By Ahmad Awadallah

Nobody has held down Ohio longer and more consistently than Copywrite. The Columbus, Ohio native has been in the game for well-over a decade and despite the passing of close friends and family, C-write has not lost one iota of passion. His pain and tribulations have given him a new outlook on life and have made him even more ruthless on the mic. The Buckeye State representer discusses his new album, U.K. Hip-Hop, recently losing his grandmother, MHz, the state of Ohio Hip-Hop, Machine Gun Kelly, God, and more with the Planet. We definitely got it popping on this joint.Planet Ill:How does your new album, God Save The King differ from your other efforts?

Copywrite:It’s better. It’s better (Laughs). It’s just better. It has a few conceptual songs on there. Some real deep songs and you know, some trash talking [songs] on there.

A bunch of punchlines, similes and metaphors are loaded on the album. Pretty much people should expect the things that they’ve grown to love about me over the years. If you ask me, it’s a mix between The High Exhaulted and The Life And Time Of Peter Nelson records. I have some Christian songs on there that are dope. So I feel that my pen game is better than ever right now.

Planet Ill: Your new album, God Save The King, is going to drop in about a month. The name of the album is powerful, how did you come up with the title?

Copywrite: The album was supposed to be released in the U.K. So I kind of took the idea from The Sex Pistols, which is a famous Punk Rock U.K. band. They had an album called God Save The Queen. So we just flipped it and named it God Save The King

Planet Ill: Speaking of United Kingdom, you have two versions coming out, one for U.K. release and the other is going to be released in the U.S. Is there a difference between the two?

Copywrite: They’re actually two totally different albums. They have about three to four of the same songs on there, but for the most part they are completely different albums.

Planet Ill: Why did you decide to do it that way?

Copywrite: I just had way too much music man. I’m constantly making music. Even when I made Life And Times, I had like 23 songs and we had to cut it down to like 20. I had more music that can fit on an actual CD. I really love U.K. Hip-Hop, because it’s so grimy and I wanted to collab with some of their brightest and talented artists. So this album was supposed to be only released in the U.K., but as we were working, it turned out to be a way bigger monster than we expected. So we had to split it up.

Actually this idea and project kind of came out the blue, because we were actually working on the MHz album and in the process we came up with this idea to get my album done and to dedicate it to our U.K. fans for their loyalty of the years. We figured let’s warm the fans out here [U.K.] with this one and get them ready for the MHz album.

Planet Ill: It’s a strange idea, but I guess I can see it working and your reasoning behind it.

Copywrite: Yeah man. I’m always about doing new things in Hip-Hop. I think it’s real dope to have fresh ideas that no one has done before but still make sense.

Planet Ill: A few years ago, you lost Camu Tao, your mother, your grandfather, and most people don’t know this but recently you lost your grandmother. Have those setbacks fueled your passion for rhyming or hurt your love for the art?

Copywrite: Nah, it definitely hasn’t hurt my passion. It definitely fueled it, if anything. I’m a Gemini and we get fuel from anguish and tragedy. There are moments, especially death, that make me feel like I hate the world and I turn my phone off and I don’t want to speak to anyone. Then like two days later I feel good and I feel like I can take on the world. I think it is a healthy fire.

Planet Ill: Most people might not know that your grandmother past just recently passed away. Did you go back in the lab and maybe add a song or two to the new album?

Copywrite: (Laughs) You know me too well. The night that she passed, I came home and added like two new verses on the song “Sorrow” featuring Ill Logic and we going to shoot a video for that real soon. I feel that when people pass away, by dedicating a song to them is the ultimate respect, because I’m a writer and my job is to capture the emotion through words. So when people tell me that “June” made them cry or “Confessional” made them cry it’s like good, because I cried when I wrote them.

Planet Ill: Beef and Copywrite has gone hand-in-hand, do you think beef is healthy for Hip-Hop nowadays or is it now extremely detrimental to the game?

Copywrite: I think it all depends on the situation. I’m not a super advocate for beef, but sometimes things just happen. I’m a pretty cool person and I’m easy to get along with, but I feel that people mix-up rap beef and real beef, because they’re totally different. [In Hip-Hop] I’ve never had an issue where I wanted to see them suffer physically and I recently stated that I wanted to squash my issue with Cage and Apathy. Actually me and Apathy never had a problem on wax. I think that issue came from when me and Cage were beefing with Esoteric.

[Apathy] probably felt that Eso was his boy and he had stand by his man, which is understandable, because that is the reason I dissed Esoteric, because Cage was my man at the time, which I later find out was a stupid move, because Cage wasn’t the dude I thought he was. Now that I sit back and think about my decisions, I see what I did wrong.

Kurt Cobain once said that he wished there was a Rock n’ Roll handbook, because he had to stumble through it the hard-way and I wish there was a Hip-Hop handbook to help guide between right and wrong.

In the past I was real vocal about my opinions and I burnt a lot of bridges like that. In a perfect world, I wish everyone would just keep to themselves and respect each other’s craft, because life is too short to be bickering over dumb shit. I’ve lost my parents and my grandparents, so I do not have any family members left. If anyone knows death it’s me. I should be the Hip-Hop poster boy for that and I don’t want to be. Life is way too short. Let’s just chill, grab some chickens and dap each other up when we see one another.

Planet Ill: So it seems you have a new outlook not only in Hip-Hop, but in life.

Copywrite: Yeah man. I have grown and matured through the years and I can spot the bullshit. I’ve grown to the point where if I do hear something or hear something through the grapevine that I’ll now confront them one-on-one and not lash out or make a spectacle.

Planet Ill: How do feel about Ohio getting a lot of mainstream attention lately with the emergence of Kid Cudi, Machine Gun Kelly and Stalley?

Copywrite: I think it’s real dope that everyone is doing their thing. When I came up in the [Rap] game, I didn’t have these diverse artists coming out. The only thing Ohio had was Bone [Bone Thugs & Harmony] and we had one dude named Tavaris and he had song with Coolio (Laughs). Coolio definitely did his thing though. I think Ohio is in an incredible space and I shouldn’t be the only rapper in Ohio that people listen to; also the best thing about Ohio is we have an incredible amount of variety.

Planet Ill: Does it get irritating that you’ve been in the game so long, but newer mainstream rappers from Ohio would get credit for putting on for their state?

Copywrite: Nah, I don’t think they get more credit. Anyone that knows their history knows that MHz is the first rap group to ever come out of Columbus Ohio. Vibe Magazine actually put out a book called History Of Hip-Hop and they have us notated in there. So if people wanted to seek the truth then it’s out there. Also, I feel my fans are so loyal that if they mess with this cat or that one, they’ll straight up tell them that Copywrite has been holding Ohio down for more than a decade. So, I don’t do the grumpy old man thing (Laughs) because I know the new dude respect us. I got love of MGK.

He actually give me props and I give him his props. I think they’re all dope and God bless them on all their endeavors for real. The only problem I have with Ohio is there was more unity instead of trying to out do each other. If we can just stick together, we’ll be a powerful force. We have endless spitters from Ill Logic to Kid Cudi to MGK to Stalley. There is so many rappers that I didn’t name, but they’re dope.

Planet Ill: There are a number of East Coast artists that have influenced you, from Big Pun to Big L to Biggie to Jay-Z, but you and DMX share similar approaches in your music in that you both are heavy with religious messages. Was DMX a big influence on your style?

Copywrite: I love DMX and I love his heart and I see his struggle. I know he hears the Lord calling him and he’s just caught up, so I send my prayers out to him, but his style has never influenced mine, we’re just big on music and our faith. There is crazy amount of Christian rappers that are nice and the world doesn’t even know about. There is a guy named Shai Linne that’s real dope. If you like me then you’ll like him. So there is a lot of faith-based rappers out there that are really talented.

Planet Ill: For the people that don’t know, can you explain the origins of your beef with Asher Roth?

Copywrite: If you ask me it’s squashed, but I have no idea what he’ll say.

Planet Ill: So you guys ironed out your differences?

Copywrite: Nah. It was all from a Rap standpoint. It was never any real ill-feelings or physical altercations with dude. At that time, I was just on some KRS-One versus P.M. Dawn shit. I just didn’t like the fact that he was biting off Eminem. I just didn’t like his approach to the game. It was real flagrant and that’s what I felt at the time.

Planet Ill: Besides the new album that’s set to drop on the 28^th of February, what else should fans look out for?

Copywrite: Yeah the album drops February and the U.K. version drops in March then we back in the lab to work on MHz album. I might have a few surprises here and there, but for right now that’s what it is. We trying to make the new MHz album the best group album ever created. We getting more technical with the rhymes and beats so it should be ridiculous man. It’s fun to get back in the studio with RJ [RjD2] and Jakki [Jakki Da Motamouth] and all of them man. It’s real exciting and it’s going to be a dope album. Just shout to my Lord savior Jesus Christ, because he makes it all possible.

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