From HipHopDx –
Melle Mel says he appreciates Macklemore including him and fellow Rap pioneers Grandmaster Caz and Kool Moe Dee in the video for “Downtown,” which has received criticism.
“He’s a good dude,” Melle Mel says to XXL. “He’s a real dude and he’s a friend to Hip Hop.”
The former Sugar Hill Records emcee says that Macklemore was the only rapper to reach out to the legends.
“I know for a fact that J. Cole or Kendrick Lamar or Rick Ross or Jay Z or any of these cats, they would not have done it, ever,” Melle Mel says. “They would not have done it. It took him to do it. And all those other so-called ‘real cats,’ they should hang their heads because somebody should have done it by now. They could have reached back to any of us. If you’re making records and you say you’re Hip Hop, you’re supposed to have a connection to what Hip Hop really is. And nobody made that connection until Macklemore made the connection. And I’ve had this conversation quite a few times since everything happened and had that little controversy of, yeah, the White boy, using the OGs, or blah blah blah. And like I said, none of those other guys would have ever done it. And it’s a shame that that’s the reality of what the game is right now.”
See the rest of this story here at HipHopDX.com
