SANDY: Yo! What’s up?

QUADRY: Hey, what’s the word?.

Where are you right now?

My room– my childhood room.

In Baton Rouge?

Yes ma’am.

Tight, how long have you been out there?

Since May 14 of 2020.

Oh, where did you live before then?

I lived in Los Angeles, like the Woodland Hills part.

What did you think? Very different?

Ummm– Nah not really. It’s the valley because it’s a little bit out the way. It’s almost just as hot. Almost just as cold, I guess. So it’s basically the same thing, you know, squirrels and stuff.

Is your project They Think We Ghetto an album?

It’s the follow-up to Malik Ruff, the last full-length. Don’t You Weep and the Tuamie album Emergency Raps were–not saying mixtapes, I don’t really like to use that phrase. Everything is a statement–but those are more like detours on the road to where we’re going.. Stops, I guess.

What’s the story behind the name?

I had signed with Warner Records with a budget to record the album. I made them buy studio equipment for the crib and all that. I made the project in the valley, like 85 percent of it. I got a whiteboard and honestly, it was a lot of different names. Actually, the notebook I’m looking at is where I started coming up with the names. At first, it was Black is Me, then it started turning into a whole bunch of stuff: Years Before, Years After. One day I wrote Live Ghetto Free, Ghetto Live Free, and the connotation of being ghetto, I guess, I found it interesting. Now it’s politically incorrect to say the n-word so it’s a replacement, but it’s also people who don’t like to be in the ghetto or have things that would make people say, “Oh that’s ghetto.” But people love the music of it, people love the –

Like the aesthetic of it.

Girls on Twitter will be so quick to say that they want them a hood n*gga. I tie that with the fascination and the fear, or the disdain and the fascination would also be in what I am as a black person or a black male. It’s a really loaded and layered set of words that even I hadn’t thought of, it’s a well-thought-out concept. I went to my friend DJ Dahi. He’s a well-known producer and I had told him the name They Think We Ghetto and the first thing he asked me was, “Who is ‘they’?” or “Is ‘they’ white people?” No, no, “they” can be anybody. It’s fluid but it’s also a subtle word so it’ll stick and when people read it, their mind will start to calculate who is the ‘they’ or “what does he mean?” I thought that would be good for the title. You can pull your own interpretation of it.

You touched upon America’s obsession with the image of the Black man and what he represents without fully accepting the Black man. That’s been a recurring topic throughout your songs. What is your view on it?

I’m only 25. Before this interview, I was watching this show from 2006 with Wayne Brady. He was hosting this show, he was with Torré, Paul Mooney, Harry Belafonte, and Diahann Carroll, this actress on a show called “Dynasty” in the ‘80s. I was just watching them talk and these are people who are at the backs of two generations before me. I’m talking about Harry Belafonte, he’s my grandpa’s age. He was explaining the same thing that I’m barely starting to see and feel. That makes me sad but it also makes me hopeful that maybe I can explain it better than James Baldwin and all these amazing people that tried to explain it and analyzed it. It’s a lot of people that I listen to in order to get a better grip on what’s going on out here.

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