C-Rayz Walz.

THIS GUY IS NOT YOUR (Puff) Daddy's rapper. C-Rayz Walz is not preoccupied with the bling factor of his watch or the legitimacy of his criminal record. Mic skills and the art of lyrics fascinate him. Influenced more by what was hot in '86 than what's on Hot 97, C-Rayz takes hip-hop "back to the future without the flux capacitator."--True 54

If you could set up a rhyme battle with anyone, who would it be?

There's not a lot of cats that are real crazy right now. I would set up a challenge for all the best emcees and have it be real creative, not regular topics. Like, "Yo, C-Rayz Walz, you're water. Eminem, you're a fish." I would put ill handicaps like that. Next round, "Eminem, you're gravel. Supernatural, you're an aardvark. JUICE, you're water and bubbles are your enemy, what will you do?" I'll take it to a 'nother level and show who really got freestyles.

Who would you predict to be the finalists in that contest?

I definitely would be. JUICE would. Supernatural would make it; Craig G. I don't think Eminem has an ill freestyle, not off the top of the dome. I think his written rhymes are brainiac. He seems more dope off the top of the dome because he has so much lyrical shit written down that he can just pull from the grab bag. I'm not taking anything away from him, because however you win you won, and it's all good.

Do you think he made a difference in freestyling coming back into the limelight a little, with &Mile and everything?

Yes, he definitely gave it more exposure. Eminem is a dope artist, he's a dope lyricist, he's a dope person. He came from the ciphers with us. He's definitely a true emcee. He made it hard for cats to come out that are white, the same way Jay-Z made it hard for kids to come out that are black. Eighty-five percent of emcees you hear spit are automatically out; "You sound like Jay, man." And for white kids, "Oh, you sound like Eminem." You have to be outside their genre, because they've mashed out their genre so bad you can't even sound nowhere near it or you're straight biting. That's greatness.

Do you ever get nervous that being on Definitive Jux is going to pigeonhole you towards being a backpacker rapper or being perceived as alternative rap?

Rap needs an alternative, for sure. It's all creative racism and separatism, it's another way to break up the unity of hip-hop. Hip-hop is more than the music; it's a whole culture. It's become negative by people who don't understand the real grind of independents, by people who want to separate themselves from people who are not real strong in the economic sense of where hip-hop is going. Def Jux is the only label I'm going to sign with. Ever. With this album, Ravipops, I wanted to make sure it wasn't so abstract that 1 would lose my core audience or stray away from people who've never heard of me. There are a lot of punchlines on there. Punchlines are a dope part of hip-hop, especially if you have dope punchlines with triple meanings. I never say a punchline that just has one meaning. All mine have at least double meanings, but a lot of times it's triple. But cats just don't listen like that, so all they hear is simple punchlines. I just wanted to connect everybody--the dummies and the geniuses. When I do my next music, it's going to be totally different. That's what's going to separate me from a lot of artists. Where I go with my album every time is going to be a whole new chamber. They're going to be like "Yo, C-Rayz has crazy chambers." That's what it's about as an artist. These hip-hop companies want you to be stagnated and make four of the same albums and keep that same money coming. I like Def Jux because everybody is an individual; nobody really gives a luck what you think about their music while they're making it. At the end of the day, they're like, "Alright, I like this, I'll let it out."

Do you want to talk a little about the economics of hip-hop?

I want to talk a little more about what you were saying before about Def Jux. I'm not a racist. But when I was younger and I was robbing people, I was like, "OK, white America owes me money for slavery." So that justified me going downtown and robbing Blockbuster. But as I progressed and evolved as a human being, 1 realized that devils come in all shapes, sizes, colors, eyes, skin tones, whatever. Most of the time it's your own people that are doing shit to you--your own family, people that you live in the same house with--that want to crush your dreams. They're like, "Fuck skating. Did you go to college for that?" And you're like, "Fuck you, guy. Did you go to college to be a dick and look at Mom like you hate her every day? You punk, I have more heart than you ever will have." Hip-hop and music don't have a home. Yeah, it originated in the ghettos to escape the reality that Mom was smoking crack or your father was a dope fiend or living some type of stagnated existence. But it's beyond that now, and you've got to grow with it. Hip-hop basically connected the whole world. It's the most powerful force in the world. Whoever listens to my music, that is who I'm making it for. So if white kids are listening to it and they're catching it, cool. What they're going to do is take my ideas into their house and overthrow the minds of their parents' government mentality. Then the next lime their parents look at me they might think, "Oh, C-Rayz is creative." Instead of " ... this fucking rap shit."

That's why so many kids are drawn to hip-hop ...

... It's against; it is rebel music.