When selecting a rapper to dub Mike Tyson’s rapper counterpart, Earl Sweatshirt is definitely not the first name that comes to mind. Nevertheless, the clever minds over at Citizens of Humanity decided to shake things up and allow the young Odd Future rapper to profile the legendary boxer for their latest issue.
Here’s an excerpt from the entertaining–and enlightening piece.
Mike: You know anger is my biggest enemy in life. I do a lot of reading on the history. I read the history, the whole history of the world, you know, from the beginning. And we have so many people, a lot of people. But do you know what we did more than fornicate?
Earl: Fight?
Mike: War, yeah. We fought more than we fucked. Ain’t that crazy? We got billions people on the planet. Even from the beginning, from the beginning of time when that book starts, fighting! What are we getting into now? Fighting! Fighting…from all that fighting, great names, great great great names, them fools be fighting, you know like George Washington All the great names, all these names came from fighting. And what for…
Earl: Fighting against something.
Mike: Yeah, themselves.
Earl: Some were fighting for like civil rights, you know – like it’s all fighting.
Mike: I think war is led by faith. I never think of physical fighting. It’s always spiritual. Fighting is spiritual.
Earl: Absolutely. Yeah. I got familiar with that concept early, just because my mom, she was always working, so she dropped me off at this martial arts dojo. And the dude instilled – we had to meditate for an hour every time, before we did anything. We would meditate. Just to connect to the spiritual side of it. And like, going inside of yourself and realizing the immense power that lies within you, just as a person.
Mike: You know young man; it’s all about spiritual awakenings. I could never stop drugs, I could never stop drinking, doing stuff, until I received my spiritual awakening. Now it’s not a problem anymore. But I’ve been doing this since the ’90s, late ’90s and I never could stop but I never understood the spiritual awakening. And once that comes into play, it’s really eye opening.
Read the rest of the interview over at Citizens of Humanity.
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Photo: Rafael Pulido/Citizens of Humanity
