In part two of an interview with Thisis50 and Young Jack Thriller, Eric Sermon spoke on 16orbetter, his E.S.P album, and what today’s hip hop artist are lacking.
Sermon gives his props to Jack Thriller for his cypher series “16orbetter” which takes aspiring rappers and gives them a platform spit their best bars in an effort to be heard. Sermon also talks about wanting to get involved with trying to bring the show to TV and using his celebrity status to attract other celebrities to the project to make it bigger.
“2015 should be that, it should be Jack Thrillers show on the biggest scale period,” said Sermon.
The former member of EPMD also discusses his new album Eric Sermon’s Perception (E.S.P) and working with Mary J. Blige, Fred the Godson, Joel Ortiz, and Too Short. Sermon talks about the concept of the album being about what is going on in the rap game and how he perceives it which leads him into discussing how there is no balance in hip hop anymore.
“Everybody shouldn’t be making the same record,” said Sermon. “I think that everybody shouldn’t be trying to do the exact same thing. People that try to be different they afraid but now somebody opened the screen door. Kendrick Lamar and J Cole opened the screen door up so now you can go through and a door might open up.”
Sermon stressed that there are millions of people that’s tired of what the mainstream is pushing out and that they would like to hear some creativity. He also touch on rappers having a five-year lifespan before their music is considered old school.
“When whites look at their situation or their genre it don’t say old school Paul McCartney, old school U2, old school Madonna, old school Bruce Springsteen. It just says U2, Bruce Springsteen, so and so,” said Sermon. He made the point that whenever a new wave of music was introduced they made a new category for their music like Pop music splitting from Rock music for example. He believes that rap and hip hop doesn’t have that and that something of the caliber should be introduced to the game.
Check out part 1 of the interview here and stay tuned for part 3.
