Whose world is this?  It's a bold and wide open question with no easy answer.  Its answer depends heavily upon one's economic status, race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and politics.  Therefore, no matter who you ask you're bound to get a different answer.  Such is the case with the album/DVD documentary, Whose World Is This? from producers K-Salaam & Beatnick. 

To begin answering this question and wrestling with global issues the two enlisted the help of some of hip-hop and reggae's finest including: Talib Kweli, Dead Prez, Young Buck, Trey Songz, Kardinal Offishall, Papoose, Saigon, Outlawz, Buju Banton, Sizzla, Luciano, Capleton & more.

Sixshot spoke with the two about "fake" conscious rappers, their confrontation with Buju Banton, their personal experiences with racism and injustice, and more.

Sixshot.com:  On the album you have all star collaborators.  In an interview I did with  KRS-One for his Stop the Violence movement he was doing a similar thing, and he noted that most of the conscious rappers he reached out to turned out to be surprisingly unsupportive.  Did you find this to be true in your case as well?

K-Salaam:  Yeah, yeah as far as the conscious rappers—we just worked with whoever was down.  The whole cons cious rap movement is fake.  It's like those dudes that rap about selling crack.  If you making this much money in the music business and selling drugs why would you advertise it and say you're connected to it?  It's a joke, but the conscious movement—people will talk about being conscious and they're not.  They are doing coke and all types of s***. 

Sixshot.com:  I read a story that you almost got killed reaching out to Buju Banton.  What's the story there?

K-Salaam:  Wow, uhm—I won't say confrontation, but a minor confrontation took place and I stood my ground.

Sixshot.com:  Between you and Buju?

K-Salaam:  Yeah so like it was just me and him and his people.  They're not punks and Buju's not a punk.

Sixshot.com:  What was he upset over?

K-Salaam:  Just the business side of things—the contract.  It's a long story but the label pays.  I didn't pay him and there's a certain delay on the payment that wasn't my fault.  He got a little angry which was understandable, but I let him know it's not my fault and I'm doing everything I can.  He was kind of like, he didn't care and pay me, and I was like no it don't work like that.  That's why the confrontation took place.  Some words were said and I stood my ground and almost got killed.  [Laughs]

Sixshot.com:  You guys are cool now?

K-Salaam:  Hell, yeah, Buju is cool as hell.

Sixshot.com:  You guys obviously went through a lot to get this project complete.  So how did this record impact you both?

Beatnick:  For me it's a part of our life that we put into this album.  This album is everything to me and whether sells or not it's a classic album.  People can't take that away.  I don't know how well it's gonna be promoted but we put everything into this album.

Sixshot.com:  K-Salaam you once said that the 9/11 terrorist attacks caused you and your family to go though personal stuff and it revitalized your commitment to activism.  Can you speak on that and how it affected you and your outlook?

K-Salaam:  It made me stronger, wiser, and more hungry.  It means your life is more intense and real.  You look at things in different perspectives than other people.  There's a lot of racism where I grew up and I grew up with a Middle Eastern family.  After 9/11 it was crazy but it made me who I am.  I wouldn't change it.  I feel bad about what my family went through but--

Sixshot.com:  What did they go through?

K-Salaam:  I had cousins who were physically beaten up by the police.  On more than one occasion my brother was harassed by the--I think it was the F.B.I. or somebody in the government.  He was harassed and they would come to our apartment constantly and daily trying to talk to him.  It was crazy.  My uncles—I had a family member that was arrested. It was a lot of little things.  My uncle would go to the bank and security guards would grab him on the shoulder, take him to the back, and ask him all of these questions.  It was a bank he was going to for 10 years.  It was those little things and especially the family members being arrested.

When you're trying to grind whether you write for an online publication, produce, or work at a shop you have things you're trying to get done.  When you get arrested for something you didn't do and you get physically assaulted it's like it has a big affect on you.  To see my aunt afraid to go outside was the most intense [experience] I had to go through.  They don't speak English and they dress like Muslim women, and they were afraid to go outside.

Sixshot.com:  You feature hip-hop and reggae on the album.  Was that a conscious decision in order to show the bridge and connection between the two genres?

Beatnick:  No, we just really wanted to work with our favorite artists and we listen to a lot of hip-hop and reggae.  It ended up working like that.  We didn't make that a conscious move at all.

Sixshot.com:  Do you feel like there needs to be more collaborations between hip-hop and reggae?  I read that one of you mentioned how reggae music is underrepresented and how it's connected to hip-hop but is not overtly mentioned.

K-Salaam:  I think reggae is underrepresented because it doesn't have the money to push it.  I would say street music here is hip-hop and there it is reggae, but here the street music got caught up in the corporate s*** and it got lame over here.  I feel there's another wave coming on in hip-hop in the states.  I think us and some other artists are onto this.

There are talented songwriters coming out of Jamaica and they don't have the same access to get into the mainstream that an American artist would have.  So as DJ's it's our job also to kind of like co-sign something and bring something to light.  A DJ is supposed to take something people don't see and use their venue and let them see it.  We're exposing a lot of mid-America to reggae music they would not have listened to.  We are packaging it in a way that they can digest it.

Beatnick:   It works really well too because reggae and hip-hop—they've been two things that have like been hand-in-hand since they started.  Musically they're very similar.  The messages started out similar and hip-hop went astray a little bit.

Sixshot.com:  This album covers many different social issues.  Which of these issues is most personal to you each?

K-Salaam:  I can't really say which is most personal.

Beatnick:  We pretty much gave them [artists] the overall idea of the album.  We had them basically say it in their own words.  So whatever they're talking about is for them and the way that they express it.  We're not gonna take that and change it.  That's their message and the way they see it.  So we pretty much trusted them to come up with the actual execution of it.  We asked them whose world was this and they answered it through song.

For more information please visit:

www.myspace.com/ksalaammusic