Ep. 267: YG Opens Up. Bad Deals, Hit Records, and a Midlife Crisis

Ross Golan (0:05)

Welcome to And The Writer Is. I am your host, Ross Golan. Today's rap superstar is the voice of this city. He's a politician, a poet, who paints pictures with words. He straight up writes movies.

All the way from Compton, this writer is overdue for a Grammy or 10 And the writer is YG.

YG (0:28)

What up?

Ross Golan (0:29)

Congrats on Gentleman's Club.

YG (0:30)

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Ross Golan (0:32)

Hitman, like, it blew my mind.

Because it's, well, obviously Ready to Die, the response is cool too. But what I love about it, when I was listening to it, I don't really go and read a lot of lyrics. But when I heard it, I was like, wait, that's how this, it's an act one and act two, it's a movie, it's Fight Club.

YG (0:56)

Man.

Ross Golan (0:57)

For those who don't realize how good that song is and how good that storytelling is, did you have to, was that editing? Did you go in a studio and just freestyle that? How do you write that song?

YG (1:09)

Now, I wrote that record. I wrote that record. It took me like, probably took me like two, three hours to like fully write that song. But I wrote that all at one time. Um, I mean, so to get that record, like when I was putting the album together, you know what I'm saying? It came like in by pieces, you know what I'm saying? And when I realized what story I was telling, like me trying to kill my, like my old self, um, to like really tell like a full in-depth story, you know what I'm saying? It was like, like the last record, Midlife Crisis, was like the first real concept song I had recorded when I was like making an album. And then when I recorded that song, that is what gave me the concept, the story line, how the album was going to end. I'm like, oh, okay.

I killed myself. How did I get here? All right, let me reverse engineer this whole shit. And it's like, how did I get here? You know what I'm saying? Because Midlife Crisis is like, I'm talking about, that shit is real. Like my everything, you know what I'm saying? I've been going through dealing with and all that. That's real. And it's like, all right, cool. I'm gonna end the album like that. And that was like, I'm finna tell a story on me trying to kill my old self. And it's like, how did you get here? And what's all the things you gotta go through? Yeah, I'm saying that I have somebody feeling like that. So, Hitman was like one of the songs that came after that. I'm like, all right, how do I get to telling this story on the album and keeping it like, respectable from like my fans or my listeners, like the streets, you know what I'm saying? It's like, how do we get here? You know what I'm saying? So, I was just like, really like taking my time, like, all right, I'm really going through, like what I'm talking about.

But how do I, like, really talk about it? You know, I'm saying through the music in a dope way.

And, you know, I watch a lot of TV shows and film and I love, like everything I watch is twisted as fuck. You know what I'm saying? It's twisted. And I'm like, man, like these stories, they gotta be twisted. They gotta be twisted. And I'm like, it took me, like, to come with the Hitman concept. Like, I'm finna tell a story about talking to a Hitman to kill somebody. And that somebody at the end of the song is gonna be me.

That took me, like, three weeks to, like, get that concept, like, you know what I'm saying? Cause I had songs and I had things in place. And I'm like, how do I get from this song to that song? And how do I get from that song to that song? You know what I'm saying? So it was just like, just time and just thinking and just thinking outside the box. And it was just like, you know what I'm saying?

Ross Golan (4:43)

What was the response? I was trying to figure out, you know, it's pretty clear what you're talking about. What's the response been from your fans with the idea of you killing younger self? Like, I don't know, it felt like it was, it's, it's...

When, when Jay-Z came out with 444, I remember having this conversation with someone where it was so elegant, the way that he talked about being, he grew up, and a lot of rappers like want to live in this time, like they're, they never, they never change, like they're, they'll do another album pretending like they're 18 or 20 And this is so sophisticated, but it's like a real conversation with the younger self.