Biannual magazine Humanity tapped rapper Earl Sweatshirt to interview Mike Tyson, and the results are surprisingly awesome. The lengthy interview contains a delightful back and forth between the two, with Earl trying to find a parallel between himself and Tyson at the age of 20. He ends up going through a number of topics, including his relationship with his mother, being sent away to a boarding school at the peak of Odd Future's success, to understanding the pressures of fame. Tyson interjects many times in the conversation, offering advice and giving a few interesting answers to questions. Check out some quotes below:
On being absent for Odd Future's success:
Earl: Yes, sir. So I get plucked out. It blows up while I’m gone. The whole time that I was gone, for the first year, I went to hell. It was the worst. Because I wasn’t involved.
Mike: Well, how exactly you wasn’t involved, because you weren’t there physically?
Earl: I wasn’t involved, I wasn’t there physically, I was mad.
Mike: But you were in the group; you were a member of the group on paper, right?
Earl: Yeah.
Mike: Did you receive your money?
Earl: I mean… I got money, but it was from when I signed my advance with the label.
Mike: I ain’t never loan friends money; I give it to ‘em and I don’t expect to get it back. Even when he says, “I’ll pay you back,” I never expect it. If he gives it back, then hey, that’s a feather in his cap, but I don’t expect to get it back.
Earl: That’s where I’m always at. I’m never…I was never even mad about it. I was just… way more obsessed with preserving the friendship.
Mike: Listen, you know sometimes that’s a really an intense word, “friend.” You know sometimes during a relationship, a friendship, a friend’s gonna have to prove their your friend, and you’re gonna have to prove you’re their friend. You know, sometimes, the people we invest the most time in disappoint us the most.
On success:
Earl: When you like achieve success like you have, how does that affect those around you – how do you get them to be motivated and not feel content?
Mike: It’s just strange to me how I have such a profound passion for my kids. I think about Just wanting to protect them. – You think id ever let my son fight a 14-year-old kid or something like me that has nothing, never had nothing?
Earl: Because he comes from a different place. It comes from desperation.
Mike: I look at my beautiful son, he’s so beautiful and handsome. And I think what a guy like me would do to this face. I would choke it, take a chunk of meat out of his head, bite his beautiful face. I would hurt him, and I’m just looking at him and I’m thinking your dad was one of them animals out there. I don’t expect my kids to be “fighters”; my kids never lived in a condemned building with their family. Most of them are at Ivy League schools, their mothers are good mothers, you know, they do good stuff with them. I don’t want my kids to be like me, I don’t want my daughter to date the guy like me. You know, a guy like me success is to take care of my children to take care of their life and make ‘em cushioned. I don’t want them to be around a people like me. You know, success for me would be that they never have the opportunity of being in the presence of someone like me.
Check out the rest of the interview here.
