Gettin’ Gilla with Redman
Like most things in life, writing online has its ups and downs. On the one hand, it’s undeniably narcissistic and the pay is crap. On the other hand, it’s kind of cool to have you have a ton of stuff you’ve written scattered all over the Web. From time to time, I grant myself the indulgence of doing a little self-Googling and checking out some of the sites I’ve been involved with in years past. Today was such a day, and I came across this gem, which I thought I’d share.
Let me set the scene first: I was interviewing Redman at Def Jam’s corporate offices in Midtown. I was late for my “day job” as a coach for a middle-school lacrosse team, so I had a backpack and lax stick in tow. The assistant who brought me in was probably thinking, “Who is this enormous clown!?” As soon as Red came into the room, he immediately closed the door behind him, stuffed some spare promotional t-shirts under it, and rolled a huge blunt and started smoking. I saw no other option but to start the interview! From the get go he was incredibly engaging, animated, and hilarious—it was just sort of surreal as I sat there watching him rant and (as I noticed when I played back the tape) answering all his rhetorical questions.
Anyway, toward the end of the interview it was clear that the ganja had begun to take its toll a bit and Red was entering his own world. This became most evident when I asked him about his memories of the infamous MTV Cribs episode, and he came out with the following answer. It still cracks me up to this day.
Now, let’s go back to the MTV “Cribs” episode, because a lot of people rate that as the best 15 minutes of television ever. How do you feel about that being one of your greatest legacies?
The way I look at it is like… First of all, Gilla House. Gilla House means over-the-top. Gilla. Short for guerrilla, just didn’t want to use guerrilla. Gilla! Like, “Is that gilla enough?” Gilla means like, say for instance you do paintings. You’re showing people your paintings, like, “See this one’s nice, but I don’t really like that one. But this one… I don’t really like this one either.” Gilla is like, why have those two in there? Why not take the time to make those two dope and have a full dope package? And over-the-top. That’s basically what gilla is: Over-the-top. And, um… I forgot the question.
No part of my question had anything to do with Gilla House! And even if it had, the analogy is insane. To date, the best answer I’ve ever received in an interview.
Read the rest here.
