“I LOVDEMUSIC GOO I HATE ANDLSHIT, BUL THAT’S BUT IN THE ALL OF THE EYE OLDER. BEH MAN’S ONELSHIT BUL LD BE THE COUT MAN’S NEX ES.” ROS
For your new album Light Up the Bomb to be successful in your opinion, how many units do you have to sell? Honestly man, the position I’m at right now where I’d be happy with a hundred [thousand], that’s real talk. I’d be happy with a hundred, but I think we gon’ do about half a million, though. 8Ball and MJG are so highly respected; you guys have been in the game for so long, why have your fans been so loyal throughout the years? I think cause when people meet us, they meet the same cats on the record. They don’t meet the superstar nigga on TV with seven bodyguards or other industry shit. They meet 8Ball and MJG, them two niggas; they don’t meet the rest of the bullshit that come with it. A lot of cats don’t talk to they fans or stop for pictures, and we’ve always done that from day one. Now you just launched your new label 8Ways Entertainment on October 25th, right? Yeah.
There are a lot of independent southern labels out there. What makes 8Ways Entertainment different from the rest of them? I think it’s all in what I’m trying to project. Hip-hop is what we do at 8Ways entertainment, but we also want to do all forms of music, that’s something I plan to bring to an “urban” record label or whatever you want to call it. I don’t want 8Ways to have limits or be constricted. If I hear some punk-rock shit that I wanna fuck with, I wanna be able to put that shit on the street through 8Ways Entertainment. I wanna be responsible for finding the world’s next Alicia Keys, or Kanye West, or Jay-Z. I want to bring something new to the table; I don’t just want to be another nigga with a record label. That’s tight, man. I know MJG has also opened up his own label as well, MJG Music. In what ways are your labels going to be different? Well, we work out of the same studio, so a lot of our shit is like meshed together. MJG, he is getting into more of the producing and I’m getting more into the CEOing, you feel me? Yeah, I heard you two are making a comedy movie, can you tell me a little about that? [laughs] It’s kinda like Cheech N Chong’s Up in Smoke meets Half Baked. I already know that’s gonna be crazy. When is it due out? We might start filming in the spring, so hopefully next fall it’ll be hitting the streets. You’ve been in the game for a long time and I know you have to be con-
tent with the fact that the South is on top right now, but in your opinion, what needs to change in the world of rap? I honestly have a different answer to this question all the time, it’s really according to how I’m feeling at the time. Right now, today, I would say nothing, because without the bad there would be no good; without the good there would be no bad. You know, there’s a ying to every yang, a hot to every cold, a reaction to every action. We wouldn’t be where we are without all of it. I know what I do, but how would I look knocking a nigga? I love good music and I hate bullshit, but that’s all in the eye of the beholder. One man’s bullshit could be the next man’s roses so, you know. So what percent of the music out there is bullshit and what percent is actual good music? You can’t say, because what I think is bullshit might be the number one shit of the whole year, so you can’t go off what I’m saying. But I think the best music gets overshadowed sometimes by the politics. Yeah, I feel you on that, what do you feel about snap music? It’s just another stage, another step, another chapter in the book of hiphop. Our culture is forever growing, I mean it’s always gon’ change, that’s what it do. If you a Scientologist, hip-hop is like the one celled organism that grew into the complex human beings that we have become. That’s hip-hop. It’s forever changing and the hip-hop fan changes just like hip-hop, what they love today they might hate tomorrow. You know, whatever the phenomenon is today, muthafuckas might be slapping themselves for making tomorrow. I heard you are going to be re-releasing some of the older 8Ball & MJG albums. What prompted you to do that? Supply and demand; you know, The Beatles haven’t stopped selling their records and that was 30 years ago. 8Ball and MJG, we are one of those groups, man. When hip-hop fans get old enough or whatever, they gon’ look at us the same way my generation looks at The Temptations and O’Jays. Back in 1992 in Memphis, all that shit was new to us, you know like Mayfield and all that type of shit. I think me and G make that kind of music. When mu’fuckas turn 16 and 17, and they get to making their own money and having their own cars, they be like, let’s buy this shit. That’s evident from our shows, it be young mu’fuckas singing songs older than them. Do you think the crabs in a barrel syndrome, where artists try to hold other artists down, is a problem in Memphis? Naw, I don’t think it is now it is like it used to be, but you just gotta realize that Memphis is still one of those places where it’s hard to get a buck. I think you gotta feed yourself before you can feed everybody else, people just trying to get that one step up. I think right now in Memphis, it’s a lot of cats throwing the hand back, straight up trying to pull cats up. You and MJG are definitely two cats that are helping other Memphis artist get on the scene so that’s a good look. Tell me about the next Ball and G album; is that still going to be released on Bad Boy? Yep, in January. With Bad Boy’s recent resurgence and restored place atop the hip-hop game do you feel that they’re giving your project is more attention, or less attention? I think it’s really the same. We never really got a whole bunch of attention over there anyway, [laughs] you know what I’m saying. Shit, I don’t think it’s changed. Living Legends was a classic, and it sold pretty well, but it definitely could have sold more with better promotion. Is there more pressure from Bad Boy to sell more records this time? I don’t think it ever was pressure with us, you know, we just really go and do us. The pressure don’t be with the music. We always do something that’s 8Ball and MJG. What’s the hardest part of your life as a rapper, CEO, or industry mogul? Shit, I think real life. Real life can be more than a hassle than the industry can. Do you have any message you want to send out to the readers? 8Ball and MJG’s Ridin’ High comes out in January, and 8Ways Entertainment’s Light Up the Bomb is in stores now, they need to get that. Devius in stores in February 2007. Also we got a mixtape coming out soon and all of that is going to be produced by Montana Trax.
Check out www.8waysent.com for more information on 8Ball and his record label 8 Ways Entertainment. 101