“Slap a White boy!” — is how the chorus welcomes us into “F the Law,” the first track off of dead prez’s Get Free or Die Trying. The 16-track album is the unexpected second volume of the group’s Turn Off the Radio mixtape series, unexpected because everyone thought the unreleased but already critically acclaimed Revolutionary But Gangsta would be the dp’s next offering. But after the collapse of Loud Records, the label that dead prez first called home, and the drama that ensued when Columbia/Sony put the release of RBG (a clever play on Garvey’s red, black and green) on indefinite hold, the group was forced to release Turn Off the Radio, Vol. 1. Done over mostly recycled beats from pop hits (the most buzz worthy cut was “We Need a Revolution,” done over Aaliyah’s “We Need a Resolution”), the album served to keep the group on hip hop’s radar until they worked out a label deal they were comfortable with.

Currently on the road for select dates as part of the ACLU's College Freedom Tour, along with Saul Williams and Mystic, dead prez is closer than ever to finally releasing RBG. But they still aren’t in the clear. A day before the group made its way to Cambridge, to perform at Harvard University, they were arrested and nearly missed the show.

Thankfully they did not, and Harvard students — regardless of race — were invited to slap white boys, pull capers and partake in the other revolutionary but gangsta activities advocated on the disc. Shortly after they found the time to sit down with Africana and talk about the arrest, upcoming albums and the message in their music.

Might as well make it short and sweet. We were talking to a cat that was on our block then the police came and arrested us. They just made stuff up and interrupted the business that we were attempting to handle without breaking any of their laws. We were let out without seeing a judge because all of their charges were bogus. And in that time they started a fight with us and my homie Ness got stomped out. There is a lot of police terrorism going on in the hood and we’re going to fight it.

It happened in Brooklyn, on Dean Street in Crown Heights right on the corner of my block.

Oh yeah, we have volume two of the Turn Off the Radio mixtape coming out. This one is called Get Free or Die Trying. We have about 16 new songs that we did with the crew. RBG is a studio album that we did with Loud/Sony, that’s going to be coming out soon. But we're still negotiating with other labels. We're taking our time.

Yes, but black people get pimped no matter what kind of music we do. What they call standard in the music industry is just slavery, it’s pimping. This whole music empire is set to pimp artists’ talent and lack of organization. Like they say — we’re not poor, we’re just poorly organized, so the industry takes advantage of that with the system. They lock you in with a certain amount of years or albums. They say that you can’t do guest appearances on other artists’ albums or they charge you money for it. There are so many ways in which this system is anti-artists’ rights, so we struggle not only in our music but also in our contracts. We’re working with lawyers trying to expose some of those contradictions. Right now there are a lot of artists who are dissatisfied with their contracts, artists who you may think are successful but are caught up in some hard situations. So we're using the struggle to make changes in the system, because if the system changes then the industry will change. And I believe that it's inevitable, it’s not just dead prez it’s the people and the conditions that make it happen. We’re just one of the many voices that will be coming.

The potential of people working in our own interest is as great as freedom, but a lot of people question the motives behind these human interest groups. There are a lot of people that might say let’s vote as a positive thing, but to me I say it’s foolish to encourage our people to vote in the system. Not because we shouldn’t participate in politics but because the vote is not an effective weapon. Number one, it doesn’t matter who runs, it’s a system so it’s already set up to function a certain way. The laws are all still interpreted the same way; the judges are still the same. Long story short, we should encourage people to be vocal and active on their agendas. For instance, if you were going to vote, what would you have liked to see changed? Then we can get to a consensus on it and find a candidate that’s running on that. A real democracy means everybody has to contribute and play a part instead of just dropping a piece of paper in a box. The politicians are the ones who have been abusing and mismanaging their power since America was established. So only the mothers, the prisoners and all the people who have been victimized by the system can make the democracy work. We’ve been thrown in prisons and locked up just to prove that we have rights. It’s all BS to me but we still have to keep fighting.

That’s a scary thing go get into because music is mot the movement. I would hope that music could be used as a tool. There was a Black Power movement and there was a Civil Rights movement — those are two different things and a lot of people don’t know that. The Civil Rights movement was about believing that the system was going to respect and honor its contract with the people. It was basically just saying we have a right to sit next to this person and work at this job, etc. Whereas the Black Power movement was saying we have a right to have our own sh*t and be independent. Malcolm, although I don’t believe in his religion, is one of the people that keep me focused. He made me realize that sh*t is real and I don’t have to just suffer.

We’re just trying to figure out how we can communicate as sincerely as possible and not be affected by the game. We want to keep it straightforward. We definitely have more things to say as well as more experiences than harassment by the police. There’s your friends, your children, the world — our music is not to be limited by just political awareness, we want to explore things that some might say are positive or negative.

They haven’t reached out. We’re not riding with the ACLU — but it’s also a business, in terms of performance. They hired us to do some shows and we mentioned that as long as we’re not censored we’ll rock anywhere. But the America Civil Liberties Union has nothing to do with me because I’m not American. At the same time whatever we have in common, in terms of beliefs, we come together on. But when we have disagreements we’re independent — that goes back to tribes and what they call gangs today. There is nothing wrong with different opinions, but to be able to coexist — that’s the science of civilization. We try to figure out our principles to work with people not in a slave/master relationship but independently. It’s a test — everything we do is a test.