Do you feel that the lack of radio play has hindered your success? Naw, we’re still doing all our shows and all our gigs. Atlanta is the only city with the bullshit— and I ain’t gon’ buy it. What the fuck would I buy it with as many Birthday Bashes and shit we done packed, and how we done crunked the city up and showed Atlanta love? I’ll be damned if I go up there [to the radio station] kissing ass trying to get the damn song [played]. I’m gonna go somewhere where they wanna play this shit gladly. I don’t know if I even have any haters, because I’m always around m’fuckers that love me. That’s the best way to do it. Why would I wanna be around some muthafuckas that’s always throwing tomatoes at me? Fuck that!
I know you stay on the road doing shows. What are you some of the places you get the most love? Man, I work every fuckin’ weekend. Charlotte, North Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina, all across Birmingham, Jackson, Mississippi, Florida, Tennessee, Memphis; we keep this shit rocking. I’ve probably been to Charlotte ten times this year alone. Atlanta seems to be a harder market to infiltrate. Atlanta is always gonna be harder market to infiltrate because it’s a million muthafuckas that wanna do what you’re doing, so they can’t appreciate it and show you love. They look at
everybody as competition. I’ve had so many [wannabe] Pastor Troys come after my style, this shit is cookoo crazy. But shit, they don’t know no better, because it was too big of an event. They had to copy, because they couldn’t get away from it; it was a new sound. Does it bother you that you’re not as appreciate at home as much as you are on the road? I’m straight. I understand how it goes. I’m real, and that means I’d rather be loved by some real muthafuckas than [a lot of ] fake muthafuckas. I don’t like people being fake with me. Be real with me. It’s all good. Do you think Atlanta is fake? Let’s put it like this: a lot of Atlanta ain’t Atlanta. So I don’t know what it is, but I know the folks I fuck wit’ is real. I was engaging in one of those classic “Top Five in the South” arguments recently, and your name came up in the discussion. Do you feel that you’re one of the top five emcees? These boys know. It’s about having a track record, a real fucking track record, a movement. You’ve definitely outshone a lot of more recognizable artists throughout the years. That track with Big Boi on Rich Boy’s album was crazy, man. That was probably one of my favorite Pastor Troy verses. Those are the kind of problems I have - murking tracks like that. Muthafuckas don’t wanna do songs with you after I done gotdamn get off like I get off. It’s not too many features or songs I did with anybody in these past ten years where the other muthafucka drowned me, but you bet I done drowned a bunch of muthafuckas! And I’ve done songs with everybody: Tip, Luda, Jeezy, you name it. I ain’t never got drowned, but I done baptized some muthafuckas, believe that. And I’ll baptize some more if they ever do songs with me. Nobody wants to do any more songs. I know you have about 20 songs on the album, and you were telling me that you have a chivalry section on the album. That’s different. Yeah, it’s gon’ be an actual section. Songs like that [are] gon’ be in a certain section. And by chivalry I mean that you should be a warrior in battle, but meek to your lady. And that’s just something that comes along with the territory. Everybody’s all gangsta’d up, but even gangstas got a muthafuckin’ woman. So we gotta address that side too. You’ve got a lot of big time samples on the album. How’d you pull that off? Yeah, we’ve got Michael Jackson, Prince, and New Edition because we’re independent. We get it how we live down here. We don’t have the problems that the majors have with getting those joints cleared. My shit is more like a mixtape. Major labels have to go through a long process. Universal wishes they could put a sample on an album without getting that shit cleared. A Michael Jackson sample would cost them damn near half the company. I’d be done spending [the profits] by the time he came fucking with me. // Words by Eric Perrin Photo by Alfred Troy
OZONE MAG // 55