40 GLOCC, OTHERWISE KNOWN AS BIG BAD 40, TALKS ABOUT CHOOSING BETWEEN MONEY AND FAME, HIS UPCOMING ALBUM WITH SPIDER LOC, AND HOW POLICE ARE USING HIS MUSIC AGAINST HIM. Often when your name comes up, there tends to be some controversy involved. Are you intentionally trying to stay in the mix or does it just come naturally to you? I mean, I don’t have problems with nobody. I think people pay too much attention to Twitter, for one. Twitter is just a source of entertainment for me. But anything else like that, you might call it “staying in the mix” but I call it documenting my life. My life has always been like that. There’s always something going on. I don’t know if I painted the picture of always being into something. I think shit just comes to me. I attract bullshit sometimes. You’re working on a release with Spider Loc, right? Yeah, we did a joint album called Graveyard Shift. It’s real dope. We’ve got Drama on it with us, MC Eiht, Kurupt, Obie Trice, you know. It’s an in-store release and I’m dropping it through my label Zoo Life Entertainment. I’m sure you’ve had offers from major labels. Do you feel like it’s a better situation for you financially to drop it yourself? Yeah, the way the terms are right now, if you drop something on a major label you really aren’t seeing any dough. You’ll have to wait on your advance. For me, with the type of money I run through during an average year, it doesn’t even make sense. The [major label] advance money wouldn’t even bail me out of jail. I’ve got houses, you know. I got hella bills. I don’t just have “a crib,” I have “cribs,” you know what I mean? (laughs) I pay bills just like any regular muthafucker. There are a lot of West Coast artists who sell records independently in the region but aren’t really known worldwide. Do you feel like you have to make a choice between making money or being famous? Yeah, that’s definitely the choice you gotta make: make money or be famous. People think they want the fame, but after they get the fame and see what type of situation it is, they don’t like it anymore. They’ll learn that the fame shit isn’t cool. They’re running around like a slave, the label is sending them here and there, landing in Tokyo, Japan or somewhere in Wisconsin and they’ve only got twenty dollars to their name. But the 24 // OZONE MAG
fans don’t know that, so they’ve still got to go out there and act like they’ve got it super-poppin’. They spent their advance money already and this goes on every year, because most of them sign a four-to-seven year deal, depending on their success. So it’s kind fucked up if you’re not that one successful artist. If you don’t get that one lucky record and if you don’t hit right off the bat, you know, it’s hard to make a career for yourself and keep it crackin’, even if you’re on a major label. They’re going to put you on the shelf, and then all you’ve got is the little fame they built for you off the relationships they have with the media and tabloids. So it’s hella fucked up if you ask me, but that’s why a lot of West Coast artists stay independent. Everybody can sell dope, but that doesn’t mean everybody’s gonna be successful selling dope, you know what I mean? You’ve got niggas that know how to sell keys and curb server niggas – that’s what we call them, the niggas that just gotta be pushin’ stone to stone every day, you know? You were in jail recently, right? What was that about? I’ve been going through litigation for the last three years. They’re accusing me of doing certain things because of my music. They basically convicted me through my music, but it was a civil suit [not criminal charges]. I was telling everybody that this is what [the government] is doing to everybody now. They just started taking it out of [California] to other spots and now they’re doing it overseas. They’ll give out gang injunctions and all that shit. They’ll go through the community and label everybody as a gang member. So if you get caught with me, the police will assume you’re a gang member. That’s basically how they did me, but they did it to me through my music. They said that I say [gang-related] things in my music. I don’t have any felonies; I haven’t been convicted of any crimes. So they filed a civil suit and they sued me. When they sue you, it’s punishable through the court system. So anything you do after that can make you a criminal. If I’m jaywalking or I’ve got an open container in the streets, it’s not a misdemeanor anymore. They add a “gang enhancement.” They make it a felony. That’s basically why they raised my bail up to $100,000, because they found a weapon. There’s a weapons charge and they added a gang injunction, which automatically boosts everything to a felony. Are you looking at doing some time? I was set up on an attempted murder of a