will.
So for all the young rappers coming in, get you some attorneys. Even if you ain’t got no money, you gotta get attorneys so you can read over them contracts and know what you’re signing so you won’t be in the situation I’m in, where I gotta fight these niggas to get my shit back.
Pull over here, I wanna get some diapers.
Snoop leaves the car, and returns three minutes later carrying a bottle of barbecue sauce.
No luck?
SNOOP DOGG (to the tape recorder): I had a diaper run. Had to get some diapers for my baby. The store didn’t have none; them motherfuckers was too small. We’re just smoking on this motherfucking bomb-ass orange weed from my homeboy Chopper.
[Continued . . .]
Kenny G was not merely on time for this interview: He was half an hour early, standing alone on the edge of a seaplane dock on Manhattan’s East River, his hair tied back in a curly ponytail. At his feet lay a crumpled brown paper bag full of navigation maps he had bought for the journey we were about to take. Not just a light-jazz saxophonist but also a light-aircraft pilot, Kenny G ushered me into the cockpit of a seaplane and flew over the Statue of Liberty to Port Washington, Long Island for lunch.
Have you ever tried any drugs?
KENNY G: Oh, I’m not a drug user at all.
So you wouldn’t just try them, even though you told me five minutes ago that you’re the first guy to try anything new?
KENNY G: I’m not interested at all. I would only try something that’s good for myself. No, I’m not. Not interested.
Not even tempted?
KENNY G: No. I mean, I go into one of those restaurants in Seattle and get one of those microbrewery beers on tap. After one of those, I’m happy. That’s about all I can take. That’s good enough for me. I don’t think drugs are necessary. If you want to have an out-of-mind experience, there are a lot of different ways I think you could do it. If you sat by yourself on a mountaintop for two days, I think you’d be there. I know that’s a little harder than taking a little shot of something and then you’re high for a few hours.
So drugs are just lazy enlightenment then?
KENNY G: That’s the perfect way of putting it. For me, if I want to get my spiritual stuff, it’s flying my seaplane to some mountain lake, turning the engine off, and sitting there. That’s awesome. I can’t tell you what that feels like. You’re totally alone and there’s no one around. You’re in a place where maybe a man wasn’t supposed to be. Whew, it’s so great.
Have you learned any important life lessons from other celebrities?
KENNY G: Do you mean about drugs?
[Continued . . .]
Chris Rock sat alone in his room at the Ritz-Carlton in Philadelphia, where he was staying under the pseudonym Jimi Hendrix. CNN played silently on the television set. When a headline about investigators finding images of child pornography at Pee-wee Herman’s house scrolled across the screen, Rock shook his head. “One of the funniest guys who ever lived,” he sighed.
So many of your jokes and characters revolve around crack.
CHRIS ROCK: Basically, whatever was going on when you started getting laid will stick with you for the rest of your life. So crack was just a big part of my life, between my friends selling it or girls I used to like getting hooked on it. White people had the Internet; the ghetto had crack. It’s weird, too. Crack and the VCR and the portable handheld camera—all this shit just came out at the same time.
And how are they connected for you?
ROCK: That whole being-able-to-tape-shit came out around the same time as crack. So you saw all these weird images of like guys’ mothers blowing people on video for some crack. Or you go over to your friend’s house and there’s a porno tape of a girl you used to date blowing eight guys. That’s crack.
I remember this rich kid from high school smoking crack in a cheap motel and hiring hookers off the street to smoke with him.
ROCK: That’s crack too. I have never been to war, but I survived that shit. I lost friends and family members. The whole neighborhood was kind of on crack—especially living in Bed-Stuy [in Brooklyn], man.
And at the same time, in the end, what does this produce? Gangsta rap. This is one of the things that goes into the misogyny of rap. You see all these young guys with this weird distorted view of women because these women they used to hold on a pedestal are now doing all this nasty shit.
Especially in LA: It’s the home of the groupies, so then it’s also got to be the home of the normal guys getting left behind. So you combine that and crack, and you see a bunch of guys with real fucked-up views on women. That’s how you get N.W.A. That’s how you get a record like “A Bitch Iz A Bitch.” That’s how you get Tupac saying crazy shit on record.
So did you ever try it?
ROCK: The closest I ever got to doing crack was selling crack. Me and a friend of mine, we took these jobs at a camp just to get money. We were going to get paid a thousand or two thousand at the end of the summer, and then take that money and buy some crack to sell. But of course he got hooked on crack before we could go out and do it. And then right after that, God brought comedy into my life.
I wonder what would have happened if you’d started selling it?
ROCK: Who knows what would have happened? I would have been dumb to have done it. I’m not saying, “If it wasn’t for comedy, I’d be selling crack.” But I remember sitting with my friends, cutting up coke like it was yesterday: cocaine, lactose, vitamin B12. Cook it up—crack. I am so lucky I never tried crack. The most I did was put some coke on my tongue.
What gave you the strength and the resources to avoid it?
ROCK: I don’t know if it was the strength and the resources. One of my brothers is an abuser of . . . things. So he kind of saved my life, by his example. People always get mad at athletes for getting high. I’m happy for every one. Dwight Gooden saved my life, Darryl Strawberry saved my life—because they always get punished. It’s not like they get caught doing drugs and then they get a raise.
What did you mean earlier when you said that God brought comedy into your life?
ROCK: It’s not even about bringing me into stand-up. It was just about
