(AllHipHop Features) The self-anointed “Mayor of Dade County” Trick Daddy put on for his city as one of the featured artists in the documentary The Field: Miami. The 53-minute film provided a platform for MIA-based rappers to discuss their hometown and its Hip Hop scene.
Trick actually opens the movie talking about the differences between Miami and South Beach. The creator of the platinum-certified Thugs Are Us LP refuses to sugarcoat his feelings about how the real Miami is not the image of white sand beaches and trendy nightspots broadcast around the globe.
AllHipHop.com caught up with the 20-year rap veteran to discuss his appearance in The Field. Trick also does not hold back on sharing his thoughts concerning the current national discussion taking place around racism, community policing, and Hip Hop’s role in addressing social issues.
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You opened The Field talking about how South Beach and Miami are not the same. Can you give more details about how those two cities are different?
First of all, South Beach has its own chief of police. They’ve got their own police department, their own police headquarters. South Beach is beautiful. If you ain’t got money you can’t afford to live there. A drink that costs you $7 in Miami will cost you $12-15 on South Beach. A hotel that will cost you $89 in Miami will cost you $300 on South Beach.
The only thing real Miamians knew about South Beach was the military headquarters, the movie Scarface, and that the people from Miami, from the other side of the bridge, they don’t want you over there.
[South Beach has] become the tourist spot. They’re building more high rises – fifteen, twenty, thirty story condos. Miami people can’t afford that. Those people are making $42,000 a year. They can’t afford to live on South Beach.
The inner-city kids of Miami – 85% of them never been to South Beach. Our beaches were Haulover and Virginia Key. Those beaches don’t have restaurants. Those beaches are sand, water, and seaweed.
There was another moment in the movie that stood out. The section where it addressed Black resident Arthur McDuffie being killed by four police officers in 1979. That relates to what’s happening right now in Ferguson, Missouri with Michael Brown. From your experience, what do you think can be done now to help mend that relationship between the Black community and the police?
I think it starts at the Senate, then down to the Congress, then to the governor, and then the mayor, the commissioner. Everybody needs to be held accountable for something. Everything’s gotta get better. When they can’t do their jobs we gotta clip their wings. We gotta take their rank, take their pay check. We gotta send them back to where we live, then maybe they could better understand. They gotta come where we are.
I don’t like n***as like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. They’re reality tv show wanna-be n***as. To me, they just come when it’s too late. I need them speaking. I don’t need them trying to get on TV, CNN, and radio stations talking after a little black boy is beaten, after somebody is fired from her job because of the color of her skin. I need them dudes to stop playing. Them dudes right there make it bad for n***as. That’s why I don’t take them serious.
We need good people in those places that people can really take serious. I ain’t talking bout no Puff. Nobody that went to Spelman. I ain’t talking bout nobody that went to an Ivy League school. I’m talking about somebody that grew up in the ghetto. And I ain’t talking bout [people from] the ghettos of the 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s that keep crying about slavery, because that’s been years ago. We need to move on from that.
There have been a few artists that have come out and addressed [the Ferguson situation]. Nelly spoke out. J. Cole went there. Killer Mike was on CNN. What is Hip Hop’s role in addressing this situation of dealing with the police?
To be honest, if you’re not those top ten rappers that’s worth tens of millions of dollars – there’s just ten, if that – but those rappers are not respected as much as the new rappers, because all the radio stations own each other. They control what music is played, so you’re here today then you’re gone tomorrow.
With that being said, you lose power when trying to force your opinion through Hip Hop. BET, MTV – all of them are owned by Viacom. That’s why BET only has one rap show – 106 & Park. They’re controlling it, so it ain’t much we can do.
When you went to Atlanta and listened to Atlanta radio, your personality was from Atlanta 10-15 years ago. When you went to the West Coast, the Bay area, they were listening to different music than what was coming out of L.A.
Not no more. Everybody is listening to the same songs all over the country, because these people came in and circled the market. So it’s going to be very hard for us. All we have to do is keep trying, because we can’t give up on the kids. We can’t give up on the future of a country we plan to live in the rest of our life.
[ALSO READ: Did Hip-Hop Fuel The Uprising In Ferguson? Holla If Ya Hear Me!]
Follow Trick Daddy on Twitter @305MAYOR and Instagram @trickdaddydollars.
Watch WSHH Presents The Field: Miami below.