Nothing’s been the same since Kendrick Lamar dropped his verse on “Control,” specifically using his “King Of New York” line. But what many never realized was he was simply flipping a Kurupt lyric! Check out what the Compton rapper had to say about the verse and his peers’ responses below in the cover story for the November issue of XXL, on newsstands now.

Marisa Mendez

Speaking of Kurupt, why are you entertaining this “King of New York” talk from everybody? Why aren’t you just saying it’s a Kurupt lyric? You said it, so you meant it—
I think I said everything I need to say on Peter Rosenberg, Hot 97. If people don’t get it from there, then I don’t feel [I need] to explain myself any more. I think they’ll run it down to the ground rather than me. You know, I just wrote a verse. I think everybody’s just taking it to the ground and don’t want to let it go. I spoke my piece on Hot 97. If people wanna take it further than there, that’s their entertainment. I’m on a whole ‘nother plateau of thinking now. That was just for that moment of writing a verse. That’s how I feel about it.

I’m trying to talk about you in terms of a student of art. You did this thing where you flipped Kurupt’s lyrics, but you’re not bringing that up. That’s the shit that makes everybody look really stupid. It just shows your intelligence; if they paid attention they would know [where those lines come from].
That’s exactly what it is. I feel like, when you’re a student of it and you have a sense of knowing what’s going on, you hold other people accountable at knowing what’s going on, too—people that you respect—so you feel like there’s no need to explain yourself. If I’m not gonna explain myself to people that I know, that understand it, I don’t feel like it’s needed to explain myself to people that’s totally oblivious to it. So I just keep my mouth quiet, be a man of few words, and let everybody else go crazy and figure it out themselves, whether it takes tomorrow or it takes ten years from now.

Not only in terms of you, but in terms of what Kurupt did, there’s this whole thing where you’re playing with opposites—you know: West Coast to East Coast; Muslims, pork; Popes, Muslims. I think people are getting upset around the King of New York thing and not even looking at it like it’s dope. Like, Are you even paying attention to what’s being done? You’re getting upset about one little thing and the whole artistry of that is—
Let me tell you something: This is my thing—this is what I found out through it all, from doing that verse. People wanted to say something anyway, period. They’re just looking for the right moment to. They want to say something anyway. That’s how I look at it. That’s it.

To me, it lost a lot of the fun immediately when you heard what Papoose said, because that was a dude that was hurt. Like, Your shit is coming from a really mean place; this isn’t fun for you. Joell [Ortiz] went in, but Joell was like, This is coming from a fun place. And there’s no difference because you know both of them—you know Joell, you know Joe Budden, you know Papoose. It was just really interesting that he took it there.
I mean, it’s 50/50—some people took it as fun, some people took it as opportunists. Huge opportunists. And more power to them.

Read the full interview at XXL.