What was your role in making this collaborative group effort happen? Keak: Me and PS had hooked up and we just started recording. We brought all our ideas together and PS had put a lot of footwork in already. Me and Mess was goin’ every whichaway. I got a studio at my house and PS keep a studio with him – laptop and whatnot. We had like 18, 19, 20 songs together and we was gon’ call it Hyphy Cool Nigga. I’m the hyphy one and he the cool nigga. So we thought about it… Oakland, Vallejo, Frisco. So we just linked up with Mess and he just was logged into every song, put something on everything. It was some good shit. PSD: It ain’t really a group. It’s just a good album. We just came together and knocked it out and got Da Bidness. You got Mess representin’ the streets, the gutter, grimy shit. You got Keak on the hyphy shit. He do what he do and I’m the cool cat. The Hyphy Cool Nigga Project just didn’t sound right. Plus I was tryna do something different and it all worked out. Messy Marv: PSD, one of the bosses of the Bay, reached out to me and wanted to do the Oakland, Vallejo, Frisco thing. He basically told me that it wouldn’t be right if we didn’t get Frisco on it. It was an honor to get on there with PS and Keak. It came out real good. It’s a classic album. Why Mess? Was he just the logical one at the time or was it that the chemistry was right between y’all? Keak: I don’t know. It was just some ordinary guys from these three little cities by the water as far as being outspoken. We gon’ say somethin’. We gon’ say some real shit. And we ain’t takin’ nothin’ from nobody else. That’s just how it went. It wasn’t really planned. It just went down like that. I’m from Oakland, but I’m with the whole movement. I’m with the Bay. I do music for the Bay cause it’s been ten years since we had some recognition. PSD: Really, it was out of Mess and [San] Quinn. I fuck with both of them. Whoever answered the phone first, and Mess answered the phone first. Mess: PS put it together and I answered my Nextel first. What makes this album so good? PSD: I’m a fan of music and I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but that muthafucka’s bad. Droop E did five of ‘em on there. He did the “Cuz Cuz” track too. It’s just a lotta shit on there. It’s some cool shit. You got some wildin’t shit on there. You got some shit that’ll make you go silly… just tryna keep it me. Everybody did they thang. Keak didn’t step outside his shit. Mess didn’t step outside his shit. But I wanted to. Mess: It’s everything all in one. I’m more from the street, raw uncut world. PS is the cool, kinda pimpish laid back – he street too – but he in that laid back world and Keak, he just GO! That’s what makes the album. It’s just three worlds combined into one and it’s all Bay. It’s real Bayish. How does that work, when everybody comes together but basically stays the same? Is that what makes it work or was there a feeling out process? PSD: It’s always like that with me. But it was three different cats and we all had three different ears. But we feed off each other. It’s a formula. I learned a lotta shit about the boy Keak, man. Keak bad! He a bad man. He got content. I
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was just [trippin’] off his voice and then when I see him, I just crack up. That’s my nigga. The muthafucka got content. People ain’t gon’ get that. He got this shit he started now, but he sayin’ some shit. Same with Mess. Mess a dog. I love Mess. Mixin’ that album, I got a chance to listen to everything acapella. That shit’s crazy. That’s all this was about. I didn’t really wanna put out no more solo shit. I write a song a day anyway. Then the opportunity came and [I took it]. And I ain’t gon’ lie. I was gon’ use these cats and get a little bit of their shine, a little bit of their light, cause they got Soundscans. They sell a lot more records than I do, but it’s a privilege. It’s a privilege to even be on a track with them cats. Mess: When PS reached out to me they had the majority of the album done. All I had to do was put my touch on it, put my flavor on it. So that’s what I did. The chemistry and all that shit, I think we work good together. As far as us being in the studio together, nah, all that didn’t happen, but it sounds damn good. It sound like we was in that muthafucka together. So it was a chemistry without a chemistry. So it was a set up to do a solo album or did you do it because you didn’t necessarily want to do a solo album? PSD: To tell you the truth, I was just doin’ something. I didn’t want to do a solo album, nah. It just happened like that. I listen to it now and I’m like, “Man, look at the numbers!” I was finna give the muthafucka away if the label didn’t come right. But basically, I was just doin’ something and it came together like that. So I know after doin’ this, muthafuckas look at me different. The like, “Dude a bad muthafucka!!” (laughs) With this album having so much potential to be big, did you intentionally concentrate on a lot of features to spread the wealth? PSD: I didn’t wanna leave nobody out. Da Bidness ain’t just Vallejo, Frisco and Oakland. I don’t never wanna step on nobody toes and X nobody out. It’s a cat up outta Richmond named Jonny Cash. He a bad muthafucka. I was going to put him on there, but the shit was done already and the shit woulda been a headache for me. I was runnin’ around like a muthafucka gluin’ it together. Why you think it took so long for the Bay to come back around and find this level of unity? Keak: I just feel like all the wrong people was gettin’ bad record deals. Like 3X Crazy. We was 17 and we was signin’ contracts and didn’t know what they said. We just wanted to do good music and when it got the point where we just ain’t seein’ no money? It was crazy. Then we got a lot of people in our ear and we was misled. I just feel like everybody just started goin’ their separate way. That caused the group to break up and it caused people to try something else that year. Then we lost some people. Rappin’ Ron, Seagram Miller, Cougnut, Mr. Cee from RBL Posse, 2Pac. We had too much time of not doin’ nothin’. Mess: It’s still not there. A couple pieces of the puzzle ain’t in place right now, but you gotta look at it like this. We are an industry within ourselves. You lookin’ at ten to fifteen entrepreneurs, CEOs that’s sellin’ twenty, thirty thousand units by themselves in the Bay Area. We push our own music, our own labels and our own rhymes. There’s a lot of that on the table as far as business moves and ventures that get in the way of people getting together and it’s going to take somebody that’s in place or in the public eye to put these last little pieces together so we can all come together. But we’re all