Speaker 1: Of Course Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This
Speaker 1: classic episode was produced by the team at Pandora. Ladies
Speaker 1: and Gentlemen, Welcome to QLs Classic Episode forty nine with
Speaker 1: the King of All Freaky Tales, Too Short, September twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: The joys of doing the show, y'all, is being able
Speaker 1: to nerd out on our favorites and todd Too Short
Speaker 1: Shaw is no exception, y'all. He's an example of a
Speaker 1: self made millionaire upstart, literally starting his own empire, selling
Speaker 1: out the trunk of his car and the tails. He
Speaker 1: is the tail boy man. This is one for the
Speaker 1: record books. Please enjoy the great Too Short QLs Classic.
Speaker 2: Supremo, Supremo, Ro Supremo, Supremo, Old Call, Supremo, Son Son Supremo,
Speaker 2: Roll Call, Suprema Sothing Son Supremo Roll Call, P B
Speaker 2: and J.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's my favorite Sandwitch.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: What's my favorite word?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Newman or Michael Scottish Silicon sup Roll Car Supremo Roll Car.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, it's fante Yeah. All in your world? Yeah,
Speaker 3: someone of the threesome. Yeah, I want a seventy five Girls.
Speaker 2: Seven Supremo Role Car Supremo Supremo role card.
Speaker 3: My name is Sugar. Yeah, I'm too fly, Yeah, I'm
Speaker 3: too sexy. Yeah, I'm too high.
Speaker 4: Car Supremo Supremo roll call, Supremo Suck Supremo roll call.
Speaker 1: I'm unpaid bill, Yeah, doing my part. Yeah, there's nothing
Speaker 1: I can say. Yeah, totally clips Supremo Road super.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 5: My name's Light. Yeah, Yo, the thistle. Yeah, I'm about
Speaker 5: to get turned. Yeah, you about to blow that whistle?
Speaker 4: Oh capec Supremo roll came Supremo Supremo roll.
Speaker 6: I'm too short, Yeah you know what's up? Yeah after
Speaker 6: the show. Yeah, I'm going to give my dick suck.
Speaker 5: Okay, and your.
Speaker 4: Supremo Supremo roll Suprivo Supremo roll.
Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, light, you're and too short coming up
Speaker 1: with men? Yeah, your brain is over. Okay. I would
Speaker 1: be remiss to say that in practicing for an hour
Speaker 1: the words the world's longest word, which is indeed new
Speaker 1: meno or microscopic silicon volcanic coneos and.
Speaker 3: What does that mean?
Speaker 1: I have no guy, a medical par or something like
Speaker 1: it is it is? Yeah, I looked up in the
Speaker 1: medical diction Yeah, like this is like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, suffixes something forty five letters and after the show,
Speaker 3: I'm going to.
Speaker 1: Ladies and gentleman, Welcome to another episode of Questlo Supreme.
Speaker 3: I think this is gonna go. I think this may
Speaker 3: uh rival Heath Hunters experts.
Speaker 1: I cannot wait even get into it.
Speaker 3: You can't wait.
Speaker 1: This is oh god, no, what's she saying?
Speaker 3: Her whistle or something?
Speaker 1: Is that what you said? I said, blow it too high? Anyway? Anyway,
Speaker 1: so yeah, uh, we were here at U. Well technically
Speaker 1: are we in Live at Canem or do we call it?
Speaker 1: We're at the Village Recorders. Now it's the Village Recorders.
Speaker 1: I mean oftentimes studios changed titles and I don't.
Speaker 7: Know what they were, but I think they've been the
Speaker 7: Village Recorders since nineteen sixty seven, really sixty eight something
Speaker 7: like that.
Speaker 1: Why many?
Speaker 5: Yes, I was looking at Short because he's been here.
Speaker 1: I was just like, well, he's not sixty seven years
Speaker 1: old though, Oh that happened. But yeah, I'm in the
Speaker 1: history of this place.
Speaker 3: Is yeah, you know Lost Steely, Dan Fleetwood, Mac.
Speaker 1: And many many, a death Row classic created in these hallways.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and Breakfast in America by Super Tramp and.
Speaker 1: A former style I like, are we in a church?
Speaker 1: I don't said. Yes, wait, we even recorded here, right,
Speaker 1: this is where I've never been here in the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 3: It was a Masonic it was a Massonic church in
Speaker 3: like nineteen twenties.
Speaker 7: Then became a recording studio and the Rolling Stones did
Speaker 7: go toed soup here angie and all that.
Speaker 1: Wow, well, let's thank.
Speaker 3: You for face value.
Speaker 7: Really, yes, this is what gave us the in the
Speaker 7: air tonight. I don't know Jesus it was this room,
Speaker 7: but yeah, it might have been. And and then the
Speaker 7: the orchestrations for wise up coasts were down here.
Speaker 1: Hence didn't we record here once? Well, we weren't here.
Speaker 3: We watched this twitter like via satellite.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, thank you for the sorry anyway, Ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 1: please uh uh welcome. Wait. I didn't even know my intro.
Speaker 1: I'll be honest. I spent so much time trying to
Speaker 1: pronounce the word that I forgot to actually craft an introduction.
Speaker 1: But uh, this young man needs no introduction.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: He has taught us all how to mac. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: let's just get into it, ladies and gentleman. The legendary
Speaker 1: Todd shaw a ka too short, my fucking house. What's
Speaker 1: what's up? How are you today?
Speaker 3: Man?
Speaker 6: Doing good man and enjoying it? You know the journey
Speaker 6: of hip hop where it's taking me to join.
Speaker 1: It a lot see to this day? Well, of course,
Speaker 1: I mean your your your story is never ending, you know.
Speaker 1: So it's it's it's probably you know, things are still
Speaker 1: happening today that we, you know, have yet to discover
Speaker 1: and and and find out. I gotta ask you, you know,
Speaker 1: it's in your daily life. How many times do people
Speaker 1: out of the word bitch to you?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: Is that your I'm rick like, do you get tired
Speaker 1: of it? Like? Do you just want to just be
Speaker 1: touched on?
Speaker 3: Just like?
Speaker 6: Yes, it's the most random places, the most random people,
Speaker 6: at the most random times, and they yell it from
Speaker 6: blind size being whole foods or like in shurt or
Speaker 6: like a voice to go past the aisle, I won't
Speaker 6: even see who was just bitch? And then people think
Speaker 6: that they think it up and they're like, I'm gonna
Speaker 6: walk over to him and ask him what's his favorite word?
Speaker 1: I'm like, are you siring of that?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Well, you know it's it's it's the thing, man, It's
Speaker 6: the thing. That if you if it goes away, you
Speaker 6: lose something, you know, So you'd be more worried if
Speaker 6: you know.
Speaker 3: They didn't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no one said anything, and they forgot about the
Speaker 1: day passed without a bitch.
Speaker 3: I would be remissed, all right.
Speaker 1: So of course I know your history. But for our
Speaker 1: listeners that you know, for the two of our listeners
Speaker 1: that are unfamiliar with your folk word, uh tell us,
Speaker 1: where were you born?
Speaker 3: Sir? I was?
Speaker 1: What do we Okay, I'm about to ask the question
Speaker 1: I hate the most, like what do I call you?
Speaker 1: I call you mister to mister short mister, I'm from Oakland.
Speaker 8: Man, you gotta have a multi multitude of names in Oakland,
Speaker 8: at least five.
Speaker 6: So I go by short dog, I go by You
Speaker 6: can call me tired, all right, close, homies called me dog,
Speaker 6: any variation, all good, all good.
Speaker 1: A couple of people call me two too. So you
Speaker 1: were born in Oakland?
Speaker 8: I was born in LA.
Speaker 6: I was born in LA and I moved to Oakland
Speaker 6: right after ninth grade. A lot of people don't know that.
Speaker 6: But the reason why it's so Oakland is because when
Speaker 6: I got to Oakland, that's when I started rapping. When
Speaker 6: I got to Oakland. That's when they started calling me
Speaker 6: too show. When I started rapping, I started rapping about Oakland.
Speaker 6: It never really had any connection to La at all.
Speaker 1: Okay, Okay, So well I got to ask, because the
Speaker 1: Oakland of twenty seventeen is hardly what the Oakland of
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty seven was. What are you just your general
Speaker 1: views of what Oakland has become, which is now more
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley based, I mean, gingerf gentrified.
Speaker 8: Yeah, you have to have your own personal opinions about that.
Speaker 6: A lot of people, you know, it's not just happening,
Speaker 6: and the Oakland's happening in San Francisco right across the bridge, right,
Speaker 6: and it's happening in a major way because.
Speaker 8: Of Silicon Valley is going.
Speaker 6: It's going really fast, like neighborhoods being taken over, and
Speaker 6: you know, just people are being priced out.
Speaker 3: And moved out.
Speaker 1: So where are they moving to?
Speaker 6: I think it's the reverse white flight. I think the
Speaker 6: suburbs are coming back to the city and then they're right, but.
Speaker 1: Where are they putting Like for anyone that you grew
Speaker 1: up with.
Speaker 6: Andy putting them out in them cheap ass houses they
Speaker 6: built twenty thirty years.
Speaker 1: Ago, they fucking falled apart the little track homes is it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Like where is it? Literally? Like you know, it's too excuge.
Speaker 6: Okay, you had a city like Antioch, thirty minute ride
Speaker 6: from Oakland, and a lot of people dipped out the
Speaker 6: Antioch for the suburbs, you know, And from what I'm
Speaker 6: hearing now, it's some a little rough areas out there.
Speaker 8: It's getting a little little shady because so that used.
Speaker 1: To be the suburbs where people escaping.
Speaker 8: Now that's because slowly but surely, you know what happened.
Speaker 3: This is this is my theory.
Speaker 6: You've got all the people who like people, you know,
Speaker 6: even even as the bubble burst. After the bubble, all
Speaker 6: this stuff, people like scramping up all their money. Man,
Speaker 6: I'm about to give me a house off the way. Man,
Speaker 6: I'm getting out this crazy see, I'm moving out the way.
Speaker 6: People been saying that. So at some point I feel
Speaker 6: like the bubble burst, the gasoline prices went up. Shit,
Speaker 6: just shit, just made suburb life real fucked up. You
Speaker 6: gotta sit there in a two hour traffic jam both
Speaker 6: ways every day during rush hour. You don't get to
Speaker 6: see your fucking kids and your family.
Speaker 1: You go old.
Speaker 8: You don't even know, they don't even know you.
Speaker 6: So I think a lot of people decided to, you know,
Speaker 6: with the price of gas and the fucking stress on
Speaker 6: the highway, like fuck it, I'm just gonna go get
Speaker 6: me in back three three bedroom apartment. My kids like fuck,
Speaker 6: no more yard, you know what I'm saying, Like fuck it.
Speaker 1: And it's.
Speaker 6: That's one angle. But the other side is you from
Speaker 6: the city and now you're looking at neighborhoods where you're like, shit,
Speaker 6: this ship was a tough ass neighborhood five years ago,
Speaker 6: and now it's just like you know, horror books, blond hair,
Speaker 6: white chicks walking down the street, untouched, like safest, safest hell.
Speaker 1: So, when's the last time you've been to your because
Speaker 1: I know you also moved to Atlanta, when's the last
Speaker 1: time you've been to Oakland like as you knew it,
Speaker 1: like where you grew up in that area, Like has
Speaker 1: it totally changed?
Speaker 8: While from East Oakland And they're not.
Speaker 6: They're not gentrifying East Oakland at this point, not yet,
Speaker 6: hadn't made that point.
Speaker 5: There's always one area toast, but they jumped.
Speaker 6: On West Oakland because it's the closest to San Francisco,
Speaker 6: and they took downtown Oakland because it's right adjacent to
Speaker 6: West Oakland and it's moving outward.
Speaker 8: But I'm one of those people who.
Speaker 3: I feel like.
Speaker 8: People in places are going to progress.
Speaker 6: You're not gonna You're not gonna say let's stay the
Speaker 6: way we are because you just can't.
Speaker 8: You can't make hip hop stay away. You can't make
Speaker 8: anything stay away. It is changing.
Speaker 6: So Silicon Valley was they were sitting out there in
Speaker 6: San Jose and Livermore and out there in the middle
Speaker 6: of fucking nowhere, and they decided one day, we're taking
Speaker 6: San Francisco and they took that ship.
Speaker 8: And then it was just the.
Speaker 1: Basic theory is that, which I guess is that the
Speaker 1: the the hidden message is that, of course it won't
Speaker 1: be like okay, no poor people, no brown people, no
Speaker 1: black people, low like. Their version of that is the
Speaker 1: rent will be five times high as it ever was,
Speaker 1: and you have to have nineteen jobs in order to
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, I know people now that work
Speaker 1: in tech worlds in which they're sharing a house with
Speaker 1: seven people made for four. So you know, I just
Speaker 1: visiting Oakland. I did a show in Oakland like three
Speaker 1: weeks ago and it was not the Oakland that I remembered.
Speaker 5: So did you invest?
Speaker 1: Did you get a little piece of property?
Speaker 6: So before the you know, for the blow up, Well,
Speaker 6: you know, I think it's a little too late to
Speaker 6: like get to get little areas because you get a
Speaker 6: twelve hundred square foot house the size of a tiny
Speaker 6: studio apartment or something in San Francisco for two point
Speaker 6: three million.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's the most expensive, Yes it is.
Speaker 3: It is.
Speaker 8: So you don't get a yard driveway, just get a
Speaker 8: little box two.
Speaker 3: Million, two million for a walking Closses.
Speaker 1: All right, so take us players like me, we moved
Speaker 1: to Vegas. Big.
Speaker 8: I've always had a spot in Vegas. That's that's part
Speaker 8: of life.
Speaker 5: But what do you do in Vegas besides everyone?
Speaker 1: For for my perspective, quest love Supreme guest, Like literally,
Speaker 1: I don't know what it is about September. They're all like, yo, dog,
Speaker 1: I just moved to Vegas. Like when I missed that memo?
Speaker 1: When did Vegas become the new?
Speaker 3: What is it?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 3: Is it taxes?
Speaker 1: Is it why?
Speaker 6: People's probably the best value real estate wives.
Speaker 5: On the West Coast more than Arizona. What Arizona does
Speaker 5: kind of same thing.
Speaker 3: But but Vegas.
Speaker 6: You get all these fucking world renown restaurants and all
Speaker 6: these big time production shows and fucking freaky ship every
Speaker 6: weekend and ships just Vegas.
Speaker 3: That's good, all right?
Speaker 9: So take us take us back to Oakland eighty five
Speaker 9: of Oakland. Wait, can you get a place in Vegas? Like,
Speaker 9: I'm not kidding around you, dog. I tried a residency
Speaker 9: out there. It's it's tough. I mean, you got to
Speaker 9: speak the language, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And it's just like it's a certain a lot of
Speaker 1: the music that I like does not intail. Like I
Speaker 1: went to a club, no, I mean the manager. I
Speaker 1: went to a club to watch Steve Okie spinning. You
Speaker 1: know they're there. Modus operandi is every five minutes has
Speaker 1: to be New Year's Eve countdown. Oh wow, every five minutes,
Speaker 1: the drop the cake and pressure you know what. Actually
Speaker 1: I did a d J gig with Snoop once out there,
Speaker 1: and this motherfucker actually played intimate from It was like,
Speaker 1: but I mean he was snooped so he could get Yeah, celebrity.
Speaker 6: Snoop will play Harold Melne and the Blue Notes at
Speaker 6: the Vegas Club in the morning.
Speaker 1: Nobody would challenge. It was the most amazing thing I
Speaker 1: ever seen.
Speaker 8: All Right, So Oakland nineteen eighty five, Yes.
Speaker 3: What.
Speaker 1: Can I say? Is that safe? Just assumed that eighty
Speaker 1: forty five is were the legend of too short? First
Speaker 1: of all, how did you pick your moniker? Too short?
Speaker 6: Well, eighty forty five was the legend of crack, and
Speaker 6: it was that's what That's what happened.
Speaker 3: Too short.
Speaker 6: Too short came a little bit before that I appeared.
Speaker 6: I moved to Oakland nineteen eighty. The year I moved
Speaker 6: to Oakland is the moment I started rapping that same
Speaker 6: something I started rapping, and it was just like a
Speaker 6: novelty thing. Got to high school that year, my brother
Speaker 6: and his friend's nicknamed me short. And they gave me
Speaker 6: the nick name short because, uh, I was like the
Speaker 6: shortest person in the whole fucking school.
Speaker 3: Like it was.
Speaker 8: It was a dude named Shorty that was taller than me.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're not that short. Everyone like six three.
Speaker 6: I was five too when on my nineteenth birthday. Oh,
Speaker 6: I was five eight on my twentieth birthday. I don't
Speaker 6: know how to happen.
Speaker 3: So in high school.
Speaker 8: In high school, I was fucking.
Speaker 1: Five too, Okay, you got a spurt huh.
Speaker 6: Somewhere in there after I turned nineteen. But so because
Speaker 6: because I was shorter than somebody named Shorty, they just
Speaker 6: called me short. They're like, we can't even think of
Speaker 6: a nickname for you, we can't call you todd. Fuck that,
Speaker 6: like it can't be tired. So it came up with
Speaker 6: short And I fucking hated the ship because it was
Speaker 6: a joke.
Speaker 3: Really.
Speaker 6: So somewhere down the line, I saw the movie Penitentiary
Speaker 6: Too Sweet, Too Sweet, and I was like, too sweet,
Speaker 6: got oh damn he beat everybody up any all the pussy.
Speaker 6: I was like, I think I'm gonna be too short.
Speaker 6: I put it, I put a twist on it. Yeah,
Speaker 6: I see all right?
Speaker 1: So what was how did how did hip hop culture
Speaker 1: even find its way to the West Coast in like
Speaker 1: what year?
Speaker 6: Like so nineteen seventy nine, right before I moved to Oakland,
Speaker 6: Rappers Delight came across the airways. Now, before Rappers Delight,
Speaker 6: you would hear rap.
Speaker 8: But not have a name for it.
Speaker 6: It was sort of records like King ten third, certain
Speaker 6: Parliament records. George Clinton was always rapping, talking to rymen
Speaker 6: and I mean, there was a lot of records that
Speaker 6: have rapped in it. And when Rappers Delight came me,
Speaker 6: being a elementary school drummer, high school marching band type kid,
Speaker 6: I instantly heard the cadences and I related it to
Speaker 6: drum patterns, and I was like, you.
Speaker 1: Told me when I first met it, you told me
Speaker 1: that you dabbled on drums, so you were serious.
Speaker 6: I was in the elementary school band it was school
Speaker 6: fucking march in high school a couple couple of years
Speaker 6: that type of sh I was a drumm, snare, drum,
Speaker 6: tenor drum you know, all right, And I immediately recognized
Speaker 6: the patterns as something I could do, and I just
Speaker 6: tried it. It was it was nineteen eighty. Uh, singles
Speaker 6: were coming out left and right. It would be Curtis Blow,
Speaker 6: then it would be Spoony g. It would be grand
Speaker 6: Master Flash and the Fist five, it would be the sequence.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 6: Just records were just coming out back to back, and
Speaker 6: I'm like, I can do this shit, I can do it.
Speaker 6: And I found a record. It was a jazz record,
Speaker 6: all instrumentals, and one of the instrumentals on there was
Speaker 6: kind of funky.
Speaker 8: I can't remember what song is. It might have been
Speaker 8: a Grubb Washington track or something, but they were they
Speaker 8: were doing cover tunes.
Speaker 6: And I wrapped to it and I just had like
Speaker 6: a remember those little recorders that that you might do
Speaker 6: an interview with U something you pressed the buttons down.
Speaker 6: I sat that ship next to the speaker to my
Speaker 6: mother's component set, got down on my knees and just
Speaker 6: wrapped some words and it was like it was, you know, ship.
Speaker 8: I knew I could do it. It was it was.
Speaker 6: It was one of those things like you look, you
Speaker 6: look at the roof and ship and you're like, I'm
Speaker 6: about to jump off the fucking roof.
Speaker 1: So it wasn't It wasn't a thing where you know,
Speaker 1: there was like party jams in the park and this
Speaker 1: crew bat on that crewise.
Speaker 8: I invented too short in my bedroom.
Speaker 3: The whole ship.
Speaker 6: Every every step of the way, it was always like
Speaker 6: my little home recording thing just kept getting bigger and bigger.
Speaker 6: My father had showed me how to take this little
Speaker 6: hand me down stereo. He gave me, you take the
Speaker 6: inputs out, you know, outputs, you run it the speakers
Speaker 6: you're running. So I said I would take that shit
Speaker 6: and loose and hook it back up and move it
Speaker 6: to the other side of the room. And I was
Speaker 6: I was real big in that ship. So I started
Speaker 6: getting parts, trading uh components with the homies, Like man,
Speaker 6: I got an extra record player, let me get that
Speaker 6: cassette player.
Speaker 8: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 6: I really was trying to get my hands on a
Speaker 6: dual cassette player. I was trying to ge my hands
Speaker 6: on a microphone in the mixture. I knew, I knew
Speaker 6: what I needed.
Speaker 10: I love everybody's stories from that era trying to figure
Speaker 10: out how to course with like a fucking two cassettes
Speaker 10: and a microphone. It's just like everybody's got that story
Speaker 10: of like how can I put together in a system
Speaker 10: where I can fucking record, you know.
Speaker 6: A fucking home studio, Like I gotta get my voice
Speaker 6: onto a tape.
Speaker 7: Can I ask you a question about the the Grover
Speaker 7: Washington was it is an Inner City Blues or do
Speaker 7: you remember what song it was?
Speaker 6: I don't remember, I do. I can give you a clue.
Speaker 6: This was a jazz record. It had four songs on it.
Speaker 6: They were all instrumentals, and I want to say one
Speaker 6: of them was a remake, a replay of brick House,
Speaker 6: you know what.
Speaker 1: Okay, so those records, no, no, no, well that's the thing.
Speaker 1: Shout out to jan Brown. All right, So okay, here's
Speaker 1: the deal. When you threw parties in the seventies and eighties,
Speaker 1: all think he's basically describing. There's a slew records that
Speaker 1: came out in the seventies. It's like their version of
Speaker 1: Now that's what I call music wow, where you don't
Speaker 1: hire DJ, but you have a record that just has
Speaker 1: all the hits. But the thing is that it's too
Speaker 1: expensive to license these songs, Like you don't go to
Speaker 1: Motown be like, yo, can I get break out? You
Speaker 1: just get a local band to replay all them songs
Speaker 1: and put on records. Like right now, that's my record
Speaker 1: collecting obsession. I got. I got Gene Brown going through
Speaker 1: every record store down South. Give me all them party records,
Speaker 1: like I have at least like, you know, thirty versions
Speaker 1: of various bands doing like you know, casing the Sunshine bands.
Speaker 1: Let's get down tonight, weird things like various covers of
Speaker 1: Billy Jean, like right now playing stupid covers. Yeah I heard, yeah,
Speaker 1: you play some exactly like when I play es Page, Yeah,
Speaker 1: all that stuff like marching band versions. So yeah, more
Speaker 1: likely that that was the investment, Like you just get
Speaker 1: party records.
Speaker 6: So so the next phase was rappers and you know
Speaker 6: disco records. They all had the B side of the
Speaker 6: twelve inch, so I would music always came out on Tuesdays.
Speaker 6: I got a little I got a little ingenious. I'm like,
Speaker 6: I'm going to the record store every Tuesday, and I'm
Speaker 6: gonna buy every new twelve inch that comes out of
Speaker 6: everything that grabs my eye. So I get these twelve
Speaker 6: inches and before they can get popular in Oakland, I'd
Speaker 6: flip it over and rap to.
Speaker 8: It and get around the streets and claim it really
Speaker 8: and not just claim it just it is what it is,
Speaker 8: right right.
Speaker 6: A few records people people people will come in and go,
Speaker 6: hey man, something like stow your record. I would get
Speaker 6: it out there first, but that was that was the trick,
Speaker 6: was to try to find it the dopest beat, and
Speaker 6: all the ship was coming out of New York.
Speaker 8: It was New York hit popp.
Speaker 6: It was those independent labels that were putting out all
Speaker 6: the twelve inches nineteen eighty eighty one, eighty two, of
Speaker 6: those years.
Speaker 1: What did your folks do?
Speaker 3: They like supportive of both of.
Speaker 8: My parents are accountants. Wow, that that goes.
Speaker 6: My mother graduated from Dillard, moved to the West Coast,
Speaker 6: met my father, and she kind of put him through college.
Speaker 8: You know, wow that situation.
Speaker 5: So your money is right?
Speaker 8: She mean she used to say shit like I fucking
Speaker 8: did all his homework.
Speaker 1: I took his chest.
Speaker 8: That's my damn degree.
Speaker 5: No, but seriously, your money is right, right, like more
Speaker 5: than the average.
Speaker 8: I'm the child of two accounts.
Speaker 5: Exactly.
Speaker 3: All right, Aunt, you have.
Speaker 1: To be because I mean the way that your hustle
Speaker 1: at least when you started. Was it Up All Night Records?
Speaker 1: Was that your first label? Or was it seventy five? Uh?
Speaker 3: Start?
Speaker 8: We started with seventy five Girls.
Speaker 6: Then we then we did a label called Dangerous Music, right,
Speaker 6: and then that evolved in the up All nineties?
Speaker 3: So seventy five girls?
Speaker 5: Was that you?
Speaker 1: Or who?
Speaker 3: Who's behind?
Speaker 6: A guy named Dean Hodges and he was a very
Speaker 6: colorful street character, played a low key He wasn't like,
Speaker 6: he wasn't a loud guy, but he you know, he
Speaker 6: was nineteen eighty five and he drove an eighty five bing.
Speaker 8: So he was, you know, he was doing his thing,
Speaker 8: and he he wanted to be not physically but mentally.
Speaker 8: He wanted to be a fucking rock star. Does that
Speaker 8: make sense.
Speaker 6: He didn't want to be on stage playing guitar, but
Speaker 6: he wanted to want the walk and be a fucking
Speaker 6: rock star. He wanted to look like a rock star,
Speaker 6: and he wanted to be around rock stars all day.
Speaker 1: The aspiration of the rock star lifestyff.
Speaker 8: So he provided us with I was friends with his
Speaker 8: little brother. Little brother brought me around.
Speaker 6: I'm popular all in the streets and ship and he
Speaker 6: just provided us with the best equipment.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 6: He had all the best ship, the Lynn drum and
Speaker 6: fucking all kind of rolling ship and all his guitars
Speaker 6: and shipping modules and ship and ship that you never
Speaker 6: seen it.
Speaker 8: And he was booking sessions nightly.
Speaker 11: We do.
Speaker 6: We did eleven PM six am sessions for to get
Speaker 6: the half half price of Graveyard Shift, and we go,
Speaker 6: we go to the studio and just every night.
Speaker 8: To me, I look back at those years like that
Speaker 8: was college. That's what it did for me.
Speaker 6: It really gave me the opportunity to when I got
Speaker 6: to a major and when I started making records, I
Speaker 6: had tons of experience. I've been in studios, I've been
Speaker 6: in mixed sessions, I've been working with musicians and punching
Speaker 6: shit in and out and learning recording techniques.
Speaker 1: So with the history of the Bay Area and its
Speaker 1: relationship to music, which you know, I'll say next to
Speaker 1: New Orleans, next to I mean at the time in
Speaker 1: the seventies, Philly was still immersed in Chicago. Also, were
Speaker 1: you rolling with actual musicians and like, what was your internet?
Speaker 6: First musicians that I worked with through seventy five girls
Speaker 6: had all been affiliated. It was guys like Marvin Holmes
Speaker 6: and Greg Levias, and these guys had played all around
Speaker 6: with cast like Rick James.
Speaker 8: And just you know, uh like Minor Williams.
Speaker 6: These these dudes were like in the Bay Area, musicians
Speaker 6: have always been connected with musicians everywhere, and it's.
Speaker 8: Still like that to this day.
Speaker 6: It's still they still breed that out there, right now,
Speaker 6: Get your skills together in church, you know, get learning
Speaker 6: the jazz. You know what I'm saying, it's still you know,
Speaker 6: young Cat's playing jazz out there.
Speaker 1: Because I was going to say, because the choi is kept,
Speaker 1: especially when you listen to your catalog. Now, I mean
Speaker 1: you you really didn't even pimp the fact that, you know,
Speaker 1: live musicianship was a big part of your musical presentation.
Speaker 8: Yeah that was sort of a secret.
Speaker 1: And yeah, well but I'm saying, like the level of musicianship,
Speaker 1: especially like with uh like on on life is Too
Speaker 1: Short and all that stuff, Like I could tell like
Speaker 1: these are cats that have actual professional.
Speaker 6: My engineer his name was out Eaton and he he
Speaker 6: he's a guitar player and he played keys, and he
Speaker 6: would I'm sitting here relating to him as an engineer,
Speaker 6: but honestly we're sitting here co producing songs together. We're
Speaker 6: like making shit happen. Like he's the kind of engineer
Speaker 6: who you leave out the room and come back. He
Speaker 6: put a little riff on there and then and then
Speaker 6: looped in and shit.
Speaker 8: You're like, what the fuck? Like I come to the student.
Speaker 6: He literally gave me Life is Too Short the basis
Speaker 6: of the track, which was you know says and and
Speaker 6: the ghetto Donny Hathaway he started those off. He called
Speaker 6: in the guys and totally no, you gotta there good
Speaker 6: something to say, Like he was, you know, super super engineer.
Speaker 3: Didn't you do some work with Bohannan. Uh No, no,
Speaker 3: it wasn't. No, I don't think it was that him.
Speaker 1: Which one was it?
Speaker 6: The Bohannans in my life are uh street guys. Okay,
Speaker 6: let's clear it up, big Tad in a little tea.
Speaker 6: They're pretty popular around around the town.
Speaker 1: But okay, okay, so I gotta ask. And this is
Speaker 1: not even playing the stereotypes. But I mean, if you're
Speaker 1: coming from a two parent household and both are accountants,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's almost like the basis of the Cosby Show. Now,
Speaker 1: I came from a two parent household and got called
Speaker 1: out immediately on the screech because the motherfuckers knew I
Speaker 1: was not street, you know what I'm saying? Like I was,
Speaker 1: I was No, I was adwep and knew it. How
Speaker 1: did you balance, Like, did you keep your your home
Speaker 1: life well?
Speaker 8: To make something like this happen?
Speaker 6: You have to have uh the cars have to line up,
Speaker 6: and then certain shit has to be organic and sh
Speaker 6: just it just can't. You can't just show up from
Speaker 6: l A walking to a city like Oakland, go hey,
Speaker 6: I'm too short the wrapper and they're like, okay, help me.
Speaker 8: It doesn't work like that, So what did you do?
Speaker 1: What did you do to get their respect?
Speaker 6: My brother and my mother moved to Oakland a year
Speaker 6: before I moved there. Okay, So the high school I
Speaker 6: went to in tenth grade, I had an older brother
Speaker 6: who was in twelfth grade and he had already went
Speaker 6: there for a year.
Speaker 8: That makes shit.
Speaker 6: I mean the first day of school, they're like, hey,
Speaker 6: you gotta see this little dude right here. Don't fuck
Speaker 6: with him. I got that my brother and his friend.
Speaker 6: So I was crazy ass school, wild as hell. Motherfucker's
Speaker 6: getting ass kicked every day. I was told people all
Speaker 6: were told not to fuck with me. So little ass motherfucker,
Speaker 6: don't fuck with me. So I got that part.
Speaker 1: And then.
Speaker 6: Around uh, my eleventh grade year, I had I met
Speaker 6: this guy named Freddie b. And he's born and raised
Speaker 6: in West Oakland, grew up in East Oakland. Always was
Speaker 6: a little kid that got in trouble. So he's been
Speaker 6: to juvenile hall, he's been to the little camp, he's
Speaker 6: been to the senior camp. He knew every motherfucker in
Speaker 6: the city because of his where he lived and what
Speaker 6: he'd been through. So when I started rapping with him,
Speaker 6: for one, it was cool to have an older brother.
Speaker 6: But even my older brother, his homies weren't connected to
Speaker 6: Oakland like I ended up being connected. They weren't out
Speaker 6: there in every neighborhood.
Speaker 3: You can't.
Speaker 8: You can't just go from hood to hood like that.
Speaker 5: You can't.
Speaker 6: So here, my rap partner know it's everybody in the
Speaker 6: whole fucking city. So it was his idea for us
Speaker 6: to start to start selling tapes. He was the one
Speaker 6: who said we made a few tapes. He's like, let's
Speaker 6: go sell this shit. I'm like, sell it to who.
Speaker 6: He's like, this calls just go sell it.
Speaker 3: So he start.
Speaker 6: We first went to a spot where they sold weed
Speaker 6: and asked them if they wanted to buy the tape
Speaker 6: and they're like, you want to buy a tape for
Speaker 6: We're like, just listen to it. So somebody put in
Speaker 6: the car and they listened for about ten fifteen minutes
Speaker 6: and one dude we only had one.
Speaker 8: Tape, and one dude was like, I buy it how much?
Speaker 8: Like five dollars?
Speaker 6: As soon as he bought it, that started the whole
Speaker 6: ship because somebody else said I want one too, and
Speaker 6: we were like, we'll only got one, but well, we'll
Speaker 6: be back tomorrow, and then we came back. We sold
Speaker 6: all the drug dealers tapes, and then we said what next.
Speaker 6: That's there's more drug dealers three blocks over.
Speaker 1: You customize it one tape at a time, and would
Speaker 1: you dup and doep and doep and deeper.
Speaker 6: So we go to my little home studio and we
Speaker 6: make a what are you working with? By this point
Speaker 6: I had acquired a radio or radio shack set up.
Speaker 6: I got the realistic hole, the mic, the mixer, and
Speaker 6: the little effecting put a little little, little little double
Speaker 6: effe and a nice cassetteler. So it's going through the
Speaker 6: right channels. Depending on the quality of the cassettes you
Speaker 6: use is the playback. So we selled I can make
Speaker 6: a low, a cheap ass fucking cassette sound good. I
Speaker 6: knew how to set the levels, set them a little
Speaker 6: bit into the red, you know, so it plays louder
Speaker 6: than you know.
Speaker 8: Realy ship figured out and what kind.
Speaker 3: Of did you use for the cheap customers?
Speaker 8: Anything Maxelle memorys TDK.
Speaker 6: It was all together with the cheap ship we used
Speaker 6: to use. Everything was a was a radio shock, all
Speaker 6: the cheap ship radio shack. So three thirty minute concepts
Speaker 6: for a dollar dollars ninety nine for three cassettes and
Speaker 6: fifteen minutes on each side, and we seld them for
Speaker 6: five dollars each, every two dollars, making fifteen dollars. That
Speaker 6: was our hustle. And then and then we started doing
Speaker 6: these customized tapes. We started customized the tape to say, uh,
Speaker 6: your name is so and so you drive this car,
Speaker 6: you from this block, These are your homies this you
Speaker 6: know anything you wanted us to say out a pen
Speaker 6: and paper, like we'll be back tomorrow almost like so,
Speaker 6: we sold those for twenty and that's how I got
Speaker 6: in Oakland that those those tapes were only purchased by
Speaker 6: at first by like the Kingpins. It started with one guy.
Speaker 6: This one guy was he said, I don't give a
Speaker 6: fuck about that rap shit. I don't listen to no
Speaker 6: fucking rap shit like O g right, he's like you,
Speaker 6: he said, if it ain't about me, he listened to
Speaker 6: that ship and we would. He was really like the
Speaker 6: kind of guy that we were scared of, and out
Speaker 6: of fear we went and made him a tape. So
Speaker 6: look so he never he never acknowledged. We just like
Speaker 6: a handoff and then walk away. He never acknowledged that
Speaker 6: he listened to it. He never said he liked it.
Speaker 6: He never said Ship. One day a guy comes up
Speaker 6: to us and we were on I'll never forget. We
Speaker 6: were on eighty like having her. He was like, do
Speaker 6: you know what the fuck I am? My name is
Speaker 6: King D, and I run this block. You on my block,
Speaker 6: And he was like, if you don't make me one
Speaker 6: of them fucking tapes like you made, like you made
Speaker 6: hot lips, that's that other hot lists, hoth lifps was
Speaker 6: it was a It was a tough guy.
Speaker 8: He couldn't have a name like hot lists.
Speaker 1: Not be tough.
Speaker 5: But I'm not laughing, you might be listening.
Speaker 8: I'm just saying that it was his specialty. Was the
Speaker 8: one punch that was a special.
Speaker 6: So King D runs up on us and custs us
Speaker 6: the funk out like straight, like I'm going to funk
Speaker 6: you up.
Speaker 8: You both of y'all fucked up. If I don't get
Speaker 8: one of the tapes like he got and.
Speaker 3: Not the cheap tapes from radio shot tell next day Bam.
Speaker 8: So ship would happen like this.
Speaker 6: We'd be sitting on the bus stop and a fancy
Speaker 6: car pull up and go, hey is it you too
Speaker 6: short and Freddy B. We're like, yeah, like get in
Speaker 6: the car, like what They're like, big Sonny wants to
Speaker 6: meet y'all. Take us some nameborhood and he's like, yeah,
Speaker 6: I want one of those tapes too. So then we
Speaker 6: spread around the city. We went to all the kingpins, everybody.
Speaker 6: It just started being a kingpin thing. All the bosses
Speaker 6: wanted the customer tape, and that led to the trinkle
Speaker 6: down of I remember I had a homily name YoY Yogi.
Speaker 6: Drove us around all these little tough neighborhoods one day
Speaker 6: and he was like, real scary dude. He's like, you
Speaker 6: see this this too shortened, Freddy B. If they come
Speaker 6: over here selling tapes, buy him if you funk with them,
Speaker 6: fucking you up to ship like that was just like
Speaker 6: just because he liked the music. So it was so
Speaker 6: it was just you couldn't. You couldn't plan it, you
Speaker 6: couldn't make it happy, you couldn't. It had to happen
Speaker 6: organically the only way time out.
Speaker 1: Am I the only one that's thinking he needs to
Speaker 1: pitch that story to Netflix. I would even want I
Speaker 1: don't even want to shorts careers. I want.
Speaker 5: It is it's like a snowfall cousin, Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: It was the same years. Wow, this story is pre
Speaker 1: crack and.
Speaker 5: You're out of high school or you're still inside school.
Speaker 3: In high school.
Speaker 1: That story to me is like I need to see
Speaker 1: this happens no one that has no one I want
Speaker 1: to tape, like I want to tape tape. Are you
Speaker 1: able to want assuming that these are one of the ones,
Speaker 1: did you keep like a version for yourself in case
Speaker 1: they popped it or my tape mess up.
Speaker 6: We did not know we were future stars. We did
Speaker 6: not know we were any kind of famous we were.
Speaker 3: It was the hustle.
Speaker 1: We were like out, have you found anyview joints on
Speaker 1: the eBay?
Speaker 6: Or it would be a fun thing to do. People
Speaker 6: in the bay always coming in and go, man, I
Speaker 6: still got my tape. They have the customized tapes, they
Speaker 6: have the ones they copy there you need.
Speaker 8: It's a guy. Have you ever heard of Mike Mosley?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 6: Yeah, he uh he personally got had had was on
Speaker 6: a mission back in like the nineties and he was
Speaker 6: taking all the two shirt tapes he can find and
Speaker 6: put them on real real to reserve them.
Speaker 8: And he's like, I still got those reels bro.
Speaker 1: Hot to hear these joints, and it's at an hour.
Speaker 1: It's like a half hour each side.
Speaker 8: Or fifteen minutes on each side most of them.
Speaker 1: Oh, you did the thirty minute joints. You really did
Speaker 1: use the radio seck joints.
Speaker 6: And it was all I was an expert at the polsmics.
Speaker 6: I could stop on the on the fore and hit
Speaker 6: the AM and you'll get no noise when you let
Speaker 6: it back up on the ant.
Speaker 1: So you weren't looping shit and none of that stuff.
Speaker 8: No, we just we were wrapped to the record ends,
Speaker 8: pose it and jump back in.
Speaker 1: So making a transition to studio work, how hard was
Speaker 1: that for you in terms of just like leaving your
Speaker 1: comfort zone, leaving your hustle.
Speaker 3: Wait, no, look, let me tell you how.
Speaker 6: This was the drum machine. It's nineteen eighty four, eighty five.
Speaker 6: It's the drum machine. It's like, you know, heavenly music.
Speaker 6: If you see one, it's like, right, right, right, it's
Speaker 6: a drum machine. If you let me touch one of
Speaker 6: them motherfuckers. First, they just had that one with the time.
Speaker 6: That's cool, that's cool. But when they came with the
Speaker 6: drums like Len drums like drug, Like if you could
Speaker 6: touch that shit, that ship was like, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 6: you're not gonna get me in the studio with a
Speaker 6: drum machine and not you know what I'm saying. And
Speaker 6: I'm listening to everything hip hop, so I'm listening to
Speaker 6: those records that are len drum records and just you
Speaker 6: know it ain't even know music and nothing. I'm like,
Speaker 6: I can do this shit Like it was never ever
Speaker 6: a moment of possibilities. It was like, this is definite,
Speaker 6: this is this is it.
Speaker 3: How did you go from seventy five girls to job?
Speaker 3: When did they come into the picture?
Speaker 6: Well, seventy five girls. Uh, we never did any contracts,
Speaker 6: We never had any agreements. It was like a family thing.
Speaker 3: It was.
Speaker 6: It was the best shit that could ever happen to
Speaker 6: me in the world, because, uh, the guy who ran
Speaker 6: the label, who owned the label, he would literally go
Speaker 6: to the studio, pay for the studio time, he would
Speaker 6: pick up the mix down, you know, pay somebody to
Speaker 6: mix it, pick up to all the shit, take it
Speaker 6: over to a manufacturer, and he'd get the ship manufactured.
Speaker 6: Then he all these boxes and ship and drop them
Speaker 6: off for the distributor. Then he keep checking back the distributor,
Speaker 6: go back and pick up some money, and keep doing
Speaker 6: the ship. And he me and his little brother, we
Speaker 6: hung out with him all the time. So I'm sitting
Speaker 6: there just watching where you go, what you do, the
Speaker 6: whole process, just watching him. He would even tell us
Speaker 6: and then y'all go and pick up some boxes and
Speaker 6: drop off the distributor. So I knew the guy's name.
Speaker 6: What's up, what's up, man, what's up? You know everywhere,
Speaker 6: even to the people that did the graphics, the art,
Speaker 6: artwork and ship. So one day he decided that he
Speaker 6: literally told me and his little brother get the fuck
Speaker 6: out my house. Fuck out my house, saying fuck the
Speaker 6: ship nor he's fuck out of here, and just that
Speaker 6: was it. And then and then we just sitting there
Speaker 6: like on a.
Speaker 1: Whims were going good, I presume, but that was that was.
Speaker 6: Not his hustle, that was not his money. So I
Speaker 6: guess at some point he just was like, I don't
Speaker 6: want y'all in my house anymore, because you know, that's
Speaker 6: what all the fly equipment was, that's where everything gravitating
Speaker 6: around his house, and you know, it was it was
Speaker 6: a hell of expres It's the kind of guy who
Speaker 6: you know, you just walk in the house and it's
Speaker 6: three chicks sitting on the couch and then underwear topless
Speaker 6: and dancing over there, and somebody's at the table smoking cocaine.
Speaker 8: Somebody over there is snorting the line and all kind
Speaker 8: of shit. And it just was that house. It was
Speaker 8: that place.
Speaker 1: Now as you're coming up, is there is there competition?
Speaker 5: You know?
Speaker 1: Are you? I don't know how, Like I know E
Speaker 1: forty was born in the nineties or whatever, but I'm
Speaker 1: just saying that, surely you're not the only horse on
Speaker 1: the on the on the track.
Speaker 6: That's like, so what me and Freddy B did in
Speaker 6: the early eighties put us way ahead of anybody that
Speaker 6: could ever claim any kind of hip hop legacy in
Speaker 6: the Bay. Nothing happened before too short and Freddy be nothing.
Speaker 6: So Freddy B, you know, he's he's a preacher now,
Speaker 6: but he had to go through his journey, right and
Speaker 6: his journey took him right out of high school and
Speaker 6: in the prison. And that's when I started making records
Speaker 6: on a larger scale. So he kind of missed the
Speaker 6: beginning of that. And you know, but fred Fred I
Speaker 6: give him a lot of credit for my journey he
Speaker 6: was when he came to our school, he was coming
Speaker 6: out of jail and had to go to continuation school
Speaker 6: and earn his way back into the regular school system.
Speaker 6: He gets back to the school, he becomes the fucking
Speaker 6: editor of the paper. He becomes the principal's best fucking
Speaker 6: student friend. He acquires the fucking keys to the entire
Speaker 6: school through I don't know, I guess he's fucking stole them,
Speaker 6: copied on the fuck he did. He stole the principals stamp,
Speaker 6: signature stamp, as well as every pass that gets you
Speaker 6: to leave campus, walk around campus, all kinds of ship
Speaker 6: hall passed. He stole them all in the stamp and
Speaker 6: he just he was.
Speaker 3: That's Freddie.
Speaker 6: He was, he was, and he fucking Eddie has school
Speaker 6: y'all as so fast. And then we're going, like, do
Speaker 6: they fucking know who this guy is? We got to
Speaker 6: keep the pass key to every lock at the school,
Speaker 6: every gate, really fucking with Freddie beat And that was
Speaker 6: my rat partner. So he was that guy man, and
Speaker 6: and you know, it was just a no brainer to
Speaker 6: get in the studio and make hits. After the legacy
Speaker 6: that we built, the foundation that we built.
Speaker 1: I mean as you're making this stuff, I mean, eventually
Speaker 1: you're gonna where's the idea that you're going to actually
Speaker 1: start have to perform?
Speaker 6: And well we were getting we had another element. All
Speaker 6: this shit happened by accidents, so we did not plan
Speaker 6: the shit out we were. We taught ourselves to be DJs,
Speaker 6: like we just that's nothing to do, right, teach yourself
Speaker 6: to be a fucking DJ in the early eighties, so
Speaker 6: we wanted dj the house parties.
Speaker 1: We net rhythm, so it couldn't have been that hard.
Speaker 6: So we knew all the fucking gangsters who are our customers,
Speaker 6: and people would throw these house parties in Oakland. You know,
Speaker 6: the index card such and such address, dollar for a drink,
Speaker 6: dollar interurance, all this stuff, those type of parties, and
Speaker 6: we DJ for a hundred bucks something like that. And
Speaker 6: at every house party when midnight hit, we tell everybody
Speaker 6: to come around the turntables and we're gonna rap. And
Speaker 6: they wanted to see it. They was like two Short
Speaker 6: and Freddy B. People wanted two Short and Freddy B
Speaker 6: to DJ air parties. They wanted us to rap. They
Speaker 6: wanted to see the ship. So we're rapping at these
Speaker 6: house parties just in the living room. The fucking DJ
Speaker 6: setup is in the kitchen. The bedroom is the VIP
Speaker 6: or some shit.
Speaker 3: Or the bar. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 6: You know that shit right right. If it's a fight,
Speaker 6: I got to stop the music. Everybody goes outside. We
Speaker 6: watched the fight and then we come back in those parties,
Speaker 6: take y'all go take that shit outside, you know. So
Speaker 6: most DJs who really were DJ's couldn't go there. They
Speaker 6: probably take your ship, they get your ass whip, you
Speaker 6: know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: It was DJ wise.
Speaker 6: We probably had two guys who did the hood parties too,
Speaker 6: because they had, you know, the past. But I think
Speaker 6: doing those parties of people who are at those parties
Speaker 6: are like, fuck you know that fuck that shit, like
Speaker 6: you really got a rocket so but you.
Speaker 1: Were protected and so. But I mean, like how rough
Speaker 1: were these were these parties.
Speaker 8: But it was no protection at a random ass house party.
Speaker 8: It was just like you just in that shit.
Speaker 6: Man, ain't no you know, shit bullets and shit start
Speaker 6: flying on a protection. But it was you just got
Speaker 6: the past to beat amongst the amongst the crowd. But
Speaker 6: that was I just I feel like, man, all this
Speaker 6: shit happened two for a reason. We're sitting here rocking
Speaker 6: these house parties all over the city. The first time
Speaker 6: I ever did a show in the city, the whole
Speaker 6: fucking crowd knew the worst of my songs. I never
Speaker 6: had a record out. I've never had a record out there.
Speaker 6: Asked me to open up for UTFO nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 6: Rock Sand Rock Sand. I was like, Okay, I'll do it.
Speaker 6: The promoter was a Lionel B. Bill Graham, and Lionel
Speaker 6: B knew about me because he's from Oakland v.
Speaker 1: Bill Graham.
Speaker 6: Yeah, because you know he had a oh he controls all. Yeah,
Speaker 6: he had a black division called Barrier Productions.
Speaker 5: Y'all tell us Bill.
Speaker 1: Bill Graham is the legendary promoter with he he I mean,
Speaker 1: he is the He was the taste maker of the
Speaker 1: whole hippie love movement.
Speaker 8: So he was the Grateful Day, a never ending concert
Speaker 8: that last till.
Speaker 1: Yeah the fell More East. So he's he made stars
Speaker 1: out of Hendrix. You went through him, then you became
Speaker 1: an international store. So the doors, Hendrix, Jopplin, they all
Speaker 1: had to go through Bill Graham and too Short. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean he controlled, he controlled like he's the original
Speaker 1: Al Hayman.
Speaker 6: So I get on a Bill Graham show. It's UTFO
Speaker 6: their headlining Roxanne Roxanes. The head is early nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 6: and it's probably like five thousand people, Oklaudatorium. I've never
Speaker 6: seen a crowd more than one hundred two hundred people
Speaker 6: at the most I've ever seen my life.
Speaker 8: And I mean, I don't care, man. I went out there.
Speaker 6: I put on a black leather suit. I went and
Speaker 6: brought a hat like I can look like rendiems some shit,
Speaker 6: and I got some instruments. I remember one of the
Speaker 6: instruments I did was Friends from Houdini. I can't remember
Speaker 6: what the other one was were it might have been.
Speaker 6: I think I did something off of Rapping Duke instrument.
Speaker 6: And I went out there and sang the lyrics to
Speaker 6: the songs that I would sell on the tapes in
Speaker 6: the streets, and the whole crowd for fifteen minutes sang
Speaker 6: everywhere with me, word for word. I get off stage
Speaker 6: and people are like, who the fuck are you? Like
Speaker 6: who the fuck are you? And how the fuck did
Speaker 6: you do that? But that that was just how That's
Speaker 6: how it happened, man, Like everywhere I went from then
Speaker 6: on everybody knew the.
Speaker 1: Words, so can I ask? I'm in retrospect. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to figure if there's another example of someone that has
Speaker 1: variety in their in their own hometown where they go national.
Speaker 1: It's almost like that Go Go act, you know, like
Speaker 1: Chuck Brown can control the whole d m V area between.
Speaker 3: The Yeah, but even he started out in Richmond.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, But I'm just saying, like a cat like
Speaker 1: ghetto boys in Houston.
Speaker 6: Yeah, they were, They were famous in Houston doing shit
Speaker 6: and then it broke out and then Houston loved them,
Speaker 6: Like that's the birth of Houston hip hop?
Speaker 8: Is scarfacing Willie Dan.
Speaker 1: Now, usually the narrative is that once someone ramps up
Speaker 1: their situation, the same thing we look at Miami, look
Speaker 1: at Miami. But I'm saying that usually if someone tries
Speaker 1: to ramp up their situation, usually like that's when well, no,
Speaker 1: I'm like, usually, I mean that's when that's the tipping
Speaker 1: point or that sort of diminished returns. But I mean
Speaker 1: that's not that way with you, Like, were you intimidated
Speaker 1: at all? Like Okay, now I gotta take this formula
Speaker 1: and make it national.
Speaker 3: So that.
Speaker 6: I knew I was told in the early days in
Speaker 6: eighty five eighty six, when I got in the studio,
Speaker 6: they were like, you can't do the stuff that you
Speaker 6: do in the streets. You can't curve in the records
Speaker 6: because you can't market them and sell them and give
Speaker 6: them the record store. There's only only people that can
Speaker 6: curse on records are comedians.
Speaker 3: And I took it.
Speaker 6: I was like, okay, I made two albums with no cursing,
Speaker 6: and the two first albums on seventy five Girls, and
Speaker 6: then it came time for us to do our own thing.
Speaker 6: And I had always had this song called Freaky Tales.
Speaker 6: I always had it, I had wrote. I had been
Speaker 6: writing Freaky Tails since I was sixteen. It started off
Speaker 6: with like ten girls and it ended up Yeah, it
Speaker 6: was with seventy five and the official version has like
Speaker 6: about forty something. But I was on seventy five Girls Records,
Speaker 6: so I was gonna make a song about fucking all
Speaker 6: seventy five girls. And by the way, that label was
Speaker 6: named after a Johnny guitar Watson line, I can't take
Speaker 6: the name of the song, but Johnny guitar sitting one
Speaker 6: of his songs I wrote up on a horse and
Speaker 6: kissed seventy five girls at the same time, and my
Speaker 6: man Dean Hodges was like, that's me. Of course, seventy
Speaker 6: five girls at the same time. So I don't know, man,
Speaker 6: I forgot what I'll saying.
Speaker 1: Oh, forty girls, Yeah, your Freaky Tails records.
Speaker 8: And then yeah, I said, just let me record this song,
Speaker 8: Freaky Tails.
Speaker 6: If I record this, I already had the baseline, had
Speaker 6: the drum pattern, I had the lyrics. Just give me
Speaker 6: the studio and record this and watch what happens.
Speaker 8: I knew it.
Speaker 6: I knew it, and I knew it, and we just
Speaker 6: everything that I'm living on right now is started off,
Speaker 6: like financially, started off.
Speaker 8: With Freaky Tails.
Speaker 3: So was that when job came into the picture.
Speaker 6: Joe picked up that album Freak eachaels on the album
Speaker 6: called Born Max and released. We recorded the whole album
Speaker 6: before we released the single. We recorded the album, we
Speaker 6: did the artwork, we had the ship ready to go,
Speaker 6: and we said, we're gonna take this song, Freaky Tails.
Speaker 6: We're gonna press up two thousand cassettes. When we sell those,
Speaker 6: we're gonna press up two thousand more. We're gonna sell
Speaker 6: the cassettes until we get fifteen thousand dollars. We get
Speaker 6: fifteen thousand, we're gonna buy albums and cassettes and we're
Speaker 6: gonna press the whole album up and we're gonna.
Speaker 8: Sell us for five dollars a pop.
Speaker 6: So the first wat we get, you know, the first
Speaker 6: time fifteen thousand is gonna make a sixty grand and
Speaker 6: then we're gonna take that and we're gonna flip another
Speaker 6: fifteen And.
Speaker 8: We did the ship like woo woo woop.
Speaker 6: I mean, Jibe got wind of us. We were probably
Speaker 6: up to about, I don't know, a few hundred thousand,
Speaker 6: and we just kept flipping the ship like because we
Speaker 6: were we were from drug dealers.
Speaker 1: Why stop a good formula where like you own it?
Speaker 1: And I mean did you? Because that puts you in
Speaker 1: the category of being Barry Gordy and Smokie Robinson at
Speaker 1: the same time.
Speaker 6: So I signed up with Jive because Barry Wise called
Speaker 6: me personally.
Speaker 8: I didn't. I didn't.
Speaker 6: I wasn't listening for no dollar amounts, no nothing. I
Speaker 6: wasn't thinking about that. I was thinking about what it
Speaker 6: would be like to get the music to the whole world.
Speaker 6: And then I was thinking like like people signed the
Speaker 6: Jive because Too Short was on job pemp c and
Speaker 6: like they're like forty ike one, Like I'm too short
Speaker 6: of I'm signing. So I signed a Jive because who
Speaker 6: didn't even on that motherfucking right mod was on that motherfucker.
Speaker 6: Karen's wanted just signed up. Will Smith with the Fresh
Speaker 6: Prince was on that motherfucker, like Billy Ocean was on
Speaker 6: that motherfucker was.
Speaker 8: I was like, I like jib you know, so.
Speaker 6: You could you could call it the Gift in the Curse,
Speaker 6: but it would I would not be too short the
Speaker 6: megastar without Jive Records, but also, you know, the independent
Speaker 6: run would have probably been a lot better to do
Speaker 6: it with those albums I gave Jive, But at the
Speaker 6: same time, we never stopped our independent hustle. I put
Speaker 6: Too Short on Jive, but we kept selling independent ship.
Speaker 3: We never stopped, and.
Speaker 1: You know it was it was not I think I
Speaker 1: think we did the right thing.
Speaker 3: Did they still let you do your own thing? You
Speaker 3: still recorded in Oakland and all that.
Speaker 8: Yeah, Jive is a very controlling label.
Speaker 6: Back in those times, they were very controlling with the artists,
Speaker 6: trying to get you to record at Battery studios, and
Speaker 6: then they fucking walking in the back door watching.
Speaker 3: Looking over your shoulders to London over there.
Speaker 8: Never never never never know.
Speaker 3: So this is how I asked you.
Speaker 6: At least never. I never even talked to the job
Speaker 6: that much. We didn't really communicate a lot in the
Speaker 6: early days. Okay, this is how I handled jib. Born
Speaker 6: in Mac was the album that they called me and
Speaker 6: they were like, we wanted to take over this album.
Speaker 6: So they picked up Born and Mac sold a few
Speaker 6: hundred thousand copies and and you know, we got to
Speaker 6: deliver a new album. So when they got Born in Mac,
Speaker 6: it was already an album, so they obviously got it
Speaker 6: all in one, one one delivery.
Speaker 8: Here here's the album. Take over.
Speaker 6: But the next time they were like, okay, we're ready
Speaker 6: to make the new album. We're gonna send you the
Speaker 6: upfront budget to start the album. And I'm like, shit,
Speaker 6: the album's already recorded, everything, we got the artwork, everything's done. Yeah,
Speaker 6: So we sent it to him and they just send
Speaker 6: the front and in the back end at one time,
Speaker 6: just here you go. So I was like, I would
Speaker 6: record an album before the one that's I would play out.
Speaker 6: I'd record the next one. Get the artwork together, and shit, Prince,
Speaker 6: I would send jibs without them ever calling me. I
Speaker 6: was sending them before I even got the first the
Speaker 6: upfront money to start the album. I would sending them
Speaker 6: the artwork that all the songs mixed down, and I
Speaker 6: send them handwritten by handwriting the fucking credits, and I'm like,
Speaker 6: send me the damn checks.
Speaker 8: Here's everything. Because they said they had a thing called delivery.
Speaker 3: What is delivery?
Speaker 1: Right? This the fucking delivery.
Speaker 6: We didn't have to We didn't have to do any
Speaker 6: clearances or any We never sampled nobody's shit. We never
Speaker 6: fucking you know, even even if we did like replays
Speaker 6: or some shit you know less. But a lot of
Speaker 6: our shit was like we were motherfuckers in the studio
Speaker 6: hitting the ship and shooting from scratch.
Speaker 8: So it wasn't a lot of So.
Speaker 1: For the songs that you had to do interpolations on
Speaker 1: like say what life is too short? Or you know
Speaker 1: the ghetto, like how was that handled? Was it just
Speaker 1: like we did the average white band get there on
Speaker 1: the later like wait a minute, that's our shit.
Speaker 8: You know, Like no, we did an advanced job drivers
Speaker 8: on point.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, well, I mean that was just unprecedented. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, but that also came out like eighty seventy eighty.
Speaker 6: One of the best things happened to me music wise
Speaker 6: was Donnie had to his wife thanking me. I was
Speaker 6: at a Leila halfway concert and it's like her mother
Speaker 6: wants to meet you. She was like, I just want
Speaker 6: to thank you.
Speaker 1: Oh you probably came through like.
Speaker 3: That was college the problem.
Speaker 1: She said, thank you.
Speaker 6: That was a big deal because I remember when that
Speaker 6: record came up on the auction block and I was like,
Speaker 6: I don't I like to take all the publice.
Speaker 8: I don't want another ship.
Speaker 3: I'll take it.
Speaker 5: Have you ever gotten tonight?
Speaker 8: Like hell yeah, hell yeah.
Speaker 3: I can't think of who but who but someone? Yeah?
Speaker 6: Two shirt is not about to butcher my fucking music.
Speaker 6: It has been, it has been said so.
Speaker 1: In promoting I know that you were on the was
Speaker 1: was the n w A tour like your first national tour?
Speaker 1: Like were you ever on any of like the Deaf
Speaker 1: Jam tours or those?
Speaker 8: Nope, nope, nope.
Speaker 6: Got a couple of little opening at spots through once
Speaker 6: again Bill Graham and Barrier predictions and where I opened
Speaker 6: for uh could have been like who DEENI, and some
Speaker 6: of it wasn't ever fresh Fellow.
Speaker 1: Or none of that stuff, like were you were you
Speaker 1: mixing and chopping it up with your contemporaries of eighty six,
Speaker 1: eighty seven, eighty eight Like.
Speaker 8: In the early days. I remember the show I got
Speaker 8: to open up for.
Speaker 6: It was when it was uh when a check out,
Speaker 6: My melody was the hottest shit, and it was Public
Speaker 6: Enemy had one song and it was you know, Russell
Speaker 6: sent them all out young.
Speaker 8: They were all young.
Speaker 6: I'm not sure if Slick Rick was was there yet,
Speaker 6: but it was the eighty seven eighty seven, eighty eighties
Speaker 6: crew that was under a rush management and it wasn't
Speaker 6: run DMC. Probably who Deni was headlining with run DMC
Speaker 6: was bigger than all that shit. But I remember it
Speaker 6: being Public Enemy Ariban rock camp in the city, just
Speaker 6: being excited to see them for the first time.
Speaker 8: So I probably got to go out and do like
Speaker 8: two songs.
Speaker 6: But I remember back then, motherfucking rappers didn't talk to
Speaker 6: each other a lot, like if you're on the show,
Speaker 6: it another rapper. It wasn't like what's up, homie, Like
Speaker 6: you see the motherfuckers, you just look, you look and
Speaker 6: look away. And don't say shit like.
Speaker 1: No matter where you're from, like no matter where I
Speaker 1: was figuring public in me like they're very diplomatic.
Speaker 6: I was about to say, the only ones to talk
Speaker 6: to you is like Houdini and Chuck d. I wouldn't
Speaker 6: not even flavor fla. Nobody was talking, nobody was saying
Speaker 6: you can't EPMD was on those stewards too. Me and
Speaker 6: Eric Certinon became really good friends. I was like, do
Speaker 6: you realize we used to stand next to each other
Speaker 6: and don't say ship?
Speaker 5: Wow?
Speaker 8: I No, I don't know.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 6: If you ever want to embarrass the funk out of
Speaker 6: yourself back in the eighties, walk up to ll cool
Speaker 6: J And say hey, what's up man?
Speaker 8: And watch him ignore the funk out of you.
Speaker 1: Damn he's been a niggas for a long Was he
Speaker 1: just aloof like, oh I didn't see you there?
Speaker 6: No, no, No, L practiced that ship how to stare
Speaker 6: the funk at you and not say ship look at
Speaker 6: you like you are you really talking to me?
Speaker 5: Like you got some nerve niggas.
Speaker 8: I never did it, but I watched people do it.
Speaker 1: Don't don't don't so by.
Speaker 5: The time, the whole time your your accounting parents are
Speaker 5: down with your new endeavors.
Speaker 6: Oh well, that's that's another story. So think about So
Speaker 6: my parents were the last ones to find out I was.
Speaker 1: I was not the only one on this. I knew
Speaker 1: I was not. No one believes me when I told
Speaker 1: my dad found out about the roots, like on our second.
Speaker 3: Album, when did they find out about your about you?
Speaker 6: I probably was album. I hadn't made any albums yet,
Speaker 6: but I probably was. I think I was working on
Speaker 6: the first album and it was that time. They're like,
Speaker 6: all right, college time, and I'm like, I think I'm
Speaker 6: gonna make a few records first.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I wasn't going to Juilliard.
Speaker 6: Out of record deal props gave me the speech about man,
Speaker 6: it's great what you do. I heard some of it
Speaker 6: is you know it's great, but it's not. But you're
Speaker 6: going to make a living off doing that. I'm like,
Speaker 6: all right, So I had I lied.
Speaker 1: I lied.
Speaker 8: I lied a lot.
Speaker 6: My mother found out I was a rapper by she
Speaker 6: found this this rap book that I had written, and
Speaker 6: she never came to me and said, like, do you
Speaker 6: wrap it? We didn't have a conversation about the rap
Speaker 6: She slipped a note into my rap book.
Speaker 8: It's like a nine.
Speaker 3: Page guilty ass letter.
Speaker 1: Like that's worse.
Speaker 8: She's like, I didn't raise you like this. I didn't
Speaker 8: like I know.
Speaker 3: She was a shock.
Speaker 1: It was like finding the Player's magazine. Yeah, she found
Speaker 1: your lyrics.
Speaker 3: She was disappointed, found freaky tales. She was hurt. When
Speaker 3: did they finally like that house? When did they finally
Speaker 3: be like okay good? When did they finally let up? Well,
Speaker 3: my mother.
Speaker 8: Watched she often. I never talked to her about this,
Speaker 8: but I think that she knew I was full of shit.
Speaker 6: Around nineteen eighty six, I had been fucking with seventy
Speaker 6: five girls and it was it was the time when
Speaker 6: his brother, the owner of the label, Dean, kicked me
Speaker 6: and a little brother out and we had a struggle. Man,
Speaker 6: We struggled for like we went from in the big
Speaker 6: house to like, you know, just can't even fucking afford
Speaker 6: food and shit. Like we was doing bad for about
Speaker 6: six months, really, man. And during that time, I was good.
Speaker 6: I was I was real shabby, man. I was like,
Speaker 6: you know, I wasn't really like fly. And I remember
Speaker 6: my mother came down for my birthday and I didn't
Speaker 6: ask for shit. I was not like nineteen or something,
Speaker 6: and she brought me all these fucking clothes and shoes
Speaker 6: and shit, and I was like I needed it. At
Speaker 6: the time, I was like cool, but I look back
Speaker 6: on it now thinking like my mother probably seen how shabby.
Speaker 1: Get some damn clothes. Wait, So you know, the struggle
Speaker 1: was was real.
Speaker 6: And then later on when I finally could call home,
Speaker 6: because I had called home many times and lied and
Speaker 6: said I'm doing great, like that ship's on the radio.
Speaker 6: I'm balling like I lied like a motherfucker. So when
Speaker 6: it really did do good. I I remember doing the
Speaker 6: show in Phoenix, and of course my mother had to come.
Speaker 6: But then when she really got there because I'm like
Speaker 6: trying to be all proud and ship. But when she
Speaker 6: got there, I was like, fuck, I can't do the
Speaker 6: show in front of her. So I I helped you
Speaker 6: pull it off, I told her, but I was like,
Speaker 6: don't let my mother go in the crowd. They're like, well,
Speaker 6: you go on.
Speaker 8: In five minutes, she's out there like it ain't gonna
Speaker 8: be no show. Somebody to do something.
Speaker 1: I'm not.
Speaker 8: I can't do this in front of her, So we
Speaker 8: got her backstage. It was that type of ship.
Speaker 1: Wait, what was it just on a regular spot date
Speaker 1: or was it like it was w A, I think
Speaker 1: we're on tour. Wait she was backstage and it was safer.
Speaker 6: Well, I'm saying she couldn't. She could not ever see
Speaker 6: me perfom ever.
Speaker 8: I couldn't.
Speaker 1: I can't yet to see a two short show.
Speaker 3: Nah, ye know?
Speaker 1: Wow?
Speaker 3: Had she heard the music?
Speaker 6: You've seen TV stuff, She seen videos. She's seeing the
Speaker 6: clean version.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, look this is my mother.
Speaker 6: They're like missus Shaw. You know, do you know your
Speaker 6: son is like the dirtiest rapper out there. She's like,
Speaker 6: I never heard him cuss.
Speaker 8: I don't.
Speaker 6: People people say that, People say that, I'm sure he
Speaker 6: does it, but I haven't heard it. And she just
Speaker 6: she wouldn't play it. She had every album I ever
Speaker 6: made in plastic.
Speaker 3: What about your pot? He has heard?
Speaker 6: See your father don't have that conversation with you, you
Speaker 6: know what I mean? Like he he's, uh, we don't.
Speaker 6: We don't talk to you, short man.
Speaker 3: We just don't. Like he's.
Speaker 8: He couldn't come to me and go, you know, I'll
Speaker 8: be bumping that one song.
Speaker 1: He couldn't. This is the long thirty year version of
Speaker 1: the White Olph in the room.
Speaker 11: When I was talking about what about your your brother,
Speaker 11: your older brother that you my older brother is uh
Speaker 11: this is his He's like, I'm like, man, people like
Speaker 11: my music.
Speaker 6: He's like, it's cool, but you'll never be run DMC.
Speaker 6: I'm like, I'm like, well, I ain't trying to be
Speaker 6: run ding Like I'm just saying you ain't never gonna
Speaker 6: be shipp because he's like these little people around here
Speaker 6: like it. Man, it's like this ship's whacked. He's like,
Speaker 6: I'm bumping l I'm bumping like you ain't.
Speaker 1: Like the East Coast playing on the load. He was
Speaker 1: just to this day.
Speaker 6: He would just destroy your dream. If you walked in
Speaker 6: and said I'm gonna be the greatest drummer the world.
Speaker 6: He's like, you're a good drummer, but you're never gonna
Speaker 6: be the greatest. What's that motivation for you? Years later
Speaker 6: we talked ship. I'm like, I'm like i should talking
Speaker 6: right now. It's like I'm your fucking big brother. Like
Speaker 6: I'm the big brother. I'll be looking out for you.
Speaker 8: And he's like he's like, uh, all those years I
Speaker 8: put you down, I was I was making you. I
Speaker 8: was making you strong.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 8: He's like I knew he was dope, like ship he was.
Speaker 1: Hey.
Speaker 6: We used to walk down the street arguing like a motherfucker,
Speaker 6: arguing about everything in the world.
Speaker 8: Me and my brother.
Speaker 3: We would argue to the death.
Speaker 1: That's crazy to this day. Yo. So what was tour
Speaker 1: life like during that period?
Speaker 6: I mean nineteen eighty nine, straight out of Compton, first
Speaker 6: chour I ever went on.
Speaker 1: Tell me about it.
Speaker 8: First start was Nashville, Tennessee.
Speaker 1: I had my.
Speaker 6: Girlfriend take me to the airport in Oakland. I'd been
Speaker 6: with her for like about a year and a half.
Speaker 6: I was really did love her. She was beautiful and
Speaker 6: she was beautiful man. I was so in love it
Speaker 6: with my younger love likes to be with my girlfriend
Speaker 6: every day, and I was like, Babe, I'm about to
Speaker 6: go on tour. When I get there. Every day the
Speaker 6: first night Pandemonian. First night, I didn't call home. The
Speaker 6: first day, I never from called home.
Speaker 3: It's like some shot I've never I had, never coming home.
Speaker 6: And then you know, I did that tour with NWA
Speaker 6: and the very next year Ice Cube quit and he
Speaker 6: went on he did America's Most Wanted and me and him,
Speaker 6: me and ice Cube is right.
Speaker 8: He went on another tour the very next year. So
Speaker 8: for two years, for the ice Cube Tour and the
Speaker 8: NWA tour, everything you could think about young rock star young,
Speaker 8: that was me I did.
Speaker 3: It was that when five thousand girls y'all did the
Speaker 3: nothing but a Word to Me record.
Speaker 8: That was the secondary gotcha, that was my record.
Speaker 3: I love that joint.
Speaker 1: So okay, it would be remiss to say that as
Speaker 1: a Philadelphian growing up on the East Coast, I'll say
Speaker 1: that at least between like in the early nineties, the
Speaker 1: idea of opinions and cultural differences between the coast. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was definitely a thing. What were your feelings like
Speaker 1: when you would read the sort like the critical claim
Speaker 1: or any that stuff being anything to.
Speaker 6: Okay, so early on, I made money early on, I'm
Speaker 6: famous as fuck. Early on, I'm rocking crowds. My self
Speaker 6: esteem is way to fuck up there, I'm rapping. I've
Speaker 6: considered myself nothing of sexy sex symbol, nothing, I'm me,
Speaker 6: I've I got money, and I won't even fix my
Speaker 6: fucking teeth. I'm like, fucking, I'm just I'm just doing it,
Speaker 6: and you know, I'm just doing it. Man, it didn't
Speaker 6: bother me at all to be on TV with a
Speaker 6: fucked up grill. I was like, I had a pool
Speaker 6: in my backyard. I don't give a fuck out of
Speaker 6: a fucking Mercedes and you know. So I would look
Speaker 6: at the media's interpretation of all of hip hop, mainly
Speaker 6: like the Source or something I read the front to back.
Speaker 6: I've been on the cover of the Source early on
Speaker 6: one of the first sources. I wasn't like treated badly
Speaker 6: by the Source, but I would. I would look at
Speaker 6: the reviews that I would get and it'd be like,
Speaker 6: you know, I can't rap, can't rap, meat the beats
Speaker 6: and blah blah blah, and then the shit would go platinum.
Speaker 8: I'm like, like, hai, motherfucker.
Speaker 6: But but I would also watch the media take the
Speaker 6: New York guy and you probably can relate to this
Speaker 6: as a Philly guy, the one guy with the one
Speaker 6: fucking song that we fucking love and make this motherfucker
Speaker 6: make it start for that one song, like he can't
Speaker 6: even proved itself yet, Like and they're like, he's our guy,
Speaker 6: blah blah blah for the whole year, and I just
Speaker 6: I watched that shit over and over again, I'm like,
Speaker 6: I'm like they they to me, they just didn't get it.
Speaker 1: See it's all right. So and I think it was
Speaker 1: when did I come out. I came to California, probably
Speaker 1: the summer of nineteen ninety, and I specifically remember Tarik
Speaker 1: had Short Dogs in the House album and now he's
Speaker 1: he's very particular about like a zimcs or whatever. And
Speaker 1: I was like, well, wait why because I remember like
Speaker 1: something in the Source or whatever and they giving you
Speaker 1: like to two mics or whatever, and I was like, well,
Speaker 1: why would you buy this because it's got a bad
Speaker 1: rate in the source like whatever. And he was just like,
Speaker 1: you don't know, like that was his ship. And I
Speaker 1: was like, all right, well if he says it usually.
Speaker 1: I mean Tweek was always right. I was wrong about
Speaker 1: n w A because that's another thing. Like Tweek had
Speaker 1: straight out of Comps. He was like the only East
Speaker 1: Coaster I knew that, like Odd on West Coast stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean he had Hammer's first record, oh wow, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean.
Speaker 8: He which wasn't a bad album, no, it was yeah.
Speaker 1: And that's the thing like he like Tik just because
Speaker 1: he watched yom TV raps. He just purchased everything that
Speaker 1: was ever on yom TV raps, and it's like it's
Speaker 1: like you're you're, you're what I call the flat footed
Speaker 1: approach to him seeing to me, that's like a tuxedo
Speaker 1: or jeans and t shirt like some ship or you know,
Speaker 1: like or chuck easy, which I mean, that's that to
Speaker 1: me is the hardest thing to do now, more than
Speaker 1: any sort of rhyme scheme. Yeah, any iambic pictameter decide.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's the tortois in the hair shit.
Speaker 1: You know, you have a billion of them seeds that
Speaker 1: do and you just stay flat footed. So at no
Speaker 1: point is no one in your ear like yo, you
Speaker 1: should get dancers like blah blah blah, or you should
Speaker 1: you know, you just basically stayed on your path and
Speaker 1: and tortoised and haired your way through everything hip hop culture.
Speaker 6: Like a microphone and a cassette was all I ever
Speaker 6: needed to make my hip hop world successful.
Speaker 8: Just a blank the set and a microphone.
Speaker 1: But it's weird because when money enters the photo, then
Speaker 1: you start people start switching up. These ship start.
Speaker 6: My counterpart, the first person you know, E forty is
Speaker 6: my homie forever from day one, we've ben hommies. So
Speaker 6: E forty's up the street doing his thing. But when
Speaker 6: we talk about Oakland, my counterpart was Hammer mc hammer. Uh,
Speaker 6: if you let me tell it was going around Oakland.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 6: He was very famous for dancing. He was popular for
Speaker 6: his run with being, you know, around the A's organization
Speaker 6: and stuff. He's popular and a lot of his friends
Speaker 6: were went to high school with me. I knew, I
Speaker 6: knew his whole crew. But Hammer had a dude named
Speaker 6: Ace that they used to dress alike and be at
Speaker 6: the clubs doing the same dance moves and shit. And
Speaker 6: then they get a crowd around him and people like,
Speaker 6: you know, he was. He was popular, So I knew
Speaker 6: who he was as a dancing dude. I knew that
Speaker 6: was Hammer, not I didn't know his fucking name. I
Speaker 6: just knew he was a dancing dude. Him and Ace
Speaker 6: they be dancing, and then he came with these records
Speaker 6: and it's like one day you see him. He's got
Speaker 6: like four bodyguards, he's got like an entourager, like you know,
Speaker 6: like twenty people, and it's like I remember the shit
Speaker 6: clear as day.
Speaker 8: Somebody was like, who fuck is that? I don't know
Speaker 8: who fuck that is?
Speaker 6: Like, you know, I'm popular, I'm famous, We mob deep,
Speaker 6: We like in this motherfucker everywhere we go.
Speaker 3: I don't know who the fuck that is.
Speaker 11: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I heard it a few times. Who are they?
Speaker 6: They like coming through the crowd, bodyguard, skut and skut apartment.
Speaker 6: Then one day somebody said, man, who is that? And
Speaker 6: somebody else said that's Hammer. I was like this, Nick
Speaker 6: ain't got a record nothing, He's like like it became
Speaker 6: more famous for that circumstance and for the music, and
Speaker 6: then the music came with it at the same time.
Speaker 1: Like he was.
Speaker 6: He walked in the fucking door with the Anthize and
Speaker 6: four bodyguards and his first single was just coming out
Speaker 6: and he just that was so having him as an example,
Speaker 6: I'm like, Shore not doing that.
Speaker 1: Can I ask a question, who were you thinking about
Speaker 1: when you wrote short of Funky Well?
Speaker 8: I was doing lines of Hammer.
Speaker 1: We all.
Speaker 6: But a lot of songs that had had Hammer references,
Speaker 6: But it was between me and him, all of.
Speaker 1: Our out right this stuff, like what was your relationship? Like,
Speaker 1: like did you guys?
Speaker 6: Ever, so I'm saying ship like that in the record
Speaker 6: we walking were down the streets and ship talking a
Speaker 6: little shit about each other to our mutual homies, never
Speaker 6: gonna ever be any friction because they thugs and we thugs,
Speaker 6: and we all know each other. But Hammer would do
Speaker 6: shit like sit on the fucking couch with our sineo
Speaker 6: or something and say, like where you from? Hammer from Oakland? Oh,
Speaker 6: how's hip hop about that? Well, you know, I'm the
Speaker 6: only rapper from Oakland, Like, I'm never going on our senio.
Speaker 6: You're gonna sit on there and tell the whole fucking
Speaker 6: world lie Like he would do ship like that, and
Speaker 6: he was just that was that was his character.
Speaker 1: So he poked.
Speaker 6: I poked back, and it ain't got to a point
Speaker 6: where we were like, man, we should just let's just
Speaker 6: let's just go there with him. Let's just go there
Speaker 6: and just all out go there. And Louis Barrell, Hammer's
Speaker 6: big brother, he called us. He said, man, I heard
Speaker 6: you know, I know what's going on. I know I
Speaker 6: know who y'all know, I know all the ship. He's like, man,
Speaker 6: we just got off to r we come, you said,
Speaker 6: we're just getting off to her. Were coming home. We've
Speaker 6: been through hell out here on the road. Somebody had
Speaker 6: got killed all kind of should have happened. He was like,
Speaker 6: he's like like not asking, like, man, we're not coming
Speaker 6: home this bullshit, Like we're not, And it was it
Speaker 6: was so real. What he said was like all right,
Speaker 6: all right, it's all getting so so basically where escalated
Speaker 6: the most. It just took a phone call. It's like, man,
Speaker 6: we want this bullshit and it's because we all be
Speaker 6: We all been from family and friends from day one.
Speaker 1: Man, why couldn't I have it with Search?
Speaker 3: What was the record for for you when you were
Speaker 3: with Jive, which was the biggest selling record, Like when
Speaker 3: did it?
Speaker 6: Kind of because Life is bigger seller one, but it's
Speaker 6: sold I think a lot because of rumors.
Speaker 8: That's that was you get your the rumor where you're
Speaker 8: dead in your young career. I got.
Speaker 1: They thought you were dead.
Speaker 6: The album drop and so three hundred thousand copies out
Speaker 6: the gate. We jump on the tour at three hundred
Speaker 6: thousand sales, and we get off tours at eight hundred thousand.
Speaker 8: So the tour did a lot in that in that case.
Speaker 10: And.
Speaker 8: Get off tour and the sales go up to like
Speaker 8: about maybe like one point three. It's just hot. It's
Speaker 8: just going and then they killed me, they.
Speaker 3: Said to.
Speaker 8: Two Shirts got shot in the in the head in
Speaker 8: the crack house.
Speaker 6: Wow, And I was having I was having memorials in
Speaker 6: Texas and I was going for real, I was I
Speaker 6: was dead to a lot of people.
Speaker 1: And you know, you can't.
Speaker 6: You can't social media back then like you died. And
Speaker 6: it's slowly the story goes slowly. You couldn't put a
Speaker 6: k back calling, you know, to kty wire.
Speaker 8: Sales went out the room.
Speaker 3: Who's going to stop?
Speaker 8: Whos gonna stop?
Speaker 1: The rumor went to two million, But the crack out
Speaker 1: of damn yeah, man.
Speaker 8: Two Shirt is funny.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 8: I've had people walked up to me.
Speaker 6: It's me and my boy standing there, and the dude
Speaker 6: walk up and say, damn man, that's fucked up about
Speaker 6: two Shirts, Like what happened? Like, man, my uncle said,
Speaker 6: was that as a dope house last night? Two Shirts
Speaker 6: said the kitchen table on smoke coke all night. And
Speaker 6: then my boy like do you know what?
Speaker 5: You know what he looked like.
Speaker 8: You're like, man, I don't know what I'm just saying.
Speaker 3: Uncle.
Speaker 8: I'm standing right there, like knowing my uncle so much ship.
Speaker 3: What led to the uh your the retirement. I think
Speaker 3: I guess your first retirement.
Speaker 1: Get short to pimp out short?
Speaker 3: Oh man, we ain't short, we ain't get what the pimp?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you know, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: I just.
Speaker 1: Can you tell about the I don't know. I felt
Speaker 1: like that to me is the least where you even
Speaker 1: got more.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 1: I got on board, you know, early, because it's trek,
Speaker 1: but with with with making Jordan the pimp and and
Speaker 1: I guess so getting where you fit in came after that.
Speaker 3: Getting it.
Speaker 8: Shorty the pimp started some new ship with me.
Speaker 6: I had been working with Al Eaton, who was my guitar,
Speaker 6: playing keyboard, playing engineer, and Al It's really good friends
Speaker 6: with Felton Pilot.
Speaker 8: Felton Pilot was Felton Pilot was mc Hammer's guy.
Speaker 6: So they they got got all that money and sold
Speaker 6: all those records and they built this whole compound over
Speaker 6: in Freemont, California. That's when Hammer bought the big house
Speaker 6: up to Hill. They was like, you know, running running Freemont, California,
Speaker 6: and Al my guy. In between two short albums, he
Speaker 6: went over to visit Felton and when he came back,
Speaker 6: he was like, man, I've seen it. I got the vision,
Speaker 6: so I'm coming into our studio to make a new album.
Speaker 6: It's going to be the Shorty the Pimp album. And
Speaker 6: uh al, it's like, here's the new rules. That's the engineer, right,
Speaker 6: here's the new rules. He owns the studio and he
Speaker 6: got new rules. Can't say he got a white girlfriend,
Speaker 6: so he can't say the word nigger in his house
Speaker 6: no more. He's like, he's like, uh, I'm not really
Speaker 6: trying to have any like profanity in my house. He's like,
Speaker 6: he's like, and I'm ah, he's telling me I got
Speaker 6: the fucking deal. I'm the fucking artist. He's like, and
Speaker 6: we're gonna start making records for white people because hammering them.
Speaker 8: You see what they're doing over there.
Speaker 6: He's like, if you ain't making, you ain't making records
Speaker 6: with white people. Man, you gotta make I was like, man,
Speaker 6: how do you make records for white people?
Speaker 3: Like? How do you do that shit?
Speaker 6: And I'm all I can think about it like pop shit.
Speaker 6: I'm like, I'm not making no pop shit. He's playing
Speaker 6: these little beats, he's trying to be like felting and
Speaker 6: hammering them and trying to I'm like, so I called in.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm saying, Like you, I know, the temptation
Speaker 1: was there and you watching by this point, Park's about
Speaker 1: the about the digital underground, like all these these big
Speaker 1: area cats are just coming up and you just tunnel vision.
Speaker 1: Just how did you resist that temptation?
Speaker 6: So I got I had a guy on my team
Speaker 6: named and Banks, and Banks was part of a couple
Speaker 6: of crews. You know, in the early days he being around.
Speaker 6: I knew all about him. He worked at em An,
Speaker 6: then he worked with poor Man, and poor Man was
Speaker 6: to do everybody in the game had to have a
Speaker 6: drug dealer backing you. You had to have a money man.
Speaker 6: So Big Bruce was their money man. And Bruce was
Speaker 6: like my homie Homi because I knew all the kingpins.
Speaker 6: So Bruce got killed and then pooh Man and Banks
Speaker 6: and all and they were just kind of like out
Speaker 6: there a little bit, didn't have that structure.
Speaker 8: And I was on Jive platinum balling. I saw Banks
Speaker 8: at the cable company and he was like, you know,
Speaker 8: he went for it. He was in a little little
Speaker 8: little hoopy whatever. He just went for it.
Speaker 6: He was like, man, you know, I make beats or something.
Speaker 6: I was like, I know, I know you a man,
Speaker 6: and we decided he was gonna link up. This is
Speaker 6: the same exact time. I'm fucking at the cable company,
Speaker 6: probably hand my bill. I'm probably there because the ship
Speaker 6: got cut off or something, and I'm right, and you
Speaker 6: got to go there to get it cut back. Nigga
Speaker 6: wasn't paying bills on time back then. And then I'm
Speaker 6: at the present moment, mad in the fucking car by
Speaker 6: myself about this fucking ship with al and the fucking
Speaker 6: engineers fucking with me, and he won't fun. I'm trying
Speaker 6: to make this music and he's fucking trying to get
Speaker 6: me to work on these white cass tracks and be
Speaker 6: like hammering. I'm like, so, I'm telling Banks the situation.
Speaker 6: He's like, all right, I'm coming to the studio tomorrow.
Speaker 6: Then I find a guy at the same time. This
Speaker 6: motherfucker was riding a tense speed with a backpack with
Speaker 6: a pistol in it, with a bunch of heroin, and
Speaker 6: he fucking he's from d C's from Maryland, from uh,
Speaker 6: from landover Maryland, and he fucking uh is really good
Speaker 6: friends with George Clinton and and and and Michael Hampton
Speaker 6: and all those guys. He's like, he's he's a student
Speaker 6: of you know, he's he got to play with a
Speaker 6: who is the who is the Problem's best fucking guitar player,
Speaker 6: the other one.
Speaker 1: Before Jerry shrind Uh.
Speaker 6: So Shorty B was a student of Eddie and fucking
Speaker 6: Mike Hampton. So he fucking knew all this ship. He
Speaker 6: could play Parliament anything inside out. He was like, I
Speaker 6: knew he was a drug dealer. I knew the crew
Speaker 6: he was, you know whatever. He's like, come over to
Speaker 6: the Acorn Projects. I know it's an Acorn niggas, So
Speaker 6: I'm not wasn't scared to go to Acorns, he said,
Speaker 6: coming to Acorn Projects. He sits in front of his
Speaker 6: fucking uh part projects where he lived, brings an amp
Speaker 6: out on the guitar and the guitar and just sits
Speaker 6: there and shows me all this ship he could do.
Speaker 6: So I'm like, you need to come to the studio.
Speaker 6: Let's go, because I knew the funk. He's playing the funk.
Speaker 6: So I get Shorty B and Banks to come to
Speaker 6: the studio with me at the same time, and I'm like,
Speaker 6: I walk in on al eating like watch this ship.
Speaker 6: And I was at the time he was, he was
Speaker 6: fucking with me, man, because he I wasn't with the ship.
Speaker 6: The niggas was just for more money or just he
Speaker 6: wanted to be like them, man. Really, he wanted to
Speaker 6: be like them bad. He named his fucking dog short Dog,
Speaker 6: and he was sucking.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 6: I come back to make a new album. He keeps
Speaker 6: saying shit, his dog short, Shit the fuck down.
Speaker 8: I'm like, this is.
Speaker 1: We're about to kill this nigga up in here.
Speaker 6: So on top of that, he's doing this new thing
Speaker 6: and he's going He's like, ah, fuck the fucking computer rebooted.
Speaker 8: And then he says there and does like this. So
Speaker 8: he did that ship to me for like two days.
Speaker 6: I come back with and Banks and Shorty b and
Speaker 6: Banks is like, hey, how you worked this shit and
Speaker 6: something something, And I was trying to resist, and Banks
Speaker 6: is like, look, just sit over here and just I'm
Speaker 6: gonna ask you whenever I can't work. So I'm ask
Speaker 6: no more computer glitches, no more motherfucking working glitch. We
Speaker 6: we made Shorty de PMP and I feel like the
Speaker 6: next albums, Getting Where You Fit In Cocktails, Getting It
Speaker 6: were all a little bit better because we didn't have
Speaker 6: that early fucking battle and Shorty PP probably would have
Speaker 6: been just as great, because that's when we took the
Speaker 6: journey on the fucking freestyle and the guitars and the
Speaker 6: bass and and we and we bought a Digital Underground
Speaker 6: keyboard player pee Weee over could Shorty Be my guitar player?
Speaker 6: Used to go do a lot of tracks with Shot too,
Speaker 6: And a lot of people don't know that Digital Underground too.
Speaker 6: Short We were using the same musicians during the same years,
Speaker 6: two pockeys coming around all the time, hanging around with
Speaker 6: Shorty Be and Pee Wee. It was just, you know,
Speaker 6: we were we were really into the musicianship and we
Speaker 6: fucking we sat out. He set him on the sidelines.
Speaker 6: So what what is he doing now?
Speaker 1: Like in terms of.
Speaker 8: Which one Al, I heard rumors that Al passed away.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure I've had you guys lost contact with each.
Speaker 3: I really.
Speaker 6: I can't remember the reason why I was so fucking
Speaker 6: mad at him, But there was a time where he
Speaker 6: was coming back, going, man, let's work together, and I
Speaker 6: was like, fuck that. And I'm still salty about I'm
Speaker 6: still salty about the old ship man. So is that
Speaker 6: still Okand and Banks is in Arizona.
Speaker 1: No, when I met you when we first started coming out,
Speaker 1: I think you were living in Atlanta at the time, Like,
Speaker 1: why would you choose Atlanta? Like what makes It's just
Speaker 1: a change of pace or scene areas.
Speaker 6: Nineteen ninety two, nineteen ninety three. Checked the stats. Those
Speaker 6: were the most violent years in the history of Oakland
Speaker 6: as far.
Speaker 3: As murders go.
Speaker 8: And it's wild as hell. It's been wild as hell
Speaker 8: some years lately.
Speaker 3: It was so wild.
Speaker 6: At one point I told the young homies. IU was like, man,
Speaker 6: it was way wilder back then. There's like no fucking way.
Speaker 6: So we sat there and looked up the murder stats.
Speaker 6: I'm like, and y'all, y'all ain't we was up in
Speaker 6: the numbers, like niggas, was getting knocked down a lot,
Speaker 6: and it was a very violent city for the reasons
Speaker 6: of That's when they started locking up the kingpins, right
Speaker 6: and then all that, Like, you know, we got Port
Speaker 6: of Oakland, and Port of Oakland is bigger than the
Speaker 6: Port of San Francisco, So you know, wherever you got
Speaker 6: those Baltimore type cities with the port, that motherfucking duck
Speaker 6: was finding his way. So you wonder why a city like,
Speaker 6: Oakland is what it is. It's because we had the
Speaker 6: army base. We had a Navy base right in Alameda,
Speaker 6: right next door. We had all this military shit, all
Speaker 6: this pimp shit, all this fucking dope shit, and it
Speaker 6: just made this little ass town, which was also part
Speaker 6: of a large metropolitan area. The Bay Area is probably
Speaker 6: you know, seven million people or some shit. So even
Speaker 6: though you like Oakland's population is less than five hundred thousand,
Speaker 6: we're still in this big metropolitan area. And Oakland is
Speaker 6: the place where if you fucking thirty miles away you
Speaker 6: want to come get the best dope. You're like, I'm
Speaker 6: about to drive down to Oakland. A lot of times
Speaker 6: when you set up shops selling dope, the customers aren't
Speaker 6: from the city. They come jumping off the freeway from
Speaker 6: the suburbs, come get that get shit, and go right
Speaker 6: back home. So Oakland was that city where there was
Speaker 6: a lot, a lot, a lot of fucking you know,
Speaker 6: just street money, all that shit and all that type
Speaker 6: of shit.
Speaker 1: So for self preservation reasons, you like, I gotta get out.
Speaker 1: I got out of here.
Speaker 5: But you picked Atlanta out of any place.
Speaker 6: Well, ninety ninety three, it was a whole lot of
Speaker 6: money and a lot of king pins getting put away.
Speaker 6: So when the king pins get put away, second in
Speaker 6: charge might not be the same leader. Third in charge
Speaker 6: might not be the same kind of leader. And then
Speaker 6: you start fighting for leadership and it gets it just
Speaker 6: the little armies break off in the little factions, and
Speaker 6: who once were homies are now knocking each other down.
Speaker 6: So I'm sitting here hanging with the homies. I'm getting
Speaker 6: phone calls like you still hanging around the niggas.
Speaker 3: Huh.
Speaker 6: I'm like whatever, we all used to be homies, Like
Speaker 6: when nigga ain't the homies now and I'm taking right now, Nigga,
Speaker 6: I'm not trying to miss you.
Speaker 8: If you with them, I ain't trying to miss you.
Speaker 8: So this is my friends telling me that whoa.
Speaker 1: Okay, So just saying that once you get established, do
Speaker 1: you still stay in the same area that you were,
Speaker 1: I mean, by the point you were too short.
Speaker 6: I bought a house sixty miles outside the city with
Speaker 6: the pool and all that shit. But then we had
Speaker 6: a house in the city with the studio in it,
Speaker 6: and you know, right on the corner right and the
Speaker 6: open everything, you know, and then I fucking I every
Speaker 6: day of my life was just in the streets. Even
Speaker 6: when I was platinum, I was standing on the corner
Speaker 6: with the drug dealers and I hadn't.
Speaker 8: It took a long time. Kind of Atlanta kind of
Speaker 8: got me out of that.
Speaker 6: Like before I moved to Atlanta, I knew for a fact,
Speaker 6: in the midst of the drug war, which was a
Speaker 6: major drug war, in the midst of it, I was
Speaker 6: so close to it that it is no way I
Speaker 6: could I could have avoided it. Well, you know, what
Speaker 6: was a everything to happen. I was gonna either be
Speaker 6: real close to something or it's gonna happen. And I
Speaker 6: didn't pick Atlanta. I didn't choose to move. I didn't
Speaker 6: say I'm leaving this ship. You know, we all played
Speaker 6: it like it's supposed to play it.
Speaker 8: During the war.
Speaker 6: You kind of play it low key and watch your
Speaker 6: fucking back as much as possible. But I went to
Speaker 6: the Freaknik. The Freaknick is the time that Freaknick was
Speaker 6: my birthday weekend, So I get to Freaknik.
Speaker 3: What is college is a black college? Marty Gry Yeah,
Speaker 3: in Atlanta, in.
Speaker 8: Atlanta, but this already used to me.
Speaker 6: I think the last year was what ninety five they
Speaker 6: tried to bring it back in like nineties. Ninety five
Speaker 6: was terrible, ninety six was vacant, and yeah, they tried
Speaker 6: to bring it back.
Speaker 8: And so the Freaknik in.
Speaker 6: Nineteen ninety two, which I didn't go, was this big
Speaker 6: ass picnic that just was the best picnic anybody ever
Speaker 6: fucking went to.
Speaker 8: So in ninety three the word was out, you gotta
Speaker 8: go to Freaknik.
Speaker 3: It got to me.
Speaker 8: I'm like, we're going to see what this shit is.
Speaker 5: And it shuts Atlanta down, like it's shut the certain pockets.
Speaker 5: You just you can't drive.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So I leave violin ass Oakland and pop up
Speaker 6: in Atlanta. And Atlanta is so much different. In Oakland
Speaker 6: and Oakland. If I see a police officer, if we
Speaker 6: just make eye contact, we're gonna have it.
Speaker 8: We gotta have a conversation. He's got to pull me over,
Speaker 8: fuck with me, right, fake ticket, real ticket, whatever ticket,
Speaker 8: and we just just fuck with you. In Atlanta, you
Speaker 8: pull up next to the cop, he's like, man, Wow.
Speaker 6: So I'm like experiencing all this fucking shit that ain't
Speaker 6: happening at home, and it's like parties and shit, with
Speaker 6: people really partying. Ain't nobody getting shot, and it's like
Speaker 6: people in the streets just having a good time at
Speaker 6: all these college campuses and shitting.
Speaker 8: And I was just like, fuck, well, the freaknik ended.
Speaker 8: I didn't leave.
Speaker 6: I stayed for another two weeks, and then I told
Speaker 6: one of my homies who is from Oakland living in Atlanta.
Speaker 6: I said, man, I'm about to go buy a house
Speaker 6: in Oakland, probably gonna spend sid I'm probably spending about
Speaker 6: five hundred thousand and get something up in the hill somewhere.
Speaker 6: And he was like, let me show you what you
Speaker 6: get for five hundred thousand in Atlanta.
Speaker 3: So in a state.
Speaker 6: We just looked at the houses and shit. And I
Speaker 6: went back to Oakland. Funerals, shootouts, all this shit. Not mean,
Speaker 6: but I'm saying, but it's just going down.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 6: I'm like literally, like the homies that I know, like
Speaker 6: we all were a big click of homies. They're killing
Speaker 6: each other. And it's a small as city, so it's
Speaker 6: real easy to kill them, motherfucking the small ast city
Speaker 6: because they ain't nowhere to hide. So I wait till August,
Speaker 6: and we prepped to go to were prepared to go
Speaker 6: to Jack the Rapper in Atlanta, and it just was
Speaker 6: I didn't I wasn't going out there to buy a house,
Speaker 6: but I was just so in love with the freaking
Speaker 6: experience and so looking forward to the Jack the Rapper experience.
Speaker 6: When I get there, I just snuck off from everybody
Speaker 6: and literally went and bought a house.
Speaker 3: And just.
Speaker 6: Southwest Atlanta, So I snuck and bought a house. It
Speaker 6: just was like I gave him three thousand, picked out
Speaker 6: my live picked out the house I wanted, and started
Speaker 6: the processing ship and didn't tell anybody. I didn't tell
Speaker 6: nobody until the ship was like really gonna happen and
Speaker 6: I started putting my crew together. Man, I was like
Speaker 6: telling y'all, fuck with me. With me, I helped a
Speaker 6: lot of people Relokay.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, were you rolling in your Oakland years?
Speaker 1: Like how deep were you rolling? As far as like
Speaker 1: when there's a too short show? Whatever are you you
Speaker 1: never heard? I mean, were you ten deep? Nine hundred deep?
Speaker 8: You're like, I bring like two hundred niggas everywhere I go.
Speaker 3: I'm everywhere.
Speaker 5: Why too short?
Speaker 6: Why we would go to shows and I would like
Speaker 6: we would do shows like maybe like drive an hour
Speaker 6: outside of Oakland, and I'm like, all right, look man.
Speaker 1: How would you get them there? We all drive overhead.
Speaker 3: How do you remember everybody's name?
Speaker 6: I have homies I've been knowing for twenty five years.
Speaker 6: I don't know they fucking name Homey, Homey Homie.
Speaker 3: I'm like, you can't.
Speaker 6: So look, everybody had cars, everybody had money, and a
Speaker 6: two short shows like a field trip. It was like,
Speaker 6: We're gonna drive fast on the freeway. The highway patrol
Speaker 6: aint gonna catch us because they gonna see fifty cars speeding.
Speaker 8: Who's gonna get caught?
Speaker 1: Not me?
Speaker 3: That was that was our thing.
Speaker 6: To get on the freeway, do one hundred something miles
Speaker 6: an hour and lawless and just we were all twenty
Speaker 6: three years old and fucking with a bunch of crack money.
Speaker 3: I was.
Speaker 6: I was the rapper selling a million records, and I
Speaker 6: was the brokenst one in the crew. So I was,
Speaker 6: you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: I was.
Speaker 6: I wasn't nothing. I was nowhere up in status in
Speaker 6: the crew. I was the rapper, like the mascot. So
Speaker 6: we go to the show and I'd be like, look man,
Speaker 6: and one thing about our crew is we didn't have
Speaker 6: a leader. Nobody could ever say they was a leader.
Speaker 6: So everybody was fucking just like I'm gonna do the
Speaker 6: fuck I want to do. You could reason with some people,
Speaker 6: but you can't. Nobody could boss anybody. So I'd be like, look, man,
Speaker 6: we're going to do this show. These people, look at
Speaker 6: the crowd is here. I'm like, let's not beat up
Speaker 6: the people that came to see too short because some
Speaker 6: shows they'd be like, man, so and so got disrespected,
Speaker 6: and I be on stage watching my guys beat up
Speaker 6: my fans.
Speaker 3: I'm like stop.
Speaker 8: And then I was the promoter.
Speaker 6: I give the promoter hell, like I didn't even say
Speaker 6: some shit like, man, let us all in this motherfucker.
Speaker 8: We don't have to all be backstage. Let my guys
Speaker 8: in the crowd. That was my thing.
Speaker 6: Just let them all in because I was like I
Speaker 6: can't go in, like it can't happen. And then to
Speaker 6: be crying, oh blah blah. I'm like, dude, okay, man,
Speaker 6: just check a thousand off my prices and we're all
Speaker 6: going in.
Speaker 8: We're going in.
Speaker 6: I used to push push security out the way all
Speaker 6: that ship just like this, like guess the.
Speaker 8: Funk out the way we're going anyway, and we just walking.
Speaker 8: I had a bad rap at.
Speaker 5: First, Yeah, cause y'all took up all the space in
Speaker 5: the club.
Speaker 8: I had a bad rap at first. It was bad.
Speaker 1: So how did they take you? Just not being there?
Speaker 3: So look at this.
Speaker 6: So when I moved to Atlanta, I literally I was.
Speaker 6: It was not a move, it was a movement. I
Speaker 6: rallied up a whole bunch of motherfuckers. I brought a
Speaker 6: whole I brought my immediate staff. I had everybody relocated.
Speaker 6: I helped everybody get you got a place, you gotta move,
Speaker 6: we gotta get your car, like whatever the fuck you
Speaker 6: need to do.
Speaker 8: And banks came.
Speaker 6: We all came, We we came. We showed up literally
Speaker 6: literally with like a mob. And then we recruited a
Speaker 6: bunch of our college kids who were out there already.
Speaker 6: We found the homies that have been living out there already.
Speaker 6: We just started a whole click. We linked up with
Speaker 6: the l A crew because you know, I got a
Speaker 6: bunch of cousins and family. Man vill tell you how
Speaker 6: Deeple was in Atlanta. We had a we had a
Speaker 6: fucking army Johns from day one.
Speaker 3: So so.
Speaker 6: I mean, I showed up in Atlanta with a cause, man,
Speaker 6: like you know, I was fucking I had already been
Speaker 6: coming out there since like eighty nine and shit, doing
Speaker 6: shows and signing autographs and records, record in stores and
Speaker 6: ship and coming back to go to Magic City when
Speaker 6: I when I get when I do the show, we
Speaker 6: go to Magic City after the You know, I knew
Speaker 6: that Atlanta style.
Speaker 8: I had friends in Atlanta. People don't even know I
Speaker 8: lived in Atlanta for a year.
Speaker 5: Wait, so can we talk about that right there though,
Speaker 5: right just right there to being in Atlanta, the strip
Speaker 5: culture and the difference between that and in the Oakland scene.
Speaker 3: We didn't have no strip clubs.
Speaker 5: I mean, I figured so when you got to Atlanta, clubs.
Speaker 8: And strip clubs in San Francisco are like really just
Speaker 8: for prostitution, right.
Speaker 5: So, but when you got to Atlanta, it was like,
Speaker 5: I mean, I know from living in Atlanta different I.
Speaker 1: Got to Atlanta.
Speaker 6: You get a table dance of five dollars, and fucking uh,
Speaker 6: you can go to spend one hundred dollars bill all
Speaker 6: night and get dances all night for five dollars.
Speaker 1: Them days over though, days over days over.
Speaker 6: When I got that, you could be like every strip
Speaker 6: club had a photographer with a polaroid and you could
Speaker 6: be like, I want a picture with that bitch, and
Speaker 6: then she would come over and she'ld be butt ass
Speaker 6: naked and he's like, just put one hand on her
Speaker 6: vagina or something.
Speaker 3: Take a picture.
Speaker 5: That's like before NIS before gentleman club.
Speaker 8: All right, look, no, bend over and spread your pussy
Speaker 8: for my picture. Wow, And they do it. That was
Speaker 8: that was like normal.
Speaker 1: How much? How much?
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm just pricing things out, he said, how much?
Speaker 1: For the say about it.
Speaker 8: Back then, the pussy was uh, some caliweed and some
Speaker 8: probably like some food.
Speaker 5: It's not like another country.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 6: Strippers used to tell me I heard you got that caliweed.
Speaker 6: I'm like, yeah, we're going to kick and smoked. I
Speaker 6: used to keep something on me, let him smell the bag,
Speaker 6: like nigga, where are you going after this?
Speaker 1: Wow?
Speaker 8: Not anymore.
Speaker 1: Now. I mean Month was made about the album number ten,
Speaker 1: getting it record as a retirement record. And if we
Speaker 1: know anything about life, black people.
Speaker 8: Don't ever time, especially that rappers, especially not rappers.
Speaker 1: But of course, my sucker, I think that might be
Speaker 1: my favorite record. That's my I love that record. I
Speaker 1: was like, oh man, it's this last record. Damn. But
Speaker 1: I mean, what made you start that campaign knowing that
Speaker 1: you weren't gonna get out?
Speaker 6: It was it was a numbers It was my tenth album, right,
Speaker 6: it was. I was thirty years old and at the time,
Speaker 6: thirty something year old rapper was like, oh.
Speaker 8: Last nigga rapper that was.
Speaker 6: That was like, man, you're really about to be a
Speaker 6: granddadd rapp. So it was just a play on the numbers.
Speaker 6: I felt like at that time, in nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 6: you could not find rappers that had ten albums, even
Speaker 6: your favorite rappers and have ten albums and then just
Speaker 6: to make that statement album number ten.
Speaker 3: That's why I named it that.
Speaker 6: It was like I was just sitting there saying, you know, look, man,
Speaker 6: I've been and out of the ten I got plaques.
Speaker 6: I was really just bragging. And the whole retirement was
Speaker 6: like some big willy shit, you know, cigar shit, yah retired,
Speaker 6: throw the retirement party. We thought it out as a
Speaker 6: promo thing that the retirement party would be the dopest
Speaker 6: album release party ever, you know, and it was. It
Speaker 6: got a lot of fucking attention. Like I've heard about it.
Speaker 6: So saying I retired was probably like the best marketing plan.
Speaker 1: I ever had.
Speaker 3: What was your deal with job? How many albums did
Speaker 3: you have on your contract?
Speaker 6: I had like one album after that, And part of
Speaker 6: the reason was to wake the motherfucker's up too. I
Speaker 6: was like, if I'm hanging around, I want a whole
Speaker 6: lot of more money.
Speaker 8: And this it was.
Speaker 6: You know. But I fucked up though, because at that
Speaker 6: point I could have got the funk out of there,
Speaker 6: and I had no idea that in a couple of
Speaker 6: years the jive was gonna fucking.
Speaker 8: Stick that Dick and Britney Spears and forget all about.
Speaker 5: Hip hop wow for a long time.
Speaker 6: And they stole in sync from R C A Records
Speaker 6: and they was like, fuck hip hop.
Speaker 8: I remember an a n R guy, a n R lawyer.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say what was like dealing with Barry Wiss
Speaker 1: and just in general.
Speaker 3: I remember a n R lawyer.
Speaker 8: I think his name is Peter Thea.
Speaker 3: Peter. I hated Peter the Peter. They tried to sign us.
Speaker 3: They try to sign a little brother.
Speaker 8: Okay, Peter THEA told me one day.
Speaker 1: R C Now, well, he's he's our status of person
Speaker 1: like he knews.
Speaker 6: Every Jive was selling tons of in sync Backstreet and
Speaker 6: Britney Spears, and they were totally neglecting R.
Speaker 8: Kelly and everything R and B and hip hop. And
Speaker 8: I'm sitting there having a.
Speaker 6: Conversation with Peter Thea about the next thing, and you know,
Speaker 6: every everything, So uh us not in the budget. I know,
Speaker 6: mother fuck you guys got the biggest groups in the business.
Speaker 6: How do you have a budget? So Peter THEA said
Speaker 6: to me one day, it's today. I totally stopped liking
Speaker 6: Jive Records. I went from like just dealing with it
Speaker 6: and doing the business and like, I don't like you anymore.
Speaker 6: He said, we're getting back in the rap game. I said,
Speaker 6: when did you get out? Like, what the did that happen?
Speaker 6: I was like, whoa they they got out the rap game.
Speaker 6: I didn't even know.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 1: So it's as far as like movement to concern and stuff. Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, I mean, first of all, buy you something, Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: I love that record, favorite joints ever. But I mean
Speaker 1: you've also done like historical collaborations with.
Speaker 6: By you something as dope as fuck. Because we're at
Speaker 6: the studio, there's a felt like it was done just
Speaker 6: further move a drum set in the studio that only
Speaker 6: has and I always kept the set in there miked
Speaker 6: up because I like to get like a little feel
Speaker 6: or a little like a little snare the loop or something. No,
Speaker 6: that wasn't me, So I think I think we always
Speaker 6: had a lot of drummer around. Don't know if it
Speaker 6: could have been Tony t from DC, it could have been,
Speaker 6: could have been Pee we Pee. We played drums and
Speaker 6: Shorty we played drums. They all can play anything. So
Speaker 6: somebody saund the drums to start kicking that beat and
Speaker 6: it's only like a little ass set with like maybe
Speaker 6: one time one one crash and I had snare bass
Speaker 6: drum and fucking guitar only had like two strings on it.
Speaker 6: So somebody starts kicking the drum and then Shorty b
Speaker 6: hiss the bassline right boom, hitting the chord he likes
Speaker 6: played the chords on the base. Got that from a
Speaker 6: Eddie Hazel. So really that's the Parliament thing that the
Speaker 6: base chorus all soulf all blooesy and shit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so.
Speaker 6: They start playing that beat and then fucking Eric Sermon
Speaker 6: freestyle diverse, which y'all know ha ha I no pen,
Speaker 6: no paper. So it was instantly that song, his first verse,
Speaker 6: that beat, that baseline, it was like, that's the ship
Speaker 6: that like, just leave that that that I wrote my
Speaker 6: rap and it was a song.
Speaker 8: It was just it was two minutes and something long.
Speaker 1: It was where did y'all recorded?
Speaker 8: At my studio and Atlanta.
Speaker 5: I literally always thought that song was too short night
Speaker 5: even being funny, but that's just funny that you said that.
Speaker 8: Yeah, because it just happened like that.
Speaker 6: And then we immediately we took the rough copy to
Speaker 6: the club, the fucking staticky copy, and it just instantly,
Speaker 6: just instantly did it.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 8: Eric Simon played a trick on me too.
Speaker 6: I never really had a lot of New York love,
Speaker 6: not a lot of a lot of fans or anything, like,
Speaker 6: not a sales or anything. And he asked me, would
Speaker 6: I come fly up to the Apollo and do that
Speaker 6: to do that song? During the show they were doing
Speaker 6: a Death Squad show, you know, not the ex sermon
Speaker 6: show with Death Squad with all him.
Speaker 8: Yeah, so you're gonna.
Speaker 6: Gonna bring you out, so you know, I'm cool, I'm
Speaker 6: I'm chilling, and you know, I'm just gonna do the
Speaker 6: ship whatever.
Speaker 8: But he didn't tell me that the record had broke
Speaker 8: in New York and that they were loving it.
Speaker 1: You didn't know.
Speaker 8: I didn't know. I was in Atlanta. I didn't know.
Speaker 6: Played the trick on me. Man put me out on stage.
Speaker 6: The motherfuckers. The song came on, they went crazy. I
Speaker 6: came out. They went even crazier, and I'm like, when
Speaker 6: did this time? I remember arguing with a dude on
Speaker 6: the elevator that I told him. He was like, he's
Speaker 6: the He's the bellman in New York City and he
Speaker 6: was like, so what do you do? I'm like, I rap,
Speaker 6: Like where you're rapping wrap everywhere. You're like, what's your
Speaker 6: rapp name? Too short?
Speaker 3: Like oh yeah, you know.
Speaker 8: He asked us a question.
Speaker 6: Somehow it gets to I do shows with a big
Speaker 6: Daddy came. He's like the funk out of here. I'm like,
Speaker 6: I'm like, shit, Big Day can't open.
Speaker 5: For me, and he's like out here now You're.
Speaker 8: Like, now you bullshit?
Speaker 3: Yeah, That's why I wanted to ask you because when
Speaker 3: you moved to Atlanta. That kind of makes sense to
Speaker 3: me because I'm from the South, from North Carolina, but
Speaker 3: like the South and the Bay always seem to have
Speaker 3: some kind of kinshit, like y'all some country niggas, and
Speaker 3: like we always got it. But like in the South,
Speaker 3: like your records always ran so like did you at
Speaker 3: the time when you w on job and just throughout
Speaker 3: your career, had you generally sell more records in the
Speaker 3: South than like in the North.
Speaker 6: For I'm also one of them kids who spent every
Speaker 6: summer in New Orleans. So I'm there for the sound
Speaker 6: of New Orleans, the whole second line, vibe the mighty
Speaker 6: grass and buy you classics. I'm there for that ship
Speaker 6: to bellow the bands. I'm a kid looking at that
Speaker 6: shit the whole way. The marching band's going by Mardi Gras,
Speaker 6: Paris and all the shit. My cousin's marching the band.
Speaker 6: I'm marching the band. But we played and stepped and turned.
Speaker 6: Then niggas marching the band. They danced and doing everything already,
Speaker 6: So so uh, I just think I when I started
Speaker 6: making records, there was a bounce in New Orleans. It's
Speaker 6: like to you swing the beat and they like do
Speaker 6: a little different dance. And I made a song called
Speaker 6: Iron't Tripping, just trying to do that New Orleans bounce,
Speaker 6: and I would always go in there and try to
Speaker 6: do something that on my rag. I'm like, they're gonna
Speaker 6: like this in New or they're gonna like this in
Speaker 6: in in Texas or something. I would know about certain
Speaker 6: sounds in certain places my way on, not like not
Speaker 6: like pandering exactly right. So I always like knew how
Speaker 6: to just work the drums to you know, you know,
Speaker 6: when you got go go drums, You're like, oh, that's
Speaker 6: go go drums, you know what I mean. So that
Speaker 6: was that I was in tune with the South, and
Speaker 6: I think a lot of rappers who jumped on the
Speaker 6: bandwagon later, producers, rappers, whatever, they kind of adapted to
Speaker 6: it as it became.
Speaker 8: I was there from day one on the South Ship.
Speaker 3: I was.
Speaker 6: They had records that they had dances that just went
Speaker 6: with two short songs, you know, So I was. I
Speaker 6: fucking came to Myths Coliseum and came out on stage.
Speaker 6: The first song was I Ain't Tripping Them motherfuckers jumped
Speaker 6: out their seats and started dancing like ant Farm doing
Speaker 6: some shit called the gangster Walk. I'm like, what the fuck?
Speaker 6: That ship looks crazy?
Speaker 8: To a performer?
Speaker 1: Were you were? You genuinely shocked at as far as
Speaker 1: like the well the cameos that you later did.
Speaker 6: Stuff, and the retirement also brought that. On the retirement announcement,
Speaker 6: they were like, well before you go, let me get averse.
Speaker 6: Let me get averse. And then it was Eric Sermon.
Speaker 6: It was me being on uh big East Biggie song,
Speaker 6: and then jay Z because I had this that was big,
Speaker 6: jay Z was like, you gotta do something. So then
Speaker 6: jay Z, I got on jay Z and then Foxy Brown,
Speaker 6: so I don't have another fucking start car. And I
Speaker 6: was like, but I also figured something else out to
Speaker 6: Living in Atlanta, we had a friendly East Coast West
Speaker 6: coast rivalry on you know, hej play certain songs. We
Speaker 6: try to see who turned up the most. And I
Speaker 6: actually started making friends with New York people so.
Speaker 5: Because they was out of the element too, so.
Speaker 1: It's neutral ground.
Speaker 8: So when I got to Atlanta, I started taking more
Speaker 8: trips to New York.
Speaker 6: It started, you know, I'm hanging out in fucking Washington
Speaker 6: Heights and I'm doing different ship and it's not so
Speaker 6: isolated to me anymore. And Trench is taking me around
Speaker 6: New York to fucking crazy ass areas at four o'clock
Speaker 6: in the morning and ship, I'm.
Speaker 1: Wrong?
Speaker 3: When did how did the record?
Speaker 1: You did call Me?
Speaker 3: Record with Little Kim for the Booty.
Speaker 6: Call Me was a Jives idea for they got the
Speaker 6: Booty Calls soundtrack. They're like, it'd be double if you
Speaker 6: did it. It's Booty called You used to do a
Speaker 6: record Little Kim. So they parlayd the ship, probably gave
Speaker 6: her a nice little chunck of chain started to come
Speaker 6: do the ship. We get in the studio in New York.
Speaker 6: We worked at Battery Studios, and we we came up
Speaker 6: with the idea to call me. It was originally the
Speaker 6: sample actually you know if you that's where it started,
Speaker 6: and we later determined we didn't want to use the
Speaker 6: sample and we changed the melody a little bit, but
Speaker 6: just kept calling me. We sat in the studio, we
Speaker 6: got the vibe and we're like, cool, we owned something.
Speaker 6: So this is what we're gonna do. I got a
Speaker 6: dope ass studio in Atlanta. We're gonna fly you on
Speaker 6: your folks down. This this meet a Little Kim. We're
Speaker 6: gonna fly you on your folks down, and we're gonna
Speaker 6: finish the song up and get the money whatever.
Speaker 8: So Jiver is in on the play. I'm in on
Speaker 8: the ship.
Speaker 6: We booked the flights for Kim and her manager, get
Speaker 6: them first class New York to Atlanta. I'm like, this
Speaker 6: little Kim, you know, I know, Biggie's my homie and
Speaker 6: Kim is his chick, So I'm respectful. I'm not gonna
Speaker 6: there's no plan to try to fuck little Kim. And
Speaker 6: I'm like, I'm gonna treat her like royalty. She's gonna
Speaker 6: get you know, to the help, to the studio, she's
Speaker 6: gonna get back home, sa nigga.
Speaker 8: I'm there to pick her up. And Biggie comes walking
Speaker 8: out the airport. No Kim, Oh, And he's like, and so,
Speaker 8: what's up with you? And what y'all doing? Like we're
Speaker 8: doing what.
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 6: But he played it cool though. He's like they're doing
Speaker 6: a song for the Booty Calls soundtrack. He's like, Oh, yeah,
Speaker 6: she missed her plane. Shes gonna be in the next plane.
Speaker 6: He kind of screamed me if I had the right answers.
Speaker 3: Wow wow. But she did finally come. She came in
Speaker 3: next fight.
Speaker 6: I took him to my mama's house, fed him some
Speaker 6: some U some some some soul food dinner from that night.
Speaker 6: I had just got a shipment of two answers of
Speaker 6: some good ass California weed, which was really hard to
Speaker 6: get at the time, and I sold him one. I
Speaker 6: didn't give it to him, that's right, and everything was cool.
Speaker 6: She got on, She got on the next plane. We
Speaker 6: worked on the song and it was cool.
Speaker 3: Another soundtrack question, the Juice soundtrack, mc pool, Who was
Speaker 3: that you? That's my artist? It was, but it wasn't.
Speaker 8: I thought that's pooh Man and he was poor.
Speaker 3: Man, yeah, and he he always I thought murder him.
Speaker 3: I thought it was you.
Speaker 8: He tried to make my voices.
Speaker 1: He was young.
Speaker 6: He tried to do my voice like a lot of
Speaker 6: you know, he tried to do two short voices. Poor
Speaker 6: Man is a big motherfucker to to be trying.
Speaker 3: To because I thought I saw pictures of him in
Speaker 3: the sores, but I didn't know if it was you know,
Speaker 3: I didn't know if that was covered thought.
Speaker 1: That sucks bunny. Murder was damn, we're right here, right here.
Speaker 3: So he was someone. He was a totally different guy.
Speaker 1: Poor Man is he he's uh, he's still around, Okay.
Speaker 6: I brought him on stage I did a thirtieth anniversary
Speaker 6: show my band and brought him out.
Speaker 1: Gotcha, gotcha? So with with with the rise of Okay.
Speaker 3: With with?
Speaker 1: When I heard you on uh the Van's joint h
Speaker 1: and someone was like, I forgot who it was. It's like, yeah, man,
Speaker 1: you know short used to be in the skate parts
Speaker 1: and on you were just so.
Speaker 8: The group that did the pack. So these were some
Speaker 8: kids that just were from Berkeley, Man.
Speaker 6: So I was going to do a show up in
Speaker 6: the way up north cast somewhere where we had to
Speaker 6: leave from the Bay and drive three hours in. The
Speaker 6: promoter had a driver, you know, come get us in
Speaker 6: a van, and this motherfucker played the Pack on their
Speaker 6: little mixtapes and he played and I was like, I
Speaker 6: was like, what is that you listen to?
Speaker 8: He said the Pack.
Speaker 6: I was like, play it again. We had long ass ride.
Speaker 6: We listened to it two times. I was like, you
Speaker 6: know then he was like yeah, I know him, and uh.
Speaker 6: I was like, man, I need to meet them. So
Speaker 6: the van dude, he was like, I'm gonna hook you
Speaker 6: up with him. So we talking and ship and he's
Speaker 6: gonna hook me up with the Pack. So we were
Speaker 6: planning on meeting at a Hamburger stand and four dudes
Speaker 6: showed up, but they wasn't.
Speaker 8: A pack and.
Speaker 1: Screening you before.
Speaker 6: So the dudes is like then it's like, so, look, man,
Speaker 6: we just want to know how we're gonna get paid
Speaker 6: and what you know when we're gonna get in the studio.
Speaker 8: And I'm like, I'm like, dude, what the.
Speaker 6: Fuck are you talking about? You got a Hennessy bottle
Speaker 6: in his hand. He's like, man, he's talking to you right.
Speaker 6: And I happened to borrow my Homies Bentley that day.
Speaker 6: I never buy Bentley's and Rolls, races and ship because
Speaker 6: I just I'm just like a Porsche of Mercedes with
Speaker 6: I mean, my homies Bentley. I'm pulling up like Big
Speaker 6: Willie at the Hamburger staying and these motherfuckers are barking
Speaker 6: out orders to me on how this relationship is gonna work.
Speaker 8: And then he's like, I'm like, so, which one of
Speaker 8: y'all is the pack?
Speaker 1: Who's the pack?
Speaker 8: He's like, look, man, we're from Berkeley, like the pack,
Speaker 8: but we ain't the pack.
Speaker 1: The pack first, before you can get to the pack,
Speaker 1: you gotta go through us first.
Speaker 8: I'm like, how, what the fuck uh.
Speaker 6: So I get a phone call from my homeboy from
Speaker 6: Frisco and he's like, man, I heard just looking for
Speaker 6: my son. I'm like the son. He's like, my son's
Speaker 6: in the pack. So I cut the middleman out. My
Speaker 6: homie is uh, little UNO's daddy. I get them to
Speaker 6: come over to his house. Then we get it going
Speaker 6: in and it's like like you know, the pack. I
Speaker 6: think two of them skate, l the producer, young l
Speaker 6: and uh and stunning. They skate and then Little Bee
Speaker 6: was just when I met them, a Little Bee, I
Speaker 6: don't know what the fuck his little image is now
Speaker 6: with the base guy crazy when I met him. When
Speaker 6: I met him, he was like a little thug. He
Speaker 6: was like a little street cadgy. We had to actually
Speaker 6: wait for him to get out of jail to start
Speaker 6: the project. He was, Oh wow, he was in Juni
Speaker 6: Hall when when I met him.
Speaker 1: A Little Bee is like the Dalai Lama of the
Speaker 1: internet round now, like no, he's he set the trends
Speaker 1: for all that ship, like Maconey and like all those
Speaker 1: guys made it cool to not.
Speaker 8: Not be good and but you're not being good on purpose.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he's definitely these motherfuckers are now wrapping off beating,
Speaker 6: rapping like they can't wrap and that's the style.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's.
Speaker 3: But it goes, it goes.
Speaker 8: So yeah, the Pack came to me.
Speaker 6: They were were kind of like working the skater image
Speaker 6: a little bit, and I just, you know, I'm an
Speaker 6: opportunist man. When I met Little John, I was like,
Speaker 6: that's the wave and I knew that Little John had
Speaker 6: a sound that was hot, and I was like, I'll
Speaker 6: help you do everything.
Speaker 8: You can in the world if you promise me that
Speaker 8: you keep giving me those beats you make.
Speaker 5: Did you meet him more house days in Atlanta?
Speaker 6: Or I met a Little John. He was already working
Speaker 6: for So So Deaf. He was doing some producing with
Speaker 6: the like Booty Shake music, and he was DJing a
Speaker 6: lot in Atlanta. I love the way he dj because
Speaker 6: he DJs and he worked the crowd up in a
Speaker 6: frenzy with what he's saying and the music. So I
Speaker 6: was like a little Johnt fan as a DJ, and
Speaker 6: I approached him. That's how I started working house. I
Speaker 6: was like, man, you need to let me wrap on
Speaker 6: your beats.
Speaker 1: Like when you got on that Pack record. And suddenly
Speaker 1: just all these rumors I'm like, yeah, two Short, you
Speaker 1: used to skate back in the day and all that stuff.
Speaker 6: I did the same thing with the pack. I knew
Speaker 6: Young L had these beats. I went over the house.
Speaker 6: I went over to Young L's house. He lived with
Speaker 6: his mind. He had the coke closet. When you first
Speaker 6: come in the house, they opened the coat closet and
Speaker 6: it's his studio microphone booth. Nope, not the mic.
Speaker 3: It was the studio studio, the studio, the mic.
Speaker 6: The microphone was wired from the coat closet to his
Speaker 6: bedroom closet. So you go in the bedroom and you
Speaker 6: wrap in there with his clothes. And I was impressed.
Speaker 8: I was not impressed by the fact that they figured
Speaker 8: it out.
Speaker 1: Did they know about the legend the too Short, that
Speaker 1: they knew who was amongst them? Or we heard about you? Okay?
Speaker 1: And I was really impressed that they had no track record.
Speaker 6: But every time they would bounce down the song, it'd
Speaker 6: be a really good mix, like this shit sounded good,
Speaker 6: And I'm like, who's doing this shit for y'all? They
Speaker 6: like they took me to the setup. They're like, we
Speaker 6: do it ourselves. Like, man, y'all got some help from
Speaker 6: somewhere and they just elle just had that earround like
Speaker 6: some people just get it immediately, and a little beat
Speaker 6: would write the hooks l make the beat, and then
Speaker 6: the other two dudes just had to come with the
Speaker 6: twelve or sixteen word verse.
Speaker 3: It was.
Speaker 8: It was magic when I met him beat. When I
Speaker 8: met him, they had sixty songs. I'm like, what that fuck?
Speaker 1: So it was almost like seeing you recontextualized for you know,
Speaker 1: the new arts, and then you know, like so when
Speaker 1: blow the Whistle comes along, then it's like, can you
Speaker 1: explain what the Hyphie movement was supposed to be or
Speaker 1: was it just okay?
Speaker 6: So so now you got you got too short, you
Speaker 6: got forty, and you got mac Drer. Now nobody from
Speaker 6: the Bay with every dispute, all rap, all Bay rap
Speaker 6: comes from these three people.
Speaker 1: Can you before you go, can you explain the legend
Speaker 1: of mac dre for those.
Speaker 6: This is the part of it, him and forty from
Speaker 6: so I get ahead started everybody. I'm like, they never
Speaker 6: get me on sales, they never get me on who
Speaker 6: came first, They never get me on the biggest records.
Speaker 8: I got them. I set the fucking tongue.
Speaker 6: So now you got me and you got mac Dre
Speaker 6: and E forty and they come out of Valayo with
Speaker 6: all homies and mac Dre is to the bay. He's
Speaker 6: the one that gets up, does the dances. He's he's
Speaker 6: amongst the people. He's he touches them, he's one of them.
Speaker 6: He hugs him and he's They love and they like.
Speaker 8: Man.
Speaker 6: Dre's my guy. Forty is the kingpin. He's like, you
Speaker 6: can't get past the security. He lives in big gated house.
Speaker 6: He's always been his rap image. His real life image
Speaker 6: has always been I'm a boss and in me, I'm
Speaker 6: the Oakland nigga.
Speaker 8: You know, I'm just you know, short dog. You know,
Speaker 8: I talk shit out do the pimp image.
Speaker 6: I do all this shit and everything Bayry rap comes
Speaker 6: from the pimp that E forty the boss and Mac
Speaker 6: Dre clowning and just being, you know, really's hell.
Speaker 8: So Oakland had a thing called the Side Show.
Speaker 6: The side Show was just a bunch of people in
Speaker 6: their customized cars hanging out in Taco Bell parking lot
Speaker 6: that's adjacent to the East Oakland East myt Mall, and
Speaker 6: we just come out there Saturday night and.
Speaker 1: Just hang out.
Speaker 6: The side show evolved into the ship. You might have
Speaker 6: seen on DVD's when they're doing the donuts and shade up.
Speaker 6: Fuckers is racking allow and all this ship and jumping
Speaker 6: out the car and all that. So the side show
Speaker 6: evolved from one parking lot to the next generation was
Speaker 6: like probably like the early two thousands. They were like,
Speaker 6: wherever we're at, if we stop and we liked the music,
Speaker 6: were about to have a fucking party. And then they
Speaker 6: would just block off main intersections, backstreets, freeways. They didn't
Speaker 6: give a fuck, and it's like hundreds of kids, you know,
Speaker 6: like not and don't picture kids. These motherfuckers like gangsters,
Speaker 6: like just wilding they got. If you want to if
Speaker 6: you want to see it, go to YouTube and look
Speaker 6: up go dumb Usa some Oakland ship. Go dumb Usa
Speaker 6: is to it is what it says.
Speaker 8: It's dumb.
Speaker 6: Motherfucker's on top of the public bus and the bus
Speaker 6: is ride and they just dance on top of the bus.
Speaker 6: So Mac Dre and the Vallejo Boys, how all these
Speaker 6: dances they do? They like, you go to Vallejo. They're
Speaker 6: very colorful, they're very originally they're very not o when
Speaker 6: they're very not san Francisco Valao is Valao always has been.
Speaker 6: So they do all these fucking dances and all this
Speaker 6: ship and they got their own slang words and they
Speaker 6: got their own they are. They're thirty miles away from
Speaker 6: us and they're fucking They might as well be on
Speaker 6: the island, right because they are not copying anybody.
Speaker 8: For Leaho is original. So mac Drake brings that element
Speaker 8: to what a side show would be.
Speaker 6: You know, I even want to say the ghost riding
Speaker 6: the whip park probably came from Dre and them like
Speaker 6: they they seem to be more like the ones that
Speaker 6: jumped out the car and knew that the car would
Speaker 6: go at a certain speed without you touching the gas
Speaker 6: or the break and then they dance at that same
Speaker 6: speed and you never lose car. That's whoever was and
Speaker 6: to like them, Yeah, I think I think not kick
Speaker 6: Sink Kickink from ok but uh, turf talk is that's
Speaker 6: the forties fan. I think I think turf is from Valeo,
Speaker 6: but I might be wrong.
Speaker 8: I might be wrong.
Speaker 6: So the high fee movement starts. The high fee movement
Speaker 6: to me is what Kick the Sneak was doing in
Speaker 6: Oakland with the side shows and just the whole Oakland
Speaker 6: vibe of what Keith was talking about. And then mac
Speaker 6: dre with the pimp silly shit dancing and clown and
Speaker 6: shit and ghost riding and all this shit. So they
Speaker 6: took the ghost riding and dancing of v Leo, mixed
Speaker 6: it with the burning rubber and crazy car driving to Oakland,
Speaker 6: and they messed it into one thing. And I don't
Speaker 6: know where Hyphie came from, because it could have been
Speaker 6: called anything, because you know, really it was a real
Speaker 6: street culture thing, And the reason why it couldn't be
Speaker 6: a hip hop, solid solidified movement is because the Hyphee
Speaker 6: movement was you gotta be high. You gotta be fucking
Speaker 6: high on the drugs. The drugs were was ecstasy and
Speaker 6: cocaine and fucking them little niggas snort heroin and shit and.
Speaker 1: Getting in the car, you gotta be drinking.
Speaker 6: So it's d u I right off the rip, it's
Speaker 6: it's fucking a lot of lot of weapons, you know
Speaker 6: what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: It's always a violent act to go with it. And
Speaker 8: then it's I'm wanting it right now?
Speaker 1: Is you talking about it?
Speaker 6: And then it's like extremely overall, it's just hell of disrespectful,
Speaker 6: just overall.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yea some female stuff going on and you don't
Speaker 5: look like it might be right, but it looked like
Speaker 5: it's exciting, you know, to watch it's like some want
Speaker 5: to get free throwing in some dope they gonna get
Speaker 5: free thrown anyway.
Speaker 6: You know, that's that's freakingin gone bad. That's like freaking
Speaker 6: that's Freaknik's fucked up cousin. So so the music was great,
Speaker 6: by the way. The music was hip hop, street ship,
Speaker 6: but it made you want to dance, and it was
Speaker 6: really big in the clubs. And the Hyphee movie was like,
Speaker 6: if it was just about the dancing the music, I
Speaker 6: think it would have been something for the world. But
Speaker 6: when you gotta be Yeah, And I talked to Big
Speaker 6: Vin over at the radio stations. She was like, man,
Speaker 6: it was really hard to promote it on a commercial
Speaker 6: level because it's not It was not commercial. So everybody
Speaker 6: involved was expected and the next crunk movement, you know
Speaker 6: what I'm saying, And if it came short of that,
Speaker 6: they weren't happy. And when they stopped doing it, the
Speaker 6: music kept going. It was the same music. It's still
Speaker 6: the same music right now. And I'm like, why are
Speaker 6: y'all letting go, y'all ship It's like, man, it ain't
Speaker 6: blowing up like you.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I felt like they gave up too early on the
Speaker 1: joint exactly. It's almost like it was their Neil soul,
Speaker 1: Like they gave it a two year run and just
Speaker 1: like and.
Speaker 8: You know, you know who picked it up right lest
Speaker 8: it on the meat. Yeah, got that tempo.
Speaker 6: All his early beats was like straight Bay influenced Tiger
Speaker 6: came out on that bas sound right, Yeah it was.
Speaker 3: It was oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because mostly it was more to tempo for it
Speaker 1: because like, just for me personally, I liked my hip
Speaker 1: hop somewhere between ninety one ten bpms just a little bit,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean.
Speaker 8: He was one of ten.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 8: It's like great energy. Wow, it's still it's still alive.
Speaker 8: It's just it's just it's just not named that anymore.
Speaker 8: It's still alive.
Speaker 6: They still do the same exact dances, they still act
Speaker 6: the same guy. Damn way, it just don't call it Hyvey.
Speaker 3: Did you ever have any do any work or have
Speaker 3: any any kind of deals with JT the Bigger Figure?
Speaker 6: Well, me and j T we like minded, so you know,
Speaker 6: we we don't we don't do agreements together and ship
Speaker 6: and we work together and we uh you know, he's
Speaker 6: family like you talk to guys like Snooper Ship. We
Speaker 6: love j T mancause JT can make something out of
Speaker 6: nothing in a minute. He uh, he never comes with
Speaker 6: his hand out. And the last time I last time
Speaker 6: I heard the fig he was in Africa. He was
Speaker 6: in Africa buying up property or some ship. He put
Speaker 6: something out real yes for this is recently too. Then
Speaker 6: I heard it got shot in Atlanta. That's the last
Speaker 6: thing I heard.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: He's the one.
Speaker 6: When the game came out, he's like, oh, I got
Speaker 6: albums on the game, like yeah, figures, He's just He's just.
Speaker 1: Who like who I mean? And now he asking journalists question,
Speaker 1: who do you still listen to? Like okay for for
Speaker 1: you even if it's ould shit whatever, like what is
Speaker 1: just your go to? You in the car are you driving?
Speaker 1: Like what what's what's in your well? I'm I'm I'm
Speaker 1: about the funk.
Speaker 6: I was a I'm officially no doubt about it, one
Speaker 6: of the clones of doctor Fungustein And then when they
Speaker 6: were cloning him, I'm one of those and.
Speaker 8: I hear the funk.
Speaker 3: I hear it.
Speaker 6: The funk is and the drums is in basslines, just
Speaker 6: in rap cadences, and the way people sing is it's it's,
Speaker 6: it's there.
Speaker 8: It's in pop music, you know, the funk is there.
Speaker 6: So I love a lot of that new funky ship
Speaker 6: that Mike will produce type ship that fucking you know,
Speaker 6: even if it's fucking uh, what's my man?
Speaker 8: Who's been killing him lately?
Speaker 6: Metro boom and he got this the funk like you
Speaker 6: hear that little funky The Migos as funky as fuck,
Speaker 6: like the way they work the auto tune. They bring
Speaker 6: the funk to a song that wasn't even funky. And
Speaker 6: I think that's another thing that autotune was misinterpreted about,
Speaker 6: was that it wasn't so much as how skillful is
Speaker 6: the person working it. It just they got these beats
Speaker 6: that they do that aren't very melodic. But then if
Speaker 6: you listen to it, and why it's so catchy. It's
Speaker 6: that little melody that they're dealing with the auto tune.
Speaker 6: No matter how stupid what they're saying could be. Shit,
Speaker 6: just it feels good, and shit feels good. It's a
Speaker 6: good vible.
Speaker 3: And what was I saying?
Speaker 8: Because I smoke a lot of wead of the.
Speaker 3: Funk.
Speaker 6: So what I'm listening to now is I'm just the funk.
Speaker 6: I'm so prejudiced against all other music. Like I love
Speaker 6: the blues, the funky blues, I don't like all blues.
Speaker 6: I love jazz when it got the funking. I just
Speaker 6: I'm just that guy who. But I feel like I
Speaker 6: was so safe of me, so sad to have a
Speaker 6: career and say if it ain't funky, we can't it
Speaker 6: can't leave it, can't.
Speaker 8: Leave out this room.
Speaker 6: It's gotta be funky. I was in the studio with
Speaker 6: Puffy in the early days and he walked in the studio.
Speaker 6: I was in there, a whole bunch of motherfuckers in there.
Speaker 6: It was smoking, it was drinking, everybody's having a good
Speaker 6: time enjoying the song that was on. Puff walked in
Speaker 6: and said, I can't dance this ship. Scrapped, threw it off,
Speaker 6: killed the whole session. It was old reason I can't
Speaker 6: dance to that ship, and it was it ain't bad boy.
Speaker 3: So how did the world is Fueled come about? Because
Speaker 3: I love that song, but it's not danceable, but I
Speaker 3: mean is a jam. It's a slow nice I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm thinking like Puffy dancing with the fucking.
Speaker 6: I can tell you why I didn't get chopped off,
Speaker 6: the kicked off, the chopping block, whatever I'm trying to say. Okay,
Speaker 6: I can tell you why, because the beat had been made,
Speaker 6: the hook was on there. The hook is Carl Thomas,
Speaker 6: and Puffy's verse was already on there. He's on the
Speaker 6: first verse. So when me and Big went to the
Speaker 6: studio we did our versus the same day, it was
Speaker 6: already beat hook, Puffy's verse.
Speaker 5: Already, he could already dance to it, so he was cool,
Speaker 5: so he.
Speaker 3: Set it off.
Speaker 6: So that's why he probably he probably conceived the concept
Speaker 6: of the song and you know, the world pencil House
Speaker 6: and all that.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I don't know, like I used that was
Speaker 3: a song I used to always play on the album
Speaker 3: because I don't know. If you notice, at the end
Speaker 3: of the song you say bitch, crazy ass man, bitch,
Speaker 3: and it starts right back over.
Speaker 1: If you put this song on repeat, it starts right
Speaker 1: back and rhythm is amazing, all right, which leads to
Speaker 1: my last question, Sure, Dunk, what is your favorite no, no, no,
Speaker 1: you have revolutionized the word bitch? Would not you make
Speaker 1: saying the word bitch the funnest thing on earth? I
Speaker 1: mean to the point where, like you know, even with
Speaker 1: Chappelle taking it to the next levels and all that
Speaker 1: he was and beyond. Yeah, I mean you, like, how
Speaker 1: did you feel when people started taking your inflections? I mean, yes,
Speaker 1: I know that you know E forty can claim all
Speaker 1: this language or whatever, but it's like you.
Speaker 3: Bach is like.
Speaker 6: It was exclusively uh, something that was only said by
Speaker 6: myself and Freddy B.
Speaker 1: Freddy did you feel some way like once you heard
Speaker 1: death throwing those guys like taking and I.
Speaker 6: Tell you, Freddy B went to jail, My career blows up.
Speaker 6: He kind of didn't get to have the glory.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And I carried it on and.
Speaker 6: The first person I heard say it was uh, ice
Speaker 6: Cube said it on A bitch's a bitch at the
Speaker 6: end he goes bers And then and then a MG
Speaker 6: sampled it, well, DJ quick sample, that's the same thing.
Speaker 6: And that that opened up the like curiosity like, well
Speaker 6: maybe I can use the of it because you know,
Speaker 6: it just slid by. And then I had a friend
Speaker 6: of mine who we were in the bathroom smoking some
Speaker 6: weed at a party one night and with a dog
Speaker 6: pound we there smoking with Dazz and Crup and Stop
Speaker 6: were smoking at my Humby was like, man.
Speaker 8: I just got to ask, man, what made y'all say bitch?
Speaker 3: Like too Short?
Speaker 8: And Snoop told the story. He said, he said in
Speaker 8: front of you.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he said, when I first time I got in
Speaker 6: the studio and they just put me in there, he
Speaker 6: was like, man, we grew up on two shows. We
Speaker 6: grew up listening too Shorts. Like, first time I got
Speaker 6: in the studio, they turned the mic on.
Speaker 3: I just said bitch.
Speaker 6: When he said that, I mean, there's no anger, there's
Speaker 6: no there's no bad vibe. So basically I look at.
Speaker 3: It like this.
Speaker 8: Cube opened the floodgates death ro They they kind of
Speaker 8: gave it to the world.
Speaker 1: They did, because for a seconds I really thought it
Speaker 1: was there.
Speaker 8: So they gave it to the world.
Speaker 6: And then when I I heard an argument one day
Speaker 6: that too Short got bitch from Snoop what That's why
Speaker 6: I wrote blow to Ustle.
Speaker 8: The way I wrote it, it was almost like just
Speaker 8: the taking back of it.
Speaker 6: I was saying some things that nobody could dispute as
Speaker 6: far as the numbers, like the whole first verse is
Speaker 6: mathema is mathematics. And I'm like, when I just say
Speaker 6: I've been rapping for two hundred twenty five thousand hours,
Speaker 6: that was ten years ago, and anybody who would stopped
Speaker 6: and put that on a calculator and could even figure
Speaker 6: out how to would realize that average is about twenty
Speaker 6: years somewhere in there. And I was just like, I've
Speaker 6: been rapping longer than you, motherfuckers. I've been rapping more
Speaker 6: and just talking shit. And then I put the what's
Speaker 6: my favorite word in there, the bitch, And I'm like,
Speaker 6: I'm just I'm reclaiming ownership of my shit. I'm like,
Speaker 6: I leased it out when all around the world everybody
Speaker 6: gets to say it, it's my gift to pop cultuler,
Speaker 6: but it's mine and we know it now. So if
Speaker 6: you notice, I love Snoop to death, hang out with
Speaker 6: him a lot, But if you notice, you don't say
Speaker 6: it that much anymore.
Speaker 1: Right, Well, sure do we cover everything I think we got?
Speaker 1: I'm trying to sure there's not an obscure, beastie. I
Speaker 1: know we're going to be like, why did we ask
Speaker 1: I got no movies?
Speaker 3: Right? Yeah, oh, well, you know he was a mini
Speaker 3: cooking the ribs. You really know how to grill?
Speaker 6: Really, no, And if you go back and look at
Speaker 6: in society, them fucking ribs was burnt. I did say
Speaker 6: so many cooking out that I'm the only motherfucker in
Speaker 6: Minn society. I'm the only mother fucking that. That pointed
Speaker 6: again that old dog. Old Dog was a savage, and
Speaker 6: they gave me the role where I got to put
Speaker 6: the shotgun on.
Speaker 11: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Yeah, And you know back then that was like folklore,
Speaker 8: like like people thought old Dog was real.
Speaker 3: Somebody.
Speaker 8: You're right, he was the hummy. But you know, fifty
Speaker 8: one years old.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was gonna say, yo, you you are no
Speaker 1: way going to convince me that you're fifty one years
Speaker 1: old right.
Speaker 5: Now, because and you ain't tired. You ain't tired of
Speaker 5: the party.
Speaker 1: But I mean not the last two nights, all know.
Speaker 8: I mean it's a lifestyle, I know, but.
Speaker 5: This is amazing to me. I take naps, okay, thank you,
Speaker 5: thank you for keeping it real. Thank you you say vitamin.
Speaker 1: Suit or is that just yeah?
Speaker 3: I do all?
Speaker 1: I guess Okay, you listen, we want to be like
Speaker 1: semi healthy.
Speaker 6: But you know, I'm fifty one years old, and I
Speaker 6: got a lot of new music coming out, and I
Speaker 6: just I feel like I'm not making records to compete
Speaker 6: in hip hop. I'm making records to compete with the
Speaker 6: definition of hip hop. People keep as as old as
Speaker 6: I keep getting. They keep saying that number, like, man,
Speaker 6: you can't wrap when you're thirty. Then I turned forty,
Speaker 6: They're like, man, forty old ast rapper. Like it's like,
Speaker 6: my age is the age they keep saying it's too old.
Speaker 6: So I'm like, I'm going to do this shit.
Speaker 1: Barrier this year.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think, yeah, you might be the oldest in
Speaker 3: terms of like the competition to me right now is
Speaker 3: I want to know and I want to be in
Speaker 3: the race of who's going to be the oldest rapper
Speaker 3: to make a relevant hit record.
Speaker 6: Oh it's hard and not be like this Nigga sixty
Speaker 6: two and they not be like, oh, that's old ass Johnny,
Speaker 6: Like no, like like that's my ship, Like.
Speaker 8: Who's gonna be relevant?
Speaker 5: I mean that's relevant though, like because.
Speaker 1: I'm like four four four, But it can happen. It
Speaker 1: can happen. I feel like I feel like it definitely
Speaker 1: happened with him. Because you're again it's he's going proven
Speaker 1: formuly its flat footed tuxedo jeans and T shirt style
Speaker 1: will never ever go out of style. You know what
Speaker 1: I mean? It will never ever go on stop. Thank
Speaker 1: you too short for coming on Quest Love Supreme. Yes, sorry,
Speaker 1: we ain't done reflections in a minute. So Fran, take
Speaker 1: a look. What did you What did you learn to day?
Speaker 3: I learned that pool Man was a totally different guy
Speaker 3: from straight up and we even made it.
Speaker 6: We made a dis record about him called getting Away Fitting.
Speaker 6: It's on the hours on Really we ripped his ass
Speaker 6: because he went and made a record and talked about
Speaker 6: a few of us on a record.
Speaker 1: So we did you not get him on job records?
Speaker 1: Like did you?
Speaker 8: I got him to deal personally.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, like these are cats on job.
Speaker 6: He has a somewhat success and comes to us after
Speaker 6: one album, goes man, I think I'm want to get
Speaker 6: off the label.
Speaker 3: We're just like, okay, damn, you're off here.
Speaker 5: Okay, So two things I learned. Number one about your
Speaker 5: parents being accountants. That's banging and being together. That just
Speaker 5: says a lot about a man. Period. Oh have you
Speaker 5: been married before?
Speaker 1: No wife?
Speaker 3: No kids.
Speaker 1: No, that's why. Yeah, that's.
Speaker 5: Hold up.
Speaker 1: No, No, it's a lifestyle.
Speaker 6: But sty, I do have somebody that keeps putting on
Speaker 6: Wikipedia that I have a wife and kids, but I don't.
Speaker 5: You have any kids. And I got something that I
Speaker 5: want to learn. You said you got a lot of
Speaker 5: stuff coming down the pike, and I know you've been
Speaker 5: doing like some interesting other kind of stuff. Can you
Speaker 5: just give us a little tat which.
Speaker 3: I wrote a book.
Speaker 6: I got a thirtieth anniversary documentary dropping just just highlighting
Speaker 6: the thirty year career. I got an album coming out
Speaker 6: called the Pimp Tape, and it is exactly what it says.
Speaker 6: It's a pimp tape. And then uh, preceding the Pimp
Speaker 6: Tape will be a mixtape called Hella disrespectful.
Speaker 1: We're talking to Mark right now. You feel like we're
Speaker 1: talking to Mark right now.
Speaker 3: Of all the of all the years of like stuff
Speaker 3: that you've done, and like all the ladies and everything,
Speaker 3: like how do you escape kids? How you make it
Speaker 3: by easy?
Speaker 6: Little John said it in from the Window to the Wall.
Speaker 6: He said, I sk skap, not every.
Speaker 5: Time everybody make a mistake and get lost up in
Speaker 5: sometime I've.
Speaker 6: Been a skeater from day one. You know, see the
Speaker 6: strap up. We're aiming at something.
Speaker 5: Well, look, all I asked you read your do your
Speaker 5: own audiobook. That's what I ask you for the people
Speaker 5: do your own audio audio.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that would be please, Steve Sugar.
Speaker 7: Steve you learn I learned the entire history of Oakland
Speaker 7: hip hop, and from the beginning it sounds like you
Speaker 7: could have been in the studio with me and you.
Speaker 3: Are essentially the same age. Awesome, married, unmarried, no.
Speaker 5: Kids, he's never been married, what I do, and in.
Speaker 7: Atlanta, and a whole bunch of stuff I didn't know,
Speaker 7: but I like. I like your bounce as a person.
Speaker 7: I don't know if that sounds weird, but you you
Speaker 7: seem like you know the right percentages of things I've never.
Speaker 8: Been in love with. Famous like that. I'm the first
Speaker 8: person you walk up to say are you too short?
Speaker 3: I'm like, I look like that's you.
Speaker 1: Man invest in Vegas. Hey, that's been going on for
Speaker 1: a long I mean, take your Hamilton money man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah all that.
Speaker 8: By the way, my book was written completely in jail.
Speaker 3: Oh are some questions we didn't you were in jail.
Speaker 8: Twenty fifteen June and July.
Speaker 6: I went to court on June fifteenth to go show
Speaker 6: him the proof of my community service for a DUI
Speaker 6: I got, and the prosecutor lady bullied me and she
Speaker 6: was like, if you fucking present that paper to the judge,
Speaker 6: I'm going to make sure that he knows that there's
Speaker 6: some false entries on there, and I'm gonna make sure
Speaker 6: you do it. You're in jail, and don't charge you
Speaker 6: with felonies and all kind of shit. So I had
Speaker 6: to go in there and lie to the judge and
Speaker 6: say I didn't have the paperwork, and the judges like,
Speaker 6: you lied to me and told me that you weren't
Speaker 6: that you were bringing this paper and you didn't bring it.
Speaker 6: And he asked the prosecutor what should we do with him?
Speaker 6: She said, give him thirty days. Do you know who
Speaker 6: he was the judge?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: Or did the judge know who you were?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 8: It was it was a high profile case. And he
Speaker 8: said she said thirty days.
Speaker 6: He said, well, I'm gonna give him ninety and then said,
Speaker 6: bailiff take him right now, and I can't do it.
Speaker 8: That's the fucked that he kept me in there five
Speaker 8: fucking weeks to the day.
Speaker 1: And so you just finished your book that way started
Speaker 1: and finished your book.
Speaker 6: Well, if jail was such so full of ship, with
Speaker 6: the fucking the ship that went on in there, like
Speaker 6: La County jail is like it's not humane at all,
Speaker 6: it's fucked up. So during the day it was so
Speaker 6: much bullshit going on that I would sleep all day
Speaker 6: and then I when they lights oute of night, I'd
Speaker 6: wake up and like write to like this little light,
Speaker 6: and I was just right all night. So I did
Speaker 6: my time away from everybody else, like I slept all
Speaker 6: day every day.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad you were remind I would have been mad.
Speaker 8: I was thinking about naming the books some ship I
Speaker 8: wrote in.
Speaker 3: Jail where like you got love in there was we
Speaker 3: know it was good. I was.
Speaker 8: I was man. I was in the high power section. Man.
Speaker 8: I was in the cell next.
Speaker 3: Yeah you can't.
Speaker 8: You couldn't come in contact any other prisons.
Speaker 3: I was.
Speaker 8: I was in the cell next to where they had
Speaker 8: Chris Brown, next where.
Speaker 5: They had like, So, what was the meals like in
Speaker 5: that section? I know it was a little.
Speaker 3: Different slice the garlic, real sin.
Speaker 6: If you're not a snacker, if you don't like snacks,
Speaker 6: because they you will not eat the meals.
Speaker 1: You will not.
Speaker 6: They asked some ship in their common series, some ship
Speaker 6: in there called cal Rains. Wait what and you couldn't.
Speaker 6: They had this one thing that they gave it to
Speaker 6: me and I was like, I'm cool, I don't want that.
Speaker 6: And I was like, but just curious.
Speaker 8: I was like, what is that? And the guard said
Speaker 8: it's ship. I was like no. I was like, no,
Speaker 8: for bro in the kitchen when they cooking it, what
Speaker 8: do they think they make it? What is it called?
Speaker 1: He said ship?
Speaker 5: No, that's sloppy Joe, right, they've started.
Speaker 3: They started purple spaghetti.
Speaker 5: Why would it be that color?
Speaker 8: You asked these questions, there are no answers.
Speaker 1: Purple spaghetti.
Speaker 8: La County ain't right?
Speaker 3: Man?
Speaker 1: Wait? Why did our episode just get lit in the last.
Speaker 3: No? I didn't know. I didn't know he was locked up.
Speaker 3: That's crazy.
Speaker 6: Five weeks. I wrote every night down there. Every night
Speaker 6: I wrote and that wrote. It's all in pencil. It's
Speaker 6: about three hundred pages and I don't know what the
Speaker 6: fund I haven't read it back yet.
Speaker 5: Wow, okay, has anybody read it?
Speaker 6: I let one peris of reading there was like, it's
Speaker 6: pretty good. I don't know, but they might be gassing
Speaker 6: my people. I don't but I just feel like I
Speaker 6: don't give a fuck this good or not. It's some
Speaker 6: ship I wrote in jail, and I might I might
Speaker 6: even release it in the handwritten in pencil. It's in pencil,
Speaker 6: because you can't have a pen in jail.
Speaker 1: Look, this is all I'm gonna say.
Speaker 10: This.
Speaker 1: This is all I'm gonna say as far as what
Speaker 1: you learned today that you really really should get an
Speaker 1: agent two for you to pitch to either Amazon or
Speaker 1: I can't even say that the N word Amazon. You really,
Speaker 1: I'm telling you there is an engaging, motherfucking story of
Speaker 1: your childhood hustling these tapes, and we.
Speaker 5: Hear Disney has a new platform.
Speaker 8: I do have a offer on the table to do
Speaker 8: a mini series, like like a three prime mini series.
Speaker 1: I feel I think there's youth streaming.
Speaker 3: Before the career.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you very much for coming on like Snowfall
Speaker 1: by the way to It's awesome, uh on behalf of
Speaker 1: Boss Bill, Unpaid Bill, Sugar, Steve take Aloa and the
Speaker 1: Light here and our guest today to be sure as
Speaker 1: giving a lad.
Speaker 5: But I'm something about the way you call me a
Speaker 5: fucking lady, sound old and I've got a birthday coming up.
Speaker 5: I don't like it.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 1: We were born on the same day, so not in
Speaker 1: the same year and on the half of the Team Supreme. Y'all.
Speaker 1: This is Quest Love. See you next go around only
Speaker 1: one Pandora Thank You. Quest Love Supreme is a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. This classic episode was produced by the team
Speaker 1: at Pandora. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.