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10/6/2008 Big Lou recently did an interview and he said he didn’t feel like you were going as hard for him as you could. How do you respond to those allegations?  At the end of the day, everything that I involve myself with, I do it with 100%. I don’t settle for anything else. I skimmed through his interview and he mentioned a lawsuit. For those that don’t know, I signed Lou because he was a very talented individual and I don’t look for no less than what Lou is as an artist. If you sign people or if you’re going to do business with them, one of the questions you ask is “are you signed to any other situation?’ Him and his manager replied, “No.”  So I did the situation and everybody was bigging me up and then everybody noticed that things stopped moving between us. The reason it stopped is because I received a letter at one of my radio stations I work at, my lawyer received a letter and even my accountant got a letter from this guy stating that Big Lou was signed to him and he was his artist and he had his paperwork. He also included how Lou’s manager had received close to half a million dollars for the Big Lou signing. Big Lou also was receiving a salary. This shit knocked my head off when I got this and I read it. And then when I contacted the dude and he started breaking the situation down to me, the first thing I do is I ask Lou and Lou is like, ‘Yeah, my company was signed but not me directly.’ He didn’t do any paperwork. His manager did the paperwork.  So now I’m like, ‘See, nobody told me this in the beginning.’ You understand? If I had known this I wouldn’t have fucked with him. So now I’m sitting here holding a lawsuit for a situation where I was trying to help somebody. So now I’m legally advised by my lawyer that I can not push or do anything pertaining to Big Lou until this lawsuit is over. Now as it stands, Lou didn’t really sign the papers. His manager signed them. All of this has to go into a court of law and I’m tied into the situation because I did business with someone who didn’t say they had a situation when in actuality they did. So that’s why Kay Slay has not been going hard in pushing Big Lou. I love Big Lou like a brother. He’s fam. I would ride with him through a beef in the street! But now in the music game, I’m advised that I can’t do anything and he’s well aware of this. He knows this.  If he knows this why wouldn’t he bring that out in the interview?  You know what? Only he can answer that. I’ve been getting calls for almost six months that I needed to address this situation and me just being who I am, I didn’t think it was really that serious but people kept on calling me telling me that I didn’t want fans to turn against me. Personally I don’t really care about fans leaving comments on a website. 90% of them, they’re probably going to download my shit and Big Lou’s shit anyway. But for the 10% who do buy albums, that’s who my concern is for.  Kay Slay is not a shady dude and Papoose had no ties to anyone when I did the situation with him. That’s why I was able to go hard with him from day one and take him from being local to being known worldwide and to be able to tour overseas and to make about $150,000 without an album being out and being on the BET Awards performing with Eminem, Busta Rhymes, Missy, Lloyd banks, et cetera…I got an ASCAP award on my wall from a dude without an album out and we got a $1.5 million deal with a major. I take an artist where I can take them and if things don’t go right down the line, nobody can deprive me of what I’ve done. The reason they make the comments they’ve made is because of what I’ve done and the talents that papoose has And he still has the capabilities to drop an album and do what it does. Everybody’s one hit away.  But yeah, that’s why I’m able to push Papoose then and now and not Big Lou because Pap doesn’t have no ties to anyone but me. Lou has ties to some crazy ass dude. This dude is emotional as hell and he’s going hard! he has paid lawyers and this situation is in court so all the dicksuckers that’s sucking my dick, suck on that shit now.  Have you always committed 100% of your time and effort to your artists?  Yo, you can ask Big Lou when first I did business with him. Did I come to the studio with him? Yes. Did I send him beats repeatedly? Yes. Did I converse on the phone with him all of the time? Yes. Did I participate when he had a video shoot? Yes. Everything that I was supposed to do…Did I bring him to the radio show? Yes. Everything I committed to I’ve done. But when a situation comes up that I don’t know about and I’m obligated to do what I’ve gotta do and some bullshit comes up, what part of the game is that. I just feel like he should address people and let them know that it’s not Slay. “It’s a fault on my end.” His manager is his responsibility so it’s on his end why Slay ain’t pushing anything at this point and time. It’s not because he doesn’t want to. “He’s not able to push forward with my music because there’s a lawsuit pending. That man has nothing to do with my situation. He was trying to help me and he got tied into some shit that my shady-ass manager did.”  And me having an understanding of the situation, the dude that’s doing this lawsuit really gave this dude close to a half a million dollars so you know he’s going to be mad at anybody affiliated with Big Lou because he invested and he’s looking like he’s going to lose his investment.  There’s so much bullshit involved with that shit that I’m not even sure about, but there’s some fucked up bullshit that I’m tied into and all I tried to do is help a nigga. I took the abuse and I let the people say what they want because I know where my heart stands at with this dude but I don’t feel like it’s being put out there the right way why Kay Slay isn’t able to push Big Lou the way he wants to.  So I have to let people know that’s what it is and I’m not even mad at Lou for doing what he’s doing. I’m mad at him for not addressing and protecting my name in his new interview I just saw yesterday. He should do that because in no shape, form or fashion have you heard me speak about this for months and you know how long niggas have been tearing into my movement for not pushing Big Lou.  You have taken a lot of heat for that.  The abuse is up.  Big Lou said that if you guys part ways, he’ll still have respect for you. Was anything in your relationship with Lou ruined with what he said?  Listen, Lou is an artist, man, and artists, they get emotional when it comes down to their music. Anything that you do that you got a genuine love for, you’re going to get emotional and I understand that. I’m not going to get angry about that. There’s no love lost. All I want him to do is if somebody asks you a question, give them the 100. I don’t want people looking at me like I’m fucked up and I’m in the wrong when I know I’m not.  All I tried to do was help a brother that I seen had a talent that was being overlooked because the nigga could rap. I’m into lyricists. I don’t give a fuck about any of these ringtone motherfuckers. I like niggas that are real lyrical because that’s the genre of music that I come from. There’s no love lost because I don’t catch feelings about anything but there’s too many other people that are feeling like they’re being affected by the situation that I’m like, ‘Hold on, man. Let me address this shit.’ I have to address it. Ain’t no love lost though. Ain’t no love lost.  Big Lou also said there was a possibility that you guys go your separate ways. Is that a real possibility?  Of course. Me and Busta Rhymes went our separate ways but he’s still my dude. We talk on a regular basis and he’s on the intro to my album More Than Just A DJ dropping in 2009. There’s been plenty of situations where you might be involved business-wise with somebody and you have to go your separate ways it’s still love and I just think the business venture that we had wasn’t working. In order for everybody to be happy they have to be able to make their own moves. I’m not an emotional bitch-made nigga or shit like that. I’m the type of person where if things can’t work out they can’t work out. You do you I’ll do me. There’s no love lost.  What’s the hardest part about managing a rapper today?   The hardest part about working with a rapper is that everybody got their own mind and there’s going to be things that you can tell an individual but because they feel like it don’t apply to them, they feel like they don’t have to adhere to that or they’re going to try to do it their way. And I do understand that because there’s things people talk to me about and I’m like, ‘Fuck that, I’m going to do it my way.’  But if I tell somebody something, I tell them from life experience. And the hardest part is only sometimes the person honestly listens to what you’re telling them to do. It’s easy in the beginning but then as time go on and they acquire some fans or people start getting in their ear and shit, then they start thinking that it’s all because of them and they can grab hold of the steering wheel now and try to drive the bus themselves and that’s how they fuck up and crash.  Can rappers be too impulsive?  Yeah. When you got a passion and a love for something, you know, sometimes you really act without thinking in a lot of situations. Shit happens. It happens every day in life besides music. I don’t take things personally. The only things I’ll be asking for is that along with that loyalty is honesty. Kay Slay has never been anything to anyone as far as up-and-coming artists except for a system to get on in the game. I’ve always been the go-to guy. I’ve watched careers blossom from T.I. to 50 Cent to the Dipset movement to DMX to Shyne to Ludacris and others. All these brothers was coming through my crib on 119th Street, freestyling and getting on my mixtapes and everything.  I’m not saying I made them but I’m saying I assisted them and my assistance helped them get to the level they’re at. So I know what I’m talking about when I speak to people and I tell them this, that and the third and it’s just a shame when certain individuals, not the ones I mentioned, but when you give them insight and they act like you don’t know what you’re talking about because they got some fans now.  Can an artist like Big Lou ever do too much on his own where there’s too much music out there?  You know what, man? At the end of the day you have to understand the difference between grinding and grinding right. Okay, I can make 100 records. But I only need one record to blow. All you gotta do is put out that one record and let it do what it do and then come with another record. Fans is real fickle right now and they’re funny-style. If you give them too much, you’re giving them too much to comment on and to judge and they start to be able to categorize you as all kinds of shit.  The best thing to do is to just focus on those real records now. I told Papoose recently, man, all right, at this point, everybody and their mother knows that Papoose can spit. There’s no doubt about that. His lyrical content, he can take that anywhere. So guess what? That no longer matters. What only matters now is us making quality records to put out and to release and that his album has nothing but quality records. Everybody knows he can rap. There comes a time where, especially at this time right now and at the stage of the game we’re in now, you see the weirdoes that’s winning, you gotta come correct. All the beef shit and all the drama, that ain’t really about nothing. That don’t help you move nothing. It’s a whole different game right now.  Can Papoose make those songs that are commercially successful and still show him as a quality artist?  Papoose can do anything that’s put in front of him to do. He’s just gotta do it. At the end of the day sometimes it’s hard to get somebody to shift into a gear that they don’t wanna go into and I never tell him to make no real crossovers or poppish-type shit because that’s not him. I want to shout Lupe Fiasco out on that note because he kept his music for what it is and he went gold, so you know what that means? If the label gives you the lane to be yourself and to cater to your fanbase, you can do that because Lupe Fiasco’s fanbase ain’t the same as Lil’ Wayne’s. It’s not the same as Jay-Z’s. He sold a half a million records. What the labels need to do is let the artists be themselves and Papoose likes to be himself and I can’t knock him for that.  Why cross over to another lane that you don’t belong in and then when the game jumps back to the lane you belong in and you try to get back in that lane, the fans are like, ‘Fuck you. You left. We don’t want you no more.’ So I gotta respect where he’s coming from too. In this game and in this time and age, it’s about riding the wave, man.  I’ve been in this hip-hop shit since day one. I watched it come into existence. I’m 42 years-old. I’ve been DJing since I was 11. There’s pictures of me on the turntables in old hip-hop books and in graffiti books. This isn’t me just talking. I’ve played every genre of hip-hop. I’ve DJ’d, I was part of the Floor Master Tots, a break dance clique. I was in the movie Style Wars, the first, the first hip-hop documentary and graffiti documentary. I was the kid rapping on the platform with 1 Arm Kase from the Bronx. I played every motherfucking angle of this shit. If I don’t know what I’m talking about then nobody does.  Is your opinion taken seriously in the game?  Well, really, real people with common sense take me seriously but a motherfucker who doesn’t know anything about hip-hop or the roots of it and he considers Nas and Jay-Z old school, to him, I don’t expect him to even have a clue or an idea where this game started from. Some motherfuckers are making comments and they don’t even know that hip-hop started in the Bronx. They don’t know nothing about Echo Park or Casanova’s or Zulu Nation. They don’t know nothing about the 9 crew, The Black Spades, Savage Nomads or no shit like that. It’s like they don’t know the roots.  If you don’t know where this game came from how the fuck are you going to know where it’s going? You don’t even know where you stand in it. You’re just standing there bopping your head. So their thoughts and views don’t matter. They really don’t. Only certain people’s views and opinions matter to me. The others are just like people who have no knowledge of what you do making a comment on it. They don’t matter. At all.  Mentality-wise, where is Papoose these days?   He hasn’t lost none of the hunger. You gotta understand, the dude has been going hard for five years. We’re coming on five years that we’ve been really rocking with each other and he put out more music than some cats who have made albums for 10 years and it’s gotten to a point where he has a lot of other things going on in his life. You have to really balance your whole life and do what you like to do but also you gotta be able to cater to your personal life as well. He’s hungrier than ever now but he knows that just making a bunch of freestyles ain’t it right now. He knows he has to make the right, quality records and that’s really it right now.  He finished his new mixtape two weeks ago. He’s getting back on that grind. It’s just like a starting over process. You know, time evolves and fans kind of look somewhere else when you slow down your pace. They’re still riding with you but they’re waiting for you to come with all of that shit that they miss. You have to get all your shit back together and come out swinging.  How much did signing and leaving Jive set back Papoose?  Jive was the biggest setback in the world. I would say this to any brother going into a major situation – the bottom line is that I think there’s just a way that some people need to be held accountable. You sign someone because they’re hot, you take him off the market and then he gets there and you don’t know what to do with him and then you want him to make these songs that don’t fit his genre, and then when a song don’t work that they wanted him to do, that’s where the little altercations begin to happen and then you have to part ways. That shit plays a major part in the demise of artists, man. You got A&Rs that don’t know anything about the music that They’re being put on.  I mean, Jeff Fenster was Papoose’s A&R. Jeff Fenster is probably going on 60 years old. He was Lionel Richie’s A&R. What the fuck was he doing on the project of a brother in his late 20s from the hood in Bed Stuy Brooklyn? See, that’s setting somebody up to lose the race. His creative ideas could work for an R&B person because he has a resume with Britney Spears and shit like that but not with no street niggas from Brooklyn. Wrong move! You can’t do that and then when you start making motherfuckers make these records that aren’t like them, they crash.  It’s just like there’s plenty of artists and I’m not going to say other names of people in these situations because I don’t think that’s fair to do it, but there’s plenty of New York artists that fell into these situations and there were A&Rs that didn’t really know how to work with these people. It’s crazy. And they ruin people’s lives and then after that, they’re trying to get rid of them before their head gets split.  Was Papoose making music that didn’t represent him while at Jive?  He had a lot of big ideas that niggas wasn’t fucking with. Why was it such a hard time to get the R&B singers to do the hooks that we were trying to do? We’re on a label with R. Kelly and that didn’t work out but I’m glad that didn’t work out because I’m not feeling him with all that little girl shit anyway. There was Ciara, Usher, Joe, Raheem DeVaughn and every other motherfucker like T-Pain. Every R&B motherfucker in the world, damn-near, is there and it was just like this dude had no pull. We was reaching out to artists outside the label to get on Papoose’s records. So then we had this other dude up there, what’s this fucking dude name? He was hating and shit. He was hating from day one because we came through the top guy, Barry Weis. Shout out to him because he believed in Papoose. I don’t believe that he had nothing to do with all of the foolishness.  I can’t remember this dude’s name. (pause) Okay, I remember. It’s Mark Pitts. He’s the fucking big hater. He was hating on shit over there. We heard he was the one trying to block any R&B artists from getting on any Papoose records. So it was just like a whole fucking hate campaign up in that motherfucker and the only person that really believed in Papoose was who actually signed him, the boss. So they just felt angry that they couldn’t get their little $10 and $20 and $30,000 shave-offs off some records being done and trying to tax a nigga because we was signed through the top so all that middle man shit gets cut off and that’s what this shit is all about. They’re trying to tax an artist when they’re on their label and they couldn’t do that shit with us!  It’s a lot deeper than the music. It’s politics, man. It’s always politics. Always. But it’s cool though because at the end of the day you will never be more stronger than the power of Allah and whatever you’re supposed to be, you’ll be. Can’t nobody stop that. No man, woman or living force can stop anything that’s supposed to come into existence. You can’t. Come on. You see how big you are? A bird can fly right over you and shit on your head and fly away and you can’t do nothing to that bird. So whatever must be must be. They might have thought they did something but it just wasn’t his time. When it is his time he will shine like the sun. We’ve seen that plenty of times before.  Does Papoose have a lot of work to do to get his buzz back?  We don’t have to get no buzz back. He’s already in people’s brains, whether it’s positive or negative. He’s already there. He already got the buzz. Everybody already knows who he is all around the world and like I said that dude toured overseas with no album. You can go on the internet. He has footage from the same place Jay-Z was touring at and he was over there ripping with a packed crowd with no album out! Motherfuckers were reciting his vocals with no album! The kid was over there for almost three weeks getting paid! So nah, new artists coming out get a buzz. He’s not a new artist. Everybody knows who he is already. He just hasn’t dropped that bomb.  Was the story about Papoose trying to sneak a skeleton key to Remy Ma a fake story?  Come on, man, that was the most dick-sucking press-made shit in the world. Pap had that skeleton key on his key ring for years. I know plenty of people that have them keys. It was just this particular fucking pig that day that just looked at his key ring and decided to make a big deal of it. Everybody knew it was bullshit and they said he couldn’t take that in there and he said, “Here” and gave him the key. He got on the bus and almost got to the prison to where they escort you to the actual house and they stopped it and turned it around and made a big deal about it.  If he tried to sneak a skeleton key into Rikers Island he would have been under arrest, bottom line. And say somebody was that dumb to try to do that, what the fuck is she gonna do after she got out of the hand cuffs? Snatch a gun and demand you open the gate? Do you know what it’s like to be locked up on The island? After you’re uncuffed you’re still in the cell or dorm!  That was my first question when I read the story.  Exactly! That’s why that was the most dumbest fucking shit in the whole fucking world. All the dumb sucker for love bitch-made niggas on the internet were saying what they were saying but it was so fucking dumb. It was so fucking ridiculous. But guess what? All press is good press and that shit didn’t do nothing but widen his fanbase and let more people know who he was. That’s about it.  Do you ever laugh at what gets said about you and Pap on the internet?  It’s funny but after awhile it ain’t even funny no more. It’s just ridiculous. Some shit gets so fucking ridiculous and you want to laugh but you also want to ask when the bullshit is going to stop.  Do you think Papoose can get another $1.5 million deal?  At the end of the day I don’t think anybody is going to get that kind of money, ever or in a very, very long time. At the end of the day we don’t even need that amount of money because his album is done. We recorded so many new songs and quality songs that at the end of the day I probably wouldn't even want to go to a major at this time to do another situation. There’s a whole lot of other kinds of commitments that they would have to commit to before I would make a move like that.  Do you look at the Jive situation not working out as a blessing today?  Hell yeah! Hell yeah! Because they would have fucked his career up with a brick. Yeah.  When are we going to see you and Papoose sign to an indie?  Even with an indie, they gotta be 100% behind it. At the end of the day I just want whoever’s involved to be 100% of the way involved and I don’t want no excuses or this, that and the third. You just gotta have everybody involved these days.  What’s been going on with Hedonis lately?  She’s just been staying busy. She’s a grown woman. She has responsibilities and at this point, you gotta understand. If you ain’t getting your money through the music, you have to have a straight, legitimate job. So juggling that, your personal life and then your career, you just gotta take it a day at a time. She’s still working and doing her thing. She called me up today and I talked to her today. She had to just take a quick hiatus and put everything in order and come back out and do what she’s doing. But you already know that it’s 10 times as hard as a female artist when they don’t have anybody that’s 100% behind them in their corner. Female rap artists are almost becoming extinct. But I got her back 1000% because she’s a real down-ass chick!  How’s your album More Than Just A DJ coming?   Man, my album is crack. It has some great records. That’s where I’m at right now, putting together some nice, quality records and making sure it’s hip-hop. Shout out to everybody doing what they’re doing as far as real hip-hop is concerned because a lot of this shit is not right. It is what it is. I guess once you hear it 100 times on the radio and you see the video 100 times on the network you begin to believe it’s hot but if this is the shit that hip-hop is going to turn out to be, God bless our children, man.  Did something happen between you and Busta that led to him leaving the Papoose project?  Man, me and Busta is good money. He got an album coming out December 9th. Make sure everybody goes out and cops that. Sometimes you get into business with a brother and you have creative minds but sometimes your minds aren’t working in the same frequency so we just gotta go our own ways and do what we do.  Business is business and people can’t confuse the word. The business, if you’re really a friend with a person, then it’s not going to interfere with your relationship. You can try to do business but if the business doesn’t work, that doesn’t mean we’re not friends. We both have collectively different views of situations and nothing worked and we had to part ways on the business side as far as being partners but we still conduct business because that’s what real niggas do.  What do you think of the free mixtape download phenomenon?  Shit is overkill, man. I don’t even know, man. Being a mixtape DJ doesn’t even count no more. (laughs) You know what I’m saying? It doesn’t. Anybody can make their own mixtape now and throw that shit on the internet. You understand? It’s about expanding yourself and exploring other options, man, as far as the music is concerned and the downloading shit, it’s like the death of the game. Niggas is assisting the death of the game and they don’t even realize it. I don’t know, man. I really don’t know where the game is going to go if the record industry doesn’t get a hold of this internet shit. What’s going to make people spend their $14.99 if they can download the whole thing for free?  A lot of times the artist’s free mixtape is better than their album.  That’s what I’m saying – you’re killing yourself. You’re giving them some free shit that’s not equivalent to what they have to spend their hard-earned money on. You have to understand that times is hard and if you have the average teenage fan with $20 and he smokes weed, he needs to get a dime bag and a blunt and he might want something to drink, shoot, he’s going to take $4 or $5 and get your shit off a blanket from a bootlegger! Niggas ain’t going and spending their hard-earned because that’s all they have and they can get something for free that’s better than what they would spend their hard-earned on. The downloading shit is killing us.  Have you lost your motivation for doing mixtapes?  I’m not going to lie – I kind of lost the knack for this shit because everybody that’s doing it ain’t doing it for all the right reasons. Mixtapes was never a situation pertaining to “I have to make money to do a mixtape.” My shit was about the competition. I needed to overcome it. My thing was not to have any records on my tape that Clue had or Whoo Kid had or S&S or Doo Wop or whoever was dropping tapes around the time when I came on the scene.  These niggas today ain’t got the same mentality. Shit, a motherfucker will take the same 10 records you got on your tape and put it on theirs and take two new records and put it on top and try to do something with it. The mentality of the game ain’t where it used to be at no more and artists don’t know how to help break their records no more. They don’t know how to make it exclusive.  If Nas gave me a record, I was the only motherfucker with that record for a few days. They would play my shit down South in the strip club with my drops all over it. That made people hungry to get the record and when they got it they was dying to play it. Now they put it on the internet and you got a DJ who could be on the radio six days a week, he’s getting the record at the same time as the nigga who just started DJing yesterday. Where’s the exclusivity at? Where’s it at?  Artists would also rather give it to everyone at the same time as opposed to getting a lot of love from two or three places.  Yeah. That’s why exclusives ain’t exclusives. Look up the meaning of “exclusive.” Don’t put out a record and email it to 300 people and say it’s exclusive. Look up the meaning of “exclusive” in the dictionary. That’s not an exclusive. It’s not.  Why do you think artists are mass emailing their songs now?  Motherfuckers are lazy! Niggas don’t want to work no more! Once motherfuckers get behind the wheel after the bus is rolling, then they start getting a name and getting a buzz and people start telling them they’re hot, then they want to grab the wheel and they crash. They feel like they ain’t gotta listen no more.  An artist used to go get a name DJ to host his mixtape. They don’t want that no more. They just get so big-headed that they get beside themselves but then once they get a cold streak and nobody’s fucking with them, then they want to come around again. I’m used to that shit. I’ve been in this shit a long time. I’ve seen how people operate.  Have you ever thought about opening up a consulting business?  This is the thing though – these motherfuckers don’t listen, man. They don’t listen. They listen in the beginning. They get 10 fans and they’re ready to take over the world. They don’t know these fans is fickle. They’ll turn on you in a heartbeat. In a heartbeat, yo!  Once an artist turns on you, do you fall back from how much you help them and how much free advice you give out?  You don’t fuck with them the way you used to. You fuck with them from a distance, man.  You and Green Lantern squashed your beef this summer. How did that happen?  At the end of the day, Uncle Murder’s manager, who is also a partner with Green Lantern, because that’s their whole situation, was once my partner. So it was just a matter of two niggas getting on the phone and saying, “Yo, this shit ain’t doing me no good nor you and you ain’t making no money doing this shit and I ain’t either. All this shit is doing is fucking up the motherfucking money and this shit is stupid anyway.” That’s all it took for G niggas to shut it down and everybody agreed.  It’s all good. Hell yeah. Everything’s all good. Everybody’s doing their own thing and everybody’s respecting their own space. And at the end of the day that’s what it’s supposed to be about because it don’t make no sense and I never understood how motherfuckers could come into the music game and have beef with so many people and just continuously have beef with motherfuckers. If that was the case you might as well stay in the drug game. Why come in the music game and take on beef and then have it to where the corporate motherfuckers don’t want to fuck with you because they don’t want to walk out of their office and have bullets flying at them or people running up on them. Executives don’t give a fuck about none of this stupid shit. This is a business for them. They’re in it for a dollar. That’s what they’re in it for. Anybody with the potential to get their head cracked, they don’t want nothing to do with it.  You also A&R’d Ray J’s last album All I Feel. How did you approach that project?  At the end of the day my expertise is in music but my job is in hip-hop but it doesn’t matter. Music is music with me. I don’t care what it is. I can finagle it and adjust to it. I can take on any other project. And then Ray J, I know people look at him like he’s Ray J, Brandy’s brother. Dude’s mind moves pretty quick and he’s from the ‘hood. He may not live in the ‘hood now but he is from the ‘hood. He understands how to shift gears and how to do certain things. It was no problem for me. It was a matter of having somebody who was wanting to work. He was always working and he was always in the studio. Shoot, there was times he was in the studio before me and he would leave after me. That’s all it takes, two creative minds willing to work and it’s no rocket science.  Will you be A&Ring more albums in the future?  Oh yeah, most definitely! It’s just like a matter of anybody I really respect and they respect what I’m doing and they’re willing to listen and they don’t just look at it like they’re an artist and I’m just a DJ. I’m more than just a DJ. That’s why it’s the title of my album because I am more than that! (laughs) I do a whole lot of other shit besides DJing these days.  How do you see this Big Lou situation playing out in court?  Yo, man, that’s some shit that only a judge could tell you. I’m going to be honest with you. From what I know, Big Lou said he didn’t do anything wrong and in my heart I believe him. It was really his manager that did the deal but they got his name on a piece of paper saying that he signed. So it’s like, whatever me, Big Lou or his manager say, it don’t matter. It’s up to the judge.  If everything works out and you’re cool to work with Lou again, do you?  I mean, that’s the way it started out before the bullshit, so why wouldn’t it end that way? That’s totally on him though. And sometimes in interviews, things can be misconstrued. I really don’t think Lou meant to say anything to piss me off or to make me look bad. It’s what he didn’t say that has the fans looking at me sideways. He didn’t say that I didn’t do anything wrong and that I was actually trying to help him and that he had a situation that had nothing to do with Slay. I was legally advised to not have anything to do with the situation because the fucking dude shelled out close to a half of a million dollars and I did not receive one penny of that so therefore why the fuck should I be hiring a lawyer to fight some shit that has nothing to do with me because I tried to help somebody get to the top? Now I want to see if these commenters comment on that.  Can you help Big Lou get his buzz up to where Papoose’s was at one time?  Anything is possible anywhere as long as they get their mind and their hearts right, without question. But what people gotta understand is that Big Lou and Papoose are two different people. Papoose had his buzz from doing a whole lot of mixtapes and from doing a whole lot of shows and from getting on a whole lot of collabos with credible people. Big Lou gets in showcases and gets a lot of crowd participation and gears towards meaningful records like “Crack Head” and paying homage to the old school so on and so forth. It’s like they’re two different artists and I don’t ever want people to confuse them. They’re two different people and his niche has to be his niche. I can’t do the same thing with Big Lou that I did with Papoose. There has to be other outlets. What one person eats doesn’t make the other one shit.  How’s your magazine Straight Stuntin’ doing?  Man, that magazine right there is a beautiful thing. Everybody’s loving the magazine, man. No complaints. That’s just another venture for me and me just trying my hand at something different. I just like to explore and try different things and not get stuck on one thing. I love women and this magazine caters to all women. I figure the same way I give somebody like a Big Lou or a Papoose or any up-and-coming artist love with the hip-hop through the Drama Hour or Shade 45 or the mixtape circuit and all that, Straight Stuntin’ is the opportunity outlet I can give to sisters, whether they’re trying to model, rap, be an author, actor, entrepreneur or whatever their heart desires.  Are you looking to sign any new artists?  Nah. I ain’t moving with no more artists right now as far as taking them under the wing and signing them and everything. What I would do is I don’t mind consultation and things of that nature but as far as signing them, nah. There is a brother on the West Coast that I’ve been fucking with for a minute. His name is Stacee Adamz and the dude is straight fire. Me and DJ Skee had done his mixtape in the summer and the dude is hot. He has the capabilities to be real big out that motherfucker, But I know they have the same roadblocks out there that we got like DJs not supporting their up-and-coming artists. You know, it is what it is.

By Brian Kayser

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