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5/31/2006 What's up? I'm chilling. How's your New Money mixtape doing for you so far? So far, so good. I put it out in a mad rush. I put a lot of older joints on there. A lot of older fans can see that. That's because the QN5 Spring Cleaning tour was sprung on me at the last minute. That's why you don't even see Session on some of the fliers. I threw this together, had Envy host it, and I threw a bunch of joints together. That was that. It's doing great so far. Cats are liking it. It's a great introduction to Session because people who haven't heard me or heard of me, even the older joints are new. To me, it's cool, but I'm setting up for my next mixtape, An A&R's Dream, which is going to be all new shit. The thing that stands out about you is the punchlines. How do you come up with those? I get hiiiigh. I get high and I feel like writing. Sometimes I'll be walking on the block and a line will enter my head for no apparent reason. I'll write it on my Sidekick and I'll get home and when I write a verse, I'll have that line to throw in there somewhere. I also have songs like "Route of Evil" I throw out there to let people know I'm not all about punchlines and that I have substance as well. New York rappers are known for corny punchlines. What's the difference between a good punchline and a bad one? All the "My car is the same color of" and "My watch is the color of…" That's all corny to me. A million people have already done that. That's elementary. I don't set my shit up like that. There's some that don't even use punchlines and that's cool. Why are there so many cookie-cutter rappers? I don't know and I don't care. There are a lot of people who complain about the state of hip-hop, but good music will prevail at the end of the day. I don't give a fuck about nobody who's not helping me out. If everybody was nice, then I would have a harder time. Thank you, wack rappers. What's the next move for you now that the Envy tape is popping? This is just me dipping my feet in the water and it's for a bunch of industry people who didn't know who I was. Now people know who I am and now I can set up my next project. Now people know who I am and cop my shit. The next project I'm doing is An A&R's Dream. It's all my newest shit. The Green Lantern track "Betta Ask Somebody" is one of my newest joints. My new songs show I know how to put songs together instead of straight spitting all the time. I'm dropping that and I'm going to Europe in August as a continuation of the QN5 tour. All that shit is just to set up my album. All of this just to set up my album. I still don't know if I'm going to go the independent route or the major route. I'll know when I get all this other shit out of the way and the effect on what's happened. Based on what's happened, I'll know what I'm going to do next. "Betta Ask Somebody" seems to be doing well for you. The response is crazy. So far, so good. A lot of people are liking that track a lot. I'm getting a lot of hits for that, especially now that Green Lantern is really doing his thing and dropping a lot of tapes left and right. The reaction is good so far, but I haven't really pushed it like that. I want to get it radio edited and send it out more. How's the QN5 Spring Cleaning tour going for you so far? So far, it's been great. I'm different from everyone on QN5. I'm not like Tone, Pack FM, or Cunninlynguists, musically. Some of the crowd likes their music better and they don't really rock with me while some of the crowds go crazy for my music. Alaska was crazy! My show is a lot more aggressive. I make drunk people music. What's the atmosphere like on tour? I'm going to blow some spots up right now. Natti from Cunninlynguists farts a lot. I have to smell his farts all day. Tone and Pack and Kno don't want us to smoke in the van so we have to go outside and smoke in the middle of nowhere. We chilled and we bonded and we talked hip-hop. Pack FM lives on his Sidekick. Life in the van was cool. It's crazy when you have to take twelve hour trips. We even bumped into Murs at the Salt Lake City spot. The world can be so small sometimes. Why don't you just get Tonedeff one of those pine trees to hang off the rear-view mirror? We should put it right off his nose. Who does he think he is? Sarah from Da Band? I'm saying! That's mad diva, yo! It's fun to get on him for that shit. It was also because they didn't want to get pulled over and all that. I want to smoke and be high. What's your relationship with QN5 right now? My relationship with QN5 is mad tight. As of now, my Spicasso album will be dropping on QN5 Music. I've spoken to them and they know I aspire to do bigger things. I aspire to be on a major label and blow the fuck up. There's different ways to do that and everybody does that a different way, whether I build a buzz before my first album or after. No matter what, all my peoples are being brought with me. There's different ways. I'm just trying to build up a buzz and most of that crowd is going to come from the Spanish crowd. I'm trying to talk to them and that's going to make me a million dollars. I'm worth a million dollars. Do you think a label's going to believe that? I think a label is going to believe that because you have to look at it this way: industry dudes would be stupid to not see the potential of me being able to make money with the way I rap. Take a Puerto Rican from Puerto Rico and a Puerto Rican from New York. That's two separate types of people even if they have the same background. My music represents a New Yorican. That's why Pun went multi-platinum. He represented and showed pride for his culture. That's why people loved him. If that was the case now, Fat Joe would be platinum all day. There hasn't been a Spanish rapper to represent their culture like Pun did. Tru Life and Joell Ortiz are going hard, but they're not Spanish dudes. I have my own lane not just by throwing a little Spanglish in there every now and then but by saying shit that's unique to us as a culture. Jay-Z said, "Spanish Jose, show me how to get the money niggas owe me." He makes us sound cool. Where's Spanish Jose? That's me! I have my own angle and I just hope people will follow me on my journey. My people make me worth a million dollars, so when you hear me say that shit, it's not me being cocky or arrogant, it's me being confident that my people will stand behind me and support me without alienating anyone else. I'm not rapping in Spanish over here. Everybody can have their angle and do their thing. In no way am I trying to take away from what Joell Ortiz, Tru Life, or anyone else is doing. Joell Ortiz raps straight-up hip-hop. I really can't call it. I just know that the way I'm going to do it is different from any way that's ever been done before. There's hood niggas who aren't Spanish and that's what's not being represented in music right now. That's my lane all day. How's the album coming out so far? The album is coming out fucking great. It's coming out real fucking good. I was actually at a show last night with Joell Ortiz and I performed the intro to the album. Cats went nuts for it. There's going to be a lot of deep tracks and conceptual shit on the album. There's going to be a lot of bangers on there of course, but it's going to be Spicasso. It's going to be a masterpiece. When are you looking to drop it? I'm looking to drop it when the time is right. I'm not trying to sell it to five people in my hood. We did an interview before and it never got published, but I'm not sweating it because the timing wasn't right. Why would I sweat it? So people could have forgotten about me the next day? I wasn't prepared to follow that up with music. I have no date right now, but as soon as you hear my name buzzing and things start working and my joints are on the radio, then you're going to know the album is coming real soon. Are you guys working on another Extended Famm album? I'm not really fucking with that too tough. There's fans who love that shit. A lot of the shit we did on that was not what I like or what I want to do. At the end of the day, I got outvoted on a lot of shit. What do you want to say to everyone? To the labels, I'm worth a million dollars. Get in while I'm cheap. Make your money grow. To my fans, I love y'all motherfuckers. Coming from an independent route, I need every one of y'all motherfuckers. I try to cultivate a fan-base because that's going to create selling power for me and I can use that at the labels. To my potential fans, I am not a dime-a-dozen rapper. I don't use the same flow and corny punchlines everyone else does. And another thing, to other artists, I'm a fan. I'm from New York where we have the crabs-in-a-barrel mentality, but I can rock to anybody's shit. If you give anybody props, they think you're wack. For example, I like Juelz Santana. I think that motherfucker is nice. Somebody will say, "You think you're wack? He's better than you?" I can still like someone else's music. I am not a hater. Make friends with Session at http://myspace.com/spicasso and be sure to visit http://qn5.com as well.

By Brian Kayser

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