help me, like my manager Big U. He came home from the pen [after doing] 13 years. He missed his whole 20s. He was in the pen from, like, 19 to 30-something. He came home and was real plugged in with the music industry. At that point, I had already taken my independent route, put out mixtapes, invested in my company, built relationships with different DJs and tried to put my best foot forward. I had my own resources and outlets. So when Big U came home, he met me halfway. It was like, we’re going to team up and we’re going to get this shit going. It wasn’t an overnight situation. We were punching for a couple of years. I think [my manager] has been home for three years now. He sent me to go do shows in Tokyo; they gave me $10,000 cash. He got me the Adidas shoe deal. He introduced me to Jon Shapiro, who in turn signed me to Epic. He also secured me a movie deal, a joint venture with Jeff Clanagan, who owns Code Black, and Epic. They’re going to put out a feature film called Blue Laces in conjunction with my album. I say all that to tell you that Big U was one of the only ones in the neighborhood that saw what I was doing and instead of being jealous or being on some hating shit, he reached out and [showed me] what combined, we could bring to the table if he endorsed what I was doing. Him being an original homie from that original era, once he got behind my shit, a lot of the older homies that were hating or going against the grain followed suit and supported me. A lot of the older dudes were threatened by me because we were young dudes making moves. My whole crew was making forward progress into a lane that nobody from our neighborhood had really went down before. Nobody really from my neighborhood had gotten to the music industry and was successful.
Also, if you want to express yourself to people who don’t live your lifestyle, don’t you sometimes have to speak their language a little bit more until they get it? Exactly.
“I’m not anti-social—I fuck with a lot of niggas in the entertainment industry—but I just don’t want to lean on anybody. I don’t want them to go out and get the album to get the song that Lil Wayne or Beyonce or T.I. is on. I want them to go get the project because it’s hot. I want to know it’s all me.”
Maybe some of them saw your intellect at play and thought they wanted you on their team doing whatever they were doing, and therefore found you threatening? Exactly. You hit the nail on the head. People tried to make me their asset and use me. But my mentality going into the game was, excuse my French, but it was like, “fuck the middleman.” That was the name of one of my mixtapes that I put out: Fuck the Middleman. Because I’d seen how everything was becoming hands-on; you can’t just be a rapper anymore. You have to be an A&R, you have to be your own promoter, you have to be your own publisher. You have to do all that on your own. The successful artists are the ones that understand that. So I started trying to not only perfect what I do creatively, but also become proficient on the business end to where I could sit down and speak for myself and get my point across and not have people assume that I’m just an ignorant rapper. That’s a big part of the equation that I think a lot of people don’t get. You have to be talented but also able to handle your business and not get screwed over in the industry. Not many people have the full package. Exactly. Who were the positive examples that you looked to, if no one from your neighborhood had made it in the music industry before? I had inspirations on different levels. There were people in my neighborhood that weren’t in music but they were impressive in their own right. 20 // OZONE WEST
So I had inspirations from every level of niggas, from niggas that were rich off dope money to niggas that had real, legitimate businesses and came from a similar element to were I came from that flipped the script and became positive and successful. I used to work with a print shop that printed up independent albums called Side Effects, and my boss Jamil was the one that really woke me up. He said, “You can’t come to work smelling like weed. You can’t say ‘cuzz’ after everything you say. You can’t come here [to work] with Dickies hanging off your ass. You have to get over that.” It was hard for me to understand it, but it’s not about not being yourself. You know who you are internally. It’s just about knowing what you’re asking for [out of life], because if you know what you’re asking for, you’ll know how to present yourself in a certain way. You get respect based on the way you present yourself.
So I understand that DJ Felli Fel from Power 106 in LA helped you get your deal? Yeah, the way I ran across Felli Fel was Steve Lobel—he’s one of the owners of the management company that I’m signed with, he and Big U own a company together—Steve Lobel was working on the Bone Thugs album. He’s Bone Thug’s manager also, and he was working on their project and the “I Tried” record went to radio. He and Felli go back years and he was playing him the Bone Thugs record with Akon and Steve told Felli that he also had a new artist from L.A. that was sick. So Felli was like, “Alright, put it in,” and he played him “Bullets Ain’t Got No Names,” which is also the name of my last mixtape. He played that record for Felli, and I wasn’t there to see it, but I was told that he was real impressed with the record and he reacted by playing it on the radio right after the Bone Thugs record. And right after he played it, we started getting a lot of calls from different people: Def Jam, Epic, Atlantic, Capitol, Warner Brothers—we met with everybody, basically. At the end of the day, Jon Shapiro got us the joint venture over at Epic, a real cool situation. There won’t be too many people in my business as far as the creative process, so I can do me. There aren’t too many things [like this] over at Epic, so they’re going to treat you as a priority. It was the best fit. I also told them I wanted to start my own brand too so based on the success of my project, I’m going to start my company up and release shit through my brand also. They said they were fully with that, from the president, Charlie Walk, to the general manager to everyone there. They want to help me build
my brand up and just me in general, so I did my part and went in the studio and just banged out a classic album. So you’re done with your album? The album is done but I’m always in the studio, so I’ve got [other] projects coming out. I’ve got a Slauson Boys deal for my group, so we’re working on that album. I’ve got two mixtapes. The first one is already out, Bullets Ain’t Got No Names Volume 1, and Volume 2 is about to come out now. They’re all original music, no jacked beats or anything of that nature. It’s all songs. So I’m putting Volume 2 out this month and Volume 3 out in December. And then we’re going to go into the album at the top of the year, but there’s no release date or anything set yet. That’s good if the label isn’t pressuring you to rush out a record. Did you feel like the other labels were rushing you? Yeah, that was part of the reason why the other labels weren’t a perfect fit for me. They all had a formula that they had won with previously, so it was more like, “Yo, we’re going to throw you in our formula and put you with our in-house producer and we’re going to put you with our artist that’s on our label and that’s how we’re going to bring you out. Let’s put out a record right now and we’re going to see what it do and that’s going to be that.” So, the same boring shit that they do to everybody? Exactly, and my whole thing was that I am trying to come in and create my own lane. I don’t want to come in as nobody’s co-signed artist; as “this producer’s artist.” I want to come in as the newest nigga with some hot shit and let my music define my own lane. I want to create my own fan base and not ride on somebody else’s exposure. I feel like the other labels didn’t understand that this same formula might have been successful for them for the past few years, but it’s a new generation. And my generation is the generation that’s going to make all the decisions. It has to be a new movement, a whole new swag with the way they treat my project, and the only people who really understood that was Epic. Epic has sure had a lot of classic artists that are individuals and not cookie-cutters. They have some of the biggest artists. I walk through the halls, looking at the plaques, tripping: The Eagles, Sade, AC/DC. When they get quality projects, they know what to do with them. So I’ve got full faith in the label. I see that everybody is excited and they’re putting their full-throttle machine behind me based on the music. We don’t really have many features on the album; Game is the only feature. It’s all hometown produced. We’ve got [tracks from] JR Rotem, we’ve got Mr. Lee, QD3. But it’s no Dr. Dres, no Timbos or Neptunes on there. It’s just me, and my whole squad and movement, and I feel like people are going to respect it because I came in on my own stretch. I’m not anti-social—I fuck with a lot of niggas in the entertainment industry—but I just don’t want to lean on anybody. I want them to like the song because it’s hot. I don’t want them to go out and get the album to get the song that Lil Wayne or Beyonce or T.I. is on. I want them to go get the project because it’s hot, or not get it because they think it’s trash. But either way, I want to know it’s all me. //