You're never going to see the fat Elvis in me. People I admired like Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and John Belushi all died at 27. I've got jeans older than that. ↗
But then there was Hendrix, man. Jimi was really the last cat to freak me. Jimi was playing all the stuff I had in my head. I couldn't believe it, when I first heard him. Man, no one can ever do what he did with a guitar. No one can ever take his place. ↗
So to compare the Beatles, obviously the Beatles are the Beatles, but in hip-hop terms, Tribe is the Beatles. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five are the Beatles. Big Daddy Kane is Jimi Hendrix. It means that much to people that grew up with it. ↗
I grew up in the sixties watching B.B. King and Tito Puente and Miles Davis and Coltrane, everybody, Marvin Gaye, Jimi. And at the same time, with my left eye I was watching Dolores Huerta, Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Mother Teresa. ↗
What I wanted to do in rock 'n roll was merge poetry with sonic scapes, and the two people who had contributed so much to that were Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison. ↗