National Public Radio broadcast an interview with Griselda and included the transcript of the extended interview with the group. They talked at length about their past, about making decisions based not on popularity but authenticity, about hip-hop eras and about mainstream embracing Griselda sound.
MCs commented more on using only original beats for their studio album. Apparently, the decision not to use samples was mostly financially motivated. Being signed up to Shady Records, Griselda could not use samples in the same way they did it before. Now everything had to be legal, formal and to go with a paycheck to copyright holders. But their hustle mentality is strong, and they don’t see the point in sharing with somebody who is not involved in their creative process.
Benny: Yeah, you know, cutting the middleman out. It’s like when you get your status up — it’s like the streets. If you meet a plug, but the plug is up here and you down here, but you don’t got the reputation to go step to him yourself, once you do get that reputation, you cut ’em out. You just do it like that: No sampling or nothing. We got to cut a check to somebody? For what? Let’s do it. It’s the Griselda movement.
Westside: And it still sounds amazing. Beat Butcha’s incredible. It’s to the point where when we dropped the album, nobody didn’t even know it was no samples on the album until like a week and a half later. Everybody thought those were samples. We been talking to a lot of OGs and they still like, “Wait a minute, no samples?” Because that’s how incredible it sounds.
And once we figured like, OK, mixing Beat Butcha up with Daringer, we could create a sound with no sample and kind of can even show the world, and even our lane of musician, our peers, like, ‘Look, this can be done.’ You know I’m saying? ‘Cause a lot of people think it can’t be done, that you have to have a sample.
The financial aspect of their rap career is important for Griselda and obviously they were asked directly how much money they have from their concerts.
Westside: We good! Because not only are we gonna make money off the show, we’re gonna make money off the merch, we’re gonna make money off of meet-and-greets, cause who don’t want to meet us? It’s all of that. What we built is something special. It’s different. So I don’t like to compare us really to nobody because in today’s game, Griselda is a one of one.
Aw, man. If sampling rules was different — honestly, the music will be a lot better. I mean, we have a lot of sample s*** too, but this album was the first album we did on a major, so this the first one that really counted, if you really look at it. So it’s like, since this the album that really do count, we need to maximize and kind of just get the most we can get out of this. And the most we could get out of this is not doing samples.
The thing about it is, you hear a lot of people album that have no samples, but the beats is trash. They might not have a Beat Butcha. You have to play the game smart. You have to actually know how to use the players that you have around you, if you have access to ’em. Fortunately, we have a Beat Butcha. Fortunately, we have a Daringer. So, like I said, that that marriage right there, it’s incredible, you know I’m saying? … To have keep people around and just to keep pushing the culture forward, showing people that it can be done. And I think more people might try more now, because they like, “Damn, OK. If a whole album came out with no samples sounding like this, let’s try this.”
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