Meet Moe Green, a budding rapper and die-hard basketball fan.
Being a professional entertainer is an amazing thing. Be it basketball, acting or music, once you’ve broken into that industry you can focus all your attention on bettering your handles, your acting and your delivery. You can fully focus on your craft because it’s your job.
Being an aspiring entertainer is a tough thing. Be it basketball, acting or music, before you’ve broken into that industry you can’t focus all of your attention on it. You have to also focus on your full-time job that pays the bills.
In the case of Moe Green, he has to split his attention between writing rhymes and working two jobs. Still, even with all the hours he clocks, the Dreamer is still well on his way to rhyming himself right out of aspiring status and into professional.
A big basketball fan from the Bay, between work, work and more work, Green found time to catch up with SLAM a while back.
SLAM: What’s up, Moe?
MG: Nothing, just chillin’. Getting off of work. You feel me? That early morning shift.
SLAM: How do you keep that dual hustle going?
MG: It’s just, you gotta find a cool sleep schedule, that’s what I tell people. But I don’t follow a sleep schedule. I’ll stay up all week—it’ll be one random day of the week I’ll just end up sleeping all day. Like yesterday I was dead. Yesterday I just laid out, I was gone. Then, I went to bed at like 12, had to wake up at 2 to be at work at 3, you know what I’m saying? You get used to it after a week, so it’s whatever. It just sucks because you start missing sleep for so long, you start getting sick.
SLAM: Yeah. So working the schedule you work you don’t even get a chance to follow hoops like that anymore, right?
MG: Yeah man. I can’t really follow like I want to. I used to hoop from when I was a young kid ‘til like ninth—then I had to get knee surgery. I hurt my meniscus in eighth grade. I played for a traveling team for the summer AU, the summer league and that stuff. I played for a team and like, I wasn’t weak. I played for the summer league team… and I tore my knee up. I was on crutches for a minute, but then I came back, and I started to play in ninth grade without having surgery. And it just bothered me too much so I went and had surgery. Then I came back, I changed schools, and I was thinking like, Man, I ain’t gonna be 6-10 or nothing like that. I was playing the post, because I was bigger than everybody, but I was like I’m not gonna be 6-10 or nothing like that. So I started playing football. I used to rock that with football. I did real good. But I still hooped for fun.
SLAM: Your song “Hometown”’ is my joint. There’s some real deep stuff in there.
MG: People heard that song and dropped tears. I heard at least five or six people tell me they started crying when they heard that song.
SLAM: The news report at the end, too.
MG: Yeah, the news report puts the ice on it. We was in the studio and we were like, We should throw a news report on the end. And we played it on YouTube, and it just fit perfect, so we just took it off of YouTube.
SLAM: That reminds me of one Pac’s old joints.
MG: Yeah, exactly. That was me just talking about my city man, because Vallejo got so much talent. You know E-40 from out here.
SLAM: All the talent in the world’s from out there, right?
MG: Yeah all the talent in the world. That’s why it’s just like, Come on. We gotta do [better]. A lot of people out here are getting together, it just seems like I’m the one out in the “public eye” more. But everybody else gonna come eventually. I’m trying to help everybody out here. A lot of homies that do music are older than me though, ‘cause I’m 22. So it’s like a lot of people are older than me, but I they still kinda look up to me, ‘cause I’m just on the grind. But I still look up to them at the same time, so it’s like a mutual respect.
SLAM: No professional teams in the area, huh?
MG: No teams, we ain’t got no teams out here.
SLAM: So y’all just root for the Warriors and the 49ers in football?
MG: The Warriors, and no Niners it’s Raiders right here. It gets pretty ugly out here—Raiders vs. Niners gets pretty ugly. There’s no way you can like both teams. Out here it’s either Raiders or Niners, you can’t cross the line. None of that. You wear a Niners jersey to a Radiers game, it’s definitely bad for you.
SLAM: Always been a Warriors fan?
MG: Yeah. As a kid you kind of go with what your pops likes. I had a Warriors jacket and a Lakers jacket—I’m a bigger Lakers fan though, I gotta admit. I don’t know, it’s just cause it’s the Lakers. You can’t really hate the Lakers. Lot of people hate the Lakers, but it’s whatever.
SLAM: Everybody’s a Lakers fan. If you’re a Warriors fan, that’ll set you apart.
MG: Yeah, well you know, when I was a kid I had a Warriors and a Lakers jacket—like a satin jacket. So we would definitely go to Warriors games, especially when they played the Lakers, you feel me? Like we had the All-Star Game out here, we had the Jam Session out here, all that stuff. Definitely rock with the Warriors though. Me and 40’s son always talk about the Warriors, because me and 40’s son known each other since we were little kids. So he had Warriors stuff all over his wall and I had a Warriors pennant on my wall. We definitely rock with the Warriors. My whole family’s from Oakland, so that’s kinda how it go.
SLAM: Who else in the NBA you feeling right now?
MG: KG was always my favorite player. Don’t get me wrong—Kobe, my phone background right now is a picture from sixth or seventh grade. Me, my brother and my cousin and my auntie and my mom were in L.A., and we left and they were like Kobe Bryant’s in there. We waited and he came out and took pictures and everything. That’s my phone background right now. Kobe, back when he had his adidas contract, before he even married his chick.
SLAM: When he still had the ‘fro.
MG: Yeah, that’s when he had the ‘fro. Definitely a Kobe fan. KG’s always been my favorite player though.
SLAM: What young players you feeling?
MG: I definitely like…
SLAM: Derrick Rose?
MG: Definitely. I think I got a jersey from dude. Not a lot of people out here wear jerseys, but I was like I definitely need that Bulls jersey.
SLAM: Rajon Rondo?
MG: Rondo is dope, he just looks weird to me. He looks scary because he doesn’t have any hair on his face. So it’s kind of like, I don’t know. Kinda weird, bro. I still see LeBron as one of them young players.
SLAM: Yeah, true. He’s only 25.
MG: That’s what I’m saying. He’s been in the game a little bit, but he came in hella young. Carmelo, they’re still young cats too. They’re not OGs yet.
SLAM: Out of your joints, you got favorite tracks?
MG: Yeah, the last little album I put out, Rocky Maivia, I’d say my favorite joints would be “Top Turnbuckle Lifestyle” and “Day Dreamer.” Yeah those would be my two favorite—real smooth joints.
SLAM: One last question. Where’s your Twitter name Moe the Dreamer come from?
MG: The rap name’s Moe Green, but The Dreamer, I was in class one time and I was with my homeboy, and my homeboy actually told me to take rap seriously back in 10th grade. We ended up going to college together. We were in class, just chillin’ out, and he was like, ‘Man, your mind is always somewhere else. You always got a dream, you trying to do what you do. You’re living in the Matrix, bruh. You not really thinking about the same stuff we’re thinking, you’re on some next level kind of hype. You always dreaming.’ And it happens to be the same day my other homie called me the dreamer. So I was like, Man… and it kind of just stuck. Let me just be the dreamer. Moe Green the Dreamer. ‘Cause it’s like, I kind of represent the person who has a dream, who’s still working that job, but at the same time—I gotta get off the ground so I ain’t gotta work here no more. Every rapper you see come out has a chain already. How’d you get that chain? I’m trying to tell you how I’m about to go get that. Document the story on how to go get that. I’m not trying to tell you to sell drugs, ‘cause not everybody sells drugs. I know dudes who do sell drugs, but a lot of people I know go to work. They hate they’re jobs. They try to do music or whatever on the side, so I’m trying to make a soundtrack for that person trying to come up.
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