E-40, Living Hip-Hop Legend, Talks 2Pac, Master P, Longevity, and Types of Fish You've Probably Never Heard Of

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Long before E-40 became a regional hero in Northern California, he would walk into Vallejo’s Salvation Army and Goodwill outposts with a handful of dimes, hunting for old records to sample. One day he came across a beat-up soundtrack to a children’s cartoon. “I think it was Spider-Man,” the rapper, born Earl Stevens, says from the back of a chauffeured SUV, en route to rehearse for the Recording Academy’s “Salute to 50 Years of Hip Hop” concert at Inglewood’s YouTube Theater in early November. “One of the parts that I sampled was”—and here 40, one of the great chameleons in a genre full of them, affects the stilted voice of a villain from a 1940s radio play—“Give me that key.” The now 56-year-old leans back in his seat and cackles at the readymade narcotics implications. Now, he notes, it’s become something like a triple entendre. “Now I got the key to the motherfucking city!”

It’s true: In October, 40 became the second person in Vallejo’s 173-year history to receive the honor. It was one of two plaques the mayor handed to 40, beaming in a black-and-white Chanel jacket in front of his childhood home on Magazine Street. The other was the certificate rechristening a one-mile stretch of Magazine “E-40 Way.” In the 30-plus years since he began pilfering those bargain bins, 40 has become one of the most admired and inimitable rappers alive, something bigger than a cult object but just short of a superstar. Every few years he’ll pop onto rap radio and warp it into his orbit. He’s comically prolific; the deliriously kinetic Rule of Thumb: Rule 1, released last month, is officially his 27th album, a count that ignores his numerous EPs, collaborative projects, and records with The Click, the group he founded with his sister Suga-T, brother D-Shot, and cousin B-Legit. On each album, he darts back and forth across beats like a rubber band that read the dictionary as a child. He’s constantly inventing slang or overenunciating familiar words to make them seem alien.

Alongside Rule of Thumb, 40 released Goon With the Spoon, a cookbook co-written with Snoop Dogg. Like even the most outlandish tangents in his music, the book—the outgrowth of the cooking series he began on his Instagram—has roots in material need. “My daddy and mom divorced when I was eight years old,” he says, “and my mom worked two, three jobs. So I had to take on an older brother-slash-fatherhood role, and I played that position.” This meant learning to cook for himself and his siblings, a skill that was further developed when B-Legit got him a job washing dishes, then cooking at a fine-dining restaurant in Vallejo. “I learned how to cook escargot, London broil, chicken cordon bleu,” he says, before adding something that sounds for all the world like an E-40 lyric: “Orange roughy is a fish most people don’t know about.”

GQ: So we’re in downtown L.A. now, headed to Inglewood. How’s your relationship with the city changed over the years?

E-40: Well, it hasn’t really changed. I remember L.A. in like 2000—I’ma be honest with you, I’ve gotta take credit for this. There was a time when L.A. wasn’t this energized. They had their own thing, they always loved me and I loved them, I’ve always been cool with all the rappers and all the civilians. But when I came out with [2006’s My Ghetto Report Card], it changed the sound of the West coast overall. And if a person don’t understand that, they must be a little kid or something. Because real ones gon’ give me that. But I love L.A.; L.A. and the Bay have always been family.

You mention My Ghetto Report Card—a lot of the L.A. street rap from the last seven, eight years has taken cues from the Bay rap that emerged post-hyphy, and a lot of the new Bay rap shares flows and slang with the new L.A. contingent. One of the common ancestors to those styles has to be you.

We’re only a five-and-a-half hour drive apart—I got cousins in Inglewood, we got family all over L.A. People got loved ones in the Bay. We all listen to the same thing, we get it. I love L.A.’s culture, I love how they get down. They’ve got their own thing, whether it’s the gangs or the way they dress or whatever. They got their own thing. We mix it up. We’re all together. I’m West Coast to the heart—to the bone, bro.

How old were you when you moved to Magazine Street?

Eight years old.

What was it like back then?

When I moved I tripped out—people had chickens in the backyard, our house had a creek in the back with berries, fig trees, it was a trip. It was kind of like the country—we had horses in our neighborhood. Then come the ‘80s, and the ‘80s was crazy. Throughout the whole neighborhood, all the way up to South Vallejo, to Grant Street and all that, it was like a movie every day. I can’t explain how it was. You’d see zombies, dope fiends walking up and down the street. Cats screaming out ‘I got ice cream for sale,’ you understand? You see a lot of shit; you see a lot of beatdowns. It was just some soil shit.

As you grew up and witnessed all of that, did you think you were just getting attuned to how the world had always been, or did you have a sense from the adults in your life that things were getting worse?

Nah, it was different. You had all kinds of soils that was living the same life. As I got older, we’d peep it, and you’d just get immune to the shit.

The South has such a rich musical tradition—what did you learn at Grambling State that you hadn’t picked up in Vallejo?

At Grambling State we performed with the band—but we was rapping. It was me, my boy Waldo Benzworth, and B-Legit; our boy Jason from Marin City, he had this big boombox, and we went up there and redid the school song. We used a Dr. Dre and Ed Lover beat. We took the instrumental and looped it, and made our own song out of it. Instead of the old, traditional “Dear Grambling” alma mater, we made it hip and put our little rap on it and talked about everything that goes down on that campus. The tape started circulating all throughout the whole university, and there was a talent show that popped up. We did our song, we won, we walked out and started signing autographs—this, that, and the third. But you know when Silkk the Shocker came with “It Ain’t My Fault,” he pretty much was showing his New Orleans side, because on campus the Baton Rouge and New Orleans guys would walk around singing that before [Master] P and them made it a song. People don’t know that. They’d be singing that with black umbrellas with the sun out. That’s New Orleans. So he was genuine when he did that.

I’ve always heard you and P crossed paths a lot when he was up in Richmond, but what was your relationship like?

We was very ambitious, we was eager to learn. He watched how I got down, but he had his own thing as well; he had brothers that rapped, my brother and sister rapped—he had Silkk and C-Murder, I had Suga-T and D-Shot, my cousin B-Legit; I had my son Droop-E, he had Lil Romeo, you understand me? We were just going by faith, trying to learn, trying to get it figured out. We was doing independent music with no handouts or nothing. We made a way out of no way. My uncle, Saint Charles, my mama’s blood brother, he had made records in the ‘70s. He knew more than us, so I was up under him, I got my tutoring from him. He was learning how to do the rap thing. P said, ‘Man, let me go holla at Saint Charles.’ Him and JT the Bigga Figga. They all went and hollered at my uncle, and history was made. Saint Charles was out there on Magazine Street the other day when they did my street unveiling, and I had to let ‘em know: ‘This guy right here is really iconic, with what he’s done not just for Northern California, but independent music overall.’

It’s about to be the 30th anniversary of your album Federal. When it came time to record and then distribute that record, what had you learned from Mr. Flamboyant and the early Click records that helped make Federal cross over?

Man, I was fresh out of the streets and I had a lot to say. I knew everything to say, and all you gotta do is go in there and spit what you know. I made sure that I made it where the streets could relate to what I was giving them. Right now, at shows, you see the older generations who play our music to their kids, and that’s beautiful. To me it’s a resurgence of old-school hip-hop. It’s a beautiful thing to have been around all these years and to be an OG.

Speaking of OGs: were there rappers who were major influences on you but are now a little lost to history?

Oh, hell yeah. Of course Too Short, but he’s known. But there was another guy with Too Short named Freddy B that rapped with Too Short when he was younger—it was Too Short and Freddy B. You could say some dudes out of Richmond named Calvin T and Magic Mike. Them dudes, man… incredible. The only thing that stopped them was, when you’re from the trenches, when you’re caught up in the system, the jailhouse, it can slow everything up for you. Going back and forth to jail can fuck you off. That was the only thing in the way for those legendary rappers—in my heart, the dopest rappers ever that was never heard outside of our soil. Them dudes would’ve been on the same level as Too Short if somebody had came through with a bag and a helping hand. They were very influential on me as well as more known rappers like UTFO—Kangol [Kid] from UTFO specifically—the boy KRS-One, I grew up on him. Ice-T. Real game involved.

All those guys have that in common—they have very different styles, but the music is really about dispensing game.

Right, down to the ad-libs; I learned those from KRS. I put my whole personality, my own spitteritiery, and what I learned and knew about the streets and became E-40.

In terms of being ahead of the curve: Any time I put on Federal, I think about how the “Carlos Rossi” hook is Screw music before Screw music.

It is. DJ Screw was one of our biggest fans. Screwed Up Click, Wreckshop and all, them dudes rocked with us heavy, they rocked with Sick Wid It Records.

I’ve always been interested in the musical relationship between California and Texas, why some of those sounds travel so well. A lot of the early Texas rap is really G-funk, and then as both styles evolved—

They fuck with us heavy. [Legendary Atlanta radio DJ] Greg Street broke my record “Captain Save A Hoe” in 1993. I tell you what, me doing songs with 8Ball & MJG and the Master Ps of the world, the UGKs—they was on my albums, I was on theirs. These are legendary people.

Right: you’ve collaborated with people from regional scenes all around the country. What’s exciting you in rap right now?

You know, to be honest with you man, in the Bay they call it the valley—Stockton, that whole area, these cats got their own thing. It’s street shit. I’m not even mad at them; as you get older you get wiser, so you kind of change how you approach your lyrics. But I still fit right in with them, I just need to be real intelligent about how I spit my spit. I’m glad it’s their turn. I’m happy to watch not-the-norm win.

People talk about it being a young man’s game, and you just said you’re happy to see the youth take over, but—

I made it cool to be over 40 and still rapping. At one time, people would say, ‘He hella old,’ but they don’t say that no more. Because now everyone’s favorite rappers are in their 50s, whether that’s Jay-Z, Nas, me, Scarface, all the greats. 2Pac would’ve been in his 50s, Biggie would’ve been in his 50s. They’re half a century old. You’re gonna be old soon, and you better hope you can have the career we’ve had.

We’ve talked before about your relationship with Pac. How did it evolve over time?

It was just genuine with him. I met him in ‘92; the last time I seen him was ‘96. I mentioned this at Pac’s street unveiling on MacArthur Boulevard in Oakland: he had a song he was working on called “Changes,” and I had a song called “Things’ll Never Change,” with the same Bruce Hornsby sample. That was the same page we were on, man, it was crazy. The last time I saw him, he was in my trailer at my “Rapper’s Ball” video, and he was playing me songs. I told him my new handle was Fonzarelli, and he was like, ‘Yeah, mine is Makaveli.’ He told me had had albums for when he passed, and I was like, ‘Woah, what the hell?’ I knew he was living at a fast pace, and he was hardheaded out there cutting up—but when I sat back and thought about it more, I understood what he was saying. He was a workaholic. He’d go in the studio and knock out seven, nine songs a day. He didn’t even go back and tighten them up, he was like, ‘It is what it is.’ He was that great of a songwriter.

Do you consider yourself a workaholic?

Oh, to the fullest. I love making music. I’d probably trip out if I didn’t make music. I have to. I’ma keep working; even if I’m 80, as long as I got my life, health, and my strength, and the Lord bless me to be in my right mind, I’m not gonna resign. They don’t even have to stream it or buy it, I’m just gonna do it because it’s therapeutic. Lord willing, if I’m still on this earth, between this time and when I’m 80, I’m gonna make another legendary record. One or two at least. You just never know.

Originally Appeared on GQ