I ain’t telling you not to bootleg my album, but in my situation it’s an ongoing fight with me to prove corporate to be wrong. They don’t fuck with the streets because they don’t respect us and they feel that the streets don’t support their own. I’m just trying to make a difference with this particular album and show them that they’re wrong.
game. You can never change that. The sad part about it – not just my situation, but being successful in general – is that my culture is so totally fucked up. For anybody who’s a part of white America and has a white family, you’re supposed to be successful. They expect you to be successful. But if you tell a nigga in the hood that you went and furthered your education or played ball in school, niggas don’t perceive that to be “real.” If the streets can’t do it, they hate on it. That’s just life. I understand what it is that I’m dealing with. You can’t find any street artist right now in the rap business where there ain’t some nigga saying that he ain’t who he claims to be. That’s part of climbing the success ladder. It doesn’t change. In Ft. Myers, it is what it is. If I go to the store in Ft. Myers, I can’t leave because 300 people show up anytime you see my car. I love the city for that. But there’s always going to be a person or a group of people who have seen you become successful and they’re not successful, so they want you to live your life the way they would’ve lived if they were in your situation. You can’t change that.
So you feel like the things they’re trying to “expose” you for – going to college and playing football – should be perceived by the community as positive things instead of negative. For me personally, my information is factual. As far as the situation that transpired with me in Gainesville, these people have painted me to be the thuggest nigga ever living, getting caught with x amount of guns in the car that I was occupying. I wish they would tell these people in Gainesville that I ain’t the nigga they think I am. I’m not a dude who’s going to try to promote my street cred off of silly mistakes I’ve made in life. There’s niggas doing real time – 40 to 50 years – and if they had the chance to change their life, they would. You can’t tell me that five ki’s of cocaine is worth 40 years of your life. You can’t make me believe that no nigga would be willing to swap that out. So for me, I’m comfortable with who I am. But you can’t avoid that. That comes with the culture. Culturally, we’re fucked up. Do you think the public buys into you as an artist moreso because of your look and your image, or the actual music itself? I don’t know. I don’t even really try to figure that out. I always make music to stay true to who I am and what I believe in. Over the course of the last four years, I’ve done it on an underground level. To start from where I was in Ft. Myers, stay hot in the streets for three and a half years without major help or finances, just me and my brother, that’s the hardest way to do this. I never even had a radio record until six or seven months ago or however long this “Shawty” record has been workin’. To stay hot and be one of the biggest niggas on my coast for the last few years, I feel like that’s a testament to not only me and my brother’s mind, but also to our hustle. Whether it’s an image that females are attracted to or music that street niggas love, it’s a combination of those things that’s been the key to my success. I’m one of the few dudes in this industry that is blessed to have both markets. Your lead radio singles, “Shawty” and “Hypnotized,” are obviously aimed at the female audience. Is the rest of the album similar or more street? I stay true to what I believe in. I’m a dude who will always make sexual female kinda records, and I’ll make records about the struggle. I have a record titled “A Hundred Years” talking about the system. I personally feel that the system wrongly oversentences niggas. I’ve got a record talking about “On My Dick” where I’m talking about how it is to be broke. Niggas don’t want to fuck with you when you’re broke, and the streets don’t fuck with you when you get money. So I’d rather be the nigga with money and the streets don’t fuck with me, than be broke and the streets still don’t fuck with me. I’ve got another 76 // OZONE MAG
record on my album called “Kept It Too Real” just talking about the relationships you’ve got with your friends and homeboys. You don’t really know the niggas you fuck with until y’all fall out. I’ve got another record on my album called “Runnin’ My Mama Crazy” that’s talking about the life of a street nigga and what we take our moms through, whether it’s being locked up or calling her at 4:00 in the morning and she’s gotta take off work to come bond us out of jail. I talk about issues that I know are reality, and I know there’s other muthafuckers around the country that are going through the same struggles. I don’t follow the trends in music. I ain’t gonna sit here and tell you that I’m trappin’ and all this crazy shit when I’m really financially stable. A lot of muthafuckers are still trying to sell you stories that, in my opinion, are not viable. If you’ve sold a million records, financially you should be good. If you’re still trying to tell me that you’re still killing niggas and you’re still in the trap, it’s hard to believe that. Maybe you are. But me, I’m going to always make reality music. In the climate of the music business today, artists really aren’t selling too many records as it is. Why should someone purchase your album as opposed to just picking up one of your mixtapes in the streets? I’ve made it a priority to never allow myself to create a distance or a gap between me and my consumers. I never expect you to spend your money on me to purchase this album just for me to tell you how good I’m living. I never expect you to spend your money on 13 tracks of me telling you how much the watch cost, how much I paid for the whip, how big the crib is, and how the trip to the Bahamas was. I’ll never belittle my consumer that way. When I’ve bought music in the past, I wanted to learn something from it when I bought it. I only bought music that related to the lifestyle I was living and the person that I was. That’s what I’m giving you on The Real Testament. When you walk away with this CD, you’re going to be able to take something from it, off every song I put on this album. Is there anything else you’d like to say? The album The Real Testament is in stores August 7th and in the streets August 7th. There’s a personal challenge that I’m giving to everybody that reads your magazine. One thing I’ve learned about corporate America is that they really don’t respect the streets. I hear it all the time: They say my kind doesn’t buy records. They say we don’t support each other and all we do is steal from each other. So I’m trying to utilize my situation to prove that whole notion to be wrong. I gave niggas my music for the last four years and didn’t charge nobody for shit. I feel like at this point they should have enough respect for me and my situation and my grind and everything that’s been invested. I feel like my people deserve more than a CD with something written on it in marker. I feel like it’s a historical situation for people who are interested in my situation. I ain’t telling you not to bootleg my album, but in my situation it’s an ongoing fight with me to prove corporate to be wrong. They don’t fuck with the streets because they don’t respect us and they feel that the streets don’t support their own. I’m just trying to make a difference with this particular album and show them that they’re wrong. And I want you to put this in the article too: I meant what I told you earlier, that I appreciate your support. People tell me all the time, “You must have some stock invested in OZONE, cause she keep you in there.” So I take my hat off to you; I salute your grind as well. So just let my brother Big Gates know that I love him, and we’re living his dream. Johnny Wardlow, he’s locked up in a Federal Correctional Facility in Coleman – I’ll keep him in my prayers. Everybody that’s locked up, I’ma keep you in my prayers. //