What sparked you to work with the Educate Our Men Initiative?

Mc Lyte: We had a meeting with President Kimbrough down at Dillard University and while we were talking with him he gave us the statistics, or the ratio rather, on women to men, attending the university and it was so void of men almost like seven to one, something ridiculous. We were like “oh man we gotta get men in school” and that’s how the initiative was started.

With what’s going on in Ferguson and New York, do you think artist should take on more initiative to have a social responsibility?

Mc Lyte: If their audience depends on them to carry the torch, then yeah. If their audience is not swayed one way or the other then I don’t think they will feel social responsibility to do that. This is the time that if we feel J.Cole we lift him up and talk about him and push him further, because what he is saying may not be received as well but we have to let him know we like that from him. Same thing with “I love myself” [“i”] from Kendrick. People are saying that the radio is not supporting it as strong as other songs, so what? I came up when hip hop was only on the radio two hours on Friday and Saturday and we had to push and promote. “You heard this? You heard that?” We must use social media to promote what must be said.

Recently you did the BET Hip-Hop Awards with Queen Latifah, Brandy and Yo-Yo, how does it feel to go out and do shows like thatand people still chant for you?

Mc Lyte: It feels like love, it’s a real good thing. To be able to go out and perform that 20 years after we did on Lady of Soul, Soul Train used to have just The Lady of Soul Train Awards, we performed it there and to do it after all these years and it be well recieved and to do it at such a male-dominated awards ceremony it really felt good because we were able to add some other flavor to it.