You started your label with your father? Yeah, see, I came up in a time when people weren’t even thinking about making records in Houston. It was unheard of. It was just about rapping on the street corner, rapping on the talent show and it just crossed my mind. Matter of fact, we sitting in MacGregor Park doing this interview, and we was riding through MacGregor Park on the other side. I might have been about 15 years old and my dad asked me what I wanted to do with my music and I said, “Man, I wanna make a record.” It don’t sound funny now but in 1985, coming from Houston, my old man was like, “Alright, let’s make a record.” He never looked at me like, “What you mean? Aw, man you can’t do that man.” He said, “Let’s do it.” And we did it. We went right in the studio, and we didn’t know what we was doing. It was on the job training and we went in the studio and it was one of the first rap records to drop in Houston. It dropped in like ’86, ’87. We were in a learning situation, and we made a lot of mistakes. We were in situations to sign with majors, we tried to go that route and the independent game was just starting with RapA-Lot. It took us all over the country but it didn’t work for us. It really wasn’t for us, but I was glad I went through it.
Yeah, last year we released a B-1 album on our group label. I got my label Black Book International and we, the South Park Coalition got our own label called Full Circle Entertainment.
Was that with the group Real Chill? Right, that was with the group Real Chill. Me and my boy Preppie J and GT. We went everywhere - New York, L.A., Atlanta - dealing with different record labels. A lot of labels were interested in us but we just couldn’t find nothing that suited us, or suited our camp. Nobody really respected us. They didn’t respect Houston. They didn’t respect what we could bring to the table. People had interest but we’d have been more of an experiment to them. That’s just how I looked at it.
What is the Dead End? The Dead End is like, if we got on Martin Luther King and went straight south without stopping, you would run into the Dead End. It’s not a Dead End no more because they opened the street up and the street run all the way through now. But it used to really be a Dead End. You couldn’t go no further down Martin Luther King. It had about 4 or 5 huge apartment complexes down there. You had the Orleans, Kings Gate, the Esperanza and Summerwood. Summerwood and Esperanza, they tore those down. Orleans and Kings Gate are still around but just have different names. Anybody from the hood they know, that’s Kings Gate and the Orleans. So when people say the Dead End, they still say Dead End to this day even though it’s not a dead end no more.
Did you release a 12” single? Yeah we had a 12” single of a song called “Rockin’ It.” You know we came up in the Run DMC, Whodini, Fat Boys era. We was on some old school in and out, wearing your warm ups like Run-DMC, we was in that mode you know? Trying to be what we thought was what you had to be in the industry at that time. But we was true to it and had love for it. So once we started seeing what the industry really was about, started learning the game, a couple of cats started losing love for it, but I’ve never really lost that love for it man. I’ve seen the potential to grow in it and it started to become a job for me. I have always been able to go back to my roots and remember how fun it was. That’s what kept me doing it so long. Back in 1985 or ’86, were there any Houston artists that influenced you? Yeah, in the streets. Not putting out no records. Of course you got people like Jazzy Red, he had Kids Jam on 90.9 KTSU crunk on Saturday morning. That was the station. You had Jazzy Red, Lester Sir Pace, Wickett Crickett, OG Style, all those cats was people that everyone in the city would listen to them to hear all the hits that was coming out of New York, plus you could walk your own demo in there. There was this one cat who came down here from New York. His name was T Mack T. He was really the one who I give a lot of credit to as far as teaching me a lot about how to rap, and teaching me the game and how to battle. This dude at the time, personal opinion, I had never heard anyone that was better than him in person, outside of Run-DMC. I was like, “Man this dude here is the greatest dude I ever heard in my life.” So I just gravitated towards him and hung around him every day. How many records have you released since 1986? In total, I think about 14, give or take one or two. 13, 14 or 15 projects. If you take Real Chill to the COD album that me and Dope E. did in 1990. Those were the two groups I was in and the rest were solos with a couple of SPC projects. So about 15 all together. Have you released albums by any other artists in South Park Coalition besides yourself? 58
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South Park Coalition was one of the first groups I heard about in Houston. Can you tell me a little about South Park? Where is it in Houston, and who were some of the artists who came up around you? South Park is on the Southeast side of Houston, TX, and the hood stretches for a long, long way. It’s a huge neighborhood to a point where you got hoods inside of hoods. You got Sunnyside, you got Yellowstone, you got just people claiming hoods inside the hoods. South Acres. People will make streets popular. Hershelwood. So it’s a situation where people started taking pride in where they are from, even though South Park is the whole area. The Dead End is where I’m from. It’s a beautiful thing because a lot of the rappers in the city are from the South Park area or just this side of town. And now you got a lot of cats on the North Side that’s holding it down and representing for Houston too. That’s what it’s about, bringing it all together.
What stopped the road? It was a real dead end. You just drive until you get to the block and it got a dead end sign and it’s nothing but fields. Just fields after that. But they busted it open and made the street run all the way through it.