TRICK DADDY WORDS: JULIA BEVERLY
W
hen we were talking earlier, you sounded frustrated. I just wish muthafuckers the best of success. I don’t wanna talk bad about nobody. My beef ain’t with no label. My beef ain’t with no single individual. My beef is with life, with the game itself. My beef is with rap music cause a lot of rap music that’s getting put out there is for this week only. Next week you won’t listen to it. My beef is not with the artist, cause you can’t blame an artist if they come out with a one-hit wonder and people fall for it. My beef is with the major labels that are putting this bullshit out and packaging this shit up. But when people open that package up, there’s nothing in it. You never win no prize. It’s like the little games at the youth fair, where they push the quarters. It always looks like the quarters are gonna fall, but they never fall. That’s who my beef is with, those types of people. But anybody who’s getting money, I don’t have beef with them. That’s why a lot of niggas on record don’t have beef with me and a lot of niggas in the streets don’t have beef with me. And if they do, fuck ‘em, cause it’s some undercover shit. It ain’t legit. So what do you think is the problem? Radio blasting too much garbage? To me, the problem is money. You’ve been seeing a lot of that lately – people getting in trouble for paying for certain records to be played. I think if they investigate even further they’ll see that people are getting money for videos to be played. I’ve seen a lot of hot videos in the last two or three years of my career, but I’ve also seen a lot of bullshit videos. And even my videos could be taken up another notch. But I’m not that type of dude. I’m not the pretty boy, I’m not what you’d call a “stunner.” I’m not gonna fake it til I make it. I am what I am, and that’s what my videos represent. [In my videos] you might see a Phantom in the background but you’re not gonna see me driving in a Phantom cause that ain’t mine. I tried that shit with “Dro In Da Wind.” They had me driving a Bentley in the video. But that ain’t me, man. I’m for the thugs, I’m for the streets. I think the problem is the money aspect of the game. It’s the same problems in music as there is in sports. In sports, the younger NFL and NBA owners are not concerned with the well-being of the game itself. Younger people are getting money and getting out of control, and they’re using their money to have power and they’re taking away from the game itself. It’s all about what they can take away from the music and how much money they can make. It ain’t about what they can instill, or give to hip-hop. Hip-hop has been around for a long time, since the 70s. Now it’s 2006. I want hip-hop to be here forever, because once hip-hop dies my whole legacy dies. That’s all I represent. You think rappers are making too much money? No. It’s just that in this music game, every year there’s somebody new and hot. Once something is done or said in the industry it travels around and once it gets back, it might be taken out of context. It’s all one big circle and one big family, so eventually we got to get together and say, “Let’s do this for hip-hop.” Whatever happened to the Stop The Violence movement? They had the East Coast All Stars, West Coast All Stars. We’re all in the same gang. These days, you call niggas for features and they tell you, “He’s working on his own project. He can’t do it right now.” And nine times out of ten, it ain’t the nigga. It’s the management or the label. So that’s why we have to go out and communicate with each other. Now Julia, if you call me and ask me to do an interview and I tell you I don’t want to do it, then you can blame me. But if you go through Atlantic or Slip-N-Slide and can’t get to me, you can’t say “Trick is hard to deal with.” And that’s what’s hurting a lot of people in the music game. They’re being blocked out and they looking like the bad guy. It’s the same thing with these fake promoters and these fake shows. They’ll falsely advertise that I’m going to do a party. All that kind of shit is hurting music, deeply. With all this talk about bringing back real hip-hop, you’re sounding like an East coast artist. First of all, the word “hip-hop” is just another form of saying “rap music.” To me, hip-hop is a more professional way of saying “rap.” I wouldn’t say that I’m a rap star, I would say that I’m a hip-hop star. The
only difference between hip-hop and rap is that rap stays in the hood. Sometimes rap doesn’t get past Orlando. Sometimes rap doesn’t get out of Florida. Some people that rap are only big in their city or their state. But hip-hop is worldwide, and that’s the difference. The difference between good hip-hop and bullshit hip-hop is that good hip-hop has a meaning. It always tells a story, whether it’s negative or positive. There’s always a beginning and an ending. But these days when you listen to the big records on the radio and on Soundscan and you really break ‘em down and analyze the lyrics, they’re not talking about shit. Do you think Southern rap is hip-hop? All of it is music. What makes your music “hip-hop” or “pop” or “crossover” just depends on the different markets that your music travels in. If you can’t get spins on crossover or mainstream or pop stations, if you can’t get those sales, you’re just a rapper. There’s millions of rappers. When you talk about these problems in the rap game, don’t you think a lot of the problems come from the artists themselves? Right. It’s our problem. This is what we do. When I talk about “us” I’m talking about me, too. So nobody get it twisted; don’t say no fuck shit about me and get busted in your muthafuckin’ mouth or get your brains blowed out or get me misunderstood. When I say “us,” it’s all of us. We have to stop falling for everything. We have to stop rapping on every track. We have to keep coming with the hits. Remember, the people only listen to what we give them. So if I ain’t putting out no good records, then why the fuck am I gonna get mad and go around hating on D4L? A lot of niggas be hating on the “Laffy Taffy” record, but D4L is D4L. D4L will never be Trick. D4L does their kind of music. I do my kind of music. But I’m not gonna knock them. And I’m not a big 50 Cent fan, but I’ve got more respect for 50 Cent when it comes to his business. It doesn’t matter if I don’t buy his album. The point is, I respect him cause he’s a businessman and he’s keeping hip-hop going. I’m not gonna like every song he does or every group he puts out, but he’s putting them out. And until I do that, I can’t say shit about this man. That’s what the problem is. I think niggas should pay more attention to being successful ourselves, and maybe we wouldn’t have so much to say about the other people that are successful. Speaking of 50 Cent putting out his groups, you have your own group. What’s going on with the Dunk Ryders? See, my niggas are hungry. They’re working. I’m not handing them nothing. They ain’t get no advance, none of that. But they’re gonna get the important shit: recognition, publishing, royalties, a good lawyer, good managers, real publicity. They’re gonna get the important shit that I didn’t get. See, I got the money, but I ain’t get the important things. I want my label and my artists to be successful because once I stop doing this music thing, I have no income. This is all I do, and the money I got won’t last forever. My kids are still young. They still have to go to school, go to college, eat, and be clothed. My bills still have to be paid. I can’t count on what I’ve got, I got to keep my circle going. The Dunk Ryders understand that, so they come with real music. I’m not looking for crossover songs or pretty boy songs, I’m just letting them be theyself. If they can’t sell just being theyself, then they won’t sell, cause I don’t know how to be fake. What impressed you about the Dunk Ryders? Lyrically, I ain’t heard no young niggas like these niggas. Iceberg, he’s a young nigga, 16 years old. But he’s coming out hard and when you listen to his shit and hear the way he uses words, you’ll say, “Damn, this nigga here knows a lot.” One of the other dudes in the group, Soup, that’s Pearl’s son also. If you don’t remember, Pearl is my mama. So I already know his background and I already know what he’s talking about. So I decided, let’s see how much he really wants this. He shows me every day when he comes to the Dunk Ryders studio and puts down music that he really wants this. They’ve got more songs than I’ve done in the past year, and that’s what I keep telling them: you’ll never have enough songs. Another dude is Fella, he’s a young dude out of Opa-Locka. Opa-Locka is one of the most OZONE
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