Artest talks about his rap album

Sacramento kings forward Ron Artest finally got around last month to releasing the rap album he was working on during his year long suspension for fighting with fans in Detroit in 2004. Due to the ongoing basketball season Artest hasn’t been out actively promoting the release, but he did find time to give an exclusive interview to little known “andPop” online magazine. Most of this interview makes no sense, even for Ron Artest. I’ve posted the best captions below, but if you want a look into the skewed ghetto world-view of Ron Artest I suggest you read the whole thing here.

On the album’s second track, “Haterz”:

... the commissioner will hear his name cited in one of Artest's rhymes: "David Stern, damn David Stern, I gotta teach you 'bout the ghetto, some things you should learn."

"There are so many people in the NBA that are from the ghetto and David Stern needs to learn a little more about these types of people that are in his league," Artest says on the line from Sacramento. "He ain't understand how to deal with the people that are in the NBA and he comes down hard on people at times."

On keeping it real:

Artest realizes the prominence of "street cred" – more or less audience approval – in the hip-hop game. "It's important that I have street cred because of the type of music that I'm doing and the type of people that are attracted to me.," says the 27-year-old from New York's Queensbridge Projects. "Right now my street cred is that I'm a real dude, not a thug, just a real dude."

On being hardcore:

"There are a lot of things I could have done [to promote my album] like touring in other states but I had to pass. I understand that without basketball, none of this would have been possible and I respect that. I always realized that but I always tried to keep it real to myself and sometimes I keep it too real and sometimes that hurt me. You can't be hardcore every day all day."

I really don’t know what else to say about all of this. It boggles the mind that this “hardcore” illiterate earns more in a year playing ghetto sports than 10 brain surgeons make over the course of their entire careers combined.