Hip-hop veteran Canibus has made his return to rap with his latest album, Kaiju, which is his first solo release since 2015, and in a new interview, the former Four Horsemen rapper explained why he left music and briefly joined the army.
Canibus detailed his journey out of rap and into the army while on the Bootleg Kev Podcast. In the episode, the rapper talked about how his polarizing and satirical music got under people’s skin and was a reason why he felt the need to step away from the game.
“It was right after September 11. That experience, at that time I made a record, C! True Hollywood Stories, that was the album,” Canibus said in the clip above. “The album was satire, it was. It was just done to kind of, like, allegorically make an album that was— you know, to get under the skin of folks that were saying that, ‘Yo man, I want the records to be hard! I want you to spit harder. The beats, the lyrics, I want more!’ And then I gave them less. Right?”
Canibus continued by explaining that publications like The Source blackballed him and didn’t promote his project, making him dislike the hip-hop industry even more.
“We paid 25 bands for The Source ad and The Source was scared to run the ad because of the relationships that they were saying could have been ruined, and they did it for the money,” he said. “And then, after that, they turn around and blackball me further. And took money to blackball me. The way I felt at that juncture was like, ‘You know what, rap ain’t it, I’m still young enough to go out and make a difference.”
Canibus served in the military for two years before being discharged in 2004 after he was caught smoking marijuana. The rap veteran had a very volatile career in the 90s. He got into feuds with other hip-hop giants like Wyclef Jean and LL Cool J, and this was all before he even released the album in question, C True Hollywood Stories. While Canibus would continue releasing music into the 2000s, these rifts clearly took a toll on him, as he explained.
Watch the full episode of the Bootleg Kev Podcast with Canibus down below.
