing again. I'd never seen anything like that. And I'm not talking about three Filipinos. I'm talking about forty Filipinos. Basketball is a huge thing in the Philippines. I think Kareem or somebody went over there in the '70s and that shit just blew up. And all these dudes got different jerseys. And none of them are the same. He got a Jordan jersey. He got a Kobe jersey. He got a T-Mac jersey. He got a Kevin Garnett Jersey. He got a this jersey. Jersey, jersey, jersey, jersey. But anyway, that basketball court was a space where people found a way to respect other people's culture, whether they participated in it or not. It's like, Yeah, man, we'll just wait. I didn't hear nobody complaining, like, Damn, why can't we keep playing? 

But now in American cities, it's like, Fuck these basketball courts, we need a dog park. When I grew up, I played basketball at like five different community centers. They're all closed now. A friend of mine, she was like, "If I want my daughters to play basketball, it's, like, $20 to try out. If they make the team, you got to pay like $360 to register." But man, we didn't have to pay to play basketball when I was a kid. You could play basketball anywhere. 

The court was a place where cultures could be exchanged. That's what a museum is supposed to be, a place for cultural exchange, but it's kind of fucked up when you go into a museum and you see 50,000 artifacts from Cairo that was stolen from this bitch. It's like, you know, Let me go to Mark's crib, steal all his furniture, put it up in my crib, and show it off. Like, Hey, yo, look at this shit, it's amazing. Of course it's amazing, motherfucker —  I stole that shit!

Q: Let's switch gears and talk about your music. You recently came out with a double album, Lighty and Ears Apart, and the beats on that came from a production team you formed. Then you wrote, recorded, and produced a sci-fi audiobook, The Looma. Most hip hop artists your age are slowing down. How do you remain so prolific? 

A: One of my favorite verses from the Quran, it says: "If all the oceans were ink, and all the trees were pens, you would run out of ink before you would exhaust the words of Allah" [Q 31:127]. And I'm gonna tell you that I'm not inspired to write? There's too many things to talk about. Now, if my whole MO is, I'm from Marcy, or I'm from Pontiac, then guess what? That's gonna get old pretty quick. Like, You already told that story. So I want to dig into my own self, my own mind. That's a minefield that's never gonna run out of diamonds.

Some taxis in Cairo play music, but a lot of time taxis or public transportation are playing the Quran. My kids start reciting along, and next thing you know the taxi driver's reciting along. It's the equivalent of him playing Drake and you're singing along. But it's the Quran. And it brings us together in a different way.

Q: You've got another album coming up, B.A.B.Y. You've put out S.O.N.O.G.R.A.M., Project F.E.T.U.S., S.T.I.L.L.B.O.R.N., L.A.B.O.R., K.I.C.K.P.U.S.H., and a lot of us are waiting for that B.A.B.Y. I know it's got a lot of features on it. I was surprised about this, because I'm used to you either putting out albums by yourself, or collaborating with local Michigan artists or people in your crew. So can you talk a bit about your thinking on B.A.B.Y.?

A: Working with people is a different challenge. It's totally different. I'm in the studio with Freeway. Ten minutes into the studio he gets a phone call. One of his boys just got shot and murdered. I mean, it was awkward. I'm like, should I turn the beat off? He's on the phone with this guy for an hour. "Man, he got killed? Damn, that's another Muslim!" The room is kind of small. I'm like, should I leave? Then Freeway gets off the phone. He's like, "Damn... play that beat." This dude listens to the beat for about ten minutes, fifteen minutes. Then he goes in the booth. Man, this dude wrote about what just happened on the phone! 

What I'm saying is, that's hip hop. It's pain, it's victory, it's working with other producers. It's not just me, me, me. It's not just me bragging about who I'm in the studio with, telling you who I know. So B.A.B.Y. [Being a Black Youth] is me purposely saying I want to work with these artists from all over the country, predominantly black cities. 

And here's the thing: I was talking to this dude when I was on the train going to New York. I was telling him, "I make music, I got this album coming out, and I got Devin the Dude on it, I got Royce da 5'9", I got Freeway, I got Jean Grae, Phonte, Freeway, Zumbi, Juice, Superstition, The Cure, DJ Abilities.' Anyway, this guy told me, "When you said you make music, I was like, Eh. But when you told me the features, that's when I started listening."

(this song, released during the pandemic, is the first single from Lo’s forthcoming B.A.B.Y. album)

And it's like, I get it. If I got a new album coming out, and it's like, Produced by who? Produced by me. Okay, who's on it? Me. Fine, who wrote the lyrics? Me. Who's on the hooks? Me. Okay…. Then they're like, Oh, I get it, man, you're so talented, you don't need anyone to cut the grass, you cook your own food. But guess what? I realize it's also kind of dope when my daughter makes the salad. It's kind of cool when you know how to share space with people. Like, I'm a fan too. I don't need to hear Nas on Mobb Deep's album. But that's candy. Oh, Raekwon's on that joint too! Now I'm thinking like a fan. I'm like, okay, let me start hitting up people I know.

And I don't know when the album is gonna come out. People are like, "Man, you recorded B.A.B.Y. in 2009! Why you sitting on this album?" And it's like, I'm not sitting on anything. There's this story in the Quran: these people hear Muhammad saying he's the Prophet, and they don't know if it's true or not. They go to this Jewish tribe in Medina and they say, "Hey, this guy's talking about he's the Prophet, what do we do about that?" And they say to him, "Ask Muhammad about the Companions of the Cave. If he's the Prophet, he'll know about this. But if he doesn't know, he's not the Prophet." So they go to Muhammad, and they ask him about the Companions of the Cave, and Muhammad says to them, "Okay, I'll have the answer for you tomorrow." And guess what? He didn't have it. He didn't have it the next day, he didn't have it the next day, he didn't have it the next week, he didn't have it the next week, he didn't have it the next week. They got to the point where people started saying, like, "Yo, what's up with your boy?" And Muhammad got kind of depressed about this. And then when Allah finally gave him the revelation, Allah also reprimands him in the Quran and says, "Never say you're gonna do something tomorrow without saying 'Inshallah' — if God wills it." The point is, wait for the revelation. "Patience with a beautiful contentment." [Q 18:9-28]