Daylyt made a trip to the Genius office to discuss his song “A PLATE OF COLLARD GREENS.” The Python P & Saint Pat produced single also features J. Cole. On today’s episode of VERIFIED, the battle rapper dives into how the collaboration came to life, the emotional story behind the song, seeing a different side of J. Cole, and more!
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MusicTranscript
00:00When I was younger, I used to question, like, why am I in the hood?
00:03And as I got older, I realized I wasn't punished, I was privileged.
00:07Because I got to play life on All Matt, Call of Duty, Kill Confirmed, everybody had Aimbot.
00:13I spent life literally waking up like that.
00:16I never stressed when my plate was empty, never.
00:18I knew eventually it would come.
00:21We're at Treesound Studios in Atlanta.
00:30We had already been cooking for about three or four days in something that was seven days.
00:34So it was like the whole seven-day creation process, you know, God said, let there be
00:38light.
00:39Cole was working in another space, which I still don't know where, some magical space
00:42he was working in.
00:43And I was working upstairs in the main room upstairs.
00:46So every day he would come up and ask me, like, yo, you know, how many fucking records
00:50you cut today?
00:51So I'm like, yeah, I'm on, like, number seven right now.
00:53He's like, yo, all right, play me the first three, the first one.
00:56Like, we didn't even get to three.
00:58Collard Greens came up.
00:59He was just like, how, like, how the fuck are you doing this?
01:03Like, how?
01:04Like, how, how?
01:05I remind him of just the time when, like, you can just be a raw MC without thinking
01:11about all the other stuff.
01:12Because, again, where we at now, you know, I think people is thinking about how to put
01:17the song out before they even thinking about the goddamn lyrics.
01:20They think about publicity or promotion and all the trickery before the actual skill aspect.
01:24Let's just worry about the skill.
01:38So Out The Gate is actually like a quintillion entendre, like Out The Gate.
01:42I've learned something called double speaking.
01:44A lot of people might know what that is, but after today, you can go Google it, double
01:48speaking.
01:49It's basically like to rap something that you can basically talk to both listeners.
01:54And then you'll have people that create their own meanings, too.
01:56Pray for me on the third.
01:57Like, so the first layer of that is just, like, I'm on 103rd Street.
02:00The third, that's what we call 103rd Street.
02:02But then also, too, like, this was the third day that I was recording this.
02:06And then also from a biblical standpoint, like, this is the third day of creation.
02:09It's a body chopped in thirds, I heard.
02:11This is an actual story of someone that got chopped into three pieces on 103rd Street.
02:16The Jews come in pairs, so he got set up by his homies.
02:19His right-hand man actually set him up, and then they chopped him up.
02:31That's the bar that connects everything.
02:32So all this time spent, the mind sent the haters at me.
02:35So the mind is like the brain.
02:36But they found out where his head was because of where it was smelling from the preacher.
02:40So the mind sent the haters.
02:41It make me happy knowing, like, they can't touch me.
02:44Them same niggas that did that to him, they're not going to be able to touch me at all, because
02:47I'm just walking in a complete different light.
03:00And this is where we do something called chain punching.
03:02The ghost, the rugby, all this stuff tied back into the body in the house.
03:06Big Homie also had a ghost, too.
03:08It's like the verse of the Paso Gay to the pulpit.
03:11They mad adore me, but I ain't here for the bullshit.
03:13That's when Cole stopped the song.
03:15He didn't hear no more of the song after that.
03:17He was like, stop right there.
03:19Give me this record.
03:20I'm out of here.
03:21That was the bar that made him stop.
03:22It was like the verse of Paso Gay to the pulpit.
03:23This also ties back into the homie dying, the ghost, the funeral.
03:28It's all leading up.
03:29So this is a whole sad ass story.
03:30It's just simple wordplay.
03:32They mad adore me, like y'all adore me, but I'm not here for the bullshit.
03:35But mad adore and bull, whatever.
03:37That's a flag on the plate, too.
03:43That also ties back into the beginning of the verse.
03:45Some people just can't take it when other people are blessed.
03:48It's probably a nigga watching me right now saying, yo, how the fuck that nigga get there?
03:52Nigga, it's supposed to be me.
03:53Those thoughts are why you not there.
03:55I've seen almost everybody in Los Angeles get there before me.
03:59I'm the last one out of my era.
04:01I'm the last one here.
04:02Not once was I like, man, what about me?
04:04Not once was I ever like, when my turn gonna come?
04:07I didn't stress at all.
04:08I just kept walking.
04:09All that stressing, you're gonna block your own blessing.
04:17This is literally history in the making right now as you're listening to this record.
04:21With me even breaking the stigmatism of the battle rappers can't do X, Y, Z, and they
04:26should stay down there, and we should stay down there.
04:28Those walls are broken.
04:30The rest is greatness from here on out.
04:35We rep these hoods.
04:36We claim these hoods.
04:37We bang these hoods.
04:38We really think we running shit.
04:39We not.
04:40Someone can come over here and say, hey, all you guys have to move today, like they just
04:45did with my neighborhood.
04:47Literally gentrified it.
04:48Our neighborhood is no longer a slum, so we can't even be gangsta no more.
04:52It's a nice area where you can walk your dog, and the nigga still trying to hold on like,
04:56no, it's real.
04:57No, it's not real.
04:58Becky has a chihuahua right there.
04:59It's over, guys.
05:00Go home.
05:04Sometimes I'm relaxed, but then sometimes I do relapse.
05:06I live in Orange County, and I be at Disneyland having a fucking nice-ass time with my family,
05:12and somebody will kind of look at me crazy, and my brain will automatically be like, nigga,
05:16who you?
05:17And then I have to remind myself like, no, it's over.
05:19We at Disneyland.
05:20It's over.
05:21All people that grow up in the hood struggle with that, moving out of the hood, but still
05:25dealing with your mindset of how you maneuver in the hood.
05:28You got to change your mindset.
05:37You're a clown, because you have all this aggression, and the aggression comes from
05:41stunted growth and not being man enough to break the cycle.
05:45You have all this energy for the ops.
05:47You have all this energy for these people, but yet you would voluntarily let someone
05:51put handcuffs on you and put you right in the backseat of the car.
05:54Like, just keep that same energy all around the board.
06:03My son's name is Sunlight.
06:04I've had my son with me at almost 90% of the events.
06:08My first event that I took him to is probably like two.
06:11So now he's what, 14 now?
06:13So now he's listening with a different ear, and he asked me about that too.
06:15It's like, dad, like, you talking about me right here?
06:17It's like, yeah, tell all your friends that your dad got a record with J. Cole, and you
06:20go back to school, and you know, what's up?
06:22So he went back to school too, and it's like, yeah, you know what I'm saying?
06:25It's me right here.
06:26It's me.
06:27The response from the YouTubers, the reactors, the you guys, all the sites, again, it's just
06:36dope to see people promote this type of rap, again, on a major level.
06:41We rarely get it.
06:42It's rare.
06:43It's like a shooting star every nowadays, but then my name is Daylight, and Daylight's
06:47technically a star.
06:48We're not going to go there.
06:49I'm just happy to be in a position to help lead that mindset or that concept into the
06:56next generation.
06:57Hot Collar Greens, I think what sparked him to write to it, and this is after I had already
07:01settled in, and I kind of built a name for myself in this space, where people were like,
07:05yo, this nigga's the boogeyman up there.
07:07I think Cole was like, nah, I can't let this nigga come in my castle and get crazy like
07:11this.
07:12Hey, send me that.
07:13Send me that shit, right now.
07:14We airdropped him the instrumental.
07:15He's like, yo, I'll be right back.
07:17You know what I mean?
07:18I didn't see him for maybe about a couple of hours, then he called me downstairs, and
07:23he was like, yo, listen to this shit.
07:25I listened to it, and I was like, oh yeah, it's go time.
07:27One of my favorite parts of Cole's verse as a collective is, it was personal.
07:31He ventured in his upbringing, how he grew up, and stuff like that.
07:34I don't really get to see that side of him musically, with all the stuff that he's doing,
07:38so that was probably my favorite part about the verse.