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5/3/2006 What's up, Shiest? Chilling and working as usual. I'm forever grinding. What's going on with Un Kasa and Purple City? He's fixing everything. I never really broke. He's resolving his own personal issues. How'd you feel about the stuff he said about you in his diss track? He's a grown man so he has to make his own decisions as far as what he's doing with that. Personally, I was laughing at the song when I first heard it. I don't take none of that shit seriously. To diss me is to diss yourself. I told him it was a pretty good record but it was disappointing that you had to write it about me, considering that I'm the one that makes this forum possible for us to do our thing. Did you force him to apologize or did he do that on his own? At the end of the day, when I heard the record and they were like, "He wants to come back," I was like, "I never kicked him out." My whole thing was, "Yo man, you have to apologize to the fans and me and whoever else deserves one." Even though it's kind of embarrassing to apologize, it's something that had to be done. Purple City is a record label. It's not a group, which the media misconstrues. It's Purple City Entertainment. Un Kasa is the first artist signed to Purple City. Artists get a little impatient, wait, no, they get a lot impatient and they want things to go a lot faster. You have to take steps and make rules. Even though I'm the CEO of Purple City, there are other factors involved in this. There's Koch Records, Babygrande Records, and Jim Jones. It's political. You have to play the game to win. Is this situation embarrassing for Purple City? We're human. At the end of the day, people make mistakes. The shit about Purple City is that we're real motherfuckers. Now Un has to pay the consequences of it. It's not embarrassing for me. At the end of the day, I'm Shiest Bub and I'm always going to do what I do. I'm from the streets and I'm in the music business. I'm blessed. I've accomplished a lot. I'm working on my fifth piece of product in the commercial zone. I'm dropping The Purple Album with a bonus CD which features my new artists Smoke and Numbers. It sounds like you never got distracted with the Un Kasa situation. I took it seriously, but I didn't really take it seriously like that. I was Purple City before Un Kasa. Fuck what he's talking about. The track record shows what it is. I grind hard. Anybody that I've ever fucked with has made more money with me than they've ever made in their life. I mean that. That's a fucking fact. At the end of the day, that was a joke to me. This is like a nigga playing checkers against a nigga that's playing chess. I let him take himself off the board with that move. I'm focusing on Shiest Bub and Purple City. I have new artists Smoke and Numbers. These aren't artists I picked up to replace Un. It just so happens that this is how it unfolds. Purple City hasn't really even popped yet. We have a nice, respectable fan-base, but we haven't even popped off together yet. Then I hear that Un is retiring before he even started. Purple City is for artists to get their grind up, get their swagger up, and do what they do. Nothing will ever change that. I own Purple City. You have to kill me to stop Purple City. Shiest Bub has to be off the earth for Purple City to stop. And the album is super-dope. Everybody's on it. Un is on it, Agallah is on it, I'm on it, Jim is on it. It's some dope shit. XXL gave us a Medium, but at the end of the day, that shit is politics. Them niggas hate to see niggas come up that made it from the streets. New York is home of the haters. That's what I call it. Everyone's looking for a handout in New York. That's why Purple City is at the top, because we've put so much groundwork in. You can't just put a mixtape out. You have to have retail history. That's what Purple City is building right now. That's what a lot of artists don't understand. They think they can just get on a mixtape and have everything pop off. Why did you sign Smoke and Numbers? What made me want to fuck with Smoke and Numbers was that Numbers had already been on one of my mixtapes. They were still grinding a few years after I first met them. That was impressive to me. New York is so fucked up on consistency. I was waiting to see who was going to be consistent. They've been grinding for a long time. We're on the same page as far as the vision I have and where I wanted them to go. What potential do they have? At the end of the day, Purple City's a lifestyle. What they're bringing to the table is the swagger from 21 year-olds. Most of the older generation has been locked up and are just coming home. What's fucked up is there's no one around to teach these young motherfuckers how to pop off and have morals. That's what I'm here for, and they're going to bring that at a younger angle. I have a lot of young fans that look up to me like, "Damn Bub, I have to get my game together." Yeah, you do. There are a lot of motherfuckers pussyfooting around. I only rapped to prove a point. Motherfuckers walk up to me and show me their $200 sneakers. You don't even have two songs. Why not put that same money in the studio? That's what I did. I have forty or fifty songs, and I don't even rap. Why is New York coming across as wack right now? It's the attitude. It's always been trendsetting. It's always been about hustling. That's why I did the song Trap Nigga just to let niggas know Down South that it's all good and we appreciate what you do, but we started crack. Crack started in New York. I'm letting niggas know that we fuck with you heavy, at least Purple City, because at the end of the day, we got paid down there. We put all them country niggas on to selling crack. Now it's their turn and motherfuckers hate. They all want shine. All you hear coming out of songs is overzealous yelling out "New York!" Instead of staying with the times, motherfuckers are doing the same shit and looking for handouts. I don't listen to New York rap. I don't listen to rap, period, because at the end of the day, I've lived what they're talking about. Are you looking to sign other artists? I have another artist named One-Oh. He's fire. I don't say artists are fire unless they're crack like that. This dude has wild potential. When I compare him to other artists, he's like a Cappadonna/Method Man/Shiest Bub/Cam'ron nigga all rolled into one. You can't imagine him. He's straight fresh. He's from New York. To be honest, he's like my next protégé to this rap shit. I'm going to bless him with the Bub swagger so hard that niggas are going to be like, "Damn, where did this dude come from?" He's fresh out of Harlem. In our last interview, you said you talk to Un a lot about new music and that you value his opinion. In my interview with Un, he said he felt disrespected by Purple City and that he's always the last to know everything. Is he disrespected? At the end of the day, if you're an artist, you're an artist. You have to know your role. Yeah, I asked him for feedback, but at the end of the day, I bring everything to the table, including his music. In order to get respect, you have to respect your own talent for what you're really good at. You can't be an artist and then want to be a CEO. The two just don't mix. You have to take one at a time. If you're an artist and happen to become a CEO, then that's what it is. My number one agenda at the end of the day is not rapping. I am not going to beef into a microphone. I'd rather host a party than perform at one. That's just me. I told you in our last interview that I had ghostwriters help me. I said "help," I didn't say they were writing my own shit. In the beginning, Un Kasa wrote some shit for me. I'm an emperor. I grew fast on the shit. All I needed were a few rhymes and I peeped the format on it. In order to get respect, you have to respect yourself first and foremost, and your skill. This shit is not personal. We are cool. We are friends, but at the end of the day, this is all business. Are you happy with how the Purple City album came out? The shit is crack! I don't listen to rap, but this is hot. This is from a street nigga's perspective. I stepped up my game crazy. My rap game has been stepped up 80% and I'm still not where I want to be at. Just imagine when I step my shit all the way up to where I want to be at. It's over. I am the Jeezy of Harlem regardless of what anybody says. I'm the dude that came from out the blue that niggas didn't even know was doing it like that, and then boom, there it goes. Were you ever going to take off verses from Un Kasa? Hell no. He's signed to Purple City. Just because he said he retired doesn't mean he signed that on paperwork. C'mon. Niggas are emotional out here. That's why he's laying low right now. He doesn't even live in New York. He's in Syracuse. After his little incident, he had to get out of New York. There's too much pressure here. He had to go lay low and get himself together. At the end of the day, we have two or three new songs together that will be on the new album and everything's a go.

By Brian Kayser

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