During Swizz Beatz latest discussion with Joe Budden on Swizz Zone Radio, the hit maker said he wants to collect “taxes” from today’s hip hop artists to give back to the founding fathers of hip hop. The pioneers that will be at the receiving ends include the likes of DJ Kool Herc, Melle Mel, Grandmaster Flash, and Sugarhill Gang.
“I want to raise a million dollars for each icon that started hip-hop, Kool Herc on down,” Swizz Beatz said, according to Complex. “The fact that we’re not paying taxes on who started hip-hop shows that we don’t fucking really love hip-hop. The fact that we don’t pay taxes as artists to those icons that paved the way took the lower cut for the music that allows us to feed our families.”
Swizz reiterated that he is passionate about making this motion work as he added, “We need to be paying taxes to the creatives of hip-hop that gave us our freedom of speech to move forward. I’m going to go so hard with that.”
https://youtu.be/ZfZSiyfmFQU
According to Swizz Beats, he is going to raise a “minimum a million a piece” for the hip hop’s founding statesmen. And Joe Budden agreed to his ideas. “Every new deal that gets signed, one percent or half a percent should go toward rapper reparations,” he said.
In addition to their discussion about artists paying their dues, Swizz Beatz went on to reveal potential Verzuz battles between Rakim and Big Daddy Kane as well as Snoop Dogg and Busta Rhymes (“That’s done already”). Interestingly he also said a piano battle between his wife Alicia Keys and John Legend is in the works already!
However, on the cards now is, Nelly and Ludacris, who will face off in the next Verzuz challenge on Saturday, 16 May at 7 pm EST.
Who you got!?? @Nelly_Mo vs @Ludacris
Saturday, 5/16 7PM EST #VERZUZ pic.twitter.com/3vIkjvbklF
— VERZUZ TV (@verzuzonline) May 12, 2020
