Describing him as a legend in southern hip-hop feels like an understatement.  His baritone-comfort presence was raised by Dungeon Family, but the power and wisdom in his words are his own.  We can call him what we want: rapper, poet, artist, spoken-word prophet…but the truth is, Big Rube can’t be defined.  He defines.

If you think you haven’t heard of Big Rube, you have.  From Outkast to Goodie Mobb, to Offset and most recently Spillage Village, Ruben Bailey tells me how he stumbled into his greatness with a little push from Rico Wade, what he has planned next and of course, a little advice.

Let's start before Dungeon Family, I understand you wanted to be a rapper.  What influenced that dream?

It’s funny…when I was a kid, when I was coming up from pre-teen to a teen, rap wasn’t really played a lot on the radio especially in the South. But we got cable, we got MTV and I saw Run DMC and I was like, oh man this is the coolest shit I’ve ever seen before in my life.  They were goin’ in and smashin’ glass, throwing guitars around, I was like man…with all black on, the Adidas, and the hats…like man…I don’t know it just kind of like enamored me, ya know what I’m sayin’?  And then I kinda wanted to see what’s up with this rap stuff, so I started tryin’ to rap and in the next two or three years, this was like 12 years old, so by the time I was 15 I was gettin’ serious about it; I actually started writing them down.  Then by the time I was like 17-18, I was pretty much good enough to be able to put together a song, that type of thing.  I had friends who had other talents: they could sing, dance, rap too or you know, play music, and we kinda just meshed together.  It was a thing that just snowballed itself.

You said Run DMC - were there any records, any other artists specifically that inspired you to pursue music?

Well, King Of Rock was the video that I saw.  I had heard “Rock Box”, but I was super young, so when I saw the King Of Rock music video, it just made me wanna rap.  And then as I started wanting to rap, artists like KRS One, Public Enemy, and Rakim made me really…like Rakim made me understand that there’s a serious skill and technique to it.  KRS One made me understand that you can come across intelligent and still be like grimy hip-hop, ya know what I mean?  Chuck D made me realize that if you have a powerful voice, people will just listen to you whether they want to or not.  They be like, “What’d he say? I wanna know what he said,” because he said it so…ya know, aggressively.  Chuck would come on and his voice was just boomin’.  So I understood certain elements that would make people want to hear you and luckily I ended up with a deep voice.

And then you met Rico Wade.  How did that happen?

Well actually I met him in high school in about 9th grade, but it was just, we just knew each other from school, know what I mean?  I got in trouble coming out of high school, and it was kinda like I was tryin’ to find something else to do with myself besides gettin’ in trouble all the time. I was just like, this is the wrong way to go. So me and a buddy of mine, Marqueze who actually wrote the [TLC] song “Waterfalls”, he was like, “Why don’t we just hang out with Rico then? They don’t really get in trouble, they dance and go to shows and stuff,” so I was like okay cool.  Started hangin’ with those guys and it was kinda like surrounding yourself in a different environment, ya know what I mean?  There was interesting stuff goin’ on, they were doin’ like a lot of uh -- ya see back in that time Atlanta, dance groups were really popular.  They’d go do talent shows, stuff like that, clubs.  So that’s what they were doin’ and that kinda led into meeting people that were doing music, DJing, producing, and different stuff, and to me, it was like, we in the South; I like rapping but we ain’t gettin’ no record deal in the South.  Ya know back then, you went to New York for a record deal.  So just, one day we were sittin’ around and I was like, we got so much talent – I’m with all these guys and we just hang out.  Why don’t we like, try to do our own stuff?  We got into it, and that’s when I met Sleepy [Brown].  He was already wanting to do music because he comes from, ya know his father does music, Jimmy Brown.  And I knew T-Boz from TLC at that time, Tionne, she was interested in doin’ music.  I mean stuff just came together.  One day I was like let’s get some equipment, went out got some equipment, Rico went in, he bought some equipment, and we just started goin’ from there.  Eventually, the funny thing is, the link with TLC, they were signed to Pebbles -- well TLC was managed by Pebbles, signed to LaFace. [Dungeon Family’s] first group wasn’t OutKast it was Parental Advisory, PA, and they were also signed to Pebbles.  [Pebbles] put out a record label and she signed PA.  So [LA Reid] heard the music and wanted to know who produced the music; once he found out it was Organized Noize, he wanted them to do a remix with TLC.  And [Organized Noize] put OutKast on there rapping so [LA Reid] was like, “Who’s those guys rapping? Let’s do somethin’ with them”.  So ya know, did some showcases, and it was kinda like, every time we did something new, we’d put another group on there and [LA Reid] be like “Who’s that? Who’s that?”. We got our foot in the door that way.

Around the time that Rico encouraged you to write the interlude on Southernplayalisticadallicmuzik, did your approach to writing change or notably evolve?

Well it's funny because I didn't write that piece as any type of prose or poetry or verse, I just kinda wrote it more in the mind of a monologue.  Cause what happened was, we were mastering OutKast and they were like, “The music sounds good but why it sound so country?” so we were like “Hol’ up, ya’ll can’t be callin’ us country”, we’re hip-hop like we got somethin’ to say.  So I just wanted to let people know that we had something to tell them in our music, not just listen to our accents or whatever - give it a chance.  People was like “Oh you’re a spoken word artist,” and I was like “I don’t even know what you’re talking about, I don’t know what spoken word is,” ya know what I’m sayin, ‘cause I rap.  It was just a talking part before a song, that’s how I looked at it.  I didn’t even wrap my head around the fact that people are going to look at it as poetry or spoken word.  People just kept wanting me to do it because I’m a talker and you sit around and like, stuff be going on. It’s funny, Rico came up with the idea, we were sitting in the dungeon and as usual there’s a beat going - like Ray on the beat, Rico sitting there on the steps and I’m sitting on the other side, and he had this kind of a face it was almost like a cartoon where someone gets a lightbulb above their head when they get an idea. He’s like “You know what?” cause I was probably runnin’ my mouth, “It’d be dope if you do what you be doing right now, like talking and explaining this stuff. I’m listening to the beat and listening to you and this sound type, like just do that over a beat.” I was like whatever… you know what I’m saying? So a couple weeks later he called me with it again - he’s callin’ me about this so I know he’s serious about it - he said, “Define Outkast,” and I’m like, “I don’t know what you want me to do”, because mind you, I hadn’t written no spoken words or anything like that before. He said “I got an acronym: Operating Under The Krooked American System Too-long. That’s all I got, run with that.”  So I said, “You want me to define that?” I gave him kind of a dictionary definition at the beginning, but then I gave him more of a street or metaphorical definition to it and that was it, he just liked it. I was just like I’m gonna talk cool and make people realize that we’re not dumb. You know what I’m saying? I didn’t even think of it as spoken word. It was just me talking and then I kinda evolved into like okay, imma do this. I looked at it just like I looked at rap and I evolved a technique in a way of doing it where it’d have some longevity to it and that’d be repetitive and stuff like that. I evolved a way that I could kind of just keep it fresh and keep it newer and not let it get stale. Stuff can get lame if you over do it, you know what I’m saying? Like beating a dead horse. I had to find different ways to make it interesting. People were like “How do you keep coming up with this stuff?”. I kinda just look at it from a perspective of my experience, whatever the subject matter is, I just try to make it entertaining. I’m kinda one of those people that’ll stop doing something when everybody else start doing it just cause too many people are doing it. 

You’re known for spoken word and poetry, but how deeply do you dabble in music production?

Actually, I started about 10-15 years ago, getting serious and dabbling into it and now I actually am producing and getting compliments from people that I respect that do music. I started doing it because I got tired of answering people, I was like, I’ll do my own beat, ya know what I’m sayin’?  I was taught and I believe if you really wanna do something you can learn to do it.  You have to learn what the technical aspects are, but if you can hear good, that’s all production really is: having a good ear.

Do you see any type of correlation between your approach to writing and your approach to producing?

Well yeah, I don’t have a formula personally, it’s whatever feels good to me. Sometimes I do things in a pattern type of way sometimes I don’t. With writing if there’s a beat, I listen to the beat a few times. But I learned a long time ago if you just constantly drive a beat into your head over and over and over again…no matter how good it sounds, you’re going to get tired of it. Your ears will get blind, ya know it doesn’t sound fresh and crispy to you, so it’s hard, you’re gonna get writer’s block. And that’s how I learned to beat the writer’s block: I listen to it a little while, I get my vibe and get the first couple of lines, whatever, whatever. Then most of the time I cut it off and start doing other stuff. Half the time, I’m writing them watching movies and playing videogames. I think the visuals - cause I’m really visual - from the movies and games, activates something else in my brain that gives me better ideas other than just listening to music. It’s what allows me to be more descriptive because I try to write in a way that’s going to give you a picture in your head; I’m trying to paint the picture with words. I always try to keep music open ended, so it’s not trapped in a box. Music can relate to people for so many different reasons, so many different people. It’s the same song, but how can one song relate to 2-3 million people that aren’t the same? Listening is a part of the experience; it becomes a part of the song when people listen to it. 

You’ve worked with other Dungeon Family members like Goodie Mobb, Future, Bubba Sparxxx, and beyond like Rapsody, Denzel Curry, Offset, most recently Spillage Village and 21 Savage…do you hold any collaboration close to your heart?

To be honest with you, the collaboration of all of us coming together as Dungeon Family to make [Even In Darkness], I mean we were already together and we were always working on stuff together, but to be collectively the same: “Okay, this our Dungeon Family album”. To me that’s what I kinda trade you as a collaboration because it had that feeling of the old school sleeping on the floor and grinding for that type of feeling; just all of us doing music together. Collaborating with my boys as Dungeon Family were the best collaborations. It’s fun, we understand each other and it flows smoothly. It’s fun -- I love doing music anyway but it’s really fun doing music when we all come together like that.

Have you not worked with somebody that you would love to?

Yeah, I would love to do a song with Rakim, a song with Chuck D…I know they’re old school cats, but I’m an old school cat. I don’t really think of collaborations like that; people always want me to do them. But I always used to [think], I don’t know why everyone wants someone else on their song, ya know what I’m sayin’? I’ll probably just go ahead and name all the people I loved coming up that inspired me. But collaborating with those two would be something I would love to have under my belt.

You dropped such a smooth track not too long ago, “Hard To Find”.  Can we expect a Big Rube album?

Yeah, I am trying to get Rico and [Ray Murray] to get my stuff out of the computer and put this stuff together cause I got a little content. We just need to finalize things and figure out what we’re gonna use and not use and mix stuff. That’s definitely in the works. I got songs on songs on songs, we just gotta buckle down and actually put it together. 

Are there any songs that stem back to the 90’s vaults?

Well a lot of my stuff, yeah I may have had it for years.  One of the beats I sent you, I actually did that original track a super long time ago and a buddy of mine liked it so I remixed it, sent it to you and nobody else heard it ya know what I’m sayin’.  You play your stuff, then it’s just sittin’ there on the computer hard drive, and I’m like man let’s do this stuff, but you gotta be patient.  You have to put stuff out at the right time. You don’t wanna just throw it out there and it doesn’t get the attention; it’s a waste if you do that - gotta be strategic about it.  I’m a quality over quantity guy so I don’t have to be rushing to do something, I rather do it right than do it fast.

In 2003 you gave everybody chills with your performance of “Alphabet Acrobat” on Def Poetry; have you thought about creating a similar space for spoken word poets and rappers?

I’ve done some hosting of poetry nights and things of that nature, but I’m such an artist.  People be asking me if I wanna do this, if I wanna do that but man I like making music; I like recording and writing, so it’d be hard for me to.  I’ll be involved with it, but it’s not gonna be me doing it…I’m tryin’ to be somewhere makin’ songs.  But I’d be involved with something like that, support something like that, even be a part of the structure of it, but ya know…it’s just not me, I’m just not the person to be like “Yo, let’s get all these guys together and do that”. It’s more like “Let’s get this beat and put the verse on there”.  I’m an artist and an artist don’t have the time, ya know, I don’t sleep regular.  I’m constantly in the studio, just bein’ realistic ya know what I’m sayin’.  I’m not the detail-oriented type of cat, I’m the artist and not in the hard-to-deal-with sense, I just go with the flow and let things happen because in my experience, life goes better that way.

What kind of impact do you want your words to leave on those listening?  Is there anything you live by?

I got into music because it was just so incredibly dope that I just wanted somebody to look at me and be like, “Wow he's great” the way I was lookin’ at them before, I just wanted to be the best.  I wasn’t worried about cars or jewelry, none of that I just wanted them to be like “Wow he’s the best” ya know what I’m sayin’?  But like I said earlier, I almost got into some serious trouble coming out of high school and evolving after that, when people would come up to me and say my music had a positive effect on them…that’s all I could ever ask for if anything: to have a positive effect on somebody in some type of way.  If it leaves a mark on somebody or leaves a legacy of more good than harm.  That’s the only thing - I mean, that’s the greatest thing, can’t put a price tag on that.  I’ve had people say that they may have stayed in school or stay out of trouble or whatever, and not just me, the entire Dungeon Family as a collective.  The message [the listeners] got out of it allowed them to elevate themselves as opposed to break themselves.  You can get money but it don’t matter – we’re all goin’ to the same place.

I am so grateful to have had this opportunity to sit down and have such a cool conversation with Big Rube.  An icon!  Click here for Spotify and here for Tidal, to listen to the playlist curated of songs highlighting Rube's best work and biggest inspirations.