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" Before Sean Combs became Puff Daddy/P. Diddy, before Jigga knocked the hustle of his hard knock life into a Magna Carter empire, and before Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake authored the history of hip-hop, there was Arsenio Hall. The man who hip-hop-itized late night television almost 30 years ago. With his high-top fade and amped-up funk house band (the Posse), Hall&amp;#039;s b-boy swagger blew gale-force winds of cultural change through America. So much so that Saturday Night Live did a bizarre and ferociously hilarious 1992 satire of Johnny Carson, reigning late night king, as an Arsenio wannabe, with Dana Carvey (in one of his funniest skits ever) as a white New Jack (pre-Timberlake/Samberg&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;Dick in a Box&amp;quot; routine) known as &amp;quot;Carsenio.&amp;quot; Hall&amp;#039;s show was so influential to the new &amp;quot;MTV Generation&amp;quot; that the governor of Arkansas, William Jefferson Clinton, went on and performed a more-than-decent rendition of &amp;quot;Heartbreak Hotel&amp;quot; on that sax, in a pair of Ray-Bans in June 1992, five months before being elected U.S. president. Arsenio was a kingmaker, too. But the pace of Hollywood began to wear the kingmaker down. Arsenio made plans to leave his show several months before the appearance of Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam. He wasn&amp;#039;t fired by Paramount. &amp;quot;I just wanted to take a break,&amp;quot; Arsenio told me in an interview earlier this week. &amp;quot;And if the media had taken the time to do its due diligence to research the facts, and not rumors, they would have known that. But for a lot of people, one plus seven equals four, so it is what it is. As for me, I just needed a break. Plain and simple. I found my happiness when I took that time off \u2014 mainly with the birth of my son, Arsenio Jr., who is now 14 years old. My son changed my life for the better.&amp;quot; After a while, though, he did want to return to television. &amp;quot;A few years before Michael Jackson passed away, he and I were at the same dinner party. I was sitting next to him, and he said, &amp;#039;You have to do your show again. People miss you.&amp;#039; Puffy was at that same dinner party, and stood up and said, &amp;#039;All I want to say is that Arsenio needs to be back on television.&amp;#039; So the idea has been in my head for a while.&amp;quot; Since Arsenio&amp;#039;s much-buzzed-about return in September 2013, the ratings have been erratic. Ironically, part of the problem is that two of his strongest competitors, Jimmy Fallon&amp;#039;s The Tonight Show (featuring the most important collective in hip-hop, The Roots, as his house band) and Jimmy Kimmel&amp;#039;s show on ABC (whose feud with Kanye West was not only a trending topic on Twitter, it became a story in The New York Times), were influenced by Hall&amp;#039;s iconoclastic show in the &amp;#039;90s. In turn, Fallon and Kimmel have developed a strong urban swag of their own. It&amp;#039;s almost as if Hall is competing with a pair of updated versions of his original talkfest. Be that as it may, Arsenio is undaunted. And the ratings have begun to climb, especially after the March 6 appearance of the myth known as Prince. Arsenio&amp;#039;s numbers jumped 56 percent higher than his February sweeps average, and the Purple One&amp;#039;s performance tied Kimmel on the same night. I had a lively phone conversation with Arsenio after the taping of an episode honoring the 30th anniversary of another American cultural innovation, Russell Simmons&amp;#039;s Def Jam, in which Arsenio told me that he is in it to win it. Again.  BARRY MICHAEL COOPER: There was a story on TMZ a few weeks ago that said, &amp;quot;NBC is coming down like a hammer on celebs who want to get on Jimmy Fallon&amp;#039;s show,&amp;quot; and that if they do a show on another network, like yours, &amp;quot;they can forget about The Tonight Show.&amp;quot; How do you respond to that? ARSENIO HALL: You know this thing goes on. But what do I do? Quit? Or whine, or cry? I just have to ignore it and keep doing my work. It exists. We know there are big ballers that have to listen to NBC. There are people who don&amp;#039;t know if I will be around for the ten years I came back to be around for. So what happens if they come here, and then NBC turns its back on them? NBC has a lot of power, and a lot of morning shows, and two wonderful evening shows. I&amp;#039;m not mad at those people. There are people who I gave a start to their careers, who can&amp;#039;t do my show. But so what? I made it the first time under even more complicated rules and business strategies. This has always gone on. The first time, when I couldn&amp;#039;t book a major actor from a film, I went and booked a kid named James Todd Smith who stayed in his grandmother&amp;#039;s basement in Queens, New York. The public knows him as LL Cool J. Dude, being black in America is about alternatives and timing, and taking the road less traveled, and winning on it! This is business, not personal. By the way, if I ran NBC, I would probably do what they&amp;#039;re doing. I would throw my power around, too. But the deal is, I&amp;#039;m not quitting, I&amp;#039;m not going away, and I plan on winning with the people who aren&amp;#039;t being controlled in that way. I believe I can still win. I have to think that way. I won the first time that way. And I don&amp;#039;t blame Fallon. I met him a while back, and he looked me in my eye, and gave me my props. Fallon and I are small pawns in a giant chess match. We don&amp;#039;t really make any decisions. He ain&amp;#039;t mad at me. He ain&amp;#039;t keeping people off my show. The people that we work for are doing what they do. We just tell jokes. To even think that we have any power to make any kind of major decision like that is ridiculous. I guarantee you, if Fallon and I were to run into each other right now, we would hug, and go have a beer. BMC: It was a really powerful episode the night Jay Leno came on your show a few weeks ago, to let you know your show had been renewed for a second season. You looked genuinely shocked as he stood next to you. It was pretty significant, because this was not long after he had been replaced by Jimmy Fallon on the Tonight Show. It almost appeared as if he was handing that late night baton to you. What was that moment like for you? AH: Honestly, it was surreal. Leno wasn&amp;#039;t wearing a tie, he looked relaxed and casual, and he was on my set. Leno is a guy who I met when I was a young guy doing stand-up in Chicago, many, many years ago, and then fast-forward to all of the hoopla I made when our talk shows were going head-to-head back in the day, and he has never been on anything that I have built, until that moment. Put it like this: Whenever we saw Michael Jordan in a Wizards uniform, it was confusing. But I don&amp;#039;t think you have to be Einstein to figure out what he had in mind when he did that. I am the little engine that could, and there are some people who believe that I can. Jay Leno is one of those people.   BMC: You single-handedly changed the course of late night television by bringing hip-hop into middle America. You brought Tupac, Public Enemy, Bobby Brown, LL Cool J, Teddy Riley and Guy, Big Daddy Kane, and Biggie into the bedrooms of kids from Harlem to Boise, Idaho. You gave a lot of young white kids, who probably had no black classmates or neighbors, their first taste of rap music. I&amp;#039;m curious, how do you view hip-hop on this side of the millennium? AH: I love hip-hop. Hip-hop is just a mirror pointed at the men and women who create it, and execute it, and I don&amp;#039;t want it to be anything else. On the show I just taped, honoring Russell Simmons and the 30th anniversary of Def Jam, he and I had an interesting conversation about the N-word. I think this conversation is very, very important. Russell has his opinions, I have mine, and they are somewhat similar. But my take on all of that is this: I don&amp;#039;t want anyone to not say the N-word if they want to say the N-word, and I include Michael Richards in that, too. As a comedian, the one thing I will never do is censor your language. Because if I censor your language, I am opening the door for someone to fuck with mine. When we start saying who should say it, and who shouldn&amp;#039;t, then we are trying to legislate class. I don&amp;#039;t think you can legislate class. The thing I love about art is that it is as diverse and unique as the multitude of people who create it. I want to know what art is to both Danny Brown and Barry Manilow, and I don&amp;#039;t want anyone being a traffic cop for what&amp;#039;s right and wrong. One of the things I talked about with Russell is that it&amp;#039;s so confusing that my favorite song, I can&amp;#039;t even sing 90 percent of the day. Because my favorite song is YG&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;My Nigga&amp;quot; Where I grew up, I could stand at a red light and sing, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve got sunshine on a cloudy day...&amp;quot; Art is confusing now. Isn&amp;#039;t it crazy that there are things we love that have been so stigmatized and controversial, that you look around, before you sing your favorite song? Russell made a very thought-provoking point on the show, in regards to the N-word, where he said, if you don&amp;#039;t have slave ancestry, maybe that&amp;#039;s one word that you can&amp;#039;t have. Maybe you shouldn&amp;#039;t say that word if none of your forefathers were slaves. Maybe that&amp;#039;s something among us as black people that can&amp;#039;t be shared. I love hip-hop because I love art. I want a world with a free Kendrick Lamar, and a free Miley Cyrus. Let her do whatever she wanna do. That&amp;#039;s what makes art... art. If Miley Cyrus stops being Miley Cyrus, she&amp;#039;s Hillary Clinton. But with larger ankles. BMC: Your interview with Kid Cudi was intense and very revealing. It still has the Internet buzzing. What did you think about it? AH: Kid Cudi is a profoundly talented artist. I love his song &amp;quot;Day &amp;#039;n&amp;#039; Night&amp;quot; and it let me know he had some serious issues on his mind that he wanted to convey in his music. That interview in particular was an unscripted moment. It was not approved by his publicist in the pre-interview, because it wasn&amp;#039;t a subject that came up. However, when he voiced his opinion on the current state of hip-hop, and then he began to talk about suicide and loneliness, he had almost a glassy look in his eye. Not tears, but I knew he had something in his head he wanted to share with me and the audience. And Cudi looked to the audience, looking to see if they were riding with him, and immediately I asked the follow-up question, &amp;quot;Tell me about those two words, suicide and loneliness.&amp;quot; And that&amp;#039;s when he really opened up and talked about a subject that a lot of folks deal with, but are afraid to share with others, ashamed of how they might react or think. It took a lot of bravery and class for Kudi to share that in front of the world.      BMC: Prince&amp;#039;s appearance a few weeks ago was amazing. It was almost disorientating to hear live music with a real horn section, and a band of beautiful women, who could really play. And of course Prince, who is like Hendrix, Miles, and Mozart combined into one person. How did you book a recluse like him for the entire hour? AH: Me and Prince go way back like OshKosh and reclining seats. Prince has always been nice to me, and he was a fan of the first show. Remember, when Prince released the Diamonds and Pearls album back in 1991, he didn&amp;#039;t appear on any other show but mine. During that time, I got a call from Prince, and he was in LA, and told me he wanted to hang out, but Los Angeles shuts down early. What do people do when they want to hang out? And I told him, they can housequake, you know, throw a house party back at the crib, or go to an after-hours joint. And he said [Arsenio does a decent impression of Prince&amp;#039;s deep and dramatic voice], &amp;quot;I always wanted to go to one of those.&amp;quot; I said, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ll take you, but understand, these spots are south of Wilshire.&amp;quot; And he laughed and said [Prince voice again], &amp;quot;Your limo or mine?&amp;quot; Next thing I know, all of his security jumped in his limo, and he jumped in my limo, and we drove south of Wilshire into the hood. And he didn&amp;#039;t blink. We went to an after-hours spot in Compton, in the hoody-hood. The spot where the strippers go when they get off work. After 3 a.m., the bars shut down, so people head out to secret locations like this particular spot in Compton. Prince doesn&amp;#039;t drink, and he doesn&amp;#039;t smoke, but he had a clear, like Plexiglas, cane that he was stylin&amp;#039; with, and he partied his ass off. We were a group of people that had a ball in this tiny little kitchen in Compton. Prince had a good time without drinking. I was drinking hard brown liquor out of a paper cup and talking to strippers. I say all that to say, Prince is a cool dude, and when my new show started, he just called and said, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m loving your new show, and I&amp;#039;m glad you&amp;#039;re back, and I think it&amp;#039;s time for me to stop by.&amp;quot; I asked him, &amp;quot;You want the hour?&amp;quot; He said, &amp;quot;I want the hour.&amp;quot; And he brought an army of some of the best musicians in the world, and introduced some new young talent he is working with, and shut my stage down that night. Back in the day, Prince had that mystique of not talking, but that night a few weeks ago, he had a great time, and people could see that. Prince is a living legend, and just as important, he is a really cool guy.       BMC: We are in the second term of a man named Barack Hussein Obama, who was elected as the first African-American president of the United States. More than two decades ago, you invited a young, unknown, white Southerner, Bill Clinton, on your show. He played a surprisingly skillful gutbucket-blues version of &amp;quot;Heartbreak Hotel,&amp;quot; in a pair of Ray-Bans, no less. A few months later, he was elected as the 42nd president of the United States. His appearance on your show was a game-changer, and it was the real synthesis between the worlds of Hollywood and the Beltway. Do you ever think about that particular show? AH: First of all, when that was going on, you can&amp;#039;t imagine how it&amp;#039;s going to be down the line. I mean TV Guide ranks it right behind Michael Jackson doing the moonwalk on Motown 25 as one of the most important television events of all time. I think about it, but I will tell you a story. Back in 1999, long after I had left my first show, I got a call from President Clinton. For me, nothing inside the walls of Hollywood really counts, because this environment is all about money and game. Outside of these walls, when you have nothing to offer \u2014 when I had no show \u2014 President Clinton calls me to hang out with him at a soccer game. That fked me up. Because it wasn&amp;#039;t about the trade-off of me offering him a spot on my show, because I had no show at the time. He did it just to be gracious. His people called me and said, &amp;quot;President Clinton wants to speak with you,&amp;quot; and then I get another call, and he says [Arsenio affects a comical and nearly spot-on Bill Clinton imitation], &amp;quot;Hey buddy, whatcha doin&amp;#039;? Do you like soccer?&amp;quot; I said, &amp;quot;Man, I don&amp;#039;t know nothing about no soccer. I&amp;#039;m from Cleveland. They didn&amp;#039;t even have grass in the neighborhood I&amp;#039;m from.&amp;quot; He laughed and said, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m going to a soccer game at the Rose Bowl. I want you to go with me.&amp;quot; I met up with him \u2014 Secret Service and the whole nine \u2014 and when I got in the car, and looked him in his eyes, I said, &amp;quot;I can&amp;#039;t believe President Bill Clinton just called me and said, &amp;#039;Let&amp;#039;s hang out.&amp;#039;&amp;quot; And he looked at me and said, &amp;quot;Doesn&amp;#039;t it make sense? You got me elected.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/interviews/a28009/arsenio-hall-late-night-interview/>