I think many will agree with me if I say that rap has now turned into a sport for likes, and hip-hop culture prefers to talk about systemic oppression, carefully avoiding the elephant in the room. And now imagine a rapper who refuses all the rules of the game. Who makes beats with jazz nuances of his opponent’s hometown so the knife goes in deeper.

Meet ColdPoison – philosopher, vegan, producer, and possibly the most uncomfortable voice of modern rap. ColdPoison doesn’t rap about who has cooler chains or who slept with whose girlfriend. He writes tracks like indictments, turning rap battles into philosophical trials of those who, in his opinion, violate the fundamental rights of living beings. ColdPoison is a musician who with each release shows how far one can go when you truly believe in what you’re saying. We met to talk about his new track “Sung to Sleep” against Rampage Jackson — and ended up discussing everything: from the nature of evil to why Michael Jackson would be the ideal collaborator for a song against another Jackson.

Hello ColdPoison, it’s a real pleasure to speak with you! You know, listening to your new track about Rampage Jackson, I caught myself thinking that diss rap over the last ten years has turned into some kind of sporting ritual without real stakes. But you’re returning the genre to its original function — public trial, almost like a medieval pillory. How do you even see the boundary between diss as an art form and diss as an act of social justice?

Hello and thank you. It is a pleasure to speak with you as well. Ah, yes. A sporting ritual. An arbitrary exchange of words, rather than of meaning. Well, to answer your question, I don’t.

I don’t see a distinction descriptively because of what I believe prescriptively. I think that if diss as an art form lacks deeper meaning, some kind of moral point to it, then it ought not be portrayed professionally. Diss ought to be considered art because it can hold people accountable. If there’s no real point, no truth, no moral stakes, then it’s just comedy or pointless anger, depending on the tone. And that kind of lens has destroyed diss rap. Instead of people waiting on thought-leaders like Frederick Douglas or Elizabeth Stanton to speak on behalf of those hurting, to create articulate ways of conceptualizing how to do what’s right, what comes to mind are silly rap battles online talking about superficial elements for cheap thrills. Or maybe rappers defending their street cred, so their purpose is some selfish endeavor about ego. It’s not about rights violations or suffering, relatable moral topics that affect people daily, or uncomfortable truths that we would like to escape from confronting us in an empowering way. No. It’s gossip, flexing, and shallow punchlines that read more like sophisticated popsicle puns than something that’s worth pondering about.

Let’s go back to when Eminem made Killshot. Eminem admitted himself that he was just being “petty” when he went after MGK. Compare that to when I made “Killthought” against Matt Walsh. I sent it to a vegan I knew quite well who already wrote and knew the culture of diss rap and guess what? I was ignored. I sent it to a man who made a diss rap series called “Dis Raps For Hire” and he gave the impression I was too gruesome in my lyrics, despite my context being obviously metaphorical and many of his own lyrics reading like some of the darkest excerpts from a Stephen King novel. I sent this to hardcore vegan activists, and they suddenly started caring about “perception,” despite doing public stunts that society already frowns upon. But you know what all these groups have in common? Respecting that “Killshot” has violent lyrics. And not just recognizing that society views that as acceptable, but personally finding it to be acceptable themselves. Really? Someone who admits to being petty is allowed to say intense lyrics in art but someone who is trying to stop REAL world violence happening in mass isn’t? The culture is a problem, and the culture needs to change.

The YouTube algorithm served you Rampage Jackson, you did “extensive research.” You probably stumbled upon some specific interview or moment where you realized: okay, this person can’t be ignored. Tell me about that moment — what exactly did he say or do when you realized you were going to write a track about him? Was it one phrase, one gesture, or did it accumulate until the cup overflowed?

The cup definitely overflowed. So, the way it all unfolded was that I had this beat which sounded like it was perfect for some kind of fighter or athlete, and I really wanted to target an anti-vegan who fit that theme. I did some googling and stumbled upon Rampage. I started to look up what sort of sentiments he was perpetuating, you know, were they really shallow ones like “not enough protein tho” or was this man on a mission to attack vegans and animals? Those are the ones I go after. And I got my answer quickly. His son, Raja, is either a closest vegan who is too ashamed to self-identify fully or would otherwise be such if it weren’t for having to fight a constant battle of willpower against his own father. When I searched Rampage’s name on YouTube, an influx of videos filled the page of him attacking Veganism in some way, shape, or form, and almost always while using his own son as the guinea pig. And these were all recent as well. I was in shock from how much fame and fortune Quinton was attempting to collect from his audience by being a firm anti-vegan.

From there, it didn’t take long before I found out about his other extreme rights violations in the human context. From sexually assaulting multiple women on camera and the footage still being easily findable, to speeding and crashing into multiple vehicles after he lost his title back in 2008 to Forrest Griffin and lost his damn mind. He could have killed multiple people, caused major bodily harm, and he arguably did cause a miscarriage. He was sentenced just mere community service hours all because he’s rich and famous. And even the one female reporter who spoke out after a 40 second unconsenual mounting wondered if she should knee him, tried multiple ways to get him to stop and it’s only reasonable to infer she thought pressing charges against him wasn’t an option. But perhaps what still sticks out to me the most individually, the scene that still makes my blood boil when I even think about it is a short YouTube clip where Rampage blames Raja for breaking their bond because Raja refuses to eat dead animals with his father. Excuse you, what? It’s the OTHER way around. If your own son doesn’t break your cognitive dissonance over the idea that it’s wrong to kill animals for taste pleasure, nutrition, or a concept of toxic masculinity culture, to realize you’re not inspired enough by him to stop looking away after all he is helping you to see, and you choose that lifestyle of disregard over your own son, YOU broke your bond. And you were never really Raja’s “father”.

I’ve always found it strange that hip-hop, a culture that talks so much about fighting the system and protecting the oppressed, almost completely ignores animals in this conversation. Like, we discuss racism, classism, police violence — but when it comes to what’s on your plate, everyone suddenly becomes conservative. Have you ever caught side-eye from other rappers or the hip-hop community for your position, and if so — how do you even deal with that without turning into that guy at the party who annoys everyone with talk about veganism?

It’s funny, at first I was going to write “wise perception!” when reading this. And then I realized, wait, no, this is a “brave perception!”. The word I am looking for has to deal with courage, because to suggest it’s wise conveys an idea that it wasn’t obvious. But I do think it’s obvious. I think the framing “…almost completely ignores animals in this conversation…” couldn’t be more accurate of a connotation. It invokes a sense of intentionality, and that’s correct to say. The idea that we as a society are participating in an unimaginably large moral wrong to which we all have our own personal obligation to abstain from, to a sufficient degree that we would accept humans who are reduced down to the level of animals (trait-equalized) and yet somehow don’t notice it is ABSURD, to say the least. The intuition pump of playing slaughterhouse footage is just one indication of such, let alone the intuition pump to reject the logical consequences of remaining consistent while attempting to name a trait or set of traits that justifies killing and eating animals but not humans.

No, I have not gotten any side-eye from other artists per se, just avoidance. I think when you’re unafraid to be as bold as I am, as much as you receive a lack of press attention for purported fear of social optics, you receive a lack of attention in general regardless of if someone could socially afford to go after you. It’s a silent admission. A way of saying “we can’t afford to let this guy blow up or else we risk losing a lot of money having to rebrand”. And why is that? Because contextually, I’m on the right side of history. Any artist who would theoretically go after me either wouldn’t want to fight this battle to make that fact more apparent, or it’s safe to say that even if they’d like to, their manager/label wouldn’t. So, they hope I stay small. That I don’t make enough noise. And that brings me to the next part of your question, because when I do wind up in that situation where my opponents attempt to frame me as annoying, stupid, lame, or anything else negative, I’m going to remain consistent. I’m not going to let the fear of invalidation, even if it’s large humiliation, stop me from holding up the mirror. It didn’t stop any of our past civil rights leaders who knew they had to be willing to be hated to help people to change. And no amount of pain I could personally emotionally feel regardless, could ever compare to what even a single animal goes through in terms of fear, let alone the billions I stand for collectively.

Okay, here’s a slightly absurd scenario, but let’s play it out. Imagine tomorrow Rampage Jackson finds your track, listens to it all the way through and… let’s say, doesn’t rage out, but actually sits down and thinks about it. Maybe even writes you some kind of response. What would you want from him in an ideal universe — public apologies, behavioral change, a debate, or do you not give a damn about his reaction because the track wasn’t written for him but for those who look up to him?

I would love a debate, as it’s a great tool for raising awareness. So, in a sense, I care about his reaction, but not in a way to suggest I care about reform. Only indirectly. I don’t reject that people changing is possible or plausible. After all, what is an identity except for a cluster of memories combined with an agent’s control over their actions? I think many people fixate on the first part, that is to say, they care about whether or not someone ought be condemned if the party in question doesn’t take ownership over the cluster of memories they are responsible for. In fact, there’s a famous example of a Nazi lieutenant who participated in mass killings but whose lawyer claimed he was unable to remember his past. Some would say this exonerates a moral agent because the argument is that there are now two different identities whose experiences are now distinct from the other. But it doesn’t change that they were in control of their thoughts and actions at the time of the wrongdoings, and for as long as that’s true, it makes the current concept of their experience irrelevant.

Now, I’m skeptical that an identity-change is as likely to occur within true sorrow or reform as much as people act like it’s plausible, especially since freedom and social shame are often incentives to hide one’s true self-perception. But it’s amazing that even if I granted the most extreme case of such, where it’s unarguable that someone’s memories are erased, that the contextual fact of having been the controller of a subjective experience, whose ability to disregard others crossed such a high threshold that it allowed for not even one but MULTIPLE atrocities, will always remain true. It’s a point then, not of if it’s possible or plausible at all. But if it’s deserved. And it many cases, it’s clearly not. Rampage Jackson is one of those. A man who carries on to antagonize his legacy that his teeth are yellow because Rampage is jealous he lost his own legacy. A man who picks on beings smaller in size and still has the audacity to call himself an “alpha”. A man who can legally find women to have consensual sexual relations with despite having unconsensually dominated women for his own selfish pleasure. A man who can drive down any road he feels like despite having endangered one that could have been the last any of those victims who drove down that California boulevard. He’s clearly guilty. Multiple times over. Innocence is not endless, and a single act is enough to constitute this behavior as unacceptable but if one isn’t convinced at this point that he’s evil, they simply aren’t thinking about things thoroughly. After all, if good deserves to be rewarded, why would evil not deserve to be punished?

How did you even come to the decision that this dark, aggressive sound was the right way to convey a message about something that’s usually hidden from public view? Why not something more experimental or, conversely, more pop that could reach wider?

Quinton is from Memphis, Tennessee and I really think the track has just the soulful, jazzy vibe that you’d expect from the music that’s true to his hometown. So, it hits deep in that regard. Like a true stab in the back. I definitely think I added a more familiar vibe to the chorus in terms of melody, while balancing it to give a desperate plea. A feeling of a cry, a way to shout to the world that Quinton “messed up!” and “It’s too late for you!” and then uses that same feeling of desperation to switch from hopeless to hopeful for Raja at the end. That it’s not too late for him. Funnily enough, I did get a rather large curator who recently rejected my track being added to their playlist because they thought I sounded “too mainstream”. I don’t agree with that idea, but it’s reassuring to know that it’s perhaps a way of saying the hook is melodically comfortable.

How important is it to you that people listen to your music for the music itself, and not just for the message?

I think it always ought be ONE strong goal an artist has in mind when creating music is to make it as sonically desirable as can be. Whether that’s melody, flow, the beat, harmonies, mixing, mastering, and so on. The PRIMARY goal of any conscious-based artist, however, should be of course, the meaning. The message ought be part of the music, something that your delivery, cadence, hooks and so on are merely tools to help the idea land. Being that I started as a beat producer first, I more than understand the importance for the role of the instrumental. It’s what captivates the audience, and like any enthralling performer, you descriptively must reel people in with something engaging to keep a large amount (enough to make a difference in a movement) stay along for the ride. But part of my ride, is to show people that the superficiality we have in determining what we pay attention to ought not supersede the message. I think of this as un-manipulating people. Because think about it, if right now, our brains react to positive stimuli to make decisions and it turns out that in all actuality, we would want ourselves to take away the message above all else, even if we didn’t like a particular element or set of elements, then someone else (myself) accounting for that by going by this formula would actually be respected.

I have this view with regards to all sorts of superficiality that we as sentient beings mistakenly fall for. Physical appearance is another hugely common version to which this same logic is deployed. There are plenty of amazing people we don’t connect with because we don’t realize how much we discriminate based on someone’s unpalatable appearance. And vice versa, grant too much credit to unfavorable ones because someone is quite pleasant to look at. If you’re lucky enough to be good looking for example, the same heuristic should apply. You should use your power for good, and remind those that were perhaps initially drawn to you for your looks to realize that they would still be sufficiently desirable enough to associate with even if they got hit upside the head with a shovel tomorrow. And if that’s the case, what if we went back in time to right before you met them? What if shortly beforehand, you lost your advantage? Imagine all those memories, enjoyable experiences, and so on all evaporating merely because you thought this advantage was what should determine you even interacting with them. Now imagine you never gained the insight that you were violating your own philosophy with regards to what sorts of beings you find acceptable to kill and eat for food simply because you didn’t like a beat, the sound of a voice, the flow, ect.

So, enjoy the dope beats, great flows and everything else, folks. Just remember, that’s not primarily for the ultimate version of yourself. It’s mainly intended for the first version of yourself to eventually learn.

Here’s what I’ve always been curious about in diss culture: the moment after the release. The track drops, you’ve poured out all the anger, all the arguments, all the punchlines — and then what? You can’t diss the same person every month, that turns into an obsession. How do you decide for yourself when the story with a specific “opponent” is closed?

Ah, obsession. And what is “obsession”? Is it when our brains see the same stimuli repeated, and we get tired of seeing it because it becomes predictable? That’s usually what people mean, something along those lines at least. And I find that funny because, that’s essentially what’s known as a “shell morality” position in philosophy. Essentially, it’s the idea that something does or doesn’t have value merely because the “shell” of what it is. A “shell” is something like, the way something looks or something that’s expected to be over-valued to what a reasonable position would consider. For example, if I took a human who had an identical mind to a cow, like a severely mentally-handicapped person or a baby, and you said they have moral value but the cow themselves doesn’t by virtue of them being in the shell of a cow, the absurd logical conclusion would be that you would think it’s fine to infinitely holocaust identical minds of that severely mentally-handicapped person/babies provided they aren’t in their human shell.

Now, let’s plug that in to becoming socially tired of a back-and-forth. Provided my opponent was always saying some new argument, or at least creating a new position or form of wording with the same conclusion (what we call “sophistry pathway” in philo), then why get bothered when I dispel it? Is it literally just because it’s in the shell of Rampage Jackson? Matt Walsh? If their exact talking point was uploaded into the mind of Miley Cyrus, is it NOW worth talking about the underlying subject matter? Or was the subject matter always the only important part, and our minds simply became frustrated by seeing too many patterns? Repetition ought not be the focus when evaluating if something should be paid attention to. It ought to be solely about the point at hand. That said, if it seems like my opponent is rehashing the same exact point, one to which almost everyone seems to see the problem with their reasoning, and I am getting little progress made with them personally, I can see value in dropping that. I think there’s many contextual points that would help to conditionally determine which direction ought be taken to maximize efficiency and/or what deserves to be addressed for maximum clarity, but certainly just a “I can predict it so it’s dumb/wrong/not worth it” is just a silly view. One that we’d never abide by if human rights were on the table (pun intended).

You mention that you combine old-school and modern elements — I hear boom-bap influences there, and something more contemporary in the production. I’m curious, did you make the beat yourself or did you work with a producer?

I normally work with a producer because I believe too few chefs spoil creativity, but this time, I really had it all under control. The ideas flowed from one to another and before I knew it, I had a lot to work with. So much so, that I admittedly spent weeks on it. It’s long, for one, but I needed a lot of ideas to keep it interesting and match the lyrical content as well. For example, when I say “the bell’s still ringing!” It’s one of my favorite intersections in the track between the instruments and my lyrics. Because on one hand, you hear it at first before I deliver that line and think, “Oh, that’s just a melodious bell he added, cool!” But then when I say the line in question, you’re like “OHHH, IT DOES SOUND LIKE THE BELL THEY DING WHEN FIGHTERS START A MATCH!!! NO WAY!!!” And it’s a bunch of little things like that. Another one was “I’ll sub-due you with this baseline,” and it’s a double entendre for the bassline, which increases in volume for a short duration after it’s said. The main brass was actually easy to assemble. It was all the building around it and the piano that I really wanted to take my time with. Piano is my specialty, but finding ways to incorporate it that felt new at each corner was a bit of a challenge. I just didn’t want to overdo it, so I spread it out more methodically. But I can’t lie, I was inspired by my childhood favorite “Everybody Wants to Be a Cat” from Disney’s Aristocats. Playing it just puts you in a jazzy mood!

You’re ColdPoison, a philosophical vegan disser, and everyone who googles you expects to see exactly that. But we both know that no person can exist 24/7 in combat mode. Outside the studio, outside writing disses about anti-vegan monsters like Rampage — what do you even do? Do you have any hobby or passion that’s absolutely unrelated to music or activism, something that helps you reboot and not go crazy from constant confrontation?

Philosophy is my main course of work. I am a tutor and can safely say that we all love philosophy to some degree, because it’s all reducible to figuring out our morals, which is just to say our preferences. But this is not unrelated to music and activism, it’s actually what fuels it. In fact, in has the opposite effect on me. I think when you realize the scope of the atrocities we have going on around us, it only makes you want to confront the problems more. This is why people partake in protests, why people vote, and why people take action in situations where they believe their voices matter (or want to believe it). Ignorance is not bliss. It’s a false sense of such, a state of mere positive brain chemicals, which in no way indicates our real preferences. Thus, if I spent all the money I’ve currently invested into my career, and instead of being broke, poured it into other frivolous activities such as to travel the world, be an ultra-fit athlete, bake fun vegan treats, go on hikes, play a real sport or video games, or what I like to joke to investors with “go to the Bahamas and snort cocaine”, it would be a waste. A distraction. How could I possibly fill my subjective experience with “enjoyment” as billions of innocent creatures around me die?

In the human context, people can’t even stomach allowing for that within their own small towns. Someone realizes they have to be a doctor, a police man, a fireman, a paramedic, and so on in order to avoid a certain threshold of rights violations and suffering. When war happens, we understand a certain amount of people are required to be soldiers to stop more mayhem. We had to take up arms to help protect Black rights back when the North divided against the South. Likewise, there’s no trait or set of traits in the animal context that if it were true of a human, would cause me to lack a sufficiently strong, but not necessarily equal obligation, to fighting for theses trait-equalized beings as I would your average human. If that sounds confusing, I’m just saying that animal’s minimum value with respects to basic rights (such as life and autonomy) of deserving to be fought for logically follows from believing in human rights. And that’s not just true of myself. That’s true of anyone. So, unless you can name a trait or set of traits that you think justify the difference of treatment with respects to having a moral obligation to protect one set of beings and not the other and doesn’t result in an absurd position, you’re behold to that view as well. And I realize that not many people are logically consistent in their actions as they are their beliefs AKA “vegan” yet, descriptively. But that urgency I am discussing here, the kind of pain that fills you up of sheer disgust for moments of peace and serenity as you know of horrors happening in parallel to your sense of pleasure, it would fill the world with grief and guilt if we all became aware. But then something else would happen sometime after. People would do something about it. They would change the wrongs for once, instead of pretending they don’t exist. And all of our peace would be earned. All of the wellbeing received would be earnest. It wouldn’t be a selfish sense of satisfaction. It would be shared. Until we reach that world, the only craziness I will encounter is staying closer to this one.

If you had the opportunity to make a collab track with any artist, living or dead, on the condition that they share your values at least 70% — who would it be?

Michael Jackson. I don’t think there’s evidence to believe he was a big animal rights advocate per se, but I will say it’s not a stretch to say he’d be on board if given a chance to critically think about it, especially given a large amount of his music is about changing the world for the better, spreading love, and bringing peace. He’s a perfectionist for music such as myself, and as much as I am tempted at times to take my sound engineer’s advice of making simple beats and just producing a ton of content, I simply can’t bring myself to lowering my standards. Sonically, it’s pointless to even bring up the sound of his vocals as a reason, except only to be rhetorical about it from a meta-view such as I am here. How funny to make a song hating on one Jackson, while wishing to collab on a track with another! I certainly take inspiration from Michael though, both musically and emotionally. Philosophy, at the end of the day, is just facing that Man In The Mirror.

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