Wifigawd: This is me on 100%. I’m turnt on this jont.
MY: Are you freestyling?
Wifigawd: I don’t remember. I was off the Molly, though. I was happy as shit.
[Laughs]
MY: I look at the persona you have on social media, and even in person like I’ve dapped you up and you’re a rapper, so you have a hard personality, you know? But you’re not a hard person.
Wifigawd: Yeah.
[Laughs]
MY: I can hear that in your music. You break out in song a lot. I’ll just be frank because that is such a contrast from the person we see.
Wifigawd: I do it all. That’s just the swag. Gotta have the swag. That’s the most important thing: you’ve got to have the swag.
MY: Where’d you learn that swag?
Wifigawd: Growing up in D.C., my environment. I’m a product of my environment as corny as that sounds. Everything around me—to my best friend being white.
MY: What’s his name?
Wifigawd: His name was Max. He was a white boy--captain of the soccer team.
MY: This is high school days?
Wifigawd: Growing up, like sandbox days. Putting me on shit like Phoenix and MGMT. I’m like ‘What the fuck is this weird-ass shit. Let me show you Kid Cudi.’ He’s like, ‘Kid Cudi? This shit is awesome, bro!’ We used to be in the attic showing each other culture. He showed me white culture and I showed him black culture. I fuck with all types of music.
MY: I just thought about the kids at your show at the Art House and who came to that.
Wifigawd: Diversity.
MY: There were black people, there were white people. And those white kids, and I say kids because they were teenagers.
Wifigawd: Some of those kids, I probably used to be their basketball coach.
MY: Where’d you coach?
Wifigawd: They had this little program called Hoop Ed in D.C and I was coaching and playing basketball. My father is a teacher, too, so he knows all the kids, and I just got to know all the young’ns. They fuck with me because I’m the cool coach, you know, so I knew all the kids. And then going to Wilson, all the little kids that go to [Alice] Deal they are always gonna see you...I used to see Gleesh when I went to Deal at Wilson--standing outside and shit. I want to play a role with the youth.
MY: You’ve been doing that.
Wifigawd: Yeah, but 2019 you’re going to see me reaching out to the youth. There’s hot new niggas from D.C. that are young.
MY: At what point did you realize you wanted to be a rapper?
Wifigawd: My man, he was certified. Marquise Heem--another alias nigga that has bars.
MY: Who is that?
Wifigawd: See, if we are going to get into that we are going to get into the Heem Team. The Heem Team was a whole group of niggas on some fly shit. They went to Duke. I went to Wilson. I say Marquise Heem because we went to elementary school together. This nigga was in my fourth grade class. My fourth-grade teacher was very close with my family. I went to a cultured school, an African school. My folks worked at the school.
MY: What was it called?
Wifigawd: It was called Tree of Life. My fourth grade teacher was Grap Luva. You know who that is?
MY: No, who’s that.
Wifigawd: You know who Pete Rock is?
MY: The name sounds familiar.
Wifigawd: Alright, Pete Rock is a legendary hip-hop producer. Worked with Kanye. Worked with Ninth Wonder. He’s worked with everybody. Grap Luva is his brother--blood brother. He was my teacher. This nigga was going to Japan on tour during the school year, coming back with crazy-ass shit. Little martial arts figurines from Japan telling me, “They love black people in Japan. Music is the shit.” And I was like, ‘Yea I want to be a rapper, too.’ We had that joint in class where everybody had to write down what they wanted to be. Everybody had NBA, NFL, NFL, NBA, NBA, and I was the nigga who wanted to be a rapper. Very cliche, very typical, very real. I always wanted to rap. Ever since I figured out that you could fuck with words like that I fucked with it. I feel like every black kid growing up in tune with music rapped or has written a sixteen before. Everybody. Listen, I wasn’t always fire. I just did that shit every day and learned myself and learned what I wanted to do.
MY: Yeah, you’re growing up with it.
Wifigawd: As black people, we’re in tune with art. That’s a part of us for any black person. Go outside and find a crackhead, that nigga would probably be painting and probably has something to tell you, too. We’re just in tune. That doesn’t mean perfect. Practice makes perfect. Look at the world. Look at the game.
MY: We are the game.
***
Wifigawd: The best quarterbacks of all time have been black.
[Laughs]
Wifigawd: I don’t give a fuck what you say. Put Mike Vick in his prime with that Belichick...stop it. Who was that out there, Randy Moss? Stop it. Wes Welker? They would’ve been blowing niggas out by 40. That’s why Tom Brady is where his draft number was picked, whatever, 12th round or some dumb-ass round. He is that type of player. He got a stinger, but he’s been on good teams the whole time.
Chachi: But Brady is like that, his IQ…
Wifigawd: Fool, he’s a Caron Butler-type.
[Laughs]
MY: Chill, chill, chill...Caron Butler beat Pitt’s ass repeatedly.
Wifigawd: Oh, he said Pitt’s ass!
Friend: You chill out, bro. Don’t play with my boy Caron.
MY: He’s a G for sure.
Wifigawd: What happened to Tim Tebow?
Chachi: I don’t know. They jih played with Tim Tebow.
[Laughs]
Chachi: He was supposed to be like-dat. He beat Pittsburgh.
MY: That’s true he did. I think Tim Tebow got robbed. The fact that he beat Pittsburgh in the playoffs and the next year the Broncos moved on? That’s not fair. The man’s a proven winner in college, that’s not fair. If you’re any franchise, you see what he did in college and you see what he did in the playoff game…
***
Wifigawd: It’s all about being high as a bitch. I can tell you that. All the songs you heard are all about being high as a bitch.
MY: When did you first start smoking weed?
Wifigawd: When I was 13.
MY: Were you making music before that?
Wifigawd: Yeah, I used to be DJ Melly Mel. My parents had 2,000 records. My nigga KO and I would be in the house just making rap songs. KO is the main nigga who inspired me to rap. We were eight years old, bro, this nigga had full songs--on rat-a-tat beats--and that’s difficult to do. A lot of niggas today, if you put on a rat-a-tat beat right now, niggas can’t touch that jont. My man was touching that jont the whole way through, with the hook, bridge, verse--eight years old. I put that on my life. You can ask my parents. This nigga used to come through because our folks always knew we were into music, and this man, no fear, played a beat in front of my whole family and spit the whole shit.
MY: Going back to DJ Melly Mel, you produce beats, too.
Wifigawd: I just recently started to get into it, but I always heard the shit in my mind. I rap so much I just know what the beat should sound like. I’m going to produce a whole tape for myself, some fire shit.
MY: As something personal or for the fans?
Wifigawd: I’m just going to make all the music and rap on them. Like “In My Mind” by Pharrell. I’m gonna do “In My Mind” by Wifigawd because I fuck with that nigga for real.
MY: Was it N.E.R.D to begin with or Clipse?
Wifigawd: It was that Neptunes tape where they had all the features on it. It’s him and Chad Hugo on the front, the black jont. This tape, no funny shit, I used to be in the house--my father had this jont on a sleeve--I’d be listening to it all the time. Pharrell’s writing influenced me. Cudi is the biggest influence on my style, from the way I look at writing songs. I’d be like, ‘Would Cudi fuck with this jont? I feel like he would fuck with this jont.’ I ain’t gonna lie, I fuck with Ye.
