Can you explain how you met each other? Do you go way back or how did you form this CORE DJ’s/FUP Mob alliance? RL: Well, me and T. Neal both from Milwaukee. I was fuckin’ with this shit early. I had a record store and anytime rappers would come in town they would come to my record store, Real Deal Records. And after that shit I started my record label, Revolutionary Records in ’91 and T. Neal was my DJ at my first show that I did with Twista. Back then he was Tongue Twista and had a little different image back then and it was MC Breed. So me and T. Neal go back far as a muthafucker. Back when I started he was just starting DJing so we got a real extensive history. I left and went to Atlanta and he stayed down and kept doing his thing. And we ended up bumping into each other again and makin’ history.
When we see the CORE DJs logo with the FUP Mob logo, what’s that mean?
TN: It’s that with his situation he had and the manpower we got, we just get the music together for The CORE DJs album and run it through FUP. We got a couple different situations but with this situation right here, we gonna run The CORE DJs album, and we gonna run Young Bos’ album. So we gonna run The CORE DJs album through that independently and distribute it through Universal.
People know of CORE DJs as a DJ crew, but do you think that people will accept them as an “artist” or how do you plan on presenting that?
TN: Well, once we start the marketing plan of it, it’s a lot of DJ’s saying, “It’s my album.” And once you got that many DJ’s in their markets saying they got an album out - you got a DJ in Virginia and Milwaukee like, “Get my album, get my album,” it’s no reason why it shouldn’t sell.
Is it fair to compare it to Khaled’s
album or the album Drama’s working on? Is it a lot of compilations or does it have a mixtape feel to it?
TN: Yeah, it’s gonna be a compilation, but we want it to be something that people are gonna play. I don’t want it to be like people have to go back and take Khaled’s voice out. We want it to be an album, it’s a CORE DJ/ FUP album. RL; We tryin’ to do the numbers like Clue, you know, platinum. TN: Yeah but with Clue, I don’t want nobody to have to go back and do a no-DJ album. Like we can do the skits in between to let people know. We gonna have the names of the DJs on the side of the album, it’s like one big unit. It’s like one album but it’s 300 DJs. We feel like if you’re a DJ and you sell 1,000 CD’s in each market, that’s 300,000 CD’s right there.
With all the record label contacts that you have, what made you confident to work with FUP Mob?
TN: Cause that’s my family. You work with people you trust. I don’t trust no damn label. I trust the people that work at the label but I don’t trust the label. RL: It’s a lot of muhfuckers in this shit that make a lot of money but don’t get paid cause they get fucked. TN: They do a lot of frontin’, buyin’ this and that on the outside but niggas still broke, live with they mamas, be havin’ like 4 or 5 roommates. It’s some bullshit. RL: This FUP shit is about niggas eating for real. I been in this music industry for a long time. I moved to Atlanta 7 years ago, and I seen everything. Niggas I looked up to and I still look up to, I just realized that this shit is a lot of smoke and mirrors. And a lot of fugazi shit. So at that point I was like, damn, do I really want this shit? I’m sellin’ my soul and I ain’t fuckin’ with my son. Me and my son ain’t spent one summer together cause I’m out here chasin’ this dream and this shit is just some fugazi ass shit. So I said I had to get some real money, get my life together and get my shit together so when I fuck with this shit, I can do it like I want to. TN: Coming from Milwaukee we had to
REALITY & TONY NEAL work twice as hard because it’s a bigsmall city, you understand?
What does FUP Mob stand for?
RL: Fuck you, pay me. FUP is about niggas eating, niggas coming together. TN: Fuck anybody blocking FUP, fuck anybody blocking The CORE. Fuck you, pay me.
What’s The CORE DJs roster look like nowadays?
TN: We cleaned it up. It’s still about 306 niggas in the Core but I did some house cleaning the other day and cats that don’t never get on no conference calls, cats that we don’t hear from until they get fired from they radio stations. We got offices in Miami now. We at a point where we just trying to put it all together, not only for The CORE and not only for FUP but for all of Milwaukee.
Do you have other artists on the label?
RL: Yeah. At the same time we gonna launch this Young Bos campaign and this CORE DJ campaign. The Core DJ’s project is going through a major label. We got Young Bos’ situation. We also got an R&B thing, this nigga Tony just sent me so I guess we bout to be
fuckin’ with him. TN: But The CORE DJs, FUP Mob, we just trying to get Milwaukee some respect, you know? Everybody knows that Reality is the shit in Milwaukee, that he was down, making the city look good. He never tarnished the town, when niggas look in the history books, everybody gonna know that. Just like in ATL, everybody know that the nigga who moved 160,000 out his trunk, and collected a million dollars and was living of a million dollars out selling CD out his trunk. And muthafuckas don’t want to accept the facts but, Milwaukee County. And we got some bitch niggas from the town too. I’ll call a spade a spade and I don’t know anything else about any other city but mine and from the radio station, all these niggas tryin’ to go around it but you ain’t gonna be able to go around me. I ain’t lettin’ niggas that in the industry go around me so why I’mma let some local nigga go around me and throw salt. If you gonna try to go around me do it the right way but if you hate, trust me it’s coming back this way. I’m just waiting.
That’s about all the questions I have for you. Do you have anything else you want to say? RL: Fuck you, pay me.
OZONE MAG // 107