Right, something that’s gonna last. Cuz where’s Pretty Ricky now?
Pretty much. They’ll play [a song] every day, 40 million times a day, and then you never hear the song again and you don’t care. Meanwhile, you can throw on a Michael Jackson Off the Wall song and the crowd acts like it just came out yesterday – like, “Aw this is my shit!” These songs that come out now, nobody cares about them next year, much less five years from now. They’re really taking the art form and ripping it up and shredding it apart. Hip hop as we knew it… the freshness of it… it’s getting so stale because corporate America raped it dry. It’s almost dry – like there’s no more blood in it. The vampires all finished sucking all the blood out of it.
I heard for a while that sample clearances where holding back the release of your major label album. If that’s no longer the case than what is?
Atlantic never wanted to commit. They would have put my album out but they were gonna pretty much put it out with no support. And I was like, “Yo, don’t do me like that. Me and Just Blaze worked hard on this record. Y’all saw how hard we worked. Most of this shit we did on our own without none of y’all support” – features, everything. They didn’t pay Jay-Z. You know how much you would have had to pay Jay-Z to do a fuckin’ 16 on your record? He’s so rich that he don’t work like that. It’s gotta be a favor. He’s gotta fuck with you to get on your record. So we’re doing all this shit, going out of the box and doing things that they couldn’t even pull off. You would think that at some point they would meet us halfway. They never put me on a promo run, they never did anything. They really shitted on me because they didn’t see where I was going. They didn’t get it. The people that needed to get it didn’t get it. They wanted me to go in there and do songs with Pretty Ricky and be another Flo Rida or do songs with T-Pain, and I was like “I really don’t wanna do that. Can I be artistic? What the fuck did y’all sign me for and give me this money if y’all didn’t understand what kinda artist I was.” It didn’t make sense. I respect everybody up there. I respect what they do. But I was going in a totally different direction.
So the album is done?
Ummm, almost done. I am technically… yeah, it’s done.
It’s almost becoming like Detox.
Yeah, I know man. It’s fucked up because I wanna get it out to the people and move on. It was becoming a black cloud. Amalgam came at the perfect time because I was like “you know what, I’m gonna put myself in a situation where I’m not thinking like an artist.” I’m thinking more like an exec and [considering] the business part as well, so I feel like I had to boss up and start making my own moves and putting out my own music. The importance of ownership and publishing… I had no idea what that was when I came into [the music industry]. Now I know that’s where you make your money at. You gotta own your promotion; you gotta own your masters to really make money. You gotta own your music. If you’re on a major, the deals they’re doing now are 360 deals. They want a piece of your merch, they want a piece of your touring, they want a piece of everything.
Ringtones…
Yeah, if you do a ringback they own your voice. People don’t know that in a contract it says, “We own your voice. We own your likeness. We own your image. We own your FACE, muthafucka!” For your little advance, what you’re giving up is not worth it. But we don’t see that. They think “Oh I’m gonna be famous! I’ma be on TV!” It’s sad.
So do you feel like you’re in a comfortable place right now? You were talking about quitting for a while.
When I was talking about quitting I just wanted to get out of the record deal. I figured, “If I quit rapping, then what are y’all gonna do then? I’m not gonna rap no more.” I really needed to get outta there a few years ago. Everything happened for a reason. I’m politically based right now – I wanna work with other artists, I wanna start producing. I’m getting up there. I’m 30 now, so I’m not trying to be around still trying to be a brand new artist acting like I’m young and doing shit the young boys do. I gotta grow the fuck up at the same time. I would like to get my album out, but it’s not gonna hinder me from living my life and creating a life for my family.
I feel like you can still be an artist and be older. Your music is pretty mature as it is. Jay-Z is damn near 40.
Yeah, I don’t get caught up on the age thing. I’m just saying as far as my lifetime – it takes a lot of work to do this shit. I don’t just mean the writing and recording aspect, but the getting out there on the road. Cause I’m grassroots, man. I’m still on the chitlin circuit, doing venues with 300 or 400 people. I still believe in building one fan at a time, so I’m still in the trenches. I still do the $2000 or $2500 shows. I’m out there on the grind – hard body. But it gets draining and you just wanna fall back sometimes, but you gotta grind, gotta get it. You get back what you put in, but I just wanna make my own rules and do it my way. With the technological era and Amalgam Digital – the way they work – it’s perfect for me because we’re ahead of the curve right now. Nowhere have you ever heard of doing an album in one day. I did the album on March 10th and we put it out on March 17th. So it was pretty much wrapped up in a week. A week later I got an album out when I had just been sitting around on Atlantic. It ain’t my debut album, but it’s music out there for the people that like my music.
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