YUKMOUTH WORDS: MAURICE G. GARLAND
PHOTO: BARRY UNDERHILL
Yukmouth has shown many faces in his ride through the music industry. He’s been everything from a lyrically inclined goof-off to a fighting mad emcee with a big chip on his shoulder. But now with the Bay Area catching its second wind, Yuk wants to show yet another one of his many faces. Read on to see what he’s looking like nowadays. Guess we’ll start off taking about the Bay’s resurgence. How does it feel seeing this? It feels good just to have people paying attention to the West Coast period. It’s good to see that since we lost the spotlight ten years ago when ‘Pac died. During the Bay’s down period you continued to release albums rather consistently. How did you keep your name out there? My advantage was being signed to Rap-A-Lot, so when the West fell off, I was in the South. At the end of the day, a lot of West Coast artists 82
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didn’t have that access. I stayed in other markets besides the West Coast. In every city, you got to hit niggas in the city. Every city has a nigga who’s running shit. So every time I go to a city, I scour the streets and I link up with that nigga and do shit with them. I do things that other artists don’t do. I plant seeds so if I don’t run the city, I got niggas there that do. I keep my name in the loop. A lot of niggas don’t fuck with the streets. They got managers and police around them all the time. I fuck with everybody; I don’t just act stuck up or act like I’m too good because at the end of the day, we all started from an independent level. So you got to look out for those niggas. When you look out for people, they fuck with you. My shows be packed. Why do you think some artists don’t take that approach? I don’t know. I think it’s because when you get to a certain status like platinum and get awards, you can’t go in the public and not get harassed. The big artists ain’t scared, but its more of a consequence to go out in the public. And it don’t help if you got security all around you.