bankruptcy, and it’s kind of surprising to the general public when you hear that someone like Suge Knight or The Source is preparing to go bankrupt. Well, I filed bankruptcy because I was trying to get out of my contract with Sony. At the same time there was a whole bunch of sample lawsuits that I had. Before that, we were sampling everything and there wasn’t no sample issues. Then there was a whole new wave of suing people for sampling records, and I got caught up in that. Right now, there’s a formula where you do certain things and get clearances and shit. After you sign for a record you get clearance. Back then, people wasn’t getting clearances. They was just sampling and using shit and it wasn’t no problem. So I got caught up in that and at the same time I had a bad contract with Sony. They weren’t paying me any more money and they were trying to take all my artists. In my opinion, I had a Judas in my camp at that time – Mr. [Joe] Weinberger. In my opinion, he conspired with Sony against me. So the logical thing for me to do to get out of my contract with them was to file bankruptcy. A lot of people don’t know that that’s a business move. If you do Chapter 11, you can reject any contract. I actually helped T-Boz [of TLC] with that because they were screaming that they were in a bad contract. If any artist is in a bad contract, just file Chapter 11 and you can reject the contract in bankruptcy court. But a lot of people look at Chapter 11 as being something bad. Was the situation with Joe Weinberger a lesson in hiring people that you trust? Most definitely. With everything I was doing at the time, I thought I was doing the right thing – hiring a tax attorney to protect me and making this guy my general in-house lawyer to protect me from lawsuits and all that. I’m not an expert – you can’t be acting like you know every fuckin’ thing. I’m not a lawyer, nor am I an accountant. So you’ve got to trust some of these people with your business deals. A lot of times, people like myself get affected by that. We’re creative artists – we can create and we can market, but we are not lawyers and we’re not accountants. People like that have a tendency to take advantage of people like myself. So the lesson to be learned as far as this business is a deep lesson. It’s not necessarily that you can’t trust nobody, but you’ve got to try to keep these people closet o you. Right now, to be honest with you, I don’t trust lawyers and accountants. I’ll look at them, I’ll double check them, I’ll have five different lawyers check the same set of paperwork. I just don’t trust them. It’s hard to trust these guys. You’ve gotta educate yourself on this business. Read a lot and look at some of the mistakes that people like myself made. You’ve got so many companies that have been affected like this. That’s one of things I was thinking about doing, a documentary on all these black companies like Fergo Sports, Famous Amos, same situations. Some lawyers and accountants stole their company from right up under them. There’s so many stories of creative people wanting to do the right thing and owning their own company. Then you’ve got these slick lawyers stealing people’s companies. They ain’t gonna do no movies like that because we all know who the lawyers are. The majority of them won’t do it; you don’t see that in Hollywood. Are you on good terms with Trick Daddy these days? I’m alright with Trick. But when I read articles in your magazine where he’s sayin’, “When I got out of jail, nobody did shit for me,” I got a problem with that. I love Trick to death, but I got a problem with that. When he got out of jail he stayed with me. When I was putting a bitch out of my house, he stayed with me. We was breakin’ bread together. See that’s why I love Pitbull so much, and I think with cats like Rick [Ross] comin’ up, it ain’t gonna be like that. Some people come up in this game and never say who the fuck put them on. I’ve heard all kinds of fuckin’ stories but I’ve never read the story of how Luke found Trick Daddy. Luke had a tag team disco rap contest, a 4-week contest, and Trick Daddy won. The contestant winner was to get on the next Luke single and get signed by Luke Records. And that’s how he got discovered. Just pay respect. I ain’t never gonna have a problem with him. I love him like a son, but I do know what kind of son he is. And I love Pit like a muthafucker too. Pit was reading all those [Trick Daddy] articles like, “Damn, man, I would never do that.” Pit said he would never turn his back on me, never say that I wasn’t the one that discovered him and put him on. So that’s why he’s got that kind of love. Every artist that I put on, they have some slick shit to say after I make them a millionaire, which I don’t understand. But that was the phase in time where all artists were talking shit about their record companies in that bullshit-ass Source magazine. Please put that in there. What about the other 2 Live Crew members, are you cool with them? 90
OZONE
Yeah, we’re alright. It’s just a fucked up situation that Lil Joe [Weinberger] holds a lot of the cards with us doing a reunion album. It’s really fucked up. Didn’t Joe try to sue 50 Cent recently? Yeah, for our lyrics [in “In Da Club”]. This guy is making money off something he never created. He never worked one fuckin’ day in the studio. He never pushed no record out of my mama’s garage. This guy is like the fifth member of the group, and it’s really fucked up. I don’t think the story has been put out there enough, cause muthafuckers need to be calling his office saying “What the fuck are you doing?” Me, I had my run-ins with the group members. We had our differences but I put my differences aside. If the fans told me they wanted a fuckin’ 2 Live Crew reunion album, I’d give ‘em that. I’d go on tour with some guys in the group who I might not want to go on tour with. But I’d get up there onstage and do my shit for the fans. But I’m not gonna do it if Joe Weinberger is the fifth member and we’re making the same amount of money. Have you ever thought about getting revenge on Joe or are you just sitting back relying on karma? Sometimes you kill muthafuckers with kindness. Whoever created that phrase is a brilliant muthafucker. If I go fuck him up, beat him up, take him out or do something crazy to this man, I’ll be giving him the satisfaction. But think about it like this: if you leave him alone on this earth, he’s got to be burning up on the inside. And that’s how I really look at that whole situation. He’s got to live with what he did. He’s living in internal hell, I really, truly believe that. I would be putting out of his misery if I was to do something to him like a normal person would do. And I thought about it a couple times – man, I should go kill this muthafucker. But I read a lot and thought about it and I’m like, naw, let this man live in internal hell. That’s what he’s doing right now. That’s why he’s suing 50 Cent, trying to make it seem like I’m suing him. Suing Jay-Z, trying to make it look like Marquis is suing him. Suing the Ying Yang Twins. That’s all this dude does. Is he winning any of these lawsuits? Naw. He’s tryin’ to get them to settle out of court. That’s how he makes his living. He’s like a fuckin’ pirate on a pirate ship. If he walked by right now what would you say? I’d say, “Hey, how you doing, Joe?” cause I know he’s living in hell. That muthafucker fucked up. He’s living in hell. If you go talk to him it’d be like talking to the anti-Christ. My man is fucked up. I talked to him a couple times and helped him try to get out of that situation. He could make himself right. He could come back and just do the right thing and give these guys their money. That’s the record business, you supposed to pay people they royalties. Them guys are really fucked up. Them guys lost a lot of shit. They made business mistakes by going with him during that whole bankruptcy process. He did the divideand-conquer thing. He divided us and told them he could give them a better deal, and they went for that shit. So they put themselves in their own fuckin’ hole. They went for it and Joe an’ them loaned them all kinds of money. He really put them in debt, and had them to the point where he controlled them. That’s why they’re fucked up right now. I told you, karma. Same thing with H-Town. They crossed me with Joe and Sony. 2 Live Crew crossed me and them muthafuckers ain’t sell one fuckin’ record. When H-town did a record on Sony they did not sell one fuckin’ record. See, God don’t like ugly. When that happened, I was like, man, there is a fuckin’ God. That’s why I just let my man live. He could straighten himself out, though. You mentioned that you coach youth football. I heard you and Snoop had a little altercation at the last tournament. Yeah, he had some thugs on his sideline, some straight pussies. We had this All Star game where he brought his team down. For years they had been doin’ so much talking shit, like they were the baddest thing in the world. Nelly brought his team, Puff Daddy brought his team, Snoop brought both of his teams, and both of his teams got the shit beat out of them. Some of his thug friends were kicking my players on the sidelines. These are kids we’re talking about. For some dude to be kicking a kid, that’s fucked up. I asked them to apologize, and his people said they didn’t feel like he needed to apologize. I find that real fuckin’ disgusting. He’s got a son just like I’ve got a son. A lot of us in this business have kids. If one of them dudes would’ve kicked his son on my sideline, he would’ve been ready to fight. And I wouldn’t be mad at him cause I would do the same thing. That’s all I tried to do – tell buddy to straighten up his fuckin’ house, because that’s somebody else’s child. He’s got these kids out there throwing