Things are going exceptionally sweetly for rap legend Suga Free, who headlines Velvet Jones this Friday, July 29, with Rappin’ 4-Tay as part of the Pimps & Players Bash. “If I get any happier, I’m gonna pass out,” he said in a recent phone interview. It’s the little things these days that keep Suga Free content: his health, fixing cars, and gardening, as well as raising more than 60 tumbler pigeons, a pet passion he has nurtured since the age of 10. “I’m a low-key person,” he said. “I’m never in the light all the time.”
His gentler qualities may come as quite a surprise to fans, who over the decades have come to know a rapper incomparable in his blend of wit and true-life grit. Famed for his verses describing life as a pimp on the streets of Pomona, the California native has earned admiration across the hip-hop world for his sharp, poignant, and often hilarious rhymes about the ups and downs of the procuring profession. He has distanced himself from those days and discourages others from pursuing his particular pimping path — “The message that I give my brothers and sisters is that there’s other ways of doing this,” he said.
Suga Free said he’s happy to see the progression of women’s rights in this country, what with Hillary Clinton poised as a presidential candidate. “Times have changed, man, and it’s a beautiful thing,” he said. “Women have been running this shit all along; the man is just a front.”