Throughout his ten years in the game we have seen a couple of different sides of Victor Santiago. Before the deal he was a street dude on the block trying to get it. He would quickly switch his hustle to rap and adopt a moniker that would represent his then by any means necessary attitude. Noreaga would go on to wave the flag for the thugs on his cult classic debut N.O.R.E., but opened up and let his larger than life personality shine with explosion of Reggaeton but still is the same OG. Now back with a new album Noreality, N.O. returns to his roots with club bangers and street anthems alike all with that N.O.R.E. flavor. In his self-proclaimed "livest interview ever," AllHipHop.com's Street Is Talking series gets two-part trill with Lefrak's best. We get the report on his come up, the status of CNN, what really went down with Esco, and why he is Hip-Hop's drinking champion. What What!

AllHipHop.com: You were on the streets heavy before the deal, can you paint the picture of what hustling in Queens was like?

N.O.R.E.: Well that what it was, we didn’t have s**t. When I came home, I tried to apply for a job twice. After a week of being home, I was back on the block selling crack, nahmean?

AllHipHop.com: Being from Queens did you get to see the street legends that came up strong in the 80’s?

N.O.R.E.: Like Preme’, Cat, Pappy?

AllHipHop.com: Yeah.

N.O.R.E.: Of course, but that was a little before my era. Next month I’ll be 30 years old. They’re in their forties, of course they are who we idolized from Queens in the hood. Me being from Lefrak and having family in 40 Projects, I definitely got to see them brothers. I got the feeling from their crews and all that.

AllHipHop.com: So you start recording N.O.R.E. what was recording that album like? Out of all your albums, that’s my favorite joint.

N.O.R.E.: Word, that’s my favorite joint too. Doing that album was the best years of my life. “I’m Leaving” was definitely responsible for setting off my solo career. Then I recorded with Fat Joe and [Big] Pun. I just kept recording and doing guest appearances. So my record label was like, “While your man is locked up, we want you to do this solo album.” I told them, “No problem.” I just wanted to see my old contract, [‘cause] I wanted to up my ante. They showed me the contract and gave me the money I wanted. I would hear all these stories about people going to Miami to record, so I wrote most of my album in my apartment in Queens. I took it and recorded it in Miami. It was so much of a stress reliver because I was under so much stress. At the end of the day, I felt like everyone was looking at me like a failure because they thought I couldn’t do it by myself. And I came out and proved people wrong.

AllHipHop.com: How was the session for “Banned From TV”?

N.O.R.E.: You know the funny thing was “I’m Leaving” was Nature’s joint for [For All Seasons]. I came in and did the chorus and picked the beat. So I wanted to show back love. There was a dude named Swizz, he wasn’t event Beatz like right now. He was just Dee’s nephew. He had this crazy beat, I brought it to the studio and told Nate we going to go maniac style on this. I had already laid my verse and Nature just couldn’t write to the s**t. Nate was like, “I don’t like the beat, I can’t flow to it and that if I wanted, I could be on the joint by myself.” Swizz was like, “If Nature can’t flow to it, don’t worry.” And he switched the beat. And when he switched the beat, that was what “Banned From TV” was. And in 10 minutes, Nate went in there and laid his s**t. That night Pun was hitting me [wondering] where I’m at. I was like, “Yo, I’m at Electric Lady Studios, Downtown.” So the n***a Pun came to see me. With no “please come record with me Pun,” none of that s**t, he came to see me and heard what Nate just did and wrote his sh*t and he didn’t even ask me my dude! He was like oh my god and he wrote his sh*t, went in the booth and just laid it. So was like, “Damn, I don’t know what to do.” The next day I bump into Cam’ron. I just did a record for Cam’s album, he heard my record and said he’s jumping on that s**t. He jumped on the s**t and then I reached out to The L.O.X.. The L.O.X. was the only people I reached out to. Everyone else I just ran into. The L.O.X. came in and did their verse and I did mine and it was a wrapsteezie.

AllHipHop.com: How did you get close with Pun?

N.O.R.E.: Well the funniest sh*t was, we were recording at Unique Studios and Fat Joe is across the street recording at another studio. We asked Fat Joe to come to our session we wanted to get him on a joint. And he brings Pun. So Fat Joe comes and is like, “I heard one of y’all got shot, which one of ya’ll got shot?” So Pone raises his hand, and Joe was basically like, “That s**t hurts, right?” This is my first time meeting Joe, and I thought he was being funny. So I’m looking at Joe funny like, “What the f**k does this n***a mean?” Then Pun asks, “Which one of y’all n***as is Puerto Rican?” So I raise my hand and I had the ice grill on. So Pun was like, “Yo papi, take off your ice grill. If you Puerto Rican, we going to be friends, so chill out with the gangster s**t.” He made me laugh. I’m sitting there trying to be a tough guy and he came up to me and made me laugh. And from then on out he took my number and would come to my hood in Lefrak and we just set it off. He was my friend in Hip-Hop.

AllHipHop.com: I heard you say you and Pun used to do guest features and not even mess with the artist too tough, y’all just did it together for the checks. You want to share who were throwing under the bus with Pun?

N.O.R.E.: Man, I can’t do it. [Laughs] I can’t do it because that secret lies between me and Pun. And that man is resting in peace, know what I’m saying? That man would love to tell you if he was here. At the end of the day, Pun was really like my brother. This n***a would go into the studio and them n***as would give Pun $15,000 and Pun would be like “I thought I told you I needed $30,000, because N.O.R.E.’s getting on the track.” That’s real brotherly love.

AllHipHop.com: When he came home you had taped that footage for a documentary you were working on called What What! What ever happened to it?

N.O.R.E.: We still got it. We still got all the footage. I got Puff kicking it with Shyne, this is right before Shyne caught that case. I got Puff telling me he was mad for me making Shyne battle Mysonne. I don’t know if you know about that?

AllHipHop.com: Yeah, it happened outside of Justin’s.

N.O.R.E.: Yeah, I was the n***a who gassed that, B.

AllHipHop.com: Let’s get into that…

N.O.R.E.: We were all at Justin’s and we kept hearing there was a dude named Shyne. I was eating there with Chris Lighty and I got drunk. Mysonne was there, and this is before he got down with Violator, and he said he was better than Shyne. So n***as went outside. I was in the rhyme cipher, but Mysonne kept hitting me like, “N.O.R.E., you already got a deal.” So I was like, “F**k it, y’all need to battle then!” I don’t think Shyne was off point or Shyne wasn’t ready, but Shyne wasn’t a battle rapper at that time and Mysonne, boy was he! He went in on that muthaf**ka! It originally was just us but then it grew to be hundreds of people.

AllHipHop.com: So Shyne took that an L?

N.O.R.E.: Um, I would say so.

AllHipHop.com: Did it get nasty to the point that dudes wanted to get the guns?

N.O.R.E.: Nah, I believe that night was really hot. I don’t think he lost in a manner that was foul. Like he just wasn’t battling, Mysonne was going at him getting in his face. When you a new dude, you got to understand when you get $900,000 from Puff, people are going to hate.

AllHipHop.com: Are you ever going to put any of that footage out? Can I get an exclusive??

N.O.R.E.: You know what the crazy thing is, I got so much footage. I got Wyclef wilding, I got Nas wilding! This is before him and Jay’s beef took off. I got 50 Cent going crazy! This is how close me and 50 was at one point. I got Memphis Bleek, Fat Joe, and Cam’ron. All of them had had words at the moment. Cam’ron had little problems with Bleek. Bleek had little problems with Joe. Joe had little problems with 50 Cent. And I had them all in the same building, in the same room. Whew.

AllHipHop.com: I got to get that.

N.O.R.E.: You know what? I’m going to put that on bootleg, because no one is going to sign all those clearances!

AllHipHop.com: During the Melvin Flynt – Da Hustler days, you did an interview with some publication in the UK and you accused the Neptunes of being gay. Where did the fugazi accusations come from?

N.O.R.E.: [Laughs] Right, it wasn’t directed towards the Neptunes directly. I was very upset with them. But at the same time I was upset with anyone who I helped in any way who wasn’t helping me. I didn’t know how to take my frustration and I didn’t know how to separate me being mad on the streets from me being mad to the world. I would take that statement and I would have handled that much better. Guess what, I’m human. Sometimes you’re going to get someone contradicting themselves, and saying something they didn’t mean. I was mad at them, one of their cousins had one of my cars and they destroyed the car. Then I couldn’t reach these mutherf**kers. They weren’t answering my calls, that didn’t have anything to do with Pharrell or Chad, but I took it out on them. That’s something I apologize for.

AllHipHop.com: So you're working on The Reunion and you get Foxy Brown to get on a track with y’all that happens to be “Bang Bang.” Did you know Foxy was going to throw Lil’ Kim under the bus so bad?

N.O.R.E.: Yo, you know what; [Mobb Deep’s] “Quiet Storm” was an ill combination so I was like, “Let’s do a song with Foxy.” We were trying to let people know there wasn’t no problems, because if you really pay attention to who did the beat it was Alchemist; the same person who did “Quiet Storm.” In all actuality, that verse Foxy spit was the least amount of disrespect. She came in with like seven verses, she was in the f**king booth going crazy. I can’t front like I was naïve to the situation like I didn’t know she was dissing somebody. I knew she was getting loose, but I didn’t know the magnitude of the song was going to become. I didn’t know people were going to take it that far.

AllHipHop.com: So she came in with seven disrespectful verses?

N.O.R.E.: Yeah man, disrespectful. The funny part was she was disrespecting her and Diddy! And Diddy was my man! To this day, I can call Diddy like, “What’s up?” And Diddy is like, “What’s good, you got your Patron?” And I’ll go to his house and Miami and we’ll drink! So I felt bad because I was like damn, because I didn’t know Lil’ Kim, but it was wrong for me to allow something like that.

AllHipHop.com: Another one of my favorite joints off The Reunion was the DJ Premier produced “Invincible.” I thought you came off so raw on that with that line “Yo Melvin Flynt dropped/ my whole colossal stopped/ I can’t believe I f**ked up and dropped a half ass album, my excuse is my pop’s just died...”

N.O.R.E.: ---"And I ain’t want to make music, my pops just died."

AllHipHop.com: Yeah obviously you weren’t trying to be a lyricist, but I always thought those couple of lines defined your whole style. Can you get into the behind the scenes of that song?

N.O.R.E.: First off, Premier was a person who we loved. We wanted to work with Premier for forever. But Premier is a perfectionist; he’s not taking a check. I don’t give a f**k how tough you are or if you go to the studio and bust your guns, Premier is not making anything he don’t think is hot. We were like, “Give us this, and give us that,” but he was like, “That stuff is not for y’all; I got the joint for y’all.” He had us on a six month wait, B! The original beat to that had a whole bunch of Nas samples, a whole bunch of Jay-Z and B.I.G. samples. We were fans of all of them but we felt like why did we have to sample them n***as’ voices? We wanted to sample our own s**t. He went back in and sampled out own s**t and made it a whole different beat.

At the time I was dealing with the Melvin Flynt s**t, people coming up to me saying I like it but it’s not as good as N.O.R.E. That’s how I felt about it. Like you said, I’m not a Nas, I’m not a Rakim, I’m not a dude who’s going to make you go to encyclopedia and look up a word. I’m going to keep it very simplistic. I’ll have people coming up to me saying, “You’re the only n***a that could diss himself and make it sound hot!”

AllHipHop.com: So coming into the release of The Reunion, I hear Tom Silverman, the owner of Tommy Boy, mistreats you…

N.O.R.E.: It got beyond [mistreatment]. At the end of the day, when you a record label, you get funded by someone else. Very seldom people fund themselves. So Penalty Records was a label that was fully owned by Tommy Boy. Tommy Boy was a label that was fully owned by Warner Brothers. So Warner looked at their sales and said, “There’s no need to keep Tommy Boy open, we’ll just take Capone N Noreaga with us.” So Tom tells them, “I’m going to get CNN to come to us. And I’m going to keep that revenue going, so instead of them dropping Tommy Boy, Tommy Boy drops Penalty.” We had a meeting at Mr. Chow’s in New York City, Queen Latifah was there too. Tom was all nonchalantly like, “You are no longer on Penalty Records; y’all with me now, pass the bread.” [Laughs]

The part that hurt the most was that it was the week before The Reunion dropping. So you go to think about it, if you got 20 people working on your project and the next day they fired, how the hell you going to get these new 20 people focused like they were?

AllHipHop.com: Didn’t Queen Latifah warn you about him being a slime ball?

N.O.R.E.: Yeah she warned us about him being a slimeball, but we had no choice the album was coming out that Tuesday. At the restaurant they charged him 10 cents more than they were supposed to. He stood there for an hour and made sure they took the 10 cents off. I ain’t trying to be funny or nothing; he’s serious with that s**t - he makes a penny scream, for real!

AllHipHop.com: How did you get out of the contract?

N.O.R.E.: We got out the contract by going to Tommy Boy offices and ordering a hundred pizzas or three thousand burgers. We didn’t beat up these n***as up, we just went up there and made it unbearable to deal with us. We were just there smoking weed in there, running through the office, peeing in the corners, scaring the mail boy. We were doing very d**khead s**t to get released. He made it so hard for us to get released, he stopped coming to work.

AllHipHop.com: Around that time Nas already ethered Jay. He was supposed to perform at Hot 97’s Summer Jam concert but Hot 97 wanted to pull the plug on Nas’s stage show. Nas goes on Power 105 to vent and then throws you under the bus saying your album was wack. How did that make you feel?

N.O.R.E.: I was crushed, I hurt me. I knew he was mad and he apologized later on in life, but I don’t think I accepted that apology. I wanted that apology. But the crazy s**t is he’s on that album (“Hit Me Slime”), the first voice you heard was him! What kind of idiot move was that? I felt like, “Damn, is this the level we at?”

I was at Def Jam at the time and I can’t say the persons name, but when he was supposed to come on at Hot 97 to show Jay-Z hanging, it was some Def Jam n***as pulling the plug on that. Me and Foxy Brown are on the radio saying we going to hold you down Nas, nobody going to pull the plug on you on one station and he throwing me under the bus on the other station. I felt terrible, because this is someone that could of came to me like a man and told me that. I know I how it is at the heat of the moment and you mad at people but you don’t throw your family under the bus. I was crushed. And what hurt the most is I was still in the middle of my promotional tour and every stop at radio people would ask me, “What’s up with you and Nas?” And I wasn’t saying anything bad about the dude; I never said nothing. I held my composure until I couldn’t any more.

AllHipHop.com: Did your boys want to ride out on him?

N.O.R.E.: You know how that is! [Laughs] You always got a d**khead in your crew who don’t understand your relationship with this man and always want to bring it to a different extent. I can’t let nobody hurt Nas, I wouldn’t be a man if I let that happen. That’s between me and him.

AllHipHop.com: Shortly after that, you start running with Dame Dash. How did you hook up with him?

N.O.R.E.: Well Dame was waiting for his car to pull up and he just chilled and I was there talking to my n***as. And he’s like, “N.O.R.E. your movie [is] ready,” and told me he was going to put me in one of his movies and he didn’t lie, he asked me if I wanted to be in Paid In Full. I was so open. My role in that movie was all made up just for me. I didn’t read anything from the script, it’s all me. I made all that sh*t up. I just know the key to acting is to exaggerate it.

AllHipHop.com: Rewind a little bit, what was the dark side of Dame Dash like?

N.O.R.E.: I f**ks with Dame, but I f**ks with Biggs so much more. Not dissing Dame, but I understood Biggs. I wish Biggs would of came to me and said, “N.O.R.E., this is how it is.” What happened was Dame Dash and Chris Lighty had past time beef. I’m loyal to Chris. Chris took it upon himself to have a secret meeting with Jay-Z. What happened in that secret meeting was that Jay said, “N.O.R.E. couldn’t be on no Dame Dash record label,” and Chris is like, “Okay, I didn’t know that N.O.R.E. is on Dame Dash record label.” Jay told Chris like, “Listen, legally, N.O.R.E. has never signed to the ROC because there was no contract exchanged. N.O.R.E. is a Def Jam artist so it wasn’t going to go down.”

What happened was I came to see Dame, and Dame flipped on me like I did it. Like, “Yo N.O., they got me looking foul up there.” And I had to tell him, “With all due respect, please don’t talk to me like that. Don’t raise your voice at me, treat me with respect and I’ll treat you the same in return.” Things got a little heated. But when I look at it today, he was right. Because Jay told Chris they were secretly dropping Dame’s situation and if you want N.O.R.E. there, then that’s on you. But if you don’t, we want him on Def Jam. It took me a year or two to see how it actually looked, and it did look bad.

AllHipHop.com: When’s the last time you spoken to Dash?

N.O.R.E.: I spoke to Dash the other day, I hit the n***a on the two-way. We been spoke about it. I don’t want to have bad blood with nobody. I tried to reach out to Nas too. He hasn’t returned the phone call, but at least I let him know in that situation I was wrong as well.

AllHipHop.com: Did you have to give the Roc-A-Fella chain back?

N.O.R.E.: I threw that s**t in the garbage. One day I was in 40/40 and something went wrong with the Roc La Familia situation, and I took off the chain, I took off the chain and let everyone see it and threw it in the garbage.

AllHipHop.com: So let’s get back to you and Pone’s situation. When I spoke to 'Pone when he was promoting his Pain Time & Glory album, he didn’t throw you under the bus but he made it clear there was some type of separation between the two of you. What led to that separation?

N.O.R.E.: I’m going to be honest because I’m not trying to gas you up but everything in this story has been on point, and you deserve to know the truth. I was a little salty because when he came home from jail, he had signed papers to ownership of Thugged Out Militainment, you feel me? He signed papers in our accountant’s office and had lawyers look over everything. We had this label Thugged Out and I got salty when he started Pain Time And Glory [Entertainment] and didn’t do the same for me, you feel me? I got a little mad. Martin, I’m not a robot, I got feelings! I’m like, “N***a, you own this company with me then he started a whole different company Pain Time and Glory.” I may have been wrong for being salty, but that’s not what I wanted for us. I wanted to ride out together. “I waited for you to come home to ride out with me not to ride out on your own!” I should have thought more about it and we should of kicked it. At the end of the day, it’s hard enough for us to be partners let alone friends from two different hoods that don’t get along. When he didn’t ask me to be apart of PTE, I was mad. I’m human, my dude, I’m sure I didn’t mean it on purpose, but I was mad I can’t lie. We worked it out and talked it out.

AllHipHop.com: So like about a year and some change ago I hear you see Nas at some party and hit him over the head with a flowerpot. What happened?

N.O.R.E.: Right. At the end of the day, I blame Puff Daddy. [Laughs] Nah, me and Puff had Patron beef. Puff see me at the club and me and this n***a downs two bottles of Patron. I don’t even know if he remembers this s**t. I got a bottle Patron - and mind you I don’t even drink Patron; that’s for girls to me. I drink Jose Cuervo.

So we down that s**t and I’m in the club hyped as hell, and I’m f**king [with] Nas the whole time. It was really some sucker s**t on my behalf, to tell the truth, because I seen Nas a couple of days before and I was at a restaurant and Nas ran up on me. He gave me a hug and we went outside and talked. People were so happy to see us outside talking. He called L.A. Reid and told him let him help N.O.R.E.’s project. At the end of the day when I seen him at the party, all I could think of is that Power 105 interview and that was some sucker s**t on my behalf. He apologized for throwing my name under the bus for what he did and I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to him, to his wife, to his family, and everybody that had to go through that. What I want people to get from when they finish reading this interview is that N.O.R.E. is a human being and he makes mistakes. Only a man can say sorry when he is wrong. A coward says, “F**k it.” At the end of day I don’t have beef with Nas because you have to hate the person you have with beef with, and how can I have beef with someone I love? I love Nas. That day I saw Nas at the restaurant, we were going to do “Body In The Trunk” part two, brother.

AllHipHop.com: It never popped off?

N.O.R.E.: Nah. [Laughs] I don’t think it ever will. [Laughs] If the man never talks to me or we never had words again, I would say that’s how life was supposed to turn out. Other than that, I’m not going to say what happened that night or if it even happened that night. I apologize to him, everybody, Jungle. I even spoke to Jungle and he didn’t bring it up. I also tried to reach out Nas. This is something I am ashamed of as a man.

AllHipHop.com: So let’s talk about the new album Noreality.

N.O.R.E.: [Laughs] Yeah, we talked about everything else. Basically I have a lot to prove on this album. A lot people started to doubt me like I can’t do Hip-Hop anymore, like I’m only doing this Spanish s**t. I sat back and went to Miami and did five records a night. I got the “Cocaine Cowboys” on there; I got this joint called “Drink Champion” because I am rap’s drinking champion. E-40 beat me twice and I beat him twice, so we call that even, but there’s none one who’s beaten me. You got to send me out in stretcher. My man Benzino, I out-drank him. My man Prodigy [of Mobb Deep] has come to the studio and drank with me and literally fell out. My man Nature thought he died in my vocal booth. I got a joint called “Pop A Pill” talking about all the ecstasy s**t going on. I got Kanye kicking hardcore rhymes on. I really wanted to give back to the hood before I gave to the radio and the clubs. This is my updated version of War Report. This is N.O.R.E.’s reality.

I read tha first post.
Interesting.

Ill read the rest later.

nice read. props