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9/14/2006 What's up? I'm great. I can't complain. I woke up today. Anything else is obsolete besides that. How did you album with Large Professor come about? Me and P have been working with each other for awhile, from the beginning of Mobb Deep's days when they were Poetical Prophets. He was working with one of the heads at Rush Management. She was getting him a lot of production jobs. I used to DJ for Mobb Deep. I was their first DJ. We went to Large's crib one day and we just clicked. Then we found out that we were Aires and we just built. How's the album coming so far? We have five joints that's real heavy. They're real heavy and crazy. Me and P, we got a thing with how we feel about the past. A lot of people right now are going away from the foundation of things that got them to be a success. He's an ill producer and I'm an ill MC. That's what we took it back to. It's basic hip-hop with basic beats and rhymes. What's a session like with Large Pro? We vibe off of each other. If P sees me in the booth and he hears something that doesn't sound right, he'll take the time out to say, Sha, you need to do it this way. I can do the same thing with the beats. That's how we work. We don't try to crowd each other's creativity. When do you see this album dropping? We're trying to drop it for the top of the year, no later than February. I heard you're also working on another album. Right now I'm working on the new QB album with Cormega. I'm working with him right now. I'm trying to get that popping for the top of the year also. I got a mixtape coming out too called Killa Sha - The Freestyle Runs. That's about to hit the network within the next two weeks. Don't you go back with Cormega? Yeah. Me and 'Mega first linked up back in the days. They used to move heavy drugs and I used to be a little nigga. I would come to the crib and chill with him. He would never be like, Go take care of this. He always looked at me a little different from the average dudes who came to the crib. He took me under his wing and talked with me. He taught me about the ins and outs of the street. Is the respect from the younger generation to the older generation dying out? Truthfully, it is. That's because a lot of younger dudes feel like they're on the same level as the older dudes. I'm an older dude and I've seen things change. There's no more respect. Nobody's listening. Everybody's on their own agenda. It's changed a great deal from when I was first introduced to the game to how it is now. It's a completely different ballgame. When did it start to change? Truthfully, around the Biggie and 'Pac era. Everybody's realm of realness is different, but to me it started getting funny-bunny when 'Pac and Biggie, God Bless the Dead, went home. That's when things started really getting out of control. You started out with Craig G and Tragedy as a member of the Super Kids. Can you talk about that? The Super Kids was the group before the Juice Crew. We were the young kids running up to Marley like, We can do this! Marley would help us out. My first live experience was at the USA Rollerskating Rink. It's not there anymore. That was my first time ever being on stage. I was crazy nervous. That's when they had the Hawaiian shirts. I was crazy nervous but I caught a feeling from that that I could never let go of. That's why I continue to do what I do now. Did you know how much talent was in The Super Kids at that time? Nobody really knew they had futures until it started to pop. Everybody knew they were talented. Craig G used to be a basketball player. He was a real funny-looking basketball player. Craig could also ball. Trag was also a thug. There was always an alternative for somebody. Nowadays it's not like that. Everybody back then had different talents besides rapping. Craig G could also beatbox. There was a lot of talent coming out of the blue. Why did The Super Kids fall apart? It's just like everything. We were focused, but we weren't really on it like that. As we got older, we started to see the jewels to it. When you're that age and you're young like that, all you're thinking about is having fun. That was our main agenda. Are you still in touch with Tragedy today? I haven't spoken to him in awhile, but me and him are still tight. Will you do more work with him and Craig G? If time allows it, I would love to do another album with Tragedy. Me and Craig were on the Lake 41st Side album together. Other than that I don't think me and him will really get together because he's out in Vegas right now. I would try and get back with Trag. After The Super Kids you linked up with Mobb Deep. How did that happen? I used to make mixtapes. I used to do the DJ thing. Havoc knew me because we all grew up in the same community and played basketball together. He knew I was a DJ. He took me down to their Graphic Arts school they went to. He introduced me to Prodigy. We were all the same size. It looked kind of crazy because we were all little but we could all do things. Havoc could draw, P could rhyme and I could DJ. It was crazy. We linked up with Rush Management. I did a couple of scratches on "Hit It From the Back" and "Peer Pressure." I was just running with them like that. As we got older we started separating, but we were still cool. What was the best thing you learned being with Mobb Deep? Never let nobody tell you that you can't do nothing. Never. Never let nobody, anywhere in the world tell you that you're not good enough to be a superstar, that you're not good enough to be able to read, that you're not good enough to deliver a speech. Never let nobody tell you that you can't do nothing. Just always go with your heart and your gut. Mobb Deep's loyalty has been questioned in the past. Are they loyal? Honestly, I look at it from a different perspective because I'm grown. When you're a child, you do what a child does and when you're a man, you do what a man does. I wasn't really mad at Mobb Deep for signing with G-Unit. A lot of fans were mad because they felt like they bowed down. You have to look at it like this is a game of selling records and they were going through a drought. They had their loyal fans but the love never adds up to rent. The rent office don't want to hear how people love Mobb Deep. They have children and bills and issues and they did what they had to do in their situation. Will you ever work with them again? Honestly, I really don't think so. I have songs with Havoc and I have songs with Prodigy. It is what it is. I have no problems with them. How did you put together your group Killa Kidz? This was right after the Mobb Deep situation. This was five little guys from my block that could rhyme. Nobody was never trying to listen to us. Everybody always thought we were problems and menaces. One of them was Baby Sham from Flipmode. That was one of them. There was Supurb. He sounded like Nas. The other two were Mr. Ruck and Challish. I believe they're working with Ron Artest right now. We put our money together nad we pressed up a single. Marley Marl was a big help with that. He pushed our promos on 105 and he pushed our freestyles. Stretch Armstrong was also very good. We went up there and that's where we got our real notoriety from. We were five brothers from one block and we made it Killa Kidz. You only released one 12", "'96 Phenomenon." How come you never put out an album? Nobody was really looking to sign nobody at that time. You were either with a clique or you had to be super, super phenomenal. We got caught up in the red tape and all the politics. Now I get millions of emails all day long like, I need the Killa Kidz album or I need the Killa Kidz songs. I know what we're doing was effective because of that. It's now 2006 and we did that in 1996 and people are still talking about it. I'm still getting requests for it. I know it was a good run for us. Do you still have all the old material? Yes. How do you feel hearing it now? I feel like it can go out right now. We were so ahead of time then for being little and being young then. I feel like the audience and the people weren't ready for us like that back then. Is there any chance for a Killa Kidz reunion? Yeah. We're trying to do that for my album or Baby Sham's album. How's Baby Sham doing? I haven't seen him in awhile. He moved from where I lived at. I did a show with Large Pro and Royal Flush at SOB's and I saw him there. That was the last time I saw him. I still see his brother. We stay in contact through his brother. How important was Stretch Armstrong's support? That was crazy. He gave a lot of real situations to people in hip-hop. A lot of people don't know he brought 50 Cent to his notoriety. He put a lot of people on to him. He was also with Whoo Kid. He was hitting them with the mixtapes. It was real serious because there wasn't anybody else who was doing that at that time. He let us come in and broadcast to the tri-state. That was a beautiful situation what he did for us. Do you have a good relationship with him today? Yeah. I used to work with him at Hot97. I was a co-host for Extra Large Radio Show. When I interviewed Pretty Ugly, he said Stretch was not loyal. Did you ever see any of that? Everybody's realm of realness is different. Maybe they had certain situations where they really didn't click. Stretch never did anything foul to me. He never shitted on me. I appreciate him. He took me around the world twice. I had never been out of the projects. He took me to go get a passport and I went to Zurich, Frankfurt, just so many places. He never was funny-style to me. He always showed me love. I could never be like, Fuck Stretch. That's my dude from the heart. Is QB hip-hop where it should be today? Honestly, there should be a lot more movement coming from out here. Unfortunately the people who had the reigns didn't really lead it where it was supposed to go. Every day there's a new little guy out here who's rhyming. There should be somebody in the game who could be like, Let's go. We haven't had that for the longest. Every borough has that except for us. We were one of the originators who started that. Queensbridge is like a whole different borough to people besides Queens. It should have been better but things happen. You just have to take your bruises with your big prizes. What do you have to do to be successful in 2006? The way I see it, there's no real standard. On my MySpace, I did a record being funny off Busta Rhymes' "New York." I did it where I'm like, I'm on my big girl shit. I did a fat girl record and I got the most hits off of that. I wasn't doing it to be real with it. I was just doing it to do it. The people linked on to that more than they linked on to my serious records. Like I said, everybody's realm of realness is different. Some people may get really hyped off of making real serious records. Other people may get off on making conscious records and others may get off on making rap gospel. There's no real true path to it like there was when people started. Right now you can do anything and be famous. What should we be looking for next from Killa Sha? The Killa Sha Freestyle Runs mixtape. That will be out in the next two to three weeks. I also do internet radio on FutureFlavasOnline.com. I program every Friday night from 10 to 12. We get 20,000 hits and we play the top R&B, hip-hop, reggae and reggaeton stuff. That's one of my machines to get my music out. The first thing will be the mixtape and then at the top of the year it'll be the Large Pro and Killa Sha album. What do you want to say to everybody? I want to let everybody know that I may be the last of the Mohicans in the projects that rhymes and gets it in. Don't judge a book by its cover. You have to open it up and read it first. Don't think I'm like the rest of them because I'm from QB. Take some time out and listen to what I'm saying because I do have a lot to say. http://myspace.com/shalumi

By Brian Kayser

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