KRS-One On Jay-Z Borrowing His Blueprint, "That's Honor, That's Respect"

News: KRS-One On Jay-Z Borrowing His Blueprint, "That's Honor, That's Respect"
Monday, Jan 11, 2010 3:55PM

Written by Cyrus Langhorne

Rap legend KRS-One has spoken up on Jay-Z's usage of the title Blueprint on three of his recent albums and how Hov has continued to pay homage to his 1989 album, Ghetto Music: The Blueprint of Hip Hop.

According to KRS, Jay continues to represent hip-hop's growth and culture.

"You can't get mad if you say number one, you put out a record and then Jay-Z puts out one," KRS said in an interview. "That's honor, that's respect because you call yourself the teacher. If I put out the first Blueprint, and then Jay-Z decides to name his next three albums The Blueprint, you can only look at that as respect in hip-hop and it actually signifies the unity of hip-hop all together...you could compare this all the way across the board [with other rappers]. You're finally getting to see hip-hop's culture, not the rap music industry. Ask yourself this question too, with all the money that Jay-Z has, why does he still have to rap? Why does he still have to rap? He has to rap because he is hip-hop. He is the culture himself..." (Culture Evi)
Nas clowned Jay for his Blueprint album title on the 2001 diss song, "Ether"

"To explode it on a camel, and his soldiers, I can handle/This for dolo and it's manuscript, just sound stupid/When KRS already made an album called Blueprint/First, Biggie's ya man, then you got the nerve to say that you better than Big/D*ck sucking lips, why not you let the late, great veteran live..." ("Ether")
Despite longevity in hip-hop, Triple C's Torch recently questioned the rap veteran's lack of homage to younger generations.

"You notice it's the people that always say 'Hip-Hop is dead,' they ain't got no [money]," Torch explained in an interview. "And to top it all off, it's like, hip-hop is dead but when they had their run, the same people that say these things, they be in pictures with AK's, they forget all that now. You need your track record, do your homework and the same record that peole are pointing their fingers, you gotta realize, every time you point your finger, the other four are pointing right back at you. You gotta understand what's going on. So at the end of the day, I ain't with the finger pointing and the other four pointing back at you, but at the end of the day, music is music. You stay in your genre of music." (Rolling Out TV)
KRS previously called out Triple C's record label, Def Jam, for "destroying" the hip-hop genre.

"Def Jam is the dopest label in hip-hop, in the culture of hip-hop," he explained in an interview. "There really would be no hip-hop as we know it today if it wasn't for Def Jam. But you don't get that respect without also being the label that single-handedly destroyed hip-hop...Every time you think of what's wrong with hip-hop, the lyrics, the commercialized music, one artist being played on the radio all day, things like that, that's all Def Jam...We respect it. It's a respect cause we all competing, so Def Jam had the hardest competition, but the hardest competition as I showed the respect, I also showed the truth. And the truth is everybody else had to sit down so Def Jam could be who they are." (XXL Mag)

From SOHH.com

http://www.sohh.com/2010/01/krs-one_on_jay-z_borrowing_his_steez_tha.html