IT’S BEEN A MINUTE SINCE WE’VE HEARD FROM MR. TRICK DADDY DOLLARS, BUT AS USUAL, THE MAYOR OF DADE HAS A LOT ON HIS MIND. HE HELD NOTHING BACK IN THIS INTERVIEW SPEAKING ON HIS FORMER LABEL AND LABELMATES. I know you put out a book, Magic City, not too long ago. Aside from that, what other projects have you been working on? We shot half of the mini-series The Lick. That’s a Miami-based story about the urban side of life here. A lot of people are like, “I just went to Miami, we stayed at the Loews [Hotel].” I’m like, “That ain’t Miami.” So it’s a mini-series based on the real Miami. Miami is a great vacation town nowadays but we still have a history here. A lot of the historical sites and monumental areas have been knocked down and rebuilt. Are you playing yourself or playing a character? I’m playing my brother Hollywood. You have to remember, Miami was built on drug money. Miami is Colombians, Haitians, Panamanians, Jamaicans – there’s no other city like this in the world. A lot of citizens of Miami originated from communist and third-world countries. Common sense will tell you that if you grew up in those conditions, you’ll be willing to die for – and kill for – anything you believe in, including survival. Where is this series going to air? We’re talking to the [television] networks. Hopefully [it will air] like The Wire. When I was younger, in the late 70s, early 80s, people snorted cocaine. You couldn’t afford it in the hood but working people did it. Then crack came along and once it made it to suburbia, Ronald Reagan made a big thing about it. A lot of the dudes that were sentenced under those rules are just now getting out of prison and they’ve been gone since the mid 80s. They didn’t kill nobody or rape nobody, they just sold drugs to feed their families and spent the rest of their lives in prison. I think that’s very unconstitutional. [The Lick] talks about that, so I don’t want to go straight-to-DVD or go to pay-per-view where it’s only going to be seen in one area. The world is so one-track minded right now. I was watching the Grammys last night, man, did you see those categories? I believe Jay-Z and Kanye won [the Grammy for Best Rap Performance] and I respect what they did, but I had to think about it. Did they deserve to win? Ask yourself what we’ve heard in the past year on the radio that we’re going to be looking
forward to listening to five years from now. Can you name one? Even with R&B music, my favorite R&B artists are people like Anita Baker, Shirley Murdock, Karen White, the late Whitney Houston, Patti Labelle, the real stars, Fantasia. Last year when [Kelly Rowland’s] “Motivation” record came out and Mary J Blige made a big comeback, I loved that because I was tired of hearing all these “independent female” records. That shit sounds so lonely for a pretty woman. I miss that celebration music. [The artists] are making music not for the year or the week but for the hour. All of that is hurting the music game so bad. And if you give out a [free] mixtape every 90 days, no one is going to buy your record. So now you understand why there are very few artists going platinum these days. I think there should be some [educational] requirements to become a rapper. You should at least be able to pass the FCAT. And producers? Producers don’t produce no more, producers just make beats like the ones they’ve heard you on already. Everybody’s doing music. They read my interview in OZONE or hear my interview on the radio and then they go from being a Trick Daddy fan to thinking they can be better than Trick. Think about someone who has a clean [criminal] record who graduated at the top of their class. They have a clean driving record and always say “yes ma’am” and “yes sir.” If he gets on a record and tells all these lies about robbing and killing and dope dealing and you fall for it, and later you find out [it was a lie], he should be punished for that. I never did music like that; that’s why my music is timeless. People don’t do that anymore in rap music, it’s all LaLaLand, so when the rainbow washes away it ain’t nothing but a sad story. Everybody’s looking crazy and dumb and all the fourteen, fifteen, sixteen year old killers are on First 48. I refuse to be the victim. I refuse to be the one on the other end of the stick and they’re saying, “Yeah, he’s locked up for killing Trick.” Are you referring to a fellow Miami rapper who’s occupational background may or may not affect the credibility of his music? I said it before and I’ll say it again. I’ve always been a fan of the man’s talents. I never really had a problem with it. I think what blew [the whole situation] out of proportion was that
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