So, about the Peace in the Middle East project – that was your idea, right?
Yeah.
Was it always your plan to get Serch involved?
Absolutely! I was a huge 3rd Bass fan growing up. It’s so funny because now I speak to a lot of a major rappers and they call me and I call them, but when I saw Serch – I was like, “oh man, that’s MC Serch” – I always kept up with Serch when I was a little kid. So when I meet him and I did my research of back in the day and knowing that he was Jewish and has family back in Israel – I said, I’m such a huge fan of this dude anyway, why don’t we just get together and do the project together and go in. S.O.U.L. Purpose - Mazzi - and I had always talked about doing this project. But when I talked to Serch about it, he was just on it – no hesitation, he was just like, “let’s do it.”It was just real exciting. I mean, how often do you get to work with one of your childhood heroes on a project of this magnitude?
Will this be on ongoing project or will you draw a line under it with an official release date?
Right now, we’re still selling the music, 100% non profit, going towards kids in Israel and Palestine on Serchlite.com and we’re going to get it out to other websites and things. Really, the project is almost done, almost ready. We’re putting those finishing touches on it and then we’re going to drop it. It’s a complete humanitarian record – it’s not political. I know everyone’s like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, but it’s bigger than that. It’s for real, for real. This is for the kids, it doesn’t matter what you believe in or who you believe in or what you are. It’s time for the madness to stop.
You’re from Beirut?
Yeah, Beirut, Lebanon. My father’s Palestinian and my mother’s Lebanese. My father is actually there right now – that’s where he lives.
Do you still have other family back there?
Yeah, all my aunts, uncles, cousins. It’s actually tatted on my skin – that’s where I’m from, that’s the city. It just gets crazy at times. You hear about car bombs going off, war breaking back out, the goverments are fighting and all the different people are getting into it again and pops is right there. I call him and he’s like right there in the middle of all of it. But that’s his home, that’s his hood. He comes to America to visit sometimes, but that’s where he’s at. So, it’s kind of stressful in his part of the world sometimes.
How many musicians are involved in the project right now?
There are so many involved right now – so many have sent me tracks, sent Serch tracks, sent Mazzi tracks– so many right now I can’t put a definite number on it, but I can say the support has been overwhelming. I didn’t expect it, honestly, to get this popular this fast. When I say fast, the first stories that got out went all over the world and then I got so many songs on my email, my inbox, and people were just so with it, it became a beautiful thing.
