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On his early hit O.G. Original Gangster and the Birth of Gangster Rap: “I didn’t think I was going to be big, because there was no one big yet. Now a kid can say, ‘I wanna be a rapper, because they can look at Drake and go ‘Look at that.’ But who was I to look at? Grandmaster Flash and Furious Five were still struggling. Hip hop wasn’t big enough. We’re talking about 1982. Original Gangster was way later. That was three albums in. “O.G. is a term used by the L.A. gangs for the first generation of a particular set. But also in L.A., the term just means ‘The Original.’ I brought it to the forefront when the press decided to name what we did ‘Gangster Rap,’ and they named it Gangster Rap because of Ice Cube. They didn’t have a name for [the genre] when we first started. They were calling it ‘Reality Rap,’ but I was like, ‘Well, this is not everybody’s reality. This is just some particular kids’ reality.’ So, Ice Cube did Straight Outta Compton and he said ‘Straight Outta Compton; crazy mother*cker named Ice Cube; from the gang called n*ggas with attitude.’ And the press said, ‘Oh, he referred to his rap group as a gang. They’re gangster rappers.’ That’s where the media gave us that name and I said, ‘Okay, if this is gangster rap, I’m the Original Gangster. I tagged myself on the tag they gave us, so I was, like, claiming my terrain.” On “O.G.” making its way into pop culture from his 1991 hit song O.G. Original Gangster: “I shoulda trademarked it. But Rakim says, ‘I’ll take a phrase that’s rarely heard, flip it; now it’s a daily word.’ A lot of terms come from Hip Hop, but yeah, I put ‘O.G.’ into the game.” On parting ways with Warner Brothers Music in the ‘90s after 1991’s Cop Killer: “What happened was Cop Killer came out. I had done five or six albums with Warner Brothers. Everything was cool until we did Cop Killer. Sh*t hit the fan, Charlton Heston went after Warner Brothers. I got caught in the crossfire. Warner Brothers was concerned with the next album I was putting out, which was called Home Invasion, which was saying that Hip Hop was invading white families; we’ve invaded white kids’ minds with Black rage. They were nervous about putting the record out. I just went to Warner and said, ‘Look, you’re all taking a lot of heat from me. I’m the one that’s causing this problem. You guys loved the Cop Killer album. You didn’t block it, but now it’s hot. Let me go.’ I asked to go and they gave me a release, and I did my next record at Priority.” “I don’t dislike cops. I dislike racism and I dislike bullies. If you wear a badge or not, it doesn’t matter. When I was a criminal I didn’t hate the cops. Any good criminal, the cop is the opponent. He’s not the enemy, he’s the opponent. If I’m a drug dealer, we need the cops because the cops create the margin. If the cocaine becomes legal, there’s no money for us. We need it to be illegal. Me, myself, I’m not a cop killer and I’m not a cop. I’m acting in both of them. I didn’t kill no cops, and I’m not a policeman. I cannot arrest you.” On the controversy surrounding ICE (the other ICE): “I’m on the right side of proper law enforcement, but what we’re seeing now in America with ICE, what is law enforcement? What is it, and who draws what line and where? They don’t need warrants. So if ICE decides they want to come in my house without a warrant, does the Second Amendment permit me to shoot them? If they’re out there behaving illegally, what makes them legal, cause they got a badge? Unfortunately, their name is ICE, so I’m taking the heat, regardless? But as far as doing Cop Killer (his 1992 heavy metal song with his group Body Count), Cop Killer was a protest record about brutal cops. The fact that he became a hero to some, that lets you know how some people feel about the police.”