What set you claim? Carver Park. It’s over there in Willowbrook District, but it’s Compton nigga rules. It states that Carver Park is Compton. We right on the other side of Nickerson Gardens. But in my music, you’ll see that it’s a difference. I’m a little something different. You wouldn’t even expect a nigga that comes from that area to be makin’ that type of music. So what is your message? What are you talkin’ about? I tell you about my life and things that I experience. Then I got the message songs with the substance also. But for the most part, I like to rap to the girls. I like to rap to the women. We got a lot of ugly goin’ on, but at the same time people want to have fun. I like havin’ fun. What straight nigga’ gon’ say he don’t like women? It sounds like you weren’t in a whole heap of trouble before the move to Vegas. Your immediate goal wasn’t bein’ the “hardest nigga” — The thing about that, if a nigga will sit here and tell you he the hardest, he a damn lie. It’s a gang of niggas out here doin’ whatever. Anywhere you go you got niggas somewhere who’s outdoing the next, but most niggas don’t speak on what they did and I’m one of them cats. I try to keep things quiet and to the side. I moved out here to change my life and find something different. But where your story is concerned, what happened to make you want to leave? Basically, fuckin’ around with knuckleheads and me being one all at the same time, I can’t just put the blame on everybody else. Me fuckin’ with knuckleheads, being a knucklehead, doin’ wild shit, I had to look at myself. I had homeboys from my inner circle that I grew up with, dyin’. Some of my homeboys was dead. Niggas was facin’ seven years. My other nigga had just got seventeen [years]. My little cousin is fighting his case right now. All that type of shit. Being amongst it and being a part of it, sooner or later it’s going to catch up with you. What you live by you go by. But there wasn’t anything specific or a general incident that happened that made you want to bounce? It was everything. Two years before I moved out here, [I had two] homeboys [named] Lamar, same name, different families. They both grew up on the block with me. One was involved in some hood shit, got killed. The other one was just being him and ended up getting killed. I’m from a neighborhood, I ain’t gon’ lie, we ain’t too much loved by the rest of the city. We don’t have a lot of friends. We don’t click up with niggas. Niggas don’t really like my neighborhood and don’t nobody really get along with us, cause it’s a lot of knuckleheads and niggas do a lot of stupid shit. I was trapped in that frame of mind and had to get away from it. But I seen a lot of that shit and it wasn’t no good comin’ from it. Regardless, I love my niggas. I love my hood, but sometimes you gotta do for yourself. The hood ain’t gon’ be there all the time. You can talk about that homie love and all that type of shit, but niggas ain’t gon’ pay your bills for you or nothin’. So did you already have a network when you moved to Vegas? Is that part of the reason why you went there or was it a leap of faith? I had a brother. My brother stays out here, so I just moved out here. I didn’t know nobody from the label. A nigga moved out here lookin’ to find work, really. From where I’m from it’s real crowded in California and it’s harder to find jobs. So I was lookin’ to find a job. What kind of work were you doing? I had a little factory job. A nigga was workin’ at a warehouse – Clark County Community Food Bank. Got boxes down, delivered shit, basically just maintaining the warehouse. How’d you hook up with Triple P Records? It actually happened at work. It was a man by the name of Barry Brag. He played the guitar and one day niggas was at work and he started playin’. I was like, “I didn’t know you played the guitar,” and he said, “I play everything.” So he started playin’ and I started spittin’. So he was like, “Man, my homeboy got a studio,” which is the CEO of the company – Dwayne Crumwell a.k.a. Crum. He called Wayne on the phone one day and I spit something for him. Next day I got a call from the Vice President of the label. I spit, spit again and they wanted me to come through the studio. I’m thinkin’ they’re just auditioning me one day and I do a freestyle to a BG beat and next thing I know it’s going on the Gangsta Grillz (Insane Gangsta Grillz) mixtape. So we did the last one with Drama before he got cracked. So after that I was fuckin’ with Triple P real heavy. We live in a reality conscious society/industry and we love to represent. How
do you feel about being a real nigga from Compton, in Vegas, on some rap shit? I don’t really think it’s no problem, cause the key word is “real.” I always been a real nigga. All the niggas from my family was real niggas and all the niggas from my circle is real niggas. I don’t never have problems goin’ back to my hood. I visit my hood often. I was just down there. It’s really that our label is about talent, so that’s what it is. Real recognize real. It don’t matter where you at. I’m always going to forever rep my city cause that’s where I’m from. That’s where I was born and raised. It’s just my label is based out of Vegas. On the flip side, what about Vegas? Do you feel a duty to include the place where you are and give it some shine? Yeah, I hear you. Vegas, it goes down out here and all that type of stuff. I ran into a lot of real muthafuckas and I ran into a lot of muthafuckas that wasn’t so real. But shit, I ran into both in Compton too, from everywhere. So basically, it don’t really matter where you from, long as you a real muthafucka and you a man of yo’ word and you a straight up nigga. You’ll never have problems out of me and I’ma fuck with you. But if you on some other type shit, I can’t deal with you. I don’t care where you from. What types of strides have you made with Triple P since signing with them? Right now, they gave me a real opportunity to really pursue my dream and go after what I know. I’m working on my album. We got a lot of shit comin’ up. We got shows. They hooked me up with a real bomb ass producer by the name of Dub Knox. He from the Bay, a real West Coast producer. He grimey with it. He go hard. He hooked me up with another dude by the name of Ishmael and he’s a master with the keys. So basically, it’s like they puttin’ me in all the right places and puttin’ me in the right people’s company. I’m gettin’ all the right beats. I could be on some hood shit, cause that’s what I grew up around. But then at the same time, I gotta be me. I always was a nigga that chased them broads. I always liked women. I can’t fake it. That’s going to be in my music and I like to have fun. I do my thang. What about product? We actually workin’ on a mixtape right now. We did a lot of them songs in the closet while we was on the road. Real shit. Stuff that I experienced while I was on the road. We got a lot of things goin’. And we workin’ on my album at the same time too. My album’s almost finished. We lookin’ to work with different cats. The album is so different and doin’ so much that we got like four or five potential singles. It’s goin’ down. Y’all started workin’ the radio yet? Shit, a little bit. We been feedin’ it to DJs and we been gettin’ a good response out of them. A lot of DJs gettin’ back at us askin’ what they can do to help out with my project; club DJs and radio DJs. We gettin’ good feedback. They wanna know if they can put my songs on their mixtapes and they playin’ it in the clubs and stuff like that. Being the third artist on the label, how do you feel about your chances, seeing what they did or didn’t do? I feel my chances are real good because I got people behind me that’s workin’ too. We all got a goal that we’re tryna meet. We all wanna make it in this industry. We’re an independent label. We’re tryna get it and basically we’re all grinding. So when you see somebody grinding like that and you a hustler and you come from a hustler’s background and you grind also, it’s lovely. We all doin’ our thang. Everybody is doing what it takes to get us to that next level. What do you hope to accomplish as a rapper? What are your goals? First of all to live better, to do better by my family. I want to have longevity in this music business, venture off into other things and set a foundation for my family. I want to create businesses, go back home and set up some programs. I got dreams of doin’ that. You got people who can’t feed themselves, clothe themselves or know how to get a job to do that. So I plan on helping people. What should we expect from that album? We got a lotta shit. We touchin’ everywhere. We make music for everybody. I’m a hood nigga. I make music for the hood and that’s what I surround myself with. I love my niggas and they love me back. But I was always that type of person that didn’t just think hood. I always had a mind of my own. Not to say that niggas that think hood ain’t got they own mind, but I was always my own person. My nigga DW, when we first did it, I told him I was thinkin’ Amsterdam. I’m thinkin’ everywhere. Not just regional or coastal. I’m thinkin’ oversees as well as hood, East Coast, West Coast, down South… I’m thinkin’ for all that. I’m makin’ music for everybody. //
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