With his partner immersed in the system, Noreaga will keep CNN on Hip-Hop's war report. The Queens rapper's solo debut, N.O.R.E., finds him on the run.
Story by CLEON ALERT
"The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life."
–Muhammad Ali
Noreaga likes to keep himself occupied. I hardly know the man, but my sentiment becomes ever the more apparent as he and I sit in a conference room at his labels office on a lazy spring afternoon.
When Noreaga isn't trying to figure out the intricacies of his brand new toy--a cellphone that either beeps or rings consistently throughout our interview, he's building. Mind you, not just on answers for this scribe's pointed questions, but also the huge lot of blow that sits on the table before him. When he finally partakes in smoking the blunt, his mercurial personality shows its colors as his emotions often override his speech patterns and his moods shifts endlessly between downright serious and amply giddy. He can be particularly animative as well, especially when he stands up to emphasize a point or when he brings up one of his well rehearsed narratives from life in the "penal"--a three-and-a-half year stint that in essence, evolved from an extreme desire for "haircut money," and to be the flyest nigga on the block at an early age running through the streets of Lefrak City, Queens where he grew up. However, it would be the "most righteous place" that would force a young Noreaga to become more "politically inclined," hook him up with eventual rhyme partner Capone and consequently put him on the path of the straight and narrow. And he's proud of that. Not too long ago his life didn't mean too much, not to him anyway. Even though he had the luxury of having both parents at home, he still reveled in the "young and dumb" life. But now he's enjoying life in the "outside" world. He's utilizing a different game. Indeed, the kid known as "Papi" has grown up, and he's cognizant that not too long ago he was headed nowhere. Fast.
"I'm only like 20 years old," he states matter-of-factly. "But people see me and be like, 'Damn, that niggas fucking old' 'Cause as a youngster, I was always with older people. I didn't even know what I was doing." Now he's up and about, prepping himself and amped to act out a scene from back in the day, not out of pride, but just to make sure you really understand the motives behind his actions. "Motherfuckers used to give me a tennis ball," he continues. "A broken tennis ball and say, 'Yo, you go hand that to him and he's gonna give you this money. And you don't even count it, you just come back and bring it to me.' And I'm like, 'Aight, cool,' I gave him a tennis ball, cause all I know, coming back I got video game money [and] I was at the ice cream shop. So I was doing this shit on the daily, waking up like, 'Yo, make money! Gotta get the tennis ball!' And when I realized what I was doing…I was only like 8, 9, 10. I was like, 'Oh shit!' And like, the ghetto is fucked up, unowaImean? Because I was the Man as a 8-year-old.
Having had youth on his side, he doesn't accept all of the blame for his wayward childhood. "Like I should have been denounced," he argues. "As I grew as an individual, I feel I should have been denounced. You see, my moms and my pops never knew. But as far as the street thugs? They should have denounced me [and been] like, 'shorty you too young to be knowing what you doing.' Instead of that, I became the Man.…and as I grew I was shooting guns. I was like 11 and had guns, all type of shit. Like at 14 or 15, I shot somebody kid. I got caught for it and then I did it again and got put in at 16."
For a young kid, the thought of going to prison may lie anywhere between feelings of fear and anxiety to stupid pride on the idea of being able to don a merit badge as a sense of accomplishment in proving one's realness. Yet, in a land where prisoners have become commodities for Uncle Sam's henchmen, laws like Bill Clinton's Crime Bill discriminate against minorities and the majority of those incarcerated in this land are non-whites, although they make up less than half the population, many inner-city kids have no idea what they are up against. Noreaga, half-Black and Puerto-Rican, probably didn't either, but still managed to beat the odds by gaining a new perceptive on what mattered the most—his life.
"Yo, I was on like a 5.3 reading level," he says in almost hushed tones, as if he's still embarrassed by it. "I went to jail and in 6 months I was on a 12.5 reading level and was like, 'Oh shit, it wasn't because I knew I was at a 5.3 reading level, it was I just wasn't reading! When you in jail, your mind is so free and so clean. It's like everything else around you may be dirty, but your mind is so clean and you just don't have nothing else to do. You just become so much into politics."
He adds: "Prior to my incarceration I was a sick individual. I was thinking that shooting somebody makes me cool and that's crazy man. You feeling me, man? You should never be ranked on violence or whatever you do. I mean, don't never be no sucker, but for you [to be] enforcing it and [thinking] it's cool to enforce it? That's corny. And now I'm aware of that. Now I give people opportunities who was like me—who will be in jail in 5 years or so, if I don't come to them now. And I can get them a record deal and help them out and get them to prosper. And show them that this is a business, it's not the crack game, but it's [takes] the same abilities."
On their fire-n-brimstone debut, The War Report, Capone-N-Noreaga spat their brand of street knowledge with the fervor of experienced b-boys, without relying on the ever-so-quaint posturing and profiling taken on by most so-called "hardcore" denizens, but rather through unorthodox and amiable linguistics that fortified their rigid surroundings. In days where the world of Hip-Hop rarely brings anything of substance, CNN encouraged heads to listen to their angst-ridden exploits. And judging from sales that are quietly approaching that Midas touch, they did.
To think, it all began on a rooftop.
"That was my concept," says Noreaga, tapping his chest for emphasis, when asked about the duo's debut single "L.A., L.A.," an answer record to Tha Dogg Pound's "New York, New York" single a couple of years ago. Through a hookup he had with his man at the time, Nore was able to get an advance of Tha Dogg Pound's release before it went public and feeling slighted took an idea of flipping the script back to fellow wordsmith and Queens denizen, Tragedy. His idea would proceed to land the group a production deal through Tragedy's own 25 To Life Records. And though the video for the song (featuring a wild-haired Noreaga and a steely-looking Capone rhyming on top of a project rooftop, and stand-ins for Tha Dogg Pound's Daz and Kurupt being kidnapped, tortured and tossed off a bridge) was cheesy at best, its rather blatant diss towards some of the top players on the West coast, not only made for more noise in an industry already plagued by enough territorial shenanigans, but, more importantly, got CNN noticed. With anthems such as "Blood Money" and "T.O.N.Y.," the group made sure that their time in the spotlight was anything but brief. Now with Capone locked up due to a parole violation, Noreaga wants to make sure that CNN's channel remains on the airwaves. So not only does he have his numerous guest appearances (Ask him and he'll tell you about every single one of them.), both also his own stellar effort appropriately entitled N.O.R.E. (Niggas On the Run Eatin')
"That's my nigga and like Trag and Capone both know, I'm not doing this album because I want to be greedy while you in jail," he says, attempting to stay ahead of all the naysayers. "I'm doing this album to keep CNN alive. By this time if we didn't do this album and we didn't have nothing else out, you'd have forgotten about CNN. Everybody would have. I would have forgotten about CNN. It wasn't none of our choices for Capone to get locked up. It wasn't Capone's choice to get locked up. Things happen cause we was living the thug shit—we was really living that shit out and one of us got the short end of the stick. We was originally together, but now he caught it for self. Be we still gonna hold it down every step of the way."