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8/9/2006 What's up? I'm chilling. I'm grinding as usual. You're not on the couch sipping ginger ale? (laughs) Not really. I'm actually in a hotel in New York right now, enjoying everything up here. How did you originally get down with Little Brother? We all went to school together and then it just transpired from there. We were always kicking it and making music together. When they were going to do the Little Brother thing, I said, "Cool." I was their road manager and we went out to Cali and had some meetings and that spawned everything. I went from road manager to all-out manager. And now I'm super-nigga. Nah I'm just playing. What were the key moves getting Little Brother where they are today? Real talk, I can't really say. I'd be the first person to say I'm not a good manager. It's not like I had this plan. They are talented dudes and I took what they wanted and helped to make it happen. There was no formula and nothing crazy. We just did the regular shit. It is what it is. It's the grind like everybody. We all went on the road together and promoted everywhere. We moved as a team and not individuals. Every move was calculated to a degree and now we are what we are. We're here. Did you anticipate the positive response to The Listening? I'm from up north so it's different for me. I was raised in a different type of music. I was a mixtape dude and I never listened to Mos Def or Common when I was coming up. It was NWA and all that crazy, wild stuff my mother didn't want me to listen to. When I got to North Carolina, 9th put me on to a lot of stuff. They put me on to Jay Dee and I was thinking JD like Jermaine Dupri. They brought me a whole bunch of stuff and when The Listening popped, I saw where they were going. I like a lot of stuff but what people call backpack wasn't my environment. It was cool because good music is good music. They just make good music. When The Listening happened, I saw that was just their own style and they were regular dudes. All their stories are real. I respect real stories from real people. You hear the struggle, you hear the fun and you hear the sorrow. Whatever they're doing is what you're hearing. Like me drinking ginger ale was real and we were laughing and if you listen to some vocals, you can hear us in the background. From meeting you guys right when The Listening was taking off to after The Minstrel Show dropped, I can definitely say you guys seemed very down-to-earth both times. How important is that to you and LB? Extremely important! That's just upbringing, man. If I'm a million-dollar nigga or a one-dollar nigga, it's going to be the same thing. I'm not going to change. If you're a broke asshole, when you get money you're just going to be a bigger asshole. If you're a cool nigga, when you get rich you'll still be cool and probably take everybody out to dinner. Nobody's gangster and nobody's trying to kill anybody in their raps. We'll fight for our respect but none of us are running out to do no crazy shit to nobody, especially over music. I have a wife and kids. I don't give a fuck what nobody thinks about me. Just take what you think over there and I'm cool. I'm not trying to get in your lane and you're not getting into mine. That's how we are. That's why we can rock with niggas like Duck Down, Bun-B, Trae, Cormega, Nottz, Buckwild, Premo, Dramills and so on. We're all just real niggas. We're not trying to be anybody else. We're just trying to be us. Just because we don't do everything with everybody doesn't mean we're not down-to-earth. We have to go to sleep and feed our family too. Even gangsters don't want to be hard-body all the time. I respect people who really are gangster but don't have to portray that. Niggas know. We fuck with good niggas and good niggas fuck with us. All types of people fuck with us. Nobody can ever say we went somewhere and started drama. Do you stay busy managing 9th Wonder? It's not like we're doing a million different things. 9th likes to work on one project with somebody, like Murs, Jean Grae, Buckshot and he's doing something with Ness right now. He has his own artists Tyler Woods and Tightman. He's doing a lot of stuff. The Skyzoo project is coming out and that's bananas. He doesn't like doing just one beat here and there even though he's on the new Lloyd Banks, Obie Trice and Mary J albums. He has a label deal and artist deal through Asylum. Now 9th is doing R&B joints too. It's crazy. A lot of producers don't get face time but he's in magazines, he has the section on HipHopGame…9th is an artist at the end of the day. He DJ's parties, he does this thing called True School where he does parties around the country for the 25 and up crowd. He's about his business and he's a hip-hop connoisseur. He started a hip-hop university at our old school. It's him and this dude Kwasi. They're doing a hip-hop university and they're trying to put something together where dudes can graduate with a degree. Dude is about his business and I respect that. He's really trying to teach the roots. I went to one of his seminars and it was really dope. I have a few other producers other than 9th now too like Khrysis, Black Jeruz, Fatin, Official and E.Jones. We started a production team with all this talent. It's about to be a wrap. Do you have a say in who 9th decides to work with? Nah, never. I don't make those kind of decisions for nobody. As a manager, I'm supposed to facilitate what somebody else wants to do. I'll give my opinion if I think somebody's wack. I'll say, "I don't think he's the best option to do stuff with, but if you think you can bring something out of him, give it a try." I'm a creative dude. I'm executive-producing projects and I'm not just putting my name on projects. I work. I would never tell someone not to work with someone. That's hating. Knowing 9th, even if I said not to do something and he really wanted to do it, he would do it. I'm not a dictator. That's not family-like. You've done some beats also. Do you have any goals as a producer? I don't really have a lot of time. The stuff I've done is way more commercial than what my artists do except for maybe Chaundon and Joe Scudda. I figure, "What if one of my joints pop and I'm stuck in a producer realm?" I would never want to mess up everything else. That could get in the way of me doing anything for anybody else. It's cool but my thing is movies and videos. I'm writing treatments for other people and I'm doing some other stuff. That's my passion. Making beats is a hobby for me. I'll definitely do a soundtrack or score for a movie. Other than that, it's whatever. If somebody comes to the studio and hears something, it's theirs, but I'm not trying to get my beats out there. I do have a management set up if I ever wanted to do something like that. My man Dame at Dame Inc. has me. It's whatever. I got that option if I really want to. How involved are you in the careers of other JUSTUS League members like Chaundon and Darien Brockington? There's a difference between JUSTUS League and Hall of JUSTUS. Hall of JUSTUS is my company. The only dudes I don't deal with are Cesar Comanche, Edgar Allen Floe and Median. All three of them have deals and I'm proud of those dudes. They're doing their own thing. They still work with the producers in the crew. Comanche always makes sure I have at least one joint on his album. Everything's good. I'm working on Legacy and the Away Team now. We're talking with ABB and a few other indies. We need the promotion. We just have to find a way to get those guys out there and put them on the road. Chaundon and Joe Scudda are coming out next. Then we have the Hall of JUSTUS album and the Darien Brockington album both on October 3. This might be random, but I'm a northerner, but real talk, North Carolina is hard-body for talent. Cats are really bugging out skipping over this place. You have every story you want down here. You have the streets, college dudes, white rappers, snap music…there are influences from the west coast, Atlanta, Houston, and up north all here. The labels need to come down here. That's not just me saying that because I'm down there. I wouldn't say that. I'm not from North Carolina but real talk, get yourself an artist from North Carolina and you will not be disappointed. Black Jeruz is from North Carolina and he's been on every G-Unit release. Fatin's from down here and he did "Cake" for Lloyd Banks. Khrysis is down here and Ski is down here. He ran Rocafella for a minute as far as production goes. You have a bunch of cats from Durham, Raleigh, Chapel Hill, the Triad, the coast all over…it's crazy. I could do a whole interview about that and the record labels still won't get it. My bad, I just went off on a tangent. How's the Hall of JUSTUS compilation sounding? It's dope. Of course I'm going to say that, but anybody who wants to hear it, hit me up. I think it's that dope. We have Trae on a joint, Cormega on a joint, Nottz on a joint, Black Jeruz on a joint, Buddy Klein, Fokis, Black Jeruz on a joint, Vandalism, Majik from Texas, Skyzoo, and of course Sean P. We have a double a-side single coming out with Little Brother and Nottz called "Life of the Party" and then there's another track with me, Trae, Chaundon, Joe Scudda and Buddy Klein and it's produced by Majik. It's crazy. It's an incredible record. It's an incredible piece of work. Some people aren't going to appreciate it because it's not going to be the sound they're looking for because they think everybody raps like Little Brother. Chaundon's from the Bronx and Joe Scudda's from Raleigh and he grew up with some street cats. Legacy's from all over North Carolina. Skyzoo's from Brooklyn…Whether you like it or not you'll have to respect it. How's Darien Brockington's album coming? Dope. Most of the production is done by E.Jones. He's this new cat from New Jersey who raps and produces. 9th has the first single. It's 9th, Khrysis, E.Jones, and a cat named Sheldon who did most of the production. A lot of cats are doing that neo-soul which is cool, but this is more Carl Thomas than Eric Benet or something like that. It's more Bobby Valentino than it would be Kem. It definitely has some uptempo joints. Darien's a talented dude. He can sing and he has a great range. We put out heat. We're one of the most consistent crews out there. You can't take that away from us. You might not like niggas, but you can't say we ever fell off or weren't consistent. We are consistent. Consistent. If you say we're wack you're lying to yourself. We may not be what you're into, but wack? Never. There are rumors about Atlantic making the Gangsta Grillz mixtape happen. What's the story behind that? It's called real recognize real. They've known Drama from awhile ago. Second off, Atlantic doesn't even know what the hell we're doing. No disrespect, but they focus on whoever they focus on. You can see how they did our record. They weren't focused on that. You didn't see us on TV or on the radio. We did that Gangsta Grillz and they didn't even know about it. We didn't even have an A&R for our records. That was us. Little Brother still did them over different beats. People saying we sold out are just hating. They know what we do and they know it was dope. We had the legendary Bun-B and niggas were mad they couldn't get a verse from him or Drama won't do a Gangsta Grillz for them. All they could think about was how did those backpack dudes get it and we couldn't? If Drama's not feeling you then you're not going to get one. For the record, Atlantic had nothing to do with it. Do you have any news on the next Little Brother album? The name of the new record is Getback and it's coming out in '07 by hook or by crook. Is Atlantic the best home for Little Brother? Is any label the best home for Little Brother? With ABB, what happened was we were signed to ABB but we still had to do two albums with them, so any label we went to, ABB was coming. We had offers from Warner, Jive, Interscope and Dreamworks. ABB chose Atlantic. We didn't choose Atlantic. Now Atlantic with the combination of original Def Jam cats is like Deflantic or Atlantic Jams. They were Atlantic when we got there but people were getting fired and people were getting hired so nobody knew what was going on and nobody knew what was happening. It's cool. Out of the top five powerful label heads hip-hop, two of them are over at Atlantic, Lyor Cohen and Kevin Liles. They're a monster label right now. Now everybody wants to go to Atlantic and it's risky because it's mad oversaturated over there. We didn't have a real sales history to them, but they know how hits are made. You would have to ask them how they felt about the project. I don't even care about it. it's whatever. We have to keep it moving. I stop for nobody. We went on three tours and sold a nice chunk of merchandise. Everything you saw, we did that. We didn't get any TV burn. How can people say we're trying to be too intelligent? I don't know what happened, but we're just going to keep it moving. We have some meetings and hopefully things can be right. They have real power over there. They have TI and Bad Boy. There's a lot of stuff going on over there. What advice do you have for other managers out there? I don't know. I need some. (laughs) I'm not a people person. I'm not into politicking and all that. I believe that if I were we would have a lot more. I'm not into building relationships. I don't do all that. That's my flaw. That's my drawback. A lot of them do the talking from themselves. I look over the deals and make sure they're right, but they do a lot of talking. There are a lot of good managers out there who do a lot of hustling. I don't do that. I was never that dude. I'm not really that guy like that. I know I put out good music. I've put out records with a whole lot of labels. I don't want no major deal or HOJ/Atlantic. I would take me a Koch, TVT, Asylum or Capitol indie deal. I just want to make a nice independent home for us. I guess I would tell other managers to just use your talents to your advantage. Use whatever you got. I'm just trying to take care of my Little Brother, no pun intended. What do you want to say to everybody? I appreciate all the love and the hate. They drive me both ways. The love inspires me and the hate makes me get on my grind. There are a lot of talented people out there and check out North Carolina and check out Connecticut. These labels need to get right and spread that love out. Keep that good music coming and put some good messages out there. Give niggas another out. Let's tell both sides of the story. It's like a schoolyard fight. You may have won the fight but tell people you got hit in the face a couple times. Shout out to everybody out there, my little brother DP, get home soon and everybody out there trying to make it. I can't do it all. If I could I would.

By Brian Kayser

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