Quite an early interview with the Fugees from Minneapolis anarchist paper 'The Blast' (March 1995 - though interview was at time of their December 1994 show in MN).
' I was telling you about that whole immigration rap thing. You know what I'm sayin', it's like people hear refugees and I want people to know it's not a gimmick. My mother was really pregnant and immigration was knocking on her door, and they broke the door open. The baby that was in her stomach was my brother... they wasn't legal, you know what I'm sayin'. Yeah, It was immigration tryin' to deport them back. Man, my father had to run from immigration. There was a time in New York where it was a chase, man' (Wyclef Jean)
'you've got to understand, this whole thing is not even between Black and White, its between the haves and the have-nots, the rich and the poor. We're trying to keep people aware, and it's not a contrived thing we are doing' (Lauryn Hill)
Justine: 'We were talking outside about the way hip hop has in some ways become commercialized. How do you define hip hop and what does it mean for you versus what it's become in the mainstream?'
Lauryn: 'It really doesn't matter to me what it's become because I know what it'll always be: little knucklehead kids who rhyme in the corners of parties and form circles. I mean, hip hop is like a folk expression, believe it or not. It's all about for the people, by the people, and to basically stay with the people. Now the man, the system, gets his hands on everything, you know what I'm sayin', and anything he sees he can make a little money off of, of course he's gonna take and exploit it. But that's ok because every time he thinks he gets his hands on it, it changes to something else because hip hop is an ever-changing form of music. It moves so quickly that the system can't really get its hands on it'
