Speaker 1: That's the Chronicals.
Speaker 2: He gonna tell you how we go.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Gangster Chronicles podcast, the production of iHeart
Speaker 1: Radio and Black Effect Podcast Network.
Speaker 2: That's how I got So that's how I got so
Speaker 2: cool with a lot of New York artists, man, because
Speaker 2: regardless of what was going on, Man, I got a
Speaker 2: lot of respect from a lot of New York artists
Speaker 2: and vice versa. So you know, I was never into
Speaker 2: the bullshit. You know, I used to fuck with niggas
Speaker 2: like uh, Pete and Premiere and early Nis before he
Speaker 2: came out. We all used to hang out with the
Speaker 2: Premier man in the white MPV van and he used
Speaker 2: to pick me up and roll me around, take me
Speaker 2: to the crib. And so that's how I got familiar
Speaker 2: hanging out with him and people like Tretch and Ship
Speaker 2: like that on each coach.
Speaker 3: So respect do makes sense? I know, I know you
Speaker 3: fuck with Prima. I knew that I seen Preme bring
Speaker 3: you out at summer Steads in New York. But I
Speaker 3: knew he was fucking with him back in the day
Speaker 3: because you know Primes, my Man and Pete and all them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, prem brought me the bb Kings one time. Crazy
Speaker 2: He brought me out to do some stuff with Black Poet.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: Like I said, anytime I would go to New York
Speaker 2: on the promo run or anything like that, ship I
Speaker 2: would call Primo and Premo pick us up. Primo introduced
Speaker 2: me to Swisher sweets Man blunts.
Speaker 3: And crazy crazy because to me, the Swishers, that's like, yeah,
Speaker 3: the Swishers to l A, we do. We did Philly
Speaker 3: We did Phillies back then, and then moved to the
Speaker 3: Dutch Master. Yeah, the White House really really L's.
Speaker 2: And I smoked my first blunt with Primo. Man. He
Speaker 2: introduced me. When I came back the La probably like
Speaker 2: eighty nine ninety Nigga, I ran straight to Save Vins
Speaker 2: and it was Billy blunts man. And I've been smoking
Speaker 2: blunts ever since. Man.
Speaker 3: La was always CALLI to me was always eight people
Speaker 3: smoke zags because New York we never have We don't
Speaker 3: have orange Jaggs. We didn't have them to way later.
Speaker 3: We had Bam Boo back in.
Speaker 2: The day, right, we had the zags and shit. So
Speaker 2: that's how we used to get all smoke on. And
Speaker 2: then once I came back from New York, I'm like,
Speaker 2: I ain't never smoking that shit, no more big factory blunts.
Speaker 2: Niggas stuffed their motherfuckers and just be smoking all day
Speaker 2: like a big ass Cuban cigar. But just you know, shit,
Speaker 2: So definitely got love for New York.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm like you, like I always like LA
Speaker 3: was always cool to me. I never I never felt
Speaker 3: none of that fun because you know, I've been fucking
Speaker 3: with mugs and Cypruss came out since they was seven
Speaker 3: eight three, and you know be Real was named Louis,
Speaker 3: so you know what I mean, Like I knew them
Speaker 3: from back then. So to me, like that was always
Speaker 3: my people in LA when I came to LA, always
Speaker 3: felling with mugs and b relling them. So to me,
Speaker 3: LA was always cool.
Speaker 1: Definitely. That's crazy, man. You know what, this would be
Speaker 1: a dope ass show just listening to you and a
Speaker 1: tell those stories man about back in the day. Two legends,
Speaker 1: just building man reminiscent. What's happening to my people? It's
Speaker 1: another episode against the Chronicles podcast with m C eight
Speaker 1: and myself Norm Steele. Tonight we have legendary a n
Speaker 1: R DNTE Ross in the building. Now Dante Ross signed
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of dope people, and he telling us
Speaker 1: some real dope stories, you know, like he talked about
Speaker 1: Big Daddy came putting hands on Slick Rick. But it
Speaker 1: ain't all about that. If you in your car, let
Speaker 1: you seek back and recline back. If you at home
Speaker 1: for yourself a drinking your favorite beverage and shake out
Speaker 1: this dope conversation.
Speaker 3: Hey, I'm right here, man, I'm for it. You know
Speaker 3: I was. I was always a fan of the way
Speaker 3: you wrap the off beat on Beach style. That was
Speaker 3: always charged to me. You know who took me under?
Speaker 3: Was that was you know, we love that record in
Speaker 3: New York and it was fucking with that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they banged it took me under in New York.
Speaker 2: All that that early music to drive by Ship.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was my ship. That shit was funky. I
Speaker 3: like because y'all also had like you had, like you
Speaker 3: had the Lee Dorsey joint, Like you had a lot
Speaker 3: of breaks, Like I think Noon was doing it, but
Speaker 3: you was using a lot of ill breaks.
Speaker 2: Slip was doing a lot of that. You know, the
Speaker 2: meter and le Dosh all that Slip. Slip was one
Speaker 2: of those digging the crates type of DJ.
Speaker 3: So, yeah, he had to give it up joint the
Speaker 3: Lee Dorset Ship. When I when I heard that, I
Speaker 3: was like, Oh, these motherfuckers got records.
Speaker 1: Over here, definitely, and you produced to right down to
Speaker 1: you don't produce a Yeah, I don't produce anymore, but
Speaker 1: you know I did for a long time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I always had my hand that ship with
Speaker 3: like whether it was Poobab Brand, Nubian or Third Base,
Speaker 3: whoever was. Oh, I was this ship. And then later
Speaker 3: on I did. I did bigger alternative records. I produced
Speaker 3: ever last solo record shit like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that every last record was huged, man, for those people.
Speaker 1: You know, we're not gonna do the standard introduction cause
Speaker 1: I'm like just sitting back here, like y'all do we
Speaker 1: have A and R legs? And you know when people
Speaker 1: it was really A and R records, A real A
Speaker 1: and R, real record man, Dante Ross Man, we appreciate
Speaker 1: you coming on man.
Speaker 3: Man, it's a pleasure to be here. Man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we will continue on with this dope conversation man,
Speaker 1: because I think your contribution to hip hop, because both
Speaker 1: of y'all contribution to hip hop, man is very understated, man.
Speaker 1: And I think I listened to people give people props,
Speaker 1: and I don't you know, everybody don't deserve the props
Speaker 1: that they necessarily get because a lot of people take
Speaker 1: credit for stuff that they didn't do. But you really
Speaker 1: had a hand and this stuff. I think that's what
Speaker 1: made you real special is you.
Speaker 3: Had a hand with it. Had I mean, I love
Speaker 3: I love the music, so you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: I grew up like loving music my whole life. I
Speaker 3: never knew what I was gonna do, and then somehow
Speaker 3: I lucked in the music business because our friends who
Speaker 3: was you know, was getting on, was popping, Like I
Speaker 3: grew up with the beasties and and all that, so
Speaker 3: being around it, man, I was just so lucky that
Speaker 3: not have to fucking do construction anymore and fucking all
Speaker 3: the bullshit I was doing. So for me, it was
Speaker 3: always like music first, all the other shit the second.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean, Yeah, for sure, I bet
Speaker 1: you feel like you never worked a day in your life.
Speaker 3: Then, Yeah, it's crazy to say that because I always
Speaker 3: say that I've never had a real job. I was like,
Speaker 3: I don't really know what that's like. I just know
Speaker 3: how to do what I do, and somehow I managed
Speaker 3: to make it, you know, work for me. You know,
Speaker 3: I got lucky, man, you know, and everyone doesn't get lucky.
Speaker 3: Doing an R is so overrated in a sense because
Speaker 3: most people who love music have good taste. You know.
Speaker 3: I was just lucky enough to be in the spot
Speaker 3: to open the door for some people, you know, and
Speaker 3: keep my spot. But you know, it's like a lot
Speaker 3: of A and R people are just we're really just
Speaker 3: glorified super fans. We're not that much more than that.
Speaker 3: You know, people get people get super gassed on that shit,
Speaker 3: but it ain't really all that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was an A and R seven years, man,
Speaker 1: I did it for seven years, the mind of music
Speaker 1: published and always tell people I was a guy that
Speaker 1: had a pin with no ink in it.
Speaker 3: I feel you, man, I mean amount of great shit
Speaker 3: that people. You know, my boss wouldn't let me sign
Speaker 3: sup so because there's kill him then, Like I wanted
Speaker 3: to sign them, and he was like, we're not going
Speaker 3: to put that record out and I was like, for real,
Speaker 3: I could have signed him. So that's like, you know,
Speaker 3: and there's always so many that tells me what you
Speaker 3: can and can't do, and this shit is just stupid,
Speaker 3: you know, the motherfuckers you don't really know the culture
Speaker 3: want to tell you what to do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I got a big one. So these people from
Speaker 1: England had a bag of money. They owned a lot
Speaker 1: of catalog. They actually owned the Chocolate Dyte record. They
Speaker 1: actually made all their money from sample. They owned that record, right,
Speaker 1: and they had that Yard Born people. Was a bunch
Speaker 1: of gap band stuff. So they you know, they talked
Speaker 1: to me and I actually met them clearing the sample.
Speaker 1: I was cleaning the sample for Glasses album and they
Speaker 1: were asking me who did the production on the records, right?
Speaker 1: And I was like, oh, we did all this stuff ourselves.
Speaker 1: So I met with him in La and next thing
Speaker 1: you know, I had the job. Right. They were telling
Speaker 1: me they moved me to the office in LA. So
Speaker 1: my boy top Dog from TV, he hits me up, man,
Speaker 1: this is maybe two thousand and six, This is real early,
Speaker 1: like two thousand and six, two thousand and seven, he says,
Speaker 1: hey man, And at that point he only got I
Speaker 1: think he has. He got Kendrick, he got Jay Rock,
Speaker 1: he got Apps, so he got school Boy Q. That
Speaker 1: was the whole TD roster, right. They were doing this
Speaker 1: stuff out the back of the roage and Carson and
Speaker 1: I knew he had some shit. Like you said, we're
Speaker 1: fans of music. I said, man, this dude got some shit, man,
Speaker 1: and this Kadi kid is unbelievable. You know. He had
Speaker 1: all these big words and stuff. He didn't wrap like
Speaker 1: the normal sixteen year old. So he came to me
Speaker 1: and said, hey, steal, see if I got to put
Speaker 1: some money in these guys pocket. They getting askedy, see
Speaker 1: if you can give me a publishing deal for about
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty two hundred, not that much money.
Speaker 1: I went up and asked him. They about laughed me
Speaker 1: out the office. They said, these people have no analytics.
Speaker 1: What are we just giving money away? You know that? No, no, no,
Speaker 1: And the funny part about it. They hit me two
Speaker 1: years later, Hey man, you think we can still do
Speaker 1: that deal? I said, yeah, right, No.
Speaker 3: An or means analytics and research. Now that's all that
Speaker 3: should mean. People reading numbers on paper, you know, and
Speaker 3: that's that doing shit like that, you'll find you might
Speaker 3: find a fly by night record of a one off artist,
Speaker 3: but you ain't finding an artist I got, like a
Speaker 3: career artist. You're not going to find somebody who's around
Speaker 3: forever that way. That's just you're gonna find that one
Speaker 3: thing that's lightning in a bottle, but you're not going
Speaker 3: to find a great one like that very rarely. Man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, collectively, all those four guys man have all sold upwards.
Speaker 1: I always keep kind of saying, man, these dudes are
Speaker 1: so like men twenty twenty five million records collectively, you know.
Speaker 3: I mean kay Dot when he was just a pen
Speaker 3: like you know, before section eighty. I remember he had
Speaker 3: the mixtapes out. He was just writing for Dre and
Speaker 3: that's how he got plugged in. You know, he was
Speaker 3: one of his writers. And he's like to me, like,
Speaker 3: because the era that that we come from, you know,
Speaker 3: most a lot of disraption now couldn't hold water back
Speaker 3: in that era in the nineties or early two thousands.
Speaker 3: You know, Kendrick could hold water back then. He's dope
Speaker 3: like he would have been dope back then. Where a
Speaker 3: lot of these dudes is coming. You know, it's it's
Speaker 3: cool for now, it ain't really cool for like the
Speaker 3: standards that like we have, you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: it's a little different, you know because because lyrics don't like,
Speaker 3: rapping doesn't really count like that anymore, say any ghibli.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the standard of what we I guess uh stood
Speaker 2: on when it came hip hop or whatever. Uh it
Speaker 2: was a bigger standard that we took. We took pride,
Speaker 2: and that's how I try to tell motherfuckers. We took
Speaker 2: pride in making songs, you get me. We didn't take
Speaker 2: pride and just coming out rapping. You getting anybody do it?
Speaker 2: S not that, not that, not the clown. But we
Speaker 2: had ship like you know, we had rappers, and we
Speaker 2: had MC's who made songs. Right, those are the type
Speaker 2: of artists who you look up today and they're still
Speaker 2: able to do a concert or or put out a
Speaker 2: single or video or whatever. Because we were able to
Speaker 2: uh uh stand the test of time because of the
Speaker 2: pride we took. You get nobody. Nobody wanted to release
Speaker 2: no whack ship to be on the radio, you get me.
Speaker 2: And yeah, you could have made a mixed show or whatever,
Speaker 2: but the pride of your song made you go fuck that.
Speaker 2: I'm a really records, you get me?
Speaker 3: You don't, you know? The standard of rapping it it
Speaker 3: it's like the bar has been lowered, right, and everything's
Speaker 3: supposed to go up. Like we look at sports right
Speaker 3: like I'm a basketball fanatic motherfuckers are so athletic and
Speaker 3: incredible now, right, But rapping did the opposite that the
Speaker 3: bar got lowered for you're like really like, I mean, it's.
Speaker 2: A lot of a lot of the motherfuckers because you know,
Speaker 2: the the the average fan of rap music changed and
Speaker 2: it's simple and what I tell niggas all the time,
Speaker 2: you're smart, motherfucker, but sometimes to be long and to
Speaker 2: put yourself in a different element, you dumb yourself down.
Speaker 3: You get you make it simpler, easier, more palatable.
Speaker 2: And that's what motherfuckers start doing. They start dumbing themselves
Speaker 2: down to the to the music because everybody not gonna
Speaker 2: understand a hood took me under or self explanatory niggas
Speaker 2: struggling or you know, a growing up in the hood. Uh, simplified.
Speaker 2: Everybody gonna understand, get your gun, make you some money,
Speaker 2: and shoot and fuck bitches.
Speaker 3: You get me the moneyfuck bitches. That's shit kind of
Speaker 3: like yeah, everyone got that, everyone gets that, but motherfucker's.
Speaker 2: Gonna you know, but what's your story behind? And I
Speaker 2: think that's where it changed, because a lot of niggas
Speaker 2: was like, man, I'm not trying to make no motherfucking
Speaker 2: song that I look up thirty years from now, they
Speaker 2: gonna be still talking about growing up in the hood
Speaker 2: or hood took me under shit, nigga, I'm trying to
Speaker 2: make some shit right now, quick fast, in the hurry,
Speaker 2: and then get it over with. And so a lot
Speaker 2: of artists dumb themselves down because they want to be simplified,
Speaker 2: because a lot of motherfuckers can't get the history of
Speaker 2: hip hop. You're getting me. That's why they're always talking
Speaker 2: about trying to cancel out or or or the age
Speaker 2: difference or you're getting because they don't want to give
Speaker 2: respect to the fact that motherfucker's like you would be
Speaker 2: and Steel and whoever, we still can sustain in this
Speaker 2: business if we wanted to, because that's how deep history
Speaker 2: we had as far as our music is concerned. You
Speaker 2: put out a song today and nigg ain't gonna remember that,
Speaker 2: motherfucker past two weeks.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's crazy you say that, because I'm always like
Speaker 3: a song, last day, album, last week now exactly is
Speaker 3: just you know, and we got like I call it
Speaker 3: swag rap, you know, dudes, just like they think they
Speaker 3: got their cute little song and they got their swag
Speaker 3: on and all that the music's not popping, like it's
Speaker 3: cool for five minutes, you know, And we always had
Speaker 3: a little bit of that, and then you got to
Speaker 3: do too Like there's always been also this out of
Speaker 3: wrap dudes, like they're not crazy spinners, but they got
Speaker 3: like a sauce to him, right, like too short, too short,
Speaker 3: a rock in, but he got sauce, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean, saucy, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: He he sustains his group because he's stuck to his format.
Speaker 3: You get he was always too short a.
Speaker 2: Little bit when I'm gonna go down with Atlanta and
Speaker 2: get me a little little John and sprinkle out on there.
Speaker 2: But the concept is still gonna be money, ass and
Speaker 2: pussy and bitches. It's still say the same concept. You
Speaker 2: get me. I'm not I'm not gonna go into an
Speaker 2: element to where what ship I think I'm gonna be
Speaker 2: a fucking Kendrick on this record or Drake or I
Speaker 2: think I'm gonna be at No. I'm gonna stick to
Speaker 2: the format that's been working for me for the last
Speaker 2: thirty years. And he gonna call him, he gonna say bitch,
Speaker 2: and he gonna say, pop that pussy and give me
Speaker 2: some money. And every motherfucker who listened to him from
Speaker 2: back in eighty seven is gonna bang his ship today
Speaker 2: because he's sticking to the same form. Me. He ain't changed,
Speaker 2: and I.
Speaker 3: Can respect that. I respect that he saucy. You know.
Speaker 3: It's like nowadays it's a cookie cutter. Everybody want to
Speaker 3: be like the next dude. Everyone raps like the next man.
Speaker 3: A dude has a hit over here like this, and
Speaker 3: dude's trying to make that same song. You know. When
Speaker 3: we you know, back in the day, it was like
Speaker 3: you can't bite that's you know, you're sucker.
Speaker 2: Yeah that was right, there was a sucker ship. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that was just for us back then.
Speaker 3: Uh, right in the day, you just not you know man.
Speaker 3: And like I don't always want to say everything's back
Speaker 3: now because there's a lot of shit I like, you know,
Speaker 3: like I went to the show last week. I want
Speaker 3: to see Earl Sweatshirt at the Novo and and this
Speaker 3: shit was dope, Like he was. It was dope, you know,
Speaker 3: seeing Alchemists and Rock Marshy and all that shit. That
Speaker 3: shit was dope to me, you know. So there's still
Speaker 3: a lot of shit I like, like Larry you and
Speaker 3: is ill there's a lot of shit. I like, still,
Speaker 3: you just got to dig deeper. It's like it's like
Speaker 3: digging for record. You gotta just go a little.
Speaker 2: Shit because we don't get as popular, we don't get
Speaker 2: as you know, promoted as we used to and not
Speaker 2: to say back then was good, but you still had
Speaker 2: the mighty power machine, the Sony's in the universes behind you,
Speaker 2: and you might have not got to the motherfucking Hollywood Bowl,
Speaker 2: but you got to the motherfucking Hollywood Palladium, you get right, right,
Speaker 2: You get me that we might have didn't play the form,
Speaker 2: but we got to play the Novo Downtown or the
Speaker 2: Key Tight in Holly, right, right right, So we were
Speaker 2: able to get put on a better pedestal than nowadays.
Speaker 2: It's like, I don't want to go to that motherfucking show.
Speaker 2: You get me, like, you don't.
Speaker 3: Know shows he's so wack half the time. Now it's
Speaker 3: like dudes rap over their vocals and is like karaoke,
Speaker 3: you know, just like a garbage like dude is just going
Speaker 3: on over the vocals, not really rapping like a live
Speaker 3: performances plummeted it is. And then you know there's still
Speaker 3: guys who you know, Earl was killing it like Tyler
Speaker 3: kills it. There's people who still still kill it. You know.
Speaker 3: I saw Naves with fucking Wu Tang in Orange County,
Speaker 3: like when it was out a little while ago. Ship
Speaker 3: was funky, you know what I mean? But you got
Speaker 3: you got a lot of shit that's not funky right now.
Speaker 3: And and you know, even like doing A and R
Speaker 3: so like I have my own label with rock Nation now,
Speaker 3: But before I had this, I was I worked at
Speaker 3: for Warner Music Group, and you know, I was like
Speaker 3: chasing things with numbers because I was my job. And
Speaker 3: I signed a couple of things that like hit, but
Speaker 3: I was like, motherfuckers, I want to be in the studio.
Speaker 3: This dude this record, he got one record, Like I know,
Speaker 3: this a problem again, And you just know that it's
Speaker 3: not a career artist. And when you start doing shit
Speaker 3: like that, that's when you got to change what you do.
Speaker 3: That should just ain't feel good?
Speaker 1: Is that? You know what's funny? You said you was
Speaker 1: at the rock Marsh.
Speaker 3: Yeah me and supposed to be there. Yeah yeah, I
Speaker 3: heard that because I fuck with what fuck with rock?
Speaker 3: He lived right near me, like, but also his manager,
Speaker 3: Robble is like one of my best friends, Selim, So
Speaker 3: I fucking Rock all the time. Rock is ill. He's
Speaker 3: to me like he's the coldest. He's cold. He raps
Speaker 3: really fucking good, like he just you know, he he
Speaker 3: he got it. He got the mojo where a lot
Speaker 3: of cats don't have it. Right now, I mean, you
Speaker 3: and Rock together will be ill. I need to hear
Speaker 3: that that shouldn't be fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're trying to put some stuff together right now,
Speaker 2: you know what I'm saying. So you know it's certain,
Speaker 2: it's certain. I guess artists people can respect and when
Speaker 2: they link up and click up, it's something worthy of,
Speaker 2: you know what I'm saying. Like anytime I see Alchemist
Speaker 2: put something out, I mean, oh it's worthy. You get me.
Speaker 3: It's just to.
Speaker 2: It's just dude who still have that passion? You get me? Right?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I mean Alice like he's like, you know, he's like
Speaker 3: everyone's sun. Like I knew since she was a little kid,
Speaker 3: like he was in the hooligans. He choked it up
Speaker 3: like you know what I mean, he was born in
Speaker 3: the ship.
Speaker 2: Like man, I started fucking with alchemists man back in
Speaker 2: when I didn't even know Alchemists I was listening to
Speaker 2: you know, Ship that he was doing with Prodigy in
Speaker 2: them you know, you know, and then for him to
Speaker 2: come out and he started rapping and busting, and then
Speaker 2: I started seeing older ship when he was a kid.
Speaker 1: I was this is tight.
Speaker 2: So anytime we fucked with, anytime he calls me and
Speaker 2: be like, hey, I need you to come do something.
Speaker 2: I think I did two records with Alchemists.
Speaker 3: Yeah I heard, I heard him before. I remember, I
Speaker 3: know you Yeah, yeah, I mean you guys did one
Speaker 3: that was crazy. You want to recollect, you want to
Speaker 3: recommend Action Bronson.
Speaker 2: Bronson. And then I was on a record with Spice one.
Speaker 3: He did yeah, yeah, yeah that's crazy Spice Wheer you
Speaker 3: had an album back in the day.
Speaker 2: Right, We had two little collaboration albums. And then once
Speaker 2: Alchemist started his label. Uh, I did two singles for Alchemists.
Speaker 2: Uh tight, Like I said, he he's one of them
Speaker 2: that's got that got that sound man that you just
Speaker 2: and and now they you know, like you said, they
Speaker 2: got that team of the Larry June's and the Rock
Speaker 2: Marciano's and all of that, so they they creating that
Speaker 2: flavor which is which is I think is appreciated by
Speaker 2: old school hip hop heads, you get.
Speaker 3: Like we fuck with it. But I was at the
Speaker 3: show Man. There was a lot of youngsters there. It
Speaker 3: was cool as hell. I was like, there's a lot
Speaker 3: of you know, little little twenty year old eighteen year
Speaker 3: olds in here.
Speaker 2: He brought uh, he brought hit Boy out and hit
Speaker 2: Boy performed.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, James out there.
Speaker 2: Even he got a song called Slipping and he and
Speaker 2: they he hit Boy performed it. So yeah, he had
Speaker 2: everybody there like kind of putting on dope. Yeah, it
Speaker 2: was super dope.
Speaker 3: It was it was it was shit. It was my
Speaker 3: birthday to that day, so I went. I went with
Speaker 3: my people. It was fucking great. I saw Rocket. It
Speaker 3: was really cool. And that to me is like that's
Speaker 3: maybe the pocket of hip hop that is interesting to
Speaker 3: me still. You know, like but they shit everywhere, like
Speaker 3: even I look to like the South, like like I
Speaker 3: like Jid and earth Gang and Kenny Mason, all the
Speaker 3: dudes in Atlanta. The dudes rapped good too. Man, There's
Speaker 3: there's still rappers who really rap. You just got to
Speaker 3: look harder for it, man, you know.
Speaker 2: Ye earth Gang is pretty cool down in Atlanta. Yeah,
Speaker 2: how bangs them a lot.
Speaker 3: I mean, what's fucked up is that New York, which
Speaker 3: should be like really still pushing the culture, really just
Speaker 3: tried to jump on being like everywhere else, which is
Speaker 3: like super disappointing because you know, like New York had,
Speaker 3: you know, they always pushed the boundaries. I don't say
Speaker 3: that was the most progressive, but you know a lot
Speaker 3: of a lot of very forward thinking, great music in
Speaker 3: from New York, and it's just not doing it's not
Speaker 3: doing that right now. New York. Yeah, well you know
Speaker 3: it's the mecca of it, but you know, New York
Speaker 3: not It's not a leader anymore New York. New York
Speaker 3: was trying to be Atlanta for like the last decade.
Speaker 1: But what happened is when you start seeing Brooklyn Drill
Speaker 1: and all this other stuff. We talk about it all
Speaker 1: the time. Man, it's real microwave right now. You see
Speaker 1: some of these girls like rapping, and you start thinking
Speaker 1: about the Queen Latifas, the mc lights and just you
Speaker 1: know that being a female of them, see you's some
Speaker 1: really dope female them seas and I look at them
Speaker 1: now and it's almost like embarrassing.
Speaker 3: I mean female and she's a whole other category like
Speaker 3: they just I mean, you know, it's about like showing
Speaker 3: they shit and talking about they ship and that whole shit.
Speaker 3: It's like just it's been reduced to just a sex
Speaker 3: sexist cartoon at this point. It's kind of fucked up.
Speaker 3: It was part of us all too is because like
Speaker 3: making not sad, but making the Stanley could actually really rap.
Speaker 3: She don't really rap, but she can't really rap, you know,
Speaker 3: but they just you know, you're getting that box and
Speaker 3: that's the box they're gonna keep you in. Brooklyn Drill
Speaker 3: is weird to me because I like the kick Cash Cobain,
Speaker 3: because I like his spin on it because she was
Speaker 3: like he took something that super negative and he made
Speaker 3: it kind of fun. But a lot of Brooklyn Drill
Speaker 3: she is just terrible. Like the dudes just rapping, just tear.
Speaker 3: It's you know, the whole style of punching in every
Speaker 3: single bar. It's just not happening to me. So weird
Speaker 3: as style.
Speaker 1: And when you know what I think happened, man, the
Speaker 1: producer got took out the element where hip hop became
Speaker 1: easier and more accessible. You think about it now, it's
Speaker 1: like if I make a record I was telling eight
Speaker 1: the other day. I remember I would have to bring
Speaker 1: in a guitar player, a piano player, and this and that.
Speaker 1: Now I don't have to do none of that.
Speaker 3: I mean technology. Technology is a gift and a curse.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 3: You know a lot of kids like our fruity loops
Speaker 3: and and look like the beauty is it is that
Speaker 3: maybe some kid who's from nowhere in his bedroom, who
Speaker 3: ain't got shit, can make a hit record and have
Speaker 3: a better life. Right, That's the beauty of it. What
Speaker 3: the downside is. The downside is a lot of motherfuckers
Speaker 3: shouldn't be making music. Is making music like you know,
Speaker 3: and everyone should have made me.
Speaker 1: Well what happened to Dante? Is this right? Where you
Speaker 1: got that producer that's kind of coaching you and as
Speaker 1: you go along, right like you think about it. Eight
Speaker 1: had his own shit going, but he had a producer
Speaker 1: in his camp. Well he had Slip, you feel what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. He had Slip and they would collaborate together.
Speaker 1: Eight is head of a producer too, so they would
Speaker 1: get together. They actually learn how to make records together,
Speaker 1: and he stayed with the same crew. Eight didn't chase
Speaker 1: what was hot. He didn't go get a peak and Timberland.
Speaker 1: He kind of stayed in his lane, right, And I
Speaker 1: think what's happening today is, like you said, New York
Speaker 1: is no longer progressive. It's because they see these records
Speaker 1: blowing up in the South. Man, I'm gonna tell you,
Speaker 1: the South is not going nowhere. Man, they got a
Speaker 1: choke hold the game. It's not gonna change. Hell, it's
Speaker 1: the biggest region in the country. You know, when you
Speaker 1: start talking about the South, you got to include the
Speaker 1: Midwestern there.
Speaker 3: You know, right, and stuff from the South to also
Speaker 3: travel better than New York music, right, Like southern music
Speaker 3: would hit in the Bay Area with hit in La
Speaker 3: More definitely, Chicago, Detroit, the middle of the country. You know,
Speaker 3: motherfucker's in New York. They talked different. It's different, you know,
Speaker 3: it's not the same dialects, So it didn't travel as
Speaker 3: well New York. Also, you know, nothing other New York
Speaker 3: was on its own did too much. Like at one point,
Speaker 3: you know, it was too much. And I think that's
Speaker 3: what kind of started the the you know, other people's
Speaker 3: like fuck New York shit, you know, and it just
Speaker 3: kind of like we did it to ourselves. If you
Speaker 3: get it, you know. And it's funny too because we
Speaker 3: talked about that nineties pocket the early two thousands, before
Speaker 3: all that shit happened with Puff and death Row and
Speaker 3: all that bullshit. Motherfuckers was musically fucking with each other
Speaker 3: and it was different sounds, but we respected all the
Speaker 3: all the snoop shit and short in New York, we
Speaker 3: was fucking all that. That shit was all cool to us.
Speaker 3: Ugk All that shit was cool to us, and New
Speaker 3: York music travel too. Once that happened, shit everything changed,
Speaker 3: you know, And I hate to say it, I almost
Speaker 3: blamed the dummy down the rat. It started with Mace.
Speaker 3: I always think he's the first one to make it
Speaker 3: stupid because it was like, you know, Big was like
Speaker 3: the greatest, and then Mace came right after. And Mace
Speaker 3: was like he was swag wrapped, like he was rapping
Speaker 3: and kind of it was like almost karaoke. He was
Speaker 3: wrapping off of shit. Every like everyone knew the records
Speaker 3: he was using. It just didn't have the creativity and
Speaker 3: everyone's seen that hit, and then it was like I
Speaker 3: could do it too.
Speaker 1: Then we got as dude the nasty rap when he
Speaker 1: want to.
Speaker 3: He actually can rap. And when he's some children corn.
Speaker 3: He actually did rap, you know, like I've seen a
Speaker 3: freestyle him the other day. He was rapping good. But
Speaker 3: you know that that moment in time, just when it
Speaker 3: changed everything forever. Ship was never the same after that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he took it from the They took it from
Speaker 2: the natural element, and somebody figured out, let's commercialize this ship,
Speaker 2: and nigga, I'm gonna be I'm gonna be hammer with
Speaker 2: the taco bell pants on jumping down getting me like,
Speaker 2: somebody figured out, wait a minute, let me commercialize this ship.
Speaker 2: Let's use some of those popular commercialized seventies dance records
Speaker 2: and woot the womb. And next thing, you know, it
Speaker 2: seemed like the element of creation started changing because, like
Speaker 2: you said, now everybody want one of those commercialized you know,
Speaker 2: hot ninety seven hits that they can play all day,
Speaker 2: and you know, take it from you know, like you said,
Speaker 2: base with the simple records and you know, my bigging
Speaker 2: jay Z went to the ABC and you know, h
Speaker 2: to the Iszo. Everybody started going, I'm gonna commercialize the
Speaker 2: ship and make big bucks.
Speaker 3: And you know it's it's it's hard to be like
Speaker 3: commercial and still dope right to walk that fence right.
Speaker 3: A few people did it. Jay did it. I think
Speaker 3: Buster did it sometimes a big pun, right, Snoop, how
Speaker 3: do you do that? How do you walk that line
Speaker 3: and not not be corny as hell?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: Very hard to do man. And some cats did it, well,
Speaker 3: a lot of cats did it trash, you know, like
Speaker 3: I thought it was, you know, like the d MX
Speaker 3: was like interesting.
Speaker 2: Snoop saying cuz on T mobile commercials Now, that's so crazy, right,
Speaker 2: It's crazy as motherfucker. Somebody, you know, we were sitting
Speaker 2: up somewhere. Somebody looked at me and say, did he
Speaker 2: just say cuz? And I said, yeah, that's.
Speaker 3: So crazy, so crazy. That's just the craziest right.
Speaker 2: There, exactly. And knowing from where that that's that that
Speaker 2: stem from an all walk of life to hear, you know,
Speaker 2: a big ass corporation to the point to where they
Speaker 2: letting the nigga just bang on nigga.
Speaker 3: Cuz he was cripping in the Olympics, man, Like you.
Speaker 2: Know what I mean, it's it's it's it's Snoop is
Speaker 2: the popular, he's the he's the comfortable crip. He makes
Speaker 2: everyone feel like, oh game bang and it's cool. Nigga.
Speaker 2: You see Snoop Dogg, He's to meet me, like crazy,
Speaker 2: that's that's that's cool to them.
Speaker 1: That's cool to me.
Speaker 3: I mean it's cool to me on one level because
Speaker 3: I'd rather see Snoop get that checked than someone who's
Speaker 3: years after Nigga walk.
Speaker 2: Up till you get the couzin You've been my Oh,
Speaker 2: Nigga's finna go down something. But you're like, damn this
Speaker 2: Nigga and and eighty million homes talking about eight because
Speaker 2: and move through, and it's like, oh shit, we don't care.
Speaker 2: That's Snoop dog I'm so crazy.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, being from being from New York,
Speaker 3: like when I when I would go to l A
Speaker 3: and people people would say hard, I'd be like, oh, ship, motherfuckers,
Speaker 3: is really really about that because New York like we
Speaker 3: don't say ship with like eight days. But when that's
Speaker 3: I always knew I was in the ship. I was like, Oh,
Speaker 3: the motherbucker just said hard. I'm like, oh man, this
Speaker 3: is fucking this is the ship over here, buddy. You know,
Speaker 3: I knew Ice Cube back in the day, and I
Speaker 3: had gone to his house a long time ago right
Speaker 3: after it was after Erica's Most Wanted came out and
Speaker 3: I want to I want to hang out, and was
Speaker 3: like right around that time. And we went to his
Speaker 3: house in South Central and his mom made like I
Speaker 3: had cereal at his house and I was like, I
Speaker 3: was eating food and shit, and I was like this
Speaker 3: shit don't look bad. Like I was like, you got
Speaker 3: a house in a yard. Like I'm from New York.
Speaker 3: We don't got none of this ship. It was like
Speaker 3: night time. He was like, nighttime, it's fucked up over here.
Speaker 3: And then he told me all about it. I really
Speaker 3: seen how different it was. I always was fascinated by
Speaker 3: the cultural differences between New York and LA because New
Speaker 3: York back then, we didn't have no gang bang and shit, right,
Speaker 3: we didn't have that shit. We got your block, you
Speaker 3: got your crew from your block. It's a different a
Speaker 3: different world, you know, it was. It to me was
Speaker 3: always fascinating because we didn't have the organization. But but
Speaker 3: it was like also a little bit depressing that like
Speaker 3: so many people are born into this thing that's like,
Speaker 3: you know, man, where's it going to take you? And
Speaker 3: and there's not a lot of ways out of it,
Speaker 3: And it's generational, so you know, I would always be like,
Speaker 3: you know, and there's this book that my pops, she
Speaker 3: was a writer he pum other called City of Quartz
Speaker 3: and then explained kind of the roots of it all
Speaker 3: and mister how the penis system in California came to
Speaker 3: basically dictate what happened in the streets of California. To me,
Speaker 3: that bugged me out because New York is different. It's
Speaker 3: not that it's a whole different way of looking at
Speaker 3: but we go to twenty twenty four and New York
Speaker 3: got all that shit now exactly.
Speaker 2: It was crazy to see that transition because somebody like
Speaker 2: me who've been traveling in New York since eighty nine,
Speaker 2: you get me like, I didn't see none of that shit.
Speaker 2: Like we used to have that shit. We used to
Speaker 2: get on there, We used to get on the train,
Speaker 2: you know, we used to walk around. We used to
Speaker 2: go to Brooklyn, we used to walk over the bridge.
Speaker 2: And the last thing, now I knew, motherfucks was hard.
Speaker 2: You know, we didn't see it. We'ven't seen the warriors
Speaker 2: in different moves and situations. But I never had the
Speaker 2: fear of going be sweated by another cripp of blood
Speaker 2: out here.
Speaker 1: You get me like it.
Speaker 2: Was hard niggas. Like I tell that story. Everywhere we go.
Speaker 2: It was hard niggas everywhere we go.
Speaker 3: But everywhere you go there's somebody.
Speaker 2: New York didn't. They didn't express the cripping blood and
Speaker 2: ship like we did in l A. That was like
Speaker 2: our foundation.
Speaker 3: That's not our culture exactly. New York cultures graffiti and breakdancing.
Speaker 2: GRAFFEEDI breakdancing. They got their crewis and clicks, and you know,
Speaker 2: we got the warlords or the spiders or the whatever exactly.
Speaker 2: Never like nigga, we the we, the we we the
Speaker 2: spider bloods over here or we we you know, we
Speaker 2: the warriors over here. It was never that it was
Speaker 2: ship nigga. You'd be Blacks, Mexicans, whatever, it clicked up
Speaker 2: in the same ship. So I never feared or not
Speaker 2: the same feet. But we never anticipated running into any
Speaker 2: gang banging situations as far as New York was concerned.
Speaker 2: Even I go to Chicago, I'd go to tech says
Speaker 2: niggas was Like I said, niggas was hard everywhere, but
Speaker 2: they were limited places where niggas was actually cripping in blood.
Speaker 3: You get me, and that shit took over the whole country.
Speaker 3: I mean, I was in New York, like you know,
Speaker 3: I'm well friends with bou Yah. I was out there
Speaker 3: like with them. The first time they came out there,
Speaker 3: I took I took cover and them to Harlem. They
Speaker 3: wanted to go to see one hundred and twenty fifth Street,
Speaker 3: and motherfuckers was bugging on them. There's all red and
Speaker 3: the Braids and motherfuckers like yoo, motherfuckers look crazy, you know,
Speaker 3: because in New York everyone talks to each other, right,
Speaker 3: like everyone's everyone got some shit to say to you.
Speaker 3: And motherbuckers was like, oh yo, motherfuckers look cool as hell.
Speaker 3: That shit could not happen nowadays. You can't. You couldn't
Speaker 3: go do that now they know.
Speaker 1: Hey, you know, did you watch the Wu Tang movie?
Speaker 1: We did the series?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, I wrote on the third season. I worked
Speaker 3: on it, and I worked with Rizon a bunch of stuff.
Speaker 3: I had helped them work on the Dirty episodes. I
Speaker 3: wrote on a couple of them. So yeah, not only
Speaker 3: did I watch it, I worked on it.
Speaker 1: So yeah, real quick man, because old Dirty Man. I
Speaker 1: think he was one of the most unique artists of
Speaker 1: all time.
Speaker 3: I mean, he was undoubtedly I mean, he was undoubtedly
Speaker 3: one of the the you know, the craziest, most charismatic
Speaker 3: while you know, he was like he was like a
Speaker 3: dangerous Bismarcky or some shit, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: But you know what crazy is it? Confidence? I saw
Speaker 1: this dude in New Orleans one year and it was
Speaker 1: I forget where we was at. Man, I was out
Speaker 1: there with I think DJ Bobcat and he said, any
Speaker 1: rappers out there, I'll push y'all ass right now where
Speaker 1: the rappers that and nobody stood up.
Speaker 3: Yo. I was there that year. Man, he was so crazy.
Speaker 3: That was man. We did this electra showcase and man,
Speaker 3: he tore that motherfucker down. But he came out and
Speaker 3: they had a mirror on the side of the States
Speaker 3: and just started looking at himself and talking, wrapping himself
Speaker 3: in the mirror like he was like, I can't Like
Speaker 3: Elvis Presley said, I can't even explain it. And he
Speaker 3: was like it was like there was like two thousand people,
Speaker 3: consider the people that he did a performance in the
Speaker 3: mirror for like one song for himself, Like he didn't
Speaker 3: even pay attention. He was so fucking wild. I love
Speaker 3: to do man as unique. I miss him a lot.
Speaker 3: He was you know, it was hard to see how
Speaker 3: it all went down, you know, like he was rough
Speaker 3: to watch.
Speaker 2: He was good people. I had the pleasure of fucking
Speaker 2: with Dirt a lot when I went to New York.
Speaker 2: You know, Wu Tang. For some reason, we gravitated to
Speaker 2: each other.
Speaker 3: You know, it's real, recognized real.
Speaker 1: That's why they even put you in a series ads
Speaker 1: in the series, I called him. I was watching, and
Speaker 1: I said, they got the homie eate in there. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was real cool, especially with a with Method and Dirt,
Speaker 2: and then with Ray Kwan. I was real cool with them.
Speaker 2: And so, like I said, they flew me out to
Speaker 2: New York to be in an All Kennedy So simple video.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, that's right, that's right, that's right, You're
Speaker 3: in the video. It's crazy. I forgot about that.
Speaker 2: And then I did a song with Dirt with the
Speaker 2: remix for Shimmy Shimmy Me and E forty.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: He was a cool cat. He was in Compton for
Speaker 2: a while to stomping around. Yeah, Dirt, Dirt was everywhere, man.
Speaker 3: Reason man, Yeah, he was could he'ling up anywhere? You
Speaker 3: never know where else up he was. He was the Wilder.
Speaker 3: He's a wild life.
Speaker 1: Homies from Compton. Man told me he was messing with
Speaker 1: his sister. He told me, he said, man, old dirt,
Speaker 1: old dirty bastard, been over her house, messing with myself.
Speaker 3: What he wanted.
Speaker 2: He was doing something. But we were stomping around the
Speaker 2: streets for men.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 2: But he was just accepted by motherfuckers because motherfuckers knew
Speaker 2: how serious and passionate he was about his ship. And
Speaker 2: when he was putting the record once she became frying
Speaker 2: and cool with him ship.
Speaker 3: Oh man, he was best. I mean. I was in
Speaker 3: the Bay Area with them and we we we I
Speaker 3: knew Forty a little and we bumped into forty and them,
Speaker 3: and that's how him and Forty ended up on that
Speaker 3: record because they had the same birthday. So they started
Speaker 3: talking and they was like something came up and it
Speaker 3: was like, yo, we got the same born day. And
Speaker 3: then they started calling each other twin and that they
Speaker 3: we were like really cool with Forty because of that.
Speaker 3: It was like, that's a that's an odd pair, those two,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean?
Speaker 2: Like we was all in Oakland for something in the
Speaker 2: day they was doing, and we just all happened to
Speaker 2: end up at the same spot and we all went
Speaker 2: to Studio Tones that night, Me, forty and Dirt and
Speaker 2: that's when we came up with the remakes and they
Speaker 2: liked it so good that they flew us all back
Speaker 2: to New York to do the video.
Speaker 1: The video.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, got the video.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I was at the video shoot. Came by and
Speaker 3: all that. That's so crazy. Yeah, man, he you know,
Speaker 3: I've worked on this documentary that's on Hulu now called
Speaker 3: Tailor two Dirties. I was a producer on it with
Speaker 3: the family and and you know, like I did a lot.
Speaker 3: I do a lot of stuff for his family still,
Speaker 3: Like I helped him find checks here and there, and
Speaker 3: his wife Shaquita I suve Shia Henry. Maybe eight years ago.
Speaker 3: It was like I got all this old footage of
Speaker 3: dirty do you think we could do something with it?
Speaker 3: And from there we you know, we kicked it around
Speaker 3: for a three years with Messiah who runs the foundation,
Speaker 3: and we ended up hooking up with Sam Pollard and
Speaker 3: and Jason and we got the doc done and we
Speaker 3: made it with post films. So like from her just
Speaker 3: calling me one day with this idea, it actually all happened.
Speaker 3: I got to I gotta take my hat off there.
Speaker 3: She really, she really really was like I think I
Speaker 3: got somewhere and she did. It was super cool to
Speaker 3: see it man come together and Dirty was like, you know,
Speaker 3: I loved him. Man, It's someone was you know, like
Speaker 3: a lot of people. I always say this, we're not
Speaker 3: most people's not built for fame and fortune, right, And
Speaker 3: if you grow up in group homes and you're institutionalized,
Speaker 3: and you might have some some bipolar issues, substance abuse problems,
Speaker 3: et cetera, et cetera. You give someone everything in the
Speaker 3: whole world that they wanted, it's very hard for people
Speaker 3: to handle that. Well, most people aren't Ice Tea, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean. Like Ice could get all that
Speaker 3: and he can handle it. Most people are not that
Speaker 3: person and they lose perspective. And that's what happened to Dirty.
Speaker 3: It is very sad, but it's also like, you know,
Speaker 3: it's a classic still cautionary tale. You got to really,
Speaker 3: you know, watch what happens when you get everything you
Speaker 3: wish for, Because when you get everything you wish for,
Speaker 3: it comes with a lot of shit attached. You know.
Speaker 3: It's like and he just wasn't you know, he wasn't
Speaker 3: prepared for and it just all went the wrong way.
Speaker 3: It was very sad to see, you know. I saw
Speaker 3: him when he came out of out of prison and
Speaker 3: Dame Bash had signed him, and Dame had you know,
Speaker 3: A knew Dame back then. I still know Dame. But
Speaker 3: he was like, come, come and check out your man.
Speaker 3: And it was it was really sad, man, it was really,
Speaker 3: it was really really sad to see he was he was,
Speaker 3: It was he was spent. It was done being in prison,
Speaker 3: and and the psych ward in prison really had taken
Speaker 3: taken a toll on the brother. He wasn't the same
Speaker 3: human being. And it was sad to see, you know.
Speaker 3: And I remained friends with Risen a lot of those
Speaker 3: guys because I always stood by dirty through thick and thin.
Speaker 3: He was he was worth it and he was you know.
Speaker 3: I remember he got shot when I worked with him.
Speaker 3: He got shot in Brooklyn. He jumped to a window
Speaker 3: another time. I mean, we did this show in l A.
Speaker 3: And I want to say it was at the Plate him,
Speaker 3: but it wasn't played. It was the spot on Vine
Speaker 3: right by Capitol whatever that is, that club right there,
Speaker 3: and we did the show for it was rat Pages
Speaker 3: had like a seminar and he killed it. Was right
Speaker 3: when the record came out, right when a single came out,
Speaker 3: he just bodied it, just destroyed it. But he was
Speaker 3: performing and it was like the second or third the
Speaker 3: last song, and these dudes in the front was he
Speaker 3: had bottle and they was all hanging out. They was
Speaker 3: like in front of the crowd, and it was apparently
Speaker 3: Grape Street Crypts. We didn't know that. But he just
Speaker 3: took his bottle and he handed it to a dude
Speaker 3: he drank from the audience and gave it back to him.
Speaker 3: And so after the show, like they literally cut his
Speaker 3: sound off. He jumped off the stage and walked through
Speaker 3: the audience and was still performing. And we went outside
Speaker 3: with all these dudes and they like became our friends,
Speaker 3: and they were all these grave street cryb dudes. We
Speaker 3: didn't know at the time, We didn't know what they were,
Speaker 3: but they ended up always fucking with him when he
Speaker 3: came out here because we had met them at that show,
Speaker 3: and I was like, this motherfucker could go anywhere and
Speaker 3: meet motherfuckers and be good. It was bugged out and
Speaker 3: they was like, you know, They're not the people you
Speaker 3: expect to be old dirty Bassa fans, but they was
Speaker 3: his friends. In this fans it was bugged out like
Speaker 3: we you know, we used to come out of a lot,
Speaker 3: like I knew the dudes, the operation from the bottom
Speaker 3: dudes too, and they used to they used to rob
Speaker 3: with brand newbie in a lot. So we would come
Speaker 3: out he and meet dudes all the time. And it's
Speaker 3: funny how like people come out from New York and
Speaker 3: they'd have problems, but we would come out to New York,
Speaker 3: I mean to LA and we would always be good
Speaker 3: because we always you know, respected everyone's boundaries, where everyone's from,
Speaker 3: and you just got to know how to move wherever
Speaker 3: you go, you know, like re new this is very
Speaker 3: good at doing that. They always made friends wherever they went.
Speaker 1: I think that's one thing about l A. Man sets
Speaker 1: usually embraced cats to come out here in that cool.
Speaker 3: Makes sense. I mean, look, you could step in ship anywhere,
Speaker 3: if you if you're if you if you ain't the
Speaker 3: right size, you can step into bullshit anywhere. But you
Speaker 3: know I did this ship my whole life. I never
Speaker 3: had a problem anywhere.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think if you come I think what
Speaker 1: don't happen though with a lot of these young cats.
Speaker 1: You know, there'd be some dudes from the hood and
Speaker 1: they wind up on to become crips and bloods. I
Speaker 1: never understood it because I always say you can just be yourself,
Speaker 1: and they go fuck with you. Just be yourself.
Speaker 3: You at you got guys, I mean, you got guys
Speaker 3: who gotta like check in when they come here. And
Speaker 3: you know, we all know, like, look, man, I grew
Speaker 3: up with like crazy Puerto Rican motherfuckers and you know
Speaker 3: who who who to let in and who not to.
Speaker 3: You got to give dudes a heisman. You can't let
Speaker 3: dudes get in real close because you know, gangsters are
Speaker 3: gonna do gangster shit and if they could do some
Speaker 3: gangster shit, you they're gonna do gangster shit.
Speaker 2: You what I say all the time. But niggas can
Speaker 2: get close and fuck you. He gonna fuck you if
Speaker 2: he thinks YEA with it. So just got to watch
Speaker 2: your element, I see.
Speaker 3: You gotta know and if you got, if you're smart,
Speaker 3: you got the spidery scends.
Speaker 1: You know, you just know, how was it trying to
Speaker 1: mix that album?
Speaker 3: Dude? Mixing Old Dirty bast album was a nightmare because
Speaker 3: Rizza had told me. He told me this years later, Like, so,
Speaker 3: I don't know if you guys know, he had a
Speaker 3: flood in his house and he lost he lost Cuban
Speaker 3: links and he lost liquortories, the whole albums. So the
Speaker 3: blood destroyed all this equipment. So he had a two
Speaker 3: inch machine in the house, he had all his records,
Speaker 3: all this shit, so he lost everything. So he had
Speaker 3: to go and make those records while while Dirty's records
Speaker 3: waiting to get mixed, so he doesn't show up. So
Speaker 3: I got to figure out how to mix the record myself,
Speaker 3: and I, you know, I'm an engineer to an extent,
Speaker 3: Like I'm not an engineer, and I know a lot
Speaker 3: of shit, but man, you know, the way he does
Speaker 3: it is not the way a normal person does shit.
Speaker 3: He got risk of signs I ain't got. I ain't
Speaker 3: got the manual. I don't have the riz of God
Speaker 3: body manual to mix his records. So you know, it
Speaker 3: was very difficult, and most difficult to ball was was
Speaker 3: mixing Brooklyn Zoo, which True Master did, but but True
Speaker 3: Master was nowhere to be found. And so I mixed
Speaker 3: that shit three fucking times and I couldn't get it right,
Speaker 3: just ain't sound right. I could not get the motherfucker right.
Speaker 3: And the fourth time, I was like, you know what, man,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna just fucking put a kick in the snare
Speaker 3: in the shit because I can't make the drum sound good.
Speaker 3: They sound like shit. So I just took a break
Speaker 3: record and I chopped that shit up and put it
Speaker 3: in there. The only thing I did on the record, really,
Speaker 3: and I only did it because I was I was
Speaker 3: I was failing over and over again, and I was like,
Speaker 3: I gotta get this fucking record done. So it worked,
Speaker 3: and you know, it made it made it made sense.
Speaker 3: And when we went to met master the album, I
Speaker 3: told Rizza, you know, I put a kick in snare
Speaker 3: in there. He looked at me like whatever, Like he
Speaker 3: didn't it didn't make no sense. He didn't care. But
Speaker 3: when I hear that record, I still hear the kicking
Speaker 3: snare in there. It's a it's a pretty famous break record.
Speaker 3: You can hear the snare every time you hear it
Speaker 3: if you know what record it is. But it was
Speaker 3: it was hard, man. You look, they gave me. They
Speaker 3: gave me, Like the album has like eleven twelve songs,
Speaker 3: like I think it came in here was like eight
Speaker 3: songs done, vocals done, and getting him to finish the
Speaker 3: rest of the ship and mixing the ship was. He
Speaker 3: got shot, he got arrested, he got thrown out of
Speaker 3: every night club in New York. He showed up on
Speaker 3: dust a few times. Like you know, he was just
Speaker 3: fucking a wild man. So you know, we got it done, though, man,
Speaker 3: we got it done. It was you know what, like
Speaker 3: in my career, I've done a bunch of shit, but
Speaker 3: like there's that's the only time someone hand me lightning
Speaker 3: in a bottle, And there was like, you know, they
Speaker 3: gave me the football in the in the red zone.
Speaker 3: They say, Yo, score that fucking touchdown. Take that motherfucker.
Speaker 3: Get it done. Walk these dogs, because in my head,
Speaker 3: I kind of knew it might never happen again, you know,
Speaker 3: like you got to catch that moment, like be in
Speaker 3: the moment, get it. And I never had that. I
Speaker 3: never had that battery on my back before when I
Speaker 3: was as an R guy, and I managed to get
Speaker 3: it done against against you know, a lot of people
Speaker 3: told me I signed the wrong motherfucker. They were like,
Speaker 3: you sign dirty, Why ain't soign met the man. You know,
Speaker 3: I don't know man, Old Dirty basst He his presence
Speaker 3: spoke to me. And when I met him, I was like,
Speaker 3: this guy is a genius. You look. I love the
Speaker 3: I love the the biz marquise, the grand Poobahs, the
Speaker 3: snoop dogs, even the ludicris Is. I like those characters, right,
Speaker 3: the character and Old Dirty Basht was a character to me. Right,
Speaker 3: So I was like, this, this could be one of
Speaker 3: the great things I do. And I was lucky enough
Speaker 3: that I was right, and I was lucky enough this
Speaker 3: is the thing ourselves the luckiest enough that Riza trusted me.
Speaker 3: So I met Rizza and we bonded, and he trusted
Speaker 3: me to walk those dogs, because he could have took
Speaker 3: that ship anywhere, right, but he trusted me with that
Speaker 3: gem and so that's that's that's a big honor. So
Speaker 3: you can't fuck that up. When Rizza trust you with
Speaker 3: one of his his own family, his cousin, you know,
Speaker 3: you got to rise to the occasion if you know,
Speaker 3: you know, what are you worth in this world? Right?
Speaker 3: So that's one of them times when I had to
Speaker 3: I had to do what I had to do. I
Speaker 3: had to prove myself and I did you know you.
Speaker 1: Had another one too, you had km D.
Speaker 3: I did m F doomf doune.
Speaker 1: I think it's his brother dad in the car.
Speaker 3: His brother dad, right, Yes, brother got hit by a
Speaker 3: car under mysterious circumstances. And you know, we put out
Speaker 3: the second record was coming out, Black Basterds, and and
Speaker 3: like you know, he used the sambo logo that he drew,
Speaker 3: and the records called Black Bastard looked like the game Hangman.
Speaker 3: You know that game he played when you were a kid.
Speaker 3: So it was that, and it was he was hanging
Speaker 3: his the sambo stereotype and effigy, and you know Billboard
Speaker 3: saw it, a woman named Terry Rossi, and she said
Speaker 3: that it was it was basically irresponsible. And some you know,
Speaker 3: like kind of accused us of being racially insensitive for
Speaker 3: allowing him to use his artworks. So his record, the
Speaker 3: label it was in there.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: It was like right after I S had the ship
Speaker 3: with cop Killer. So Warner Brothers was all they were
Speaker 3: nervous and they let it go. So they gave him
Speaker 3: back his masters and he disappeared for a few years,
Speaker 3: you know, and he came back as MF. Doom. His
Speaker 3: name was is Doom is Daniel Doomle, so his name
Speaker 3: was Doom. So he just became who he really was.
Speaker 3: And in a strange way, it was a blessing, right
Speaker 3: he would you know, never lose your brother, can never
Speaker 3: be a blessing. But but like all the trials and
Speaker 3: tribulations he went through made him find this this inner
Speaker 3: voice and he came back as m AT Doom, which is,
Speaker 3: you know, a totally kind of different chamber of music.
Speaker 3: But I feel like that is like a metaphor on
Speaker 3: some level for like black people in America, Like you
Speaker 3: can hand motherfucker's a bull of shit and they're gonna
Speaker 3: come back and make the greatest thing ever. You could
Speaker 3: give people the worst conditions in the world, subject people
Speaker 3: to bullshit, but watch the motherfuckers do with that right,
Speaker 3: that ingenuity and that spirit. And I always felt that
Speaker 3: in his music he was like a modern blues man
Speaker 3: or some shit he took. He got handed the worst
Speaker 3: shit in life, and he made that ship into gold. Right.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: That hip hop, yes, hip hop shit really that mass iconic.
Speaker 1: I remember, man, somebody telling me that Doom would go
Speaker 1: do shows all over the world and have somebody being
Speaker 1: doom over he did in England, somebody in Ireland doom.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I want to see him in fil One time.
Speaker 3: I once drove up there to the show and I
Speaker 3: was on the side of the stage. Dude came up
Speaker 3: next to me. I put his arm. I looked over
Speaker 3: and it was doomed but he was on stage. His
Speaker 3: man was being him, this dude Ben. It was Ben Klingon, Like, yeah,
Speaker 3: doom was you know, man. We're working on this big,
Speaker 3: big thing about him, me and and the family, and
Speaker 3: we're gonna do. We got a lot of ship that
Speaker 3: we're trying to do that celebrates him because you know,
Speaker 3: he's one of a kind like he is. It's wild
Speaker 3: because he has become like a guy who never had
Speaker 3: a hit record, right, but he is like a folk hero,
Speaker 3: which is so wild when I think about him. A
Speaker 3: lot of mythical.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, a lot of people fucked with M F.
Speaker 2: Doom that I didn't even know about. I would see
Speaker 2: people and they'd be like, man with the mask and
Speaker 2: all that shit. He was like he he was, like,
Speaker 2: like you said, a folk hero to a lot of people.
Speaker 3: Know he's he's like the centerpiece for like the whole
Speaker 3: Earl world, Tyler and them. They love him. He's like God,
Speaker 3: like to the mythical it's bugged out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know who put me up on the m
Speaker 1: F done My oldest son. I heard that gazillion here
Speaker 1: and I was like, who is this? You listened to?
Speaker 3: This?
Speaker 1: Shit is ill? He said, m F doone m F
Speaker 1: Doune was incredible.
Speaker 3: He's crazy, said that because like all my arm all
Speaker 3: the youngsters around me, like my family and shit, Like,
Speaker 3: you know, my nephew like his favorite rapper is Doom.
Speaker 3: He's like twenty years old. I was like, how the
Speaker 3: fuck is that your favorite rapper? He's supposed to like
Speaker 3: Travis Scott or some shit, but he just loves Doom.
Speaker 3: And he's always asked me about Doom. Shit. So you know,
Speaker 3: if we if if everything lines up in the next
Speaker 3: you know, we're trying to do this this doc and
Speaker 3: all this shit with the families. You know, we're knee
Speaker 3: deep in trying to figure it out. So his story
Speaker 3: will be told in another way, a very creative way.
Speaker 3: Everything comes together. Doom was one of a time man.
Speaker 3: You know, that's a unique individual. And I always tell
Speaker 3: people I worked with KM d I don't work with Doom,
Speaker 3: but Doom was my really good friend. You know. He
Speaker 3: was like my brother for life. And he's just a
Speaker 3: unique individual, Like he's a wild boy man. He was
Speaker 3: the funniest like and there's no one like him, you know.
Speaker 3: And in this rap thing, like I always say, like,
Speaker 3: I'm so lucky to be allowed to be part of it,
Speaker 3: to contribute a little bit to it, to be accepted,
Speaker 3: to have made friends who are like family to me,
Speaker 3: whether it's large Professor or it's mugs in them or
Speaker 3: whoever the fuck it is in this world that, like
Speaker 3: you know, I get to really be part of it.
Speaker 3: To have spent all those days with Bismarcky looking for
Speaker 3: records and pro keads and traveling, buying shit with him
Speaker 3: and shit like that, running around the world with people
Speaker 3: like that is the greatest honor of all of it.
Speaker 3: Like I never had a real job, I never really
Speaker 3: had to stress too much for money, Like you know,
Speaker 3: I'm fucking blessed. This thing is to me, like hip
Speaker 3: hop the most important subculture of my lifetime. And without it,
Speaker 3: I don't know what the fuck I would have done,
Speaker 3: And my life would have been so much it would
Speaker 3: have been boring bro life and you be doing it.
Speaker 1: Some of the greatest artists in hip hot would never
Speaker 1: probably came into existence.
Speaker 3: No, I can't say that. I can't say that. I
Speaker 3: don't say that because I say to me, so, I
Speaker 3: was just lucky enough that, like, I don't know how
Speaker 3: you guys feel about God, but I believe in God
Speaker 3: very abstract. I believe in something bigger, you know. I'm
Speaker 3: not like a Jesus dode with God, like I'm on
Speaker 3: some universal unconsciousness, right. So, but I was lucky enough
Speaker 3: that what I call God put me in a position
Speaker 3: to open the door for people. But I just was
Speaker 3: that lucky motherfucker who's antenna was turned tuned in, turned on, right.
Speaker 3: So I just was very blessed to be allowed to
Speaker 3: help some great people come to life. But I believe
Speaker 3: that those people would have found a way anyway because
Speaker 3: they had the talent. I was just lucky enough to
Speaker 3: be able to open the door for him. And that's
Speaker 3: an honor, man, That's an honor to me.
Speaker 1: Now I want to ask you about I want to
Speaker 1: ask you about three, two groups and one person. Okay,
Speaker 1: why did you Digital Underground?
Speaker 3: So Digital Underground a guy named Ed Strickland I worked with.
Speaker 3: He was a promo guy. He was traveling and he
Speaker 3: came back from the Bay and he had Underwater Rhymes.
Speaker 3: He had that record and we listened to it and
Speaker 3: we liked it a lot, and then Adrian Gregory, who
Speaker 3: managed them, sent him the tape that had had do
Speaker 3: what You Like on him before it came out, because
Speaker 3: they were putting records themselves out on tnc Records to Macola,
Speaker 3: so they were putting they have put out Underwater Rhymes.
Speaker 3: So they pressed up do what you Like and sent
Speaker 3: us that. We was talking to him, and then I
Speaker 3: had the record and we played it in the office
Speaker 3: and day La Soul was there and they were like
Speaker 3: Pasta News was like you better sign those motherfuckers, and
Speaker 3: we all were like, yeah, we need to get the
Speaker 3: deal done, and we signed them. So my hat's off
Speaker 3: to Daylight kind of pushed that one over the top.
Speaker 1: And that was it.
Speaker 3: Man. We met Hump and and all that, and unfortunately
Speaker 3: I left before the album came out because I wasn't
Speaker 3: making no money working at Tommy Boy. And someone actually
Speaker 3: was like, we're gonna give you a real job and
Speaker 3: give you a real check and you don't have to
Speaker 3: live in a shoebox apartment no more and sell wheat
Speaker 3: on the side. So I got to stop hustling and
Speaker 3: had a real job, thank god. But yeah, dude, you
Speaker 3: know digital Underground and Shock was like, like Shock, he's
Speaker 3: one of them dudes. Man, he was like a genius,
Speaker 3: like I can't explain it, Like he could sit down
Speaker 3: at the piano and play some real shit like he
Speaker 3: was a boy. He's a genius. Motherfucker. He did all
Speaker 3: the artwork. He would send the drawings in like he
Speaker 3: was a genius. Like I never yo, He's like, look, man,
Speaker 3: drugs suck, you know what I mean? Like you know,
Speaker 3: and and he you know, he had problems with with
Speaker 3: things later in life. But man, that dude was light
Speaker 3: years ahead of motherfuckers. And he did everything. He played everything,
Speaker 3: produce everything. He was so motherfucking talented and so fucking cool.
Speaker 3: He was the coolest.
Speaker 1: Well Shock, so you lay it right into him daylor Soul.
Speaker 1: Do you remember how you met them?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So they were getting signed already and I got
Speaker 3: interviewed with the job I had been. I mean, I'm
Speaker 3: I'm old, so but I was there being rockins Road
Speaker 3: manager right. So when I was a kid, because I
Speaker 3: worked for Rush Productions, I worked for Russell lee Or
Speaker 3: and I was a crazy kid. You know. I went
Speaker 3: on the road with the Beastie Boys and and when
Speaker 3: I was a kid and my friend Sean was a
Speaker 3: road manager. He was like, here's how you here's how
Speaker 3: you be a romantic basically his slave. He was like,
Speaker 3: you're going to just be my fucking slave every day.
Speaker 3: You're can do all the shit I don't want to do.
Speaker 3: So I learned how to kind of road manager. I
Speaker 3: became their road manager and rap music and you you,
Speaker 3: I'm sure you know the state It wasn't like it
Speaker 3: was small man, small community right in la probably even
Speaker 3: smaller than New York. You know, it was just just
Speaker 3: a hand. It was like because in la I think
Speaker 3: in la Is it was like it all comes from
Speaker 3: Uncle Jam's army, right, right.
Speaker 2: That's what records came through. Yeah, right exactly.
Speaker 3: And it was small, man. It was like it was
Speaker 3: Ice and them, dudes, and you know, there was just
Speaker 3: a small group of people, Dre and them. It was
Speaker 3: small Julio g it was Tony and them. So, you know,
Speaker 3: New York was was a little bigger but it's still small.
Speaker 3: So I knew everybody. So Daddy Oh from Stetsusnic. They
Speaker 3: had offered him an A and R job, but he
Speaker 3: could he didn't want it because he's he's doing the ship.
Speaker 3: But I had been on the road with him. He
Speaker 3: was my boy. Damn here, damn hear him. He was
Speaker 3: damn here trying to get me to be like a
Speaker 3: five percent. I swear to God, I can't make this
Speaker 3: ship up, you know, like the whole ship, like the teacher,
Speaker 3: you know, I know, the supreme alphabet, the whole ship.
Speaker 3: So so he told them they should hire me, and
Speaker 3: I went for the job. And they played me a
Speaker 3: tape and it was Dayla or Soul and it was
Speaker 3: plugged tuning and I lost my mind. I said, this
Speaker 3: is the greatest thing I ever heard. I was like,
Speaker 3: this ship is the I was like, I loved ultra magnetic.
Speaker 3: I was like, this is beyond ultra magnetic. This is
Speaker 3: like even further out there. And they said, oh, we're
Speaker 3: gonna sign this. So they called me a couple of
Speaker 3: weeks later, right before Christmas. I'll never forget, it was
Speaker 3: snowing out. I went to the office and they Monica
Speaker 3: Lynch was like, so you got the job, and you
Speaker 3: know that group that you really like. I was like, yeah,
Speaker 3: Prince pauls Hoopers. I knew Prince Paul. She was like.
Speaker 3: I was like yeah, She's like, that's gonna be your
Speaker 3: first group. So I ended up working with them and
Speaker 3: really basically spent a whole year in my life with
Speaker 3: them traveling. I would road manager and we go all
Speaker 3: over the country. I took them to La the first
Speaker 3: eight eight you'll appreciate this. I took them to play
Speaker 3: at World on wheels. We played that World on wheels
Speaker 3: and we had never seen no shit like that before.
Speaker 3: So I knew I'd been to LA. I knew more
Speaker 3: about it than them. But we played that World on
Speaker 3: wheels and that shit was cripped out like a motherfucker.
Speaker 3: We had. We never seen no shit like that before,
Speaker 3: like I had. I was like, Yo, this shit is
Speaker 3: fucking crazy. And we were bugging because everyone's wearing like
Speaker 3: Yankee shit and Georgetown shit, and I was like cowboys shit.
Speaker 3: And then we seen do Yeah, we seen dudes crip
Speaker 3: walk and iced. He hosted the events for kDa and
Speaker 3: seventy three. That's where I met Mugs that's the damn me.
Speaker 3: No I knew mugs I've met ever last that day
Speaker 3: he was with the Rom Syndicate and and we we
Speaker 3: knew Ice, but I knew Ice, but we got cool
Speaker 3: with Ice because in the club there was a big
Speaker 3: ass fight and then dudes went at it and they
Speaker 3: got everyone out the club. You know, they locked us
Speaker 3: in the club. They locked us in and dudes are
Speaker 3: shooting in the parking lot and we're like, and you know,
Speaker 3: we're Dayla soul man. There was striped shirts and we
Speaker 3: got flat tops and Aaron Max's we not we don't
Speaker 3: know about that ship. That's not us. You know, no
Speaker 3: one's a sucker, but we don't know that ship. And man,
Speaker 3: just running around the country with daylight was that was
Speaker 3: so much fun. And and then I came back a
Speaker 3: few months later with Latifa and we played at at
Speaker 3: at World on wheels and at Skateland. So I went
Speaker 3: to both of those motherfuckers. And Skateland was wild. Skate
Speaker 3: Land was Skateland was way scarier than me. It smelled
Speaker 3: like dust. We walked in and the bou Yad dude.
Speaker 3: That's why I met bou Ya because bou Yah dudes
Speaker 3: were doing security, so they yeah, the dude from bou
Speaker 3: yall Rid Gangster D was like, hey man, I rapped,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna get you to give me your number and
Speaker 3: and then I talked to Gangster D on the phone
Speaker 3: is ship So like, you know, daylave Man like people
Speaker 3: forget like eighty seven, they were out and they their
Speaker 3: record was big on KD was big in l A.
Speaker 3: So you know what Daylight was like, I met them LA. Yeah,
Speaker 3: they like New York didn't have all rap station. KD
Speaker 3: was the first all rap station in America, the first one, right,
Speaker 3: So we used to fuck with Greg Greg Mack and
Speaker 3: his scandalous as and Roger Clayton because Roger used to
Speaker 3: be in New York. People don't notice that the l
Speaker 3: A possibly moved to New York for a while when
Speaker 3: it was all all that Bobcat And that's why I
Speaker 3: met Pooh. So I met Pooh back then because Pooh
Speaker 3: was the youngest one. So me and Pool used to
Speaker 3: hang out and smoke weed like because they were always
Speaker 3: who was like, they were always kind of son and
Speaker 3: Pool like take this their do this, do that? Right?
Speaker 3: So I knew all them dudes. And back to Daylight,
Speaker 3: Like Daylight was just when I met them, they were
Speaker 3: like it was like looking at myself, and we had
Speaker 3: the same likes. We like all the same shit. We
Speaker 3: all wore funny ass shit. You know, we were fucking
Speaker 3: funny mother. You know we were funny like we was
Speaker 3: because at that time rap change, everyone was so hard, right,
Speaker 3: but this new thing came out and it was like
Speaker 3: we was having fun, like and it was bitches around.
Speaker 3: It was like it was another thing. So you know,
Speaker 3: we was in it all that like step fashion and shit.
Speaker 3: So when I met them, it was like meeting my
Speaker 3: kindred spirits. Like I was like, oh, I known you
Speaker 3: my whole life. So we just man, we ran around
Speaker 3: the whole world.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 3: We went to England the first time they went. We
Speaker 3: did all this wild shit. It was super fun and
Speaker 3: to this day, like those are my brothers. Like I
Speaker 3: speak to Post all the time. You know, Like when
Speaker 3: day passed, I was like, really, you know, that took
Speaker 3: a lot out of us. But you know, when he passed,
Speaker 3: I went to New York. I spoke the past and
Speaker 3: He's like, come to the shit, stop bullshit. So I
Speaker 3: got a ticket, Like the last second I went to
Speaker 3: New York and I was there when when they had
Speaker 3: the big thing at Webster Hall with Dave Chappelle and
Speaker 3: all that. Like I was on stage, like you know,
Speaker 3: I was with Latifa, I'm with Loa because Dana's like
Speaker 3: my sister, and I'm there and we're common. And I
Speaker 3: got to tell you, man that she was like a
Speaker 3: spiritual experience. Man. I was like, you know, I didn't
Speaker 3: go to high school. I barely went to high school.
Speaker 3: I didn't go to college, but I went to hip hop.
Speaker 3: That's my college, right. So and that was like my
Speaker 3: college reunion. I was there with my people, with pas
Speaker 3: and and you know, everyone was there and Mace and man,
Speaker 3: that shit was great. And and you know, look the
Speaker 3: people you meet when you're a young man, you're becoming
Speaker 3: a man. Those people are very important your whole life,
Speaker 3: right because you have gone you have you know, you
Speaker 3: watch people have children, You watch people get married, you
Speaker 3: might some get divorce. You watch people go from being
Speaker 3: young men to be to be men. And that to
Speaker 3: me is like those bonds we make them, they never
Speaker 3: go away. So me and me and day lives like
Speaker 3: you know to this day, were like, you know, always connected.
Speaker 3: I go to Miami. I'm gonna go see pass. You know.
Speaker 3: That's how it is, you know. And those dudes musically
Speaker 3: like they change everything, Like you know, look, there's people
Speaker 3: who change everything. NWA changed everything, right, Dayla Soul changed everything.
Speaker 3: There's before run DMC changed everything. There's before and after.
Speaker 3: Motherfuckers come out and they do this, and then there's
Speaker 3: what happens afterwards. So they're one of those groups that
Speaker 3: changed everything. And I'm lucky and that Wu Tang change everything,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm lucky enough to have been around that shit,
Speaker 3: you know. And you know, my Pops is like a
Speaker 3: very smart cat. He hung out with all these jazz musicians, like,
Speaker 3: but he he always knew, like he always could spot greatness, right,
Speaker 3: So I'm lucky enough that I could see sometimes. And
Speaker 3: it's not only the music, it's the culture around it.
Speaker 3: You can see the greatness if you're lucky, right, And
Speaker 3: Daylight was one of the things that was a moment
Speaker 3: in time when you felt like, man.
Speaker 2: Like.
Speaker 3: Eight did you ever go to Latin Quarters? So the
Speaker 3: Latin Quarters to me was like I was like, every
Speaker 3: single one of these fucking groups gonna be famous probably,
Speaker 3: like how World on Wheels was all that everything, like
Speaker 3: every one of these motherfucker's gonna be famous, right. It
Speaker 3: was just like it was in the It was in
Speaker 3: the air. I can't explain it other than that it
Speaker 3: was crazy.
Speaker 1: No, for the last group I want to ask you
Speaker 1: was a two fold question, Leaders of the New School.
Speaker 3: Oh that's okay. So Leaves of New School is like
Speaker 3: the best and worst group I worked with of all
Speaker 3: time because they were like r they kicked him out,
Speaker 3: didn't they They didn't really kick him out. They kind
Speaker 3: of just ruined it all like so, so it was
Speaker 3: like they never got along too good. But there was
Speaker 3: always like tension between Brown and Buster. It was always beat,
Speaker 3: always little shit going on, and it was jealousy because
Speaker 3: Buster was a star. We've seen it. He was like
Speaker 3: his motherfucker is a star, and Charlie Brown was dope.
Speaker 3: Don't get it fucked up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, he wasn't.
Speaker 3: Enough Buster rhymes though, you know there's only one to.
Speaker 2: Him, showman. He wasn't the show that Buster was. Knew
Speaker 2: he had the showmanship. You give me everybody else is
Speaker 2: in the group. You give me right right lyrics, We
Speaker 2: got lyrics. But you you know, when there's this that
Speaker 2: Nigga's gonna be superstar, you get me.
Speaker 3: I mean he he had that Jamaican dance all ship,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean? Like you know, like like
Speaker 3: in New York, we have a lot of Jamaican culture.
Speaker 3: I grew up. I lived in Brooklyn, went to the
Speaker 3: high school Brooklyn. So Jamaican people is if you ever
Speaker 3: go to Jamaica and if you ever peep any dancel ship,
Speaker 3: no slouches make it because it's so It's the third
Speaker 3: world in Jamaica. My book is is poverty is real.
Speaker 3: So if you made records at Jamaica, you dope at fuck.
Speaker 3: Buster has that thing in him, like he's super competitive
Speaker 3: and super dope because it means everything to him. His
Speaker 3: work ethic is crazy. So you know, there was jealousy
Speaker 3: and it was mounting. And as we got to the
Speaker 3: second record, like I always say, scenario is the greatest
Speaker 3: thing to have the leaders in new school. It's the
Speaker 3: worst thing to have no leaders in new school. Because
Speaker 3: Buster rhymes qut doing the crazy al Right, he was like,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna make this whole record. This one part is
Speaker 3: a showcase for him, Like watch this and it passes him.
Speaker 3: The rock exactly drops the drums, and then Buster has
Speaker 3: the you know, he's just no drums and he's just
Speaker 3: as I come, you know, as I rewind, Like the
Speaker 3: shit is just crazy. So after that, everyone's tapping on
Speaker 3: Buster's shoulder, do this feature, to do this feature, puffs
Speaker 3: in his ear, fucking everyone's trying to fucking him big
Speaker 3: as hollering at him. He's a you know, tribe is
Speaker 3: with him all the time. He's like he is starting
Speaker 3: to really shine, and shit gets really hectic. And with
Speaker 3: that second record time, if you ever listen to it,
Speaker 3: they're all trying to out wrap each other. No one's
Speaker 3: giving each other. It's not a group no more. It's
Speaker 3: all like look at me, look at me. It's not cohesive.
Speaker 3: And they made the record the first time and it
Speaker 3: was yo. It was whack yo. They delivered it the
Speaker 3: first time, and Chris Lighty rests in peace. He was
Speaker 3: their manager. He was like my really good friend and
Speaker 3: me I was like, Chris, what's up with this record?
Speaker 3: He was like, the shit's whack. I was like, the
Speaker 3: shit's whag. So we sent him back. We sent him
Speaker 3: back to do a whole record again, and it got better,
Speaker 3: but not a whole lot better, and I had wanted
Speaker 3: Q Tip to go do the whole redo, the whole record,
Speaker 3: and was so bugged out. All of them said no,
Speaker 3: but Buster took him to side. He said, Yo, I
Speaker 3: like that idea's and I was like, this guy's smarter
Speaker 3: than everyone else. So record came out and it didn't
Speaker 3: do too good, got bad reviews, and I knew they're
Speaker 3: gonna break up. And the whole time me and Chris
Speaker 3: was like, Buster, we got you on the solo, We
Speaker 3: got you on the solo, We got you, we got you,
Speaker 3: And it took him. He didn't want to do it.
Speaker 3: He did not want to do it because he was
Speaker 3: a little scared. He was only nineteen and he had
Speaker 3: been in the group, and he felt like he didn't
Speaker 3: want to be disloyal. He felt like that was you know,
Speaker 3: this is my click and I'm gonna I'm gonna write
Speaker 3: out with my people and that's what I signed on for.
Speaker 3: And then when, but when Charlie pulled that shit on
Speaker 3: the O MTV raps, when he basically was like broke
Speaker 3: the band up on TV, you know, Buster was so man.
Speaker 3: You ever seen someone get so mad they cry like
Speaker 3: they so mad they cried like they they're not They're
Speaker 3: not hurt like that, they're not sad. They're so angry.
Speaker 3: They crackers. Some want to kill somebody. That's how Buster was.
Speaker 3: And me and him just we hung out the whole
Speaker 3: the whole day, like and I was like, come on, man,
Speaker 3: you know what it is like, you know, you're ready,
Speaker 3: and he was like, you know, he's like I think
Speaker 3: I'm ready, And he came back and said he was ready,
Speaker 3: and then Bomb we just went and did the Bust
Speaker 3: of Rhymes show and that was that, you know, and like,
Speaker 3: I don't regret it at all. Look, those guys leaders
Speaker 3: had talent, you know, but but Busterer Rohns was probably
Speaker 3: always should have been a solo artist. He's that dope.
Speaker 3: And and you know the proof is in the pudding.
Speaker 3: He's still here, still relevant. Well how many years later,
Speaker 3: right thirty five years later, it's like it's like Brand
Speaker 3: Nubian too. They had split up and everyone told me,
Speaker 3: don't make them. They ain't not ship without Grand poo Ba.
Speaker 3: But then they put up Punch Jump Up, and I
Speaker 3: believe that they had it. I didn't feel like the
Speaker 3: leaders without Buster had it the way that Brand Newbian
Speaker 3: did I can't say it a thing the other way.
Speaker 2: They had they had some they had some cuts that
Speaker 2: were sustainable. Like you said, they were able to you know,
Speaker 2: don't let it go to your head and yeah, punks
Speaker 2: jump up g beat that they had songs, so yeah,
Speaker 2: able to sustain without grand Pool. But now I like
Speaker 2: the grand Poopa too.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 3: He was he was nasty, he was you know, there
Speaker 3: was like I would say this, like for one year,
Speaker 3: Like there's a lot of dudes who was like top
Speaker 3: dog for a year. For like one year, grand Poopa
Speaker 3: was the top dog in New York. But you know,
Speaker 3: you got to do it for ten years, five years.
Speaker 3: You can't do it for one year. It's tough, you know.
Speaker 2: And where did grand Poopa come from? Did he come
Speaker 2: from a group called Masters Ceremony ship Man?
Speaker 3: That was the ship sexy was I mean, they was
Speaker 3: banging out on kDa that was a k record.
Speaker 2: The record was hard as fun.
Speaker 3: It was hard. Look man, we were fans of grand
Speaker 3: Pool by me and when we was making Daylight Soul
Speaker 3: record was grand Pool. Its nice. We're like, I don't
Speaker 3: know about the rest of the group so much, but
Speaker 3: grand Pool by Yeah, he's nice.
Speaker 2: He was nice. Man, He definitely was nice.
Speaker 3: You know. So he I mean, you know, and he
Speaker 3: had a he had a run for a minute, you know.
Speaker 3: And so the brand new being and look man music
Speaker 3: is it's it's really hard to sustain. Man, it's so hard.
Speaker 3: And because just because you don't do it and you're
Speaker 3: not a top dog for ten years of twenty years,
Speaker 3: doesn't mean it wasn't great. You know.
Speaker 1: It's just like you know, when I knew bust Around
Speaker 1: was gonna be the ship I played college football, right
Speaker 1: we was about to play We was about to play
Speaker 1: somebody that was big. We was about to play Arizona
Speaker 1: when they had the desert swarm. That's when this is
Speaker 1: a big game. When I go to a little bit
Speaker 1: he has Mexical State. And that was the year they
Speaker 1: was number one team in the country and we lost
Speaker 1: them fourteen to seven. We listened to We've got the
Speaker 1: bus from Los Cruises all the way to Arizona. You
Speaker 1: know what, they played back to back and that's when
Speaker 1: I started sucking with bust a brand. Come on down,
Speaker 1: come on down, come on down. Think that he kinge joint.
Speaker 1: That's that that that real minisent. And he was like
Speaker 1: hold over the track Man. We went out there almost
Speaker 1: upset fucking Arizona listening to that song.
Speaker 3: Man you know came back eight did you know came
Speaker 3: back in.
Speaker 2: The day I bang came Like it wasn't ship he
Speaker 2: became with this man.
Speaker 3: He was nasty king was like the James Brown of rap.
Speaker 2: Like he was like he was dishes man, especially when
Speaker 2: he went off on records. You gave me that smooth
Speaker 2: operator type.
Speaker 3: Shot rap, mad the wrapping like that.
Speaker 2: Let it roll, get bold explore man.
Speaker 3: When I like, I used to see him at the
Speaker 3: Latin Quarters and I was like, this motherfucker is the
Speaker 3: greatest motherfucker in the world. I was like, he's the greatest.
Speaker 3: I really was like he's the greatest, Like he was
Speaker 3: so ill to me. Ain't Carris once too? Totally different
Speaker 3: but super crazy for you know like that that like
Speaker 3: witnessing that man, that was like to me, like I've
Speaker 3: seen everything, that's still to me the greatest shit I
Speaker 3: ever seen.
Speaker 2: Raps. We had the greatest rhymers man of all time
Speaker 2: in our era and body. But we, like I said,
Speaker 2: it was a certain pride we took when it came
Speaker 2: to making songs and music and we looked at that
Speaker 2: as man, you can't make it here. Nigga, you ain't
Speaker 2: making it nowhere, so you better put in some shit
Speaker 2: because nigga act to the block. It's back to shootout
Speaker 2: to drug sales. So I got you, I got it,
Speaker 2: I got it, man. It got to make sense right now,
Speaker 2: you feel me? And somewhere repped like they was trying
Speaker 2: to get off the block. Some motherfuckers just put their
Speaker 2: ass and yeah, every nigga who was rapping back then
Speaker 2: was trying to get the fuck off the block. And
Speaker 2: once they once they knew, wait a minute, I could
Speaker 2: put some some real shit together and nigga's finna pay
Speaker 2: me a couple of million. Nigga, I'm about to get men. Nigga, please, nigga.
Speaker 2: I'm like, nigga, it ain't finna be just no. You
Speaker 2: know ABC one two three, Mary had a little lamb
Speaker 2: and you know, block, Nigga, I'm shit to where you're
Speaker 2: gonna be like, God, damn, this motherfucker hard.
Speaker 3: And so year did you first make your first record?
Speaker 3: What year was your first record?
Speaker 2: My first record was probably eighty seven, eighty six, eighty seven.
Speaker 2: I had a single out with DJ Slip, and I
Speaker 2: wasn't doing shit on it, just chatting on the record,
Speaker 2: but I was. I was a sixteen year old kid
Speaker 2: like and Slip used to make They used to make
Speaker 2: techno records out here, you get me. A lot of
Speaker 2: techno came through La before the establishments of Tone Looks
Speaker 2: and Toddy T's.
Speaker 3: And all the electro shit, all the like up tempo
Speaker 3: like they did all the records.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So me as a young kid trying to get
Speaker 2: out the hood ship, I would go I met Slip
Speaker 2: and I would just go sit up at slips house
Speaker 2: while he would do techno records from you know, that's
Speaker 2: how they made their bread. I'm gonna make a twelve
Speaker 2: inch nigga, call this motherfucker nigga the Shock of the Hour,
Speaker 2: some crazy shit and I'm gonna throw this motherfucker out
Speaker 2: and the swap meets and on and the record pools
Speaker 2: and all that shit. And that's how niggas made their
Speaker 2: little change back then. And so Slip used to let me,
Speaker 2: you know, niggas Compton City conton something, and I would
Speaker 2: just do chants and make records with him while he
Speaker 2: did the beats and the music, and I would just
Speaker 2: Chi and it went from there to go, I'm fenna
Speaker 2: write a fucking rap, and then I just started writing
Speaker 2: and then going through the situations I was going through
Speaker 2: every day with high school and gang bang and team
Speaker 2: pregnancy and trying to sell crack pieces to you know,
Speaker 2: I just start pinning the shit about the life. I
Speaker 2: was shit, nigga. Today we woke up, niggas tried to
Speaker 2: sweat us. Police came through the home meet. God shot nigga.
Speaker 2: I was at the swap meet trying to find me.
Speaker 2: This got into it with some niggas from the other side,
Speaker 2: and you would just start writing that, and then it
Speaker 2: turned more serious. When you start going I need to
Speaker 2: make some money, turned from I can't get a job.
Speaker 2: I got no high school education, I ain't went to college.
Speaker 2: You get me. I'm out here gang banging, trying to
Speaker 2: sell dope to make ends meet. Where the fuck am
Speaker 2: I going? You get me? What's so different? Because I
Speaker 2: look up every day when I go to school and
Speaker 2: I see a hundred niggas just like me. You get me.
Speaker 2: They're in the same shit. We all got on raiders
Speaker 2: hats and white T shirts and khakis and cortels, and
Speaker 2: we all doing the same shit. You gotta separate yourself
Speaker 2: from the ship. So, like I said, I just started
Speaker 2: writing raps about the community and niggas can't get ahead,
Speaker 2: and niggas can't get a break, and motherfucking you got
Speaker 2: niggas over here wanting to kill you. You got one
Speaker 2: time's over here want the jack you you get. So
Speaker 2: that's how I started constructing my ship, to make it like, oh,
Speaker 2: it's niggas like me out there, like you know, fun
Speaker 2: and you know, we had the young m c's and
Speaker 2: we had the JJ Fatz and we had the fun wraps.
Speaker 2: But then nigga is some serious shit going on out here.
Speaker 3: Well six in the morning. The one I got you
Speaker 3: like to like know you can do with that stuff.
Speaker 2: Honestly, Eric Rockim the president president is you start rapping
Speaker 2: like our rap as to what he's doing, because he
Speaker 2: was even though it was it was he was the
Speaker 2: same ship you give me. I'm taking off my coat, Nigga,
Speaker 2: the rhyme's antagonized me. Nigga, I'm I'm looking for a donut. Nigga,
Speaker 2: the bitch trying to glaze me. You get love it
Speaker 2: ship you give me. He wasn't talking about you. I
Speaker 2: rock Hemp having fun, Nigga, I'm in the struggle out here.
Speaker 3: You get was signing ice cold.
Speaker 2: Then I came to the door. I said it before, Nigga,
Speaker 2: I never let the mic magnetize me no more. But
Speaker 2: it's biting me. You get me he telling you some ship, Nigga.
Speaker 2: I got to take off my coat and clear my throat. Nigga, Like,
Speaker 2: let me let me talk to me right quick. That's
Speaker 2: what made me take Raps serious when I heard him crazy.
Speaker 1: That's what you think I said, when you first heard
Speaker 1: a Gainst the Rep, like be real, like when we
Speaker 1: first heard a Gainst the Rep that you know it
Speaker 1: was gonna be some ship.
Speaker 3: So I'm one of the like five people in New
Speaker 3: York who liked that, n w A. So I came
Speaker 3: to this is such a funny story. I came LA
Speaker 3: for motherfucking BRR. I think you remember br I came
Speaker 3: for the br shit I was working. I think I
Speaker 3: was working at Tommy Boy. I just started working at
Speaker 3: eighty seven, and I grew up with this is the
Speaker 3: craziest thing. I grew up with Kadeem Hardisan Dwayne Wayne
Speaker 3: from from Cosby Show. He's my childhood friend. We went
Speaker 3: to his mom and my mom's in school. He's my brother,
Speaker 3: so literally my friend from grade school. So I was
Speaker 3: hanging out with him. I checked in him every time
Speaker 3: I came out of and he was like, you heard
Speaker 3: this shit yet, And it was like it was is
Speaker 3: makaj and it was dope Man, and I was like,
Speaker 3: what the fuck? And it sounded kind of like the
Speaker 3: Beastie Boys, but it was ill and they had to skit,
Speaker 3: you know, hey, mister dope man, the whole shit. And
Speaker 3: then I went to bu up to twelve and I
Speaker 3: was like, I want to go buy that, bring it
Speaker 3: back home. I brought it and I've seen the cover
Speaker 3: and the cover it just bugged me the fuck out.
Speaker 3: I was like, who the fuck are these motherfuckers? This
Speaker 3: shit is wild? So I was fan. I was. I was.
Speaker 3: I like this ship. I liked it. It was I
Speaker 3: didn't know c I A. I knew Six in the Morning,
Speaker 3: I knew Ice Tea, I knew the Battle Ram but
Speaker 3: those records didn't really pop in New York like that,
Speaker 3: but I knew them. But I heard that Dope Man shit.
Speaker 3: I was like, this ship is crazy. And then I
Speaker 3: came back to La and I met Ice Cuban Dre
Speaker 3: so I was a fan. And if you look at
Speaker 3: that first Underway record, they said Dante Ross from the
Speaker 3: Tommy Boy because because I met them and they came
Speaker 3: to New York and they didn't know it was gonna
Speaker 3: be dumb cold. I took Cube to buy a coat
Speaker 3: because he came out with the little fucking he had
Speaker 3: the Derby jacket. He didn't have a real coat, like
Speaker 3: I was like, mother bucket, it's cold out here. So
Speaker 3: so I don't know, man, I always liked it. I
Speaker 3: liked it because ship was raw. Shit was raw, and
Speaker 3: it was they was talking some ship that wasn't like
Speaker 3: New York. They wasn't trying to be like New York.
Speaker 3: So I liked that about it, where like even Miami Base,
Speaker 3: I didn't really like Miami based music, but it was original.
Speaker 3: It wasn't trying to be New York. But I didn't
Speaker 3: like it the way I like gangster rap.
Speaker 1: Can I tell you a secret about Miami Base.
Speaker 3: I mean it's just electro, it's really just playing it
Speaker 3: round and you know that shit originated out here.
Speaker 1: They produced mixes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I knew that he's from the Bay and and
Speaker 3: you know even like you know egypt like go you know,
Speaker 3: Egyptian Lover, like you know, Dill of freaking all those records,
Speaker 3: those are like before. Those are like two Live Crew
Speaker 3: before Two Lives to me, you know, but that music
Speaker 3: to me was when that came out, like that ship
Speaker 3: was like a little it was like it was cool.
Speaker 3: But then when they kept going with that, it was
Speaker 3: ancient to me, Like I was fucking with rock can,
Speaker 3: I was listening to whatever ll that shit was like that.
Speaker 2: Was our early I guess, our early introductions into the
Speaker 2: crossing over from the techno into the hip hop so
Speaker 2: to speak, you know, Egyptian Lover and the Wrecking Crew
Speaker 2: and and and those type of cat l a dream team. Uh,
Speaker 2: that was our introduction because you know we thought that
Speaker 2: was wrapped, you know, and my beat goes boom and
Speaker 2: what is the DJ if he can't what is a
Speaker 2: DJ if he can't straight?
Speaker 3: That was hard. That reck was hard. I can't run.
Speaker 3: That was hard. That was hard, but hard to me too,
Speaker 3: I can't.
Speaker 2: Dolla Freak was our ship too, because if it got
Speaker 2: the girls freaking works, donad Freak was our party anthem.
Speaker 2: And then, like I said, you. You wrapped it up
Speaker 2: with a little bit of Egyptian lover Like I said,
Speaker 2: my beat goes boom and what is a DJ? And
Speaker 2: then then you brought it back with ice tea and
Speaker 2: when he came with six in the morning, and then
Speaker 2: kind of set us on the path of finding our
Speaker 2: own identity as far as hip hop was concerned.
Speaker 3: Uh In The Battle right.
Speaker 2: Was was? The Battle Round was really a neighborhood jam
Speaker 2: until it got so popular that eve Jam, which was
Speaker 2: an independent label, put it out and then Todd ended
Speaker 2: up getting the deal like a single d N yeah
Speaker 2: because of it.
Speaker 3: So the Battle I mean I always liked I like
Speaker 3: that record.
Speaker 2: Like to me, it was like travel through stages. It
Speaker 2: went from the homie cassette tape, then it went to
Speaker 2: the independent label, then it made it to the majors.
Speaker 3: I mean I used to go to the swap meet.
Speaker 3: I used to go to I used to go to
Speaker 3: go to the swap meet and get hats me you know,
Speaker 3: the La hats, the embroider hats. And I would go
Speaker 3: there and I would ask dudes what the ship was,
Speaker 3: what was the tape, what was the thing to buy?
Speaker 3: And dudes would put me up on records in La
Speaker 3: like and I had met the dude. I went to
Speaker 3: the roodium in Torrents and I met that. I went
Speaker 3: to the dude ship Steve Ganno, the Japanese dude, and
Speaker 3: I bought records from him, like you know, I would,
Speaker 3: you know, I knew, like I had checked him out,
Speaker 3: but I remember that I had bought and I know
Speaker 3: you guys used to be funking, but I had got
Speaker 3: DJ Quick's tape at the swaplan before it came out,
Speaker 3: and it was called the Red Tape.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: And that album is the same album as Born and
Speaker 3: Raised in conference. Yeah, that was like eighty five percent
Speaker 3: the same ship.
Speaker 2: We had to change up some ship. Yeah, he changed
Speaker 2: up a little shit, but ninety percent of that that
Speaker 2: Red Tape was his first.
Speaker 3: Album album because I had, Yeah, he was talking ship,
Speaker 3: he was talking that ship.
Speaker 2: He did a gang of dissing on that Red tape.
Speaker 2: He was this in us, He was dising easy in them.
Speaker 2: He was dising that.
Speaker 3: He took shots at everyone.
Speaker 2: You when you're establishing your position and based on you
Speaker 2: know how we was. We were in Compton in La
Speaker 2: as far as the game were, it was only right.
Speaker 2: You get me them. Niggas is crips, we bloods, like the.
Speaker 1: First person to bring the aspect to it right.
Speaker 3: You know, to me, like rap, don't get a fucked up.
Speaker 3: Rap is a full contact sport. If there's a full
Speaker 3: contact sport, that's not for. It's not for you know,
Speaker 3: it's not marshmallow music. And people forgot that along the
Speaker 3: way kind of you know, like look, Daylight are not
Speaker 3: tough guys all that shit, you know whatever, But rap
Speaker 3: is like that the essence, the battle aspect of rat.
Speaker 3: That's like at the core of it. That's like the
Speaker 3: meat and potatoes. That's where it started. So you know,
Speaker 3: that's part of it. Like take a full circle.
Speaker 2: Touring with niggas. You don't give a fuck where they from.
Speaker 2: When y'all on tour funking with some niggas in another state,
Speaker 2: then this whole tour gonna start getting down. Primo used
Speaker 2: to tell me stories all the time, how nigga they
Speaker 2: wasn't no gang banging, but if so and so was
Speaker 2: on the tour and they was getting into it, niggas
Speaker 2: ship premont like nigga we rolling up the sleeves too.
Speaker 3: That's how it is, man. It's not a you know,
Speaker 3: it's like one for all. That's how it is. I mean,
Speaker 3: you know we're talking about like battle Rap go full
Speaker 3: circle Man, Drake and Kendrick. Man, that's just that same ship.
Speaker 3: You know. It's like that's to me, like, look, you
Speaker 3: hope it doesn't have repercussions, right, but that's like part
Speaker 3: of the beauty of this thing. Man, Like that's you know,
Speaker 3: hammer ticket shots at run DMC and then you know
Speaker 3: that shit is just part of it. It comes with
Speaker 3: the territory.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for real, man, you know what I heard Big
Speaker 1: day Came actually had hands man somebody else beat Slick
Speaker 1: Rick and rode out about you about the Big.
Speaker 3: Rick did that happens? Big Daddy Came was knowing to
Speaker 3: beat people up. He was like you know, he just
Speaker 3: was was hot tempered. He definitely was knowing to put
Speaker 3: his hands on people, you know. And then there was
Speaker 3: also it's also like it's very he was he beat
Speaker 3: up what he's from East New York exactly. That's a
Speaker 3: serious place that's in East New York. Back in the
Speaker 3: day was only Browns Bell was worse than all of Brooklyn.
Speaker 3: That's one of the roughest neighborhoods.
Speaker 2: What what what what beers mark He saying. My Nigga said,
Speaker 2: Big Daddy would grow up to be nothing but a
Speaker 2: hulum either in j J someone shooting. He was the
Speaker 2: hard nigga. Big would talk about hisself like that. He
Speaker 2: telling you, I had another brother that's calm and playing.
Speaker 2: He goes by the name of Fellow, that's laid back
Speaker 2: back in the days, he was nothing like that. And
Speaker 2: Nigga said, I remember when he used to fight every day.
Speaker 3: He beat up, he beat up, He beat up Brother Marquise.
Speaker 1: He beat up Brother Marquise too.
Speaker 3: Brother Marquise said some ship to him, some some god
Speaker 3: body ship. He he didn't appreciate it. And he turned
Speaker 3: around and he had to do what he did at
Speaker 3: the New Music Seminar upstairs in the balcony, and King
Speaker 3: came on them.
Speaker 2: We're not what we used to get it in at
Speaker 2: the New Music seminars. Nigga, you have for the nigga
Speaker 2: you meeting them at the seminar. Nigga is going down. Nigga,
Speaker 2: I'm telling where.
Speaker 1: That's where lay on them, cut mob and above the law.
Speaker 3: Let me ask you so me. I want to ask
Speaker 3: both of you.
Speaker 2: At the New Music seminar.
Speaker 3: Let me let me ask you. I always hear about
Speaker 3: Above the Law start A G Funk. I never know
Speaker 3: what the truth is and all of that because I
Speaker 3: never liked their music after Dre and Them didn't. I
Speaker 3: didn't love it. I like some songs, I like Black Superman,
Speaker 3: there's some joints, but they wasn't rocking the way Dre
Speaker 3: was to me. So I always wanted to know was
Speaker 3: they really Were they really those dudes who invented that ship.
Speaker 2: Hutch goes back, you know hutch has you know it's
Speaker 2: the really Hutchinson and all that. So they had that
Speaker 2: Philadelphia sound. But then you know, you got my dude
Speaker 2: Warren g who you know with Snooping them whose claims
Speaker 2: their ship came out. You get me. Above the Law
Speaker 2: came out before all of them.
Speaker 3: Yep, they did.
Speaker 1: Man, You gotta remember A Warren and Snoop started off
Speaker 1: with Above the Law exactly. They all.
Speaker 3: I didn't know that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they was all clicked together when Dre and Them formed.
Speaker 2: So because Above the Law had the first album Living like.
Speaker 3: Hustlers right well before then n.
Speaker 2: W a Is but not Snoop and G Funk and
Speaker 2: William G. It was n w A and then it
Speaker 2: was Above the Law. They were first after after Ease,
Speaker 2: after the Easy solo record and the n w A
Speaker 2: straight out of Compton. They came out on epic under Ruthless. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the first album was Living like Hustlers and.
Speaker 3: That album that almost popping that she was knocking an.
Speaker 2: Album was the Ship. They had flow on on that motherfucker.
Speaker 2: And now I got a murder rap, just another execution nigga.
Speaker 2: They had flow on, Nigga. They had songs on.
Speaker 3: It was hard. That shit was hard, that she was
Speaker 3: harder than anything else they ever did. But I just like,
Speaker 3: who invented what? Like I always wanted to know because
Speaker 3: I always read it and I'm was like, who really
Speaker 3: did what? I want to tell you.
Speaker 1: Like this, Dante Warren, She and Snoop were with them
Speaker 1: at the time, right, And I would have to say
Speaker 1: that they kind of did. And Warren is always kind
Speaker 1: of undervalue to me because his contribution to the chronic
Speaker 1: is never hardly talked about. He kind of put that
Speaker 1: stuff together. But Drey, you know, Dray got that here.
Speaker 1: You know, Dray hooked it up because a lot of
Speaker 1: those records was done already, a lot of those records
Speaker 1: like Little Ghetto Boy and all that stuff. Those records
Speaker 1: was done already, and you know, Trey kind of went
Speaker 1: in and put his touches on him and made a
Speaker 1: magic I'm not saying Trey won't do nothing, but Warren,
Speaker 1: she played a big part of that all so the
Speaker 1: dazz right, yeahs Dads and Warren. I would say Warren
Speaker 1: was probably a little further along than Dads at that time.
Speaker 3: Warren was always dope.
Speaker 1: Because he had kind of went through boot camp like
Speaker 1: Snoop and them could have came out with about the law.
Speaker 1: They kind of gave Trader blessing to go ahead and
Speaker 1: you know, handle it with Snoop.
Speaker 3: Interesting. I never knew. I never knew any of that,
Speaker 3: like I had. I never met above Block. I met
Speaker 3: Easy back in the day. I mean he was Easy
Speaker 3: was in New York. He like he didn't give a fuck,
Speaker 3: Like he was like I'm over here now, like fuck it.
Speaker 1: Iris like Easy had Easy had deals everywhere, didn't he?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Easy everywhere?
Speaker 3: I mean Easy Easy, This is so crazy Easy. Jerry Heller,
Speaker 3: Dre and michell La came to my office because I
Speaker 3: had one. I worked at Tommy Boy. I want a son.
Speaker 3: Two groups. I didn't get either of them, Trive Request
Speaker 3: because they got way more money, and DC, who we
Speaker 3: could have for one hundred and seventy five thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: Tom Silverman looked at Jerry Heller and said, no, but
Speaker 3: I want to work at a lecture. Jerry Heller called
Speaker 3: me up and he said, I'm going to get out
Speaker 3: of my deal with Atlantic for Ruthless. Do you want
Speaker 3: to sign DC? And I said, how's that working? He said,
Speaker 3: we have a song that they won't put on an
Speaker 3: album called Bridget. You guys probably know that song. It's
Speaker 3: a song with all It's the one they run the
Speaker 3: train on the Girl. So they were like, they won't
Speaker 3: let us put the record on. We're gonna get out
Speaker 3: the deal. So he came to see me and they
Speaker 3: came to my office and DC wasn't there. I had
Speaker 3: never met Doc and they I was like, they were like,
Speaker 3: they won't let us put the song on the album.
Speaker 3: I was like, yo, we'll do the deal. So then
Speaker 3: me and Jerry the next day met with my boss
Speaker 3: and my boss told me my boss is says og Is.
Speaker 3: There was Bob Kraus and he said that Jerry Heller
Speaker 3: got don't trust him. I don't know how he knew.
Speaker 3: He said, don't trust that guy. And it turned out
Speaker 3: they couldn't get out of their deal. But they were
Speaker 3: all in my office and I remember I played one
Speaker 3: song by grand Football for them and Dre was like,
Speaker 3: he you know, he's like grand Pool boy, He's a
Speaker 3: bad motherfucker. But Easy was just like clowning. He was
Speaker 3: just fucking around, like walking around, just fucking around in
Speaker 3: the office. I was like, he was bugged out, but
Speaker 3: he really was in New York like just like he
Speaker 3: was like, I can't explain it. He had an aura.
Speaker 3: He had an aura like I was like, this guy's
Speaker 3: bit larger than life, mad small. So the only time
Speaker 3: I ever met him, he bugged me out though, and
Speaker 3: then of course it all became what it was and
Speaker 3: Doc to me, he was a bad Motherfuckerdoc.
Speaker 1: Doc was the ship I think gotten an accident.
Speaker 2: Man, it.
Speaker 1: Really fucked a lot of stuff up for him out.
Speaker 1: I'm always curious to see what his career would have been.
Speaker 1: Eight and he's been able to put three or four
Speaker 1: more albums out.
Speaker 2: Ship Star, Yeah, he'd have been he would have been
Speaker 2: in that Kendrick era. He would have been. In that
Speaker 2: ice Cube era.
Speaker 3: He would have been him and ice Cube would have
Speaker 3: been like the top in.
Speaker 2: That ice Cube era, that Scarface era that you know
Speaker 2: he he was. He was, like you said, he was
Speaker 2: a bad motherfucker when he came to that pin. He was.
Speaker 3: He raped. He rat better than Ice cbe back then.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he he knew how to because like another thing,
Speaker 2: he wasn't an l A nigga, you get me, So
Speaker 2: he was able to pin a lot of ship that
Speaker 2: didn't have the cultural aspects of game bang and ship.
Speaker 2: You just looked at yo see and thought he was
Speaker 2: an l A nigga, But he was from Dallas, Texas
Speaker 2: crew you look fresh crew. That's where I first heard of.
Speaker 3: Him, to crew.
Speaker 2: And he was one of those motherfuckers that when you heard,
Speaker 2: you was like, god damn, this mother talented when it
Speaker 2: came to that pin. So, you know, I doubt I
Speaker 2: wouldn't doubt that he would be up there on on
Speaker 2: that upper echelon, you know, his Cube status, you know,
Speaker 2: or any nigga who was popular from the West coast.
Speaker 1: And if you ask him, I talked to d C
Speaker 1: and I talked to Scarface, right, I told d C
Speaker 1: Man that I thought his verse on the on the
Speaker 1: Grand Finale was I thought he got you know. He
Speaker 1: told me, he said, man, I wasn't better than Cube.
Speaker 1: Scarface told me he wasn't better than Q. I think
Speaker 1: prime ice Cube.
Speaker 3: Man, he was some ice cubes on those guys. For
Speaker 3: one year, maybe two, he was top dog. He was
Speaker 3: the badest motherfucker in the world. When America's Most Wanted
Speaker 3: came out, No, he know what was fucking Cube that year?
Speaker 3: I was like he was top dog.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in my opinion. Yeah, the America's.
Speaker 3: Second album too, he.
Speaker 2: Uh the death certificate. He it was, I I don't
Speaker 2: you know, I say, by a round. Then Cubes started,
Speaker 2: you know, venturing off into a lot of shit. After
Speaker 2: that second record. He started to the Predator. It's you
Speaker 2: feel it starts declining. And like I said, not because
Speaker 2: of you know, his ability, but just because of the interest.
Speaker 3: Probably he's doing movies and this, that and the other.
Speaker 2: Like Fridays, I'm doing this, I'm doing are we there yet?
Speaker 2: I'm doing this, I'm doing this movie. I got another
Speaker 2: Friday movie. I'm doing this. And Q turned into you know,
Speaker 2: the hip hop Demzel Washington.
Speaker 3: As far as the first.
Speaker 1: Thing about the economics though, eight especially back then making records.
Speaker 1: You figure he got that movie money man, he looking
Speaker 1: at what.
Speaker 3: I go to a movie, this.
Speaker 2: Record and maybe make a half a million maybe, but
Speaker 2: I can put out this movie and make forty fifty.
Speaker 2: You get me like demographics. So now my more thoughts
Speaker 2: and process is the finishing up these movie scripts than
Speaker 2: the trying to pin another steady mob. And I was, well,
Speaker 2: I wasn't a movie dude. I didn't consider myself No.
Speaker 3: Man, you incredible and menace. Man, you were fucking great.
Speaker 2: Oh that's why it was vice versa. It was different
Speaker 2: for me. I relied more on pinning wraps. Then let
Speaker 2: me go sit up and try to write a script
Speaker 2: with a nigga or do this or do that, because
Speaker 2: my sole interest was records was hip hop.
Speaker 3: I mean, let me tell you someonehen you're in the
Speaker 3: car and you told them to stop acting like bitches.
Speaker 3: That ship was classic when you was like you said
Speaker 3: that shit was incredible. Man, you were so authentic, Like
Speaker 3: it was so because you are authentic, but.
Speaker 2: It was that was and they and people ask and
Speaker 2: I'll be like, man, that shit we did every day
Speaker 2: on the on the regular man.
Speaker 3: It didn't have to be great.
Speaker 2: It didn't have to be a camera on, It didn't
Speaker 2: have to be a microphone on.
Speaker 3: What you telling me? Say? They killed your.
Speaker 2: Nigga. Nigga and you riding around talking about who you
Speaker 2: don't want to shoot and who you don't want to kill,
Speaker 2: but your cousin laid up dead, nigga. Y'all got to
Speaker 2: be the most bitchiness niggas I've ever seen.
Speaker 3: Right now, But I was so classic going.
Speaker 2: To pill some niggas caps. We worried about who's standing
Speaker 2: around outside and I don't want to shoot no kids.
Speaker 2: And we didn't have that mentality that was real shit
Speaker 2: like we had a sense of of, well, we ain't
Speaker 2: just gonna start shooting if it's five and six kids
Speaker 2: running around on bicycles and ship. We had a difference
Speaker 2: of approach. But hell no, nigga, we in the car
Speaker 2: and it's time for dirt to be done. I don't
Speaker 2: want to hear no shit about well, I don't want
Speaker 2: to do this and I don't want to be nigga.
Speaker 2: Are you politicking right now?
Speaker 3: I mean to me, that's the that's the best. That's
Speaker 3: the best. Likely movie game.
Speaker 2: Movies your cousin laid up stiff as hell on the
Speaker 2: on the sleigh I have in the morgue, and you
Speaker 2: want to talk about what you don't want to do, nigga,
Speaker 2: if you don't get the fuck up out of my
Speaker 2: car right now.
Speaker 1: You turned down after that, though, didn't you ate?
Speaker 2: It was it was nothing as important as far as us,
Speaker 2: as far as that that scenario as that that that movie,
Speaker 2: everything else was like bullshit. So I didn't want to
Speaker 2: do No.
Speaker 3: That movie is a statement. Man. That's a great movie.
Speaker 3: It's just a good It's just a great movie, Chris,
Speaker 3: because it's also like real life, like the way I
Speaker 3: want to.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to be a Watch the Wire.
Speaker 3: It's like similar in a way because what it showed
Speaker 3: you in that movie is like there there is no
Speaker 3: real justice. The straight murderer o Dog gets away obody.
Speaker 3: He was trying to turn the turn the corner and
Speaker 3: do the right thing. He got smoke. And that's the
Speaker 3: way sh it is. There is no right or wrong.
Speaker 3: It ain't always gonna work the way it's supposed to work.
Speaker 3: And I thought that that was classical. Like in the Wire,
Speaker 3: when the little motherfucker killed Omar, right you never know,
Speaker 3: you know, there's no real rules and how it's gonna happen.
Speaker 3: That's what I thought was great about it because there
Speaker 3: was no moral to the movie.
Speaker 1: Right, I love it.
Speaker 3: I love about it. That was bug.
Speaker 1: Did you ever watch The Wire eight?
Speaker 2: I've seen it.
Speaker 1: The little bitty dude, the dude that was put me
Speaker 1: in all that work, man, a little bitty kid came
Speaker 1: and smoked him at the end.
Speaker 3: Yeah, little dude, a little like fourteen year old smoked him.
Speaker 3: Because it's like, you know, when it's your time, at
Speaker 3: your time, and it's not going to always work that way.
Speaker 2: And when somebody feel like I could step in them shoes,
Speaker 2: it's show time.
Speaker 3: It's I mean, look, man, I know you've been to
Speaker 3: a lot of crazy places, but I've been there when
Speaker 3: the when the bullets went by and they didn't hit me,
Speaker 3: and it was if it was my day, it was
Speaker 3: my day, it wasn't my dad. I'm fucking lucky, man. No,
Speaker 3: it's fucking life.
Speaker 2: You just take life for what it is, man, Try
Speaker 2: to walk in that, in that in that light to where, hey,
Speaker 2: I can't control what happened. You know what I'm saying?
Speaker 1: Are you for good now?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I live in l A. I've been here for
Speaker 3: for six years. In February, I still have a place
Speaker 3: in New York, but I stay in l A. I
Speaker 3: like l A. L A Is. I hate Winter Bro,
Speaker 3: I hate Winter. I don't like that ship. And one
Speaker 3: day I was like, you know what, I don't got
Speaker 3: to live in New York and be dealing with winter
Speaker 3: no more. So I moved to l A.
Speaker 1: Like, you got a lot of dope. You got a
Speaker 1: lot of dope, fast stuff going on, man, And I'm
Speaker 1: no eight Field the same. You got a home here, man,
Speaker 1: You work from here?
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, I'm out here, man, I live out here,
Speaker 3: you know, working in a lot of film and TV.
Speaker 3: Ship right now. I sold the screenplay the lions Gate.
Speaker 3: I'm doing it. I'm working on a project with Ice
Speaker 3: that I will talk to you guys about in a
Speaker 3: minute because I need to get eight on camera in it.
Speaker 3: It's it's basically everything before n w A. So it's
Speaker 3: the story of how it got to that. So from
Speaker 3: Uncle Jam's Army to my cola and swap me the
Speaker 3: torrents and the whole shit. So you know, we got
Speaker 3: we finally got the funding for it. So as I
Speaker 3: get into shooting it next year, I'm gonna want to
Speaker 3: sit you guys down and and talk about because to me, like,
Speaker 3: and this is just my favorite rappers from LA, Like
Speaker 3: we're always like you know, obviously there's Cube and everyone,
Speaker 3: but there's always you and King T were like the motherfuckers.
Speaker 3: I was like, and and you guys got your records
Speaker 3: played in New York. It was like uncanny. We was bumping.
Speaker 3: Doc got a ship bump in New York too, But
Speaker 3: they played your guys records like side by side with
Speaker 3: all our records, and that ship, to me is so cool.
Speaker 3: You know, we listen to your music, man, We've been
Speaker 3: listening to it from when it came out. So I
Speaker 3: want to at some point see you down when we're shooting,
Speaker 3: and I want to interview because I want to get
Speaker 3: your perspective on how it all got to where it
Speaker 3: came from, you know, from from because you know what
Speaker 3: Uncle Jam's army was going, and Mycola records just pop in.
Speaker 3: Corny ass King Keith, I mean corny ass Young MC
Speaker 3: and Tone locas out there. They were making hit records.
Speaker 3: And Ton Locu is a real one. He's not a sucker.
Speaker 3: So I just think the whole ship is kind of interesting.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: So that's that's a crypt exactly for sure. That's all good.
Speaker 2: Let's make it happen. That's doing.
Speaker 3: Man. Look, you guys got my math. Anytime you want
Speaker 3: to holler, I'm here whatever you guys need, Man, I'm
Speaker 3: I'm always here. So let me know.
Speaker 1: We appreciate you coming through, Bron.
Speaker 3: You're on Twitter a lot, right I'm on Twitter, Instagram.
Speaker 3: I'll be talking about fuck trump Ship. I'm on my
Speaker 3: my fucking Nipsey Hustle fuck trump Ship right now, you know.
Speaker 3: But you know so, so if that drives you crazy,
Speaker 3: you don't look at my Instagram right now you be
Speaker 3: mad because I'm.
Speaker 1: Y'all make sure man, y'all hit my man up. Man,
Speaker 1: this is history record wister Instagram.
Speaker 3: Bro Aunty Ross at at Instagram.
Speaker 1: It's my name Ross Instagram. Man, that's another against the chronicles. Man,
Speaker 1: We're gonna hoigher at your cats next week. M hm