INTERVIEW BY TOM EVANS
ILLUSTRATION BY SAMUEL DHOOGE
“You could shock them with knowledge, you could shock them with comedy, but just don’t make it be shock for the sake of shocking people.“ R.A. The Rugged Man, June 2020
Staff Sgt. John A. Thornburn returned to the USA as a veteran from the Vietnam war where he was affected by Agent Orange, the chemical warfare used by the American military. While back in New York he started his life over and had a child who would grow up to be a famed rap artist named R.A. The Rugged Man. R.A. would see a life of tragedy due to the chemical warfare, with his brother Maxx being born handicapped and blind, dying at the age of 10. He also had a sister named Dee Ann who died at the age of 26. John A. Thornburn died in 2010 from cancer. R.A The Rugged Man told his fathers story in his record ‘Uncommon Valor: A Vietnam Story’ which was named ‘Verse of The Year’ in Hip-Hop DX and a Hip-Hop quotable in The Source magazine.
Despite today being referenced as a Hip-Hop icon, R.A. The Rugged Man was constantly ignored from the discussions of Hip-Hop in the 1990s. R.A. began a music career in the early 1990s at just 12 years old. After getting signed to major label Jive Records at 18 years old, R.A The Rugged Man was destined for a career of mainstream greatness, however his debut album was never released. What followed was a legacy tarnished by the corporate aspects of Hip-Hop, all the while still managing to keep his name relevant in the wider conversation of Hip-Hop while featuring on compilations and collaborations such as all three editions of the iconic Rawkus Records Soundbombing series where he featured alongside Eminem, Mos Def, Styles P, Talib Kweli and others, and the platinum selling ‘WWF Aggression’ compilation where he featured alongside Snoop Dogg, Method Man, Ice-T, Run DMC and others. R.A has also collaborated with the likes of Notorious B.I.G and Mobb Deep.
In 2004, R.A. The Rugged Man finally released his first album ‘Die Rugged Man, Die’. R.A’s second album ‘Legends Never DIe’ was released in 2013. His third and most recent album ‘All My Heroes Are Dead’ was released on April 17, 2020 and features appearances from Ghostface Killah, Ice-T, MOP, Onyx, Brand Nubian, Vinnie Paz, Chino XL, Inspektah Deck, DJ Jazzy Jeff, Afro and more.
URBAN KINGDOM SPOKE TO RA THE RUGGED MAN IN JUNE 2020, DURING THE GLOBAL CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC.
WARNING: This interview contains mature themes. Reader discretion is advised.
R.A. THE RUGGED MAN:
THE ARTIST’S DIDN’T BLACKBALL ME. IT WAS THE INDUSTRY. When (the artists) were signed to the majors, my agent would say, ‘I can’t do nothing with them’, but now that we all kind of run our own shit, we can do whatever the fuck we want.
TOM EVANS:
With the new album ‘All My Heroes Are Dead’ there are so many legends on one project – was there any artist in particular that you felt particularly challenged by or even made you go back and rewrite?
R.A. THE RUGGED MAN:
Kool G Rap is my idol. Of course he gave me one of them verses that just bodies a whole song and that’s what I want from Kool G rap. He gave it to me. So I was very, very, very, extremely ridiculously stupid happy when I did G rap part.
TOM EVANS:
Was it something you had to go back and like rewrite or for that particular verse?
R.A. THE RUGGED MAN:
No not at all. Not at all. I had already had the track, I already had Wu-Tang on it, so I wanted, you know, it was a fast tempo track. I wanted one other MC and I was thinking about another Wu–Tang member and then I was like, nah, let’s go Juice Crew. Let’s, let’s do it. Let’s just expand it. So I already had it all kind of worked out but G Rap was just the icing on the cake.
TOM EVANS:
So in the early days you featured on a lot of compilation albums such as the Soundbombing series. Was the transition between having a lot of loose tracks out there to actually creating a full body of work a challenge or did it come naturally?
R.A. THE RUGGED MAN:
Well when I make an album, I want to make sure it’s really good. When you’re struggling and broke and you’re not really getting the money, it’s hard to sit in a studio and make something that you love.
You think ‘I got studio for one day, so I have to just mix it, record it, write it and hand it in and that’s the song’ and you know, good music is made that way, but I kind of want to put my shit together properly and make it sound competitive with anybody on the planet….
The whole planet is doing the same thing. So if they got all the tools in the world, and all the music in the the world, and all the engineers in the world and you got yourself a couple of beats, yeah you could do some cool underground like that, but I kinda wanna body everybody, you know.
TOM EVANS:
So the album itself is very varied in terms of style and subject matter but it still manages to sound very cohesive and well put together. How do you get yourself in the head space of doing a track like Golden Oldies for example, which is a lot more playful and sounds like you’re having fun with Slug as opposed to like Angelic Boy, which is obviously a lot darker in tone?
R.A. THE RUGGED MAN:
The human mind works like that. It’s like if you’re hanging out with your old friends from high school telling stories, goofy and stupid and, and they’re laughing like little kids, but then, somebody says “Hey you know, this black kid was jogging and got shot by two redneck white boys. The father and the son.” Then you’re not giggling now, you’re on with a serious topic that really happened. So I think that’s how the human mind works. You have a great day, you just had sex with a beautiful woman and then an hour later you get home and, and you got news that your uncle has cancer. The inside of a human mind isn’t just in the same lane all day all night so, you know, if you want me to make an album full of all the same type of tracks and same topics and kinda make it like easier, you know, for the listeners so they know that if they are in the mood for this kind of music they put on this kind of album, fine but that’s not how I work. I wanna be more psychological, I want to be in and out of everything from like I say in the intro from politics to porn to whatever the fuck we want to rock about. I like albums like that. I like the long albums where the topics varied. I like albums like ‘Business as Usual’ by EPMD, super long, ‘Whut Thee Album’ by Redman, super long, different sounds, different styles, different content, you know, ‘It’s a Big Daddy Thing’ that was another one. Kane would go from ‘Mr Welfare Cheque’ to ‘Smooth Operator’ to ‘Another Victory’ to you know, ‘make ’em say, daddy, I don’t want none’.
TOM EVANS:
I’d still make the argument that that was his best album. Even though it’s his lengthiest, there’s so many classics on there.
R.A. THE RUGGED MAN:
I have it as his best album. I think that Kane’s best songs ‘Ain’t No Half Steppin” and ‘Set It Off’ from the first album but that’s three songs and the rest of the album is great too ‘Long Live the Kane’ and all of that. I think as a body of work, the second album works better as a body of work.
TOM EVANS:
I couldn’t agree more with that. Are there any other examples of a long albums that you think work better than short albums. Any that particularly influenced you?
R.A. THE RUGGED MAN:
‘One For All’ by Brand Nubian
‘Ready to die’ was a long album by Biggie you know, so you know, it all depends.
TOM EVANS:
So being an uncensored artist, you must write a lot of music and you look at it and you decide whether to put it on a song or not. Did you ever get that feeling where you’re looking at verse and think “No, even I can’t say that.”
R.A. THE RUGGED MAN:
Uh, yeah, sometimes you go “Oh, is that funny enough or was it strong enough?” If it’s offensive you still want it to be strong or you want it to be funny or you want it to be interesting, you don’t want to offend just to offend. When I was younger sometimes I would throw some shots and be like, yeah, that’s going to piss everyone off but when you get older, you go, yeah, let’s still shock them, but let’s make it a little bit more creative shock and not shock shock.
TOM EVANS:
On the same day your album dropped The Four Owls dropped their album and you feature on their track ‘Air Strike.’ I was just wondering how that collaboration came about and if it was a case of actually meeting with them in the studio or if you sent your verse across?
R.A. THE RUGGED MAN:
We did a couple festivals and sometimes when I’m touring Europe, I need a DJ so we talked to the Owls ahead of time and said “Hey yo, could you, you know, we’ll meet before the set and you guys DJ my set?’ I think this is what happened. Double check with them but I’m pretty sure that this is what happened. I think they deejayed my set and then I played the ‘Stanley Kubrick’ beat from the Rawkus Soundbombing album. I’m tired of that song but I love the beat so a lot of times I do the rhymes and then I’ll invite other MCs out to spit on it so when I was in New York, we had like this OG show with Grandmaster Caz and Fearless Four members and Mikey and a young Chris Rivers. We all came out and spat on it, but we was in this festival. I forgot what country it was in, I had the Owls come out and spit on the beat in the middle of my set and you know, we stayed in touch and Leaf Dog hit me up years ago, I think before there was a Four Owls. He used to send me beats and he used to send Vinnie Paz beats.
TOM EVANS:
So seeing as you like traveling around the world, do you have a favourite city to perform at?
R.A. THE RUGGED MAN:
Well right now it’s any fucking city. The new world we live in right now is insanity man. So wherever the fuck wants to open up, let me in. That’s my favorite city.
TOM EVANS:
Do you have any crazy stories from the UK? I know we have been very supportive of your new album over here and Europe as a whole has been supportive but do you have any crazy UK tour stories?
R.A. THE RUGGED MAN:
One time I was touring with Stig Of the Dump and I said “Let’s go and do some sword fighting.” and Stig of the Dump was like “What do you mean?” I’m like, “Yeah, we’re in England let’s go and do some sword fighting.” They’re like “What? You think everybody in the UK is just fencing? Do you think everybody has a fucking sword, and sips tea and goes fencing?” Stig told me we don’t have that everywhere and I’m like “Yeah you do?” So I had them look it up on a computer and there was like three fencing spots. It was a day off. I just randomly called some fencing spots and said “Hey yo, I’m from New York. I want to sword fight people.” They were like “yeah, sure.”
We went to the fencing spot and I was fucking up everybody because I got arms. I don’t fence either, but I slap box so fencing turned out to be the equivalent to slap boxing cause you just, you know jab people in the face with a sword. They had this one chick that was an Olympic trainer and I was even lighting her up, then all of a sudden, she was like leaping into the fucking sky like Peter Pan and stabbing me in the face and she fucked me up. Like literally she turned into Peter Pan, flying in the air and shit. I look up and the swords in my face and I’m like “Oh shit, the sword’s in my face” and she’s like jumping and spinning and shit like a fucking movie, you know, like some crouching tiger shit crazy. I beat all the UK rappers though, it was easy.
TOM EVANS:
So do you feel, since moving to Berlin from America? Do you feel like you’ve been embraced by the German hip hop community?
R.A. THE RUGGED MAN:
I’ve always thought of Germany a lot – way before I moved here. I met the mother of my children and we made babies (because I was doing a show in Germany) so they’ve always embraced me pretty heavy in Germany.
TOM EVANS:
Do you feel you’ve been embraced more so than by some American audiences? Because in America you had quite a turbulent start to your career and then obviously you released classic albums.
R.A. THE RUGGED MAN:
Europe always embraces culture more than America. America is not a very cultured place. There’s cultured people but as a whole collective, they need to be fed corporately what they’re supposed to listen to. They have to be taught. It’s all about what’s happening now? What’s going on now? It’s like this is the hot shit, I heard about it in the magazine and on the newspaper and on the TV and on the internet and you know, if it’s highly advertised and shoved down their throat and it’s affiliated with something and it’s got a Grammy nomination, you know that’s America in a lot of cases. America also has a great underground scene. Europe as a whole just kinda respects art a little more.
TOM EVANS:
I was speaking to Immortal Technique last week or about two weeks ago. You did that track with Immoral technique ‘Who do we trust?’ And we knew what to expect going into the track just based off the title because we know what Immortal Technique’s like and I feel like you both have a lot in common in the sense that you’re both actively looking for truth in a world that’s full of corruption and lies. Who do you think we should be looking to in these sorts of times when we’re constantly being lied to?
R.A. THE RUGGED MAN:
Independent thinkers, you know, people who don’t just follow the same narrative that gets repeated over and over again and that’s what we’re supposed to believe and if you don’t believe the narrative that we’re constantly fed, then you’re the enemy. You know? It’s like, no, you have to think and you have to look at everybody, you can look at the mainstream narrative as well and see if there’s any truth in it because sometimes there is, but the majority of time it’s not. The mainstream information that we’re given is part of control. They want to control the narrative. They want to control your thoughts. They want to control the truth, and they’re not giving the full truth so you have to look everywhere. You’ve got to look at crazy people, you’ve gotta look at smart people, you gotta look at professors, you gotta look at plumbers, you gotta look at everybody for truth.
TOM EVANS:
Last week, Immortal technique was comparing being in prison to being in lockdown and saying how prison was so much harder and I think people don’t realize that there’s, all this shit that’s been going on has been going on for years. It’s not new for lockdown. People have been in lockdown all their lives without a choice of what they get to eat that day.
R.A. THE RUGGED MAN:
Most of the OG’s look at it that way. Ice T said the same thing. It’s like, you know, “I’ve been locked up so this shit is easy for me.” On the flipside of that is this lockdown is destroying people’s lives as well. People are going bankrupt, people are dying, people committing suicide and we don’t know how effective it is yet. None of us know. We need more information but we do this as a precaution. It’s just a crazy time man. There’s other doctors that are saying there’s better ways to do it and then Sweden did it in a way where they said “Okay, if you’re old and you’re sick or you have certain conditions then stay away.” If you’re young, healthy, strong, you know, go to the streets, don’t kill our economy, keep your job, let’s go. Let’s keep it moving. I don’t know exactly how they did it, but the numbers weren’t crazy and then the rest of the world smeared Sweden and acted like they were an abomination. “This is diabolical! They’re going to kill everybody.” That didn’t happen, you know. There’s been pandemics in the sixties and fifties and eighties and the pandemic in the sixties, the late sixties killed millions of people but people were still out protesting in the streets and starting riots and fighting and in the fifties, the economy crashed. I mean, it didn’t kill the economy because of a pandemic so this is the first time we’re responding to it like this. We don’t know if this is the right way to do it, but we also don’t know if it’s the wrong way to do it completely so we’re just doing what we’re told which you know me, I’m a conspiracy researcher man like I don’t believe everything they’re telling us but at the same time I’m not a scientist either so, you know, there’s no work for me right now. Just like there’s no work for theatre owners and there’s no work for restaurant owners. It’s a different world we live in right now and hopefully the world can begin to function again.
TOM EVANS:
A lot of artists have been stopping album releases because obviously for labels they’re looking at it like when you drop an album you need to tour it so you can ride off the hype of that album straight after it’s release. What was your thought process on that when you were releasing your album as It might be a while before you can start touring again?
R.A. THE RUGGED MAN:
Well, my thought process was we already named the release date and the fans were waiting on it. It took me this long to put out a fucking record. You don’t want to have people biting your shit because the press got your fucking songs and somebody makes the song that you make and then they release it for you. Like get the fucking music out. You know, it’s obviously going to hurt my money because I’m not going to be able to tour off of it, but the fans get the music. I made them wait long enough. Let’s give it to them
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