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3/29/2006 What's up Apathy? I'm good man. I just got off stage trying to de-charge a little bit. I'm pretty amped. I'm having a good tour right now. Feeling Spectacular! What's up with your situation at Atlantic? Three years ago, I got signed to Atlantic. I've been signed to Atlantic for a minute. It's not big news to me anymore. It's actually bad news. Atlantic is dope man. They've done so much. They've helped me out a lot to teach me about the business. On the other hand, it's taxing because I figured after I got signed, everything was going to be hot and people were going to come whisk you away, help you write the hooks, and not even just that, but also give you direction. Things aren't the same anymore. People have this misconception that once you're in the game that automatically you're given this preferential treatment, that your whole name is on blast and you walk up in the building, cats are like, "Yo, there's Apathy." Truth be told, when you go up into that Atlantic building, even after you've proven yourself sales-wise in another market, most people in that office still don't know you. So you still have to be on your grind. You have to still make songs and be hungry. Up until the point you make a few smash hits, you're still in demo-mode. I'm so envious of Little Brother man, they have the perfect situation. They came in and did their record the way they wanted to and it's hot. It came out. For me, they tried to push me in several different directions. I worked with my A&R on tons of different stuff and trying so many different angles to the point where I've created songs where they were like, "This is it, this is a hit right here." We played it for Craig Carowin, President of Atlantic, Julie Greenwall, basically everyone on board, and everyone loves it. And they tell you, "Call me up next week and we'll talk about opening up your budget". Ok, cool. When you call next week it's, "Uh, before we fly you out here to record and start the album, we need you to record five new songs to start it off so we have good progress going. Just keep making songs." To make a long story short, getting on page with Atlantic and my A&R is a difficult thing to do. It's to the point right now where I don't know what's going to happen. I just talked to him the other day. This is the raw shit you don't hear a lot of artist speak on because they all want to be politically correct and play it off, but personally, I don't give a fuck. I'm at the point right now where I don't care. I have nothing to lose. I'm 26 about to be 27, so I'm either going to make it pop or not. Either way I gave it my best shot. I'm at a point right now where they're telling me, "You're not on the shelf, you can stay with us and try to grind it out, or you can explore your options." So I have to figure out what I want my options are because I have interests from other labels. I'm not sure what I'm going to do. Why did you want to put "Eastern Philosophy" out on Babygrande? The release on Babygrande is an indie album that I wanted to put out for years. I stepped to my A&R saying, "I can't wait anymore. Can I just put this out on the side, independently?" He was cool. He told me to do that they'd even help a bit. So I stepped to a lot of different labels and Babygrande expressed the most interest in me. They told me what they wanted to do for me. They wanted to license the album. Atlantic ultimately owns the album, but Babygrande wanted to license it so they can have the exclusivity to put it out. Babygrande gave a great offer. The contract process took about nine months from the first time we started talking about it until now because we had to go through the bullshit of being a signed artist. Having to go through the lawyers and the proper channels was a nightmare. Back and forth between Babygrande's lawyers, my lawyers, and Atlantic's lawyers was a nightmare. It was just crazy and stressful. We finally knocked it out and just got it finished around December and it's just now coming out. Now, I'm not slowing down. I'm not even jaded. I'm so appreciative, I made it to a level where so many people haven't. If I quit rap tomorrow, I'll never regret what I've experienced. All I can try to do is work as hard as I can. How did you come up with the title "Eastern Philosophy"? "Eastern Philosophy" was like everything I felt about growing up on the East Coast. It really came to me after I traveled on tour. I love everywhere. I love LA. Half of my crew is from LA, but nothing gives me a better feeling than when I come home. I know my man Reks know what I'm talking about, even if it means coming home to the shitty, nasty snow. "Eastern Philosophy" is basically what I'm feeling and what I would want to hear as a fan. How would you describe the term "philosophical gangster"? The funny thing about the term "gangster" that it has transcended its original meaning. "Gangster" is not gangster anymore. 99% of the people who claim "gangster" aren't gangster. If someone's mother yelled outside of the window, people say, "That's gangster." No, it's not gangster. It might be ballsy, but not gangster. When Nas said that in "Thief's Theme" that being gangster represents that struggle and grind and to be down for anything, and still being that intelligent intellectual. It represents the perfect duality. Who influenced you? The biggest influences on me were Nas. "Illmatic" is my favorite album. It's my Bible. Definitely Jay-Z, Organized Konfusion, Souls of Mishief, Big L, and of course Wu Tang. Why did you want to get Blue Raspberry on your single? Getting Blue Raspberry on a track was a big deal to me. We hunted for her for a long time. When we were brainstorming on the song, we actually had her in mind. In our minds we were like we'll never find her, this will never happen. I had a friend who knew RZA and she called him, and RZA gave her the number. I called Blue. It was a shot in the dark, but Blue agreed to do it. That was a huge deal to me. Other than that, I really wanted to keep the album personal. There were a few emcees that I could have gotten on the album, but I voted against it because it would go against what I was trying to do with "Eastern Philosophy". I wanted to save that for the major label release if anything. How is the major label album coming along? To tell you the truth, it's intangible. I have so many songs recorded, millions of songs. I'm so prolific. Then it's like, "What is my album?" The songs are all over the place. The biggest problem is deciding what to use for the album. But my A&R has to say what's for the album. I have everything from classic, crazy, real old school Hip Hop, all the way to Outkast shit. One of my biggest joints that I did that was "supposed" to be a hit was a track that I did was rapping over Marilyn Manson's "The Beautiful People" beat. I destroyed it. Everyone at the label went bananas over it. Everyone said this is going to be a hit. They were ready to move. That was about seven months ago. Look at it now. What happened? Who did production for "Eastern Philosophy"? Most of it was handled by Chum aka the Skrilla Gorilla. Chum is my DJ, engineer, and producer. Chum recorded, mixed, and engineered the album. I wanted it all to sound the same. Other producer's asked me to send them the vocal so they could mix it. I wand had Chum do it all. Chum did like 80% percent of the album and I also had DJ Cheapshot from Styles of Beyond. I did a track, Celph Titled did one, two dudes from Europe did tracks as well. One of them did that "Philosophical Gangsta" track. And Quincy Tones did two tracks. We've been talking about the overall attitudes and themes in your life rap life, but inside and outside of everything is family. Speak on family in and out of the game for a little bit. Family is very important to me. When I was growing up, I was an only child. I had tons of cousins, aunts, and uncles. My parents were young when they had me. In that house we would all help each other. Family has always been important. When I formed the Demigodz they were good friends and ultimately became like brothers to me. There is nothing in the world I wouldn't do for them. There isn't anything they don't know about me or that I don't know about them. That's fam right there! It's real cliché to say that we've been through everything together. We can almost come to fist fights, I can be mad at Chum but, but all of a sudden if someone is messing with Chum I switch up like, "What? You messing with Chum!" Chum, Celph, Motive, Eso…those are brothers and family. Speaking of the 'Godz, what's good with the album? Why hasn't there been one? Demigodz is the crew. When we started the crew we wanted to have an all-star cast. It started with folks that people may not know about. It was me, Eso, Rize, Louis Logic, El Fudge, Celph, Spin 4th, and Motive. After a while, I lost contact with certain people that we were real cool with. I haven't heard from El Fudge in years. It's hard to say that's my man and he's crew when I haven't seen him in years. When I see him again it'll start back up where it left off, its all love. But it got to a point where it needed to be more focused and a little more real. So we decided to focus on the group aspect. It was Me, Celph, Eso, Tak and Ryu of Styles of Beyond, and Motive. We wanted that to be the group, the definitive group. The DJ's were going to be Chum, 7L & Cheapshot. We wanted to be a tight-knit unit. Then it jumped off immediately. We started getting shit done. So after that we made a Demigodz group which was the focus and the Demigodz affiliates. And the album? We had an EP. It was supposed to be Apathy and Celph Titled thing, but the thing was, I was signed at the time. The label didn't want me to do a Celph Titled album. So we flipped it and made Apathy self titled present the Demigodz. We didn't intend for it to be a Demigodz EP, but it kind of ended up that way. We're now a group and we're focused on the album. We don't want to put this out like its whatever. We want to maximize its potential. I really don't care what the fans think. If you're a real Demigodz fan you know we put a lot of work into this we've killed ourselves for this. We've paid our dues for free. We're going to do the Demigodz thing and we plan on doing it real major. We have a lot of interest for a lot of labels major and indie for the Demigodz project. We're going to try to secure a distribution deal with someone like Koch if not we'll try the major label thing. But it all gets so tiring now. And I know this is off topic, but I have to say this. When I was 17, and I know the emcees can relate, you would pay out of pocket to drive up to Wisconsin to do a show for free. Now some of us have kids and cell phone bills I can't afford to do shows for free. Its like, yeah, he's a good chef but I'm not going to ask dudes to come to my house and cook me a meal for free. At a certain point if it doesn't make money it doesn't make sense. You can't just do it for free. You have to find that common ground where you're doing it for the love and the money. You have to be compensated for your work. Hip Hop is a bitch. It's a fucking bitch. It will break your heart because you will give it everything you have and no matter what, people will still hate, labels will still hate, and people will start to sleep. All this game is like is a bitch cheating on you. At least that's what it feels like. I was 17 once watching Jay-Z and thought that shit wasn't real. I said, "I love Hip Hop. I'm going to rap and do music forever. You'll understand, mark my words." You'll understand when you get a kid and bills pile up, or when they turn off your power. Once your power goes off, its real. What's next for you? I want to get into things other than music. Music is way too inconsistent. One day you can be hot another day you could be wack. You can be in favor with the people or you can be out of favor. Look at MF Doom. He's probably making more money than he ever did back in the day just by putting a mask on. You just never know. I want to make as much money off of rap as I can. I'm going to invest, I'm thinking large. If I make a hit record on the major label stage I'm going to invest most of it and do something big. Even if I make a little dough I'll invest that as well. Maybe do some real estate. I speak to my father about this all the time, he's like my best friend. Its important for me to get into something that generates more money for me. But no matter what I do its important for me to stay humble because I came from nothing. I have to take advantage of this. People ask me why do I take this so seriously and my answer is, "This just might be the only chance I have." How happy are you with your current situation? Ever since I was a kid, I loved Hip Hop and I never thought that could be me. I remember being 13 years-old and getting good but never thinking that could be me. Now being signed to Atlantic, although it's been three years and nothing has come out, I'm still happy. I got signed to a major record deal. Even if nothing comes out I still got here. It's like if I was an NBA ball player sitting on the bench, I still got there. No one can take that away from me. If I had to quit tomorrow, I wouldn't regret it because I'd be happy that I did what I did. Do you think Atlantic is using you to bridge the gap between the major and the indie crowds? I don't think so, because they have nothing to gain by it. I've heard that theory also, but they don't get any brownie points for it. It doesn't help sell records. At the end of the day, they're a crew of ruthless people who are out to sell and they saw me as a commercially viable product. We just can't read into it too much. Any closing words? Motive, that's what it is. Motive, Demigodz, Dough Rakers, AME…we're here. "Eastern Philosophy" is real serious. The album is fire.

By Demo Beats

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