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5/8/2006 What's up, Smiley? I'm chilling. It's the same fight, different round. How does it feel to finally have The Antidote out in stores? It's exciting. I don't think I've felt the full effect yet. It's a mixtape, not an LP. I think people are getting that confused. It's a pre-album joint. What's up with the album? That's virtually done. I have some powerful shit on there. What's the difference between The Antidote and the album? The Antidote is shit I wanted to get off my chest from the perspective of the streets. The underground is different from the mainstream and I wanted to get out all that real gutter shit first. The album is going to be much more articulate and it's going to hit the masses. Even though The Antidote is going to be in all the stores, this is all that grimy shit that I've never had a chance to display. The difference with the album is it's going to be much more global and diverse, like a movie. I look at The Antidote like a street documentary, but my album will be the major movie. The Antidote has been a long time coming. Hell yeah. I wanted to drop a mixtape for awhile, but you know how that shit goes. You just get caught up in shit trying to survive, from trying to be a father and everything else. There's just a lot of shit combined. Why is your mixtape called The Antidote? There's a strong significance behind that name. Everybody's complaining about how shit is wack, the radio is wack, mixtapes are even wack now. It's like everything is polluted and everybody's trying to be somebody else instead of being themselves. The Antidote represents my cure for all that bullshit. It's time for us to just be ourselves and just spit what's real instead of trying to create a gimmick and be an actor. My shit is the cure for all the sickness that's out there. How long does it take for the medicine to act? Any second, baby! It's like a spontaneous reaction. As soon as this shit gets in your bloodstream, it's a wrap. How did you go about putting The Antidote together? That was a real architect job. A lot of the songs that are on here, I took days to do or maybe I did it in an hour. What I do with my songs, how I structure my songs, is I get the beat and I mumble some rhythm to it. If I can mumble some rhythm to it and it connects, then I'll write the first verse. I might get the chorus in. I might let it be like that for three or four days, and then I'll finish it. You have a lot of big names on The Antidote. How did you get everyone down? I just bumped into cats that felt me and they were representing and they had the love for it just as I did. People like Sebb, Chaze, Premier, Showbiz, they represent that pure shit to the fullest to this day. We both sympathize with that. We're in the same struggle and telling the same shit. At the end of the day, we just want to represent real hip-hop and we want this shit to come across right. It really wasn't a problem to get features on the album or production. Did you work in studio with the producers or were the songs two-tracked? A lot of the joints, we were in the studio. I'm not going to say which ones were two-tracked, but the joints with Premier, Showbiz, and Sebb, they were all in the studio. It's not like I just two-tracked it. We were emotional with it. We put our hearts into it. With people of that caliber, it's personal, so we put our all into it. What was your inspiration for The Wake-Up Call? Aaliyah. God bless her soul. I know that's a bad accident and it could happen to anybody, I just saw how it affected my daughters. They are big fans of Aaliyah. At that time, a lot of things were happening in hip-hop, and I was just like, "Wake up!" I was building with Agallah and he helped me with the inspiration for that song too. We were on the phone talking about Aaliyah's death. That's what inspired me. Are you shooting for a certain demographic with this project? I'm shooting for everybody. I want the old cats, too, but I'm not worried about that. I know I have a strong following. It's crazy because I never dropped too much shit. I dropped a few singles and features overseas. To have people embrace it, that shit makes me feel excellent. I feel good. What are your goals for The Antidote? There are high expectations for this shit. I want my people to distribute this right. I really want it to get out in the right hands. I'm going to shoot two videos for it. I just want it to be embraced. What do you want people to take away from The Antidote? The shit is real. I have feelings just like everybody else. I go through shit, I've been though shit, I've made dumb choices, and I've rectified them the best way I can. I've experienced this game of life. I want to jump on a subject real quick. These internet gangsters are real wack. All this internet hating shit is real wack. There's a way to express yourself. It's not what you say but how you say it or how you get it to come across. I wish the website gangsters would stop acting up. That shit is really irritating. So the way I want them to take The Antidote, I want them to see that element is still there. It's not, "Let's go back to the old school." I want people to know I know how to choose beats and I know how to write. I bust my brain. Sometimes it comes, sometimes it doesn't. I put my heart and soul into The Antidote and it's real sensitive to me. I just really want people to take it in and the whole process of this shit. It was done with sincerity. That's what I want people to take from it. The era you came up in was way different from now. How do you feel hearing kids talk about "taking it back"? I had an opportunity to come up in the golden age of rap and I got locked up. Not for no drugs. I got locked up for hurting somebody. The 52nd precinct mased my mom in the face. She came downstairs to see why the police were harassing me, and next thing I know, I blacked out and woke up in the hospital. That was when the Group Home album was out and we were supposed to do the "Realness" video. They lessened my charge because they violated my mom's rights. Coming up in that era and what happened, I never had a chance to drop a full-length. I'm really excited. Do you have any regrets from your past? Nah. Nah. I can't say I do, man. I've had a lot of experiences and it's been a hell of a ride. I know a lot of motherfuckers that couldn't make it on this trip. I really do. I mean that shit sincerely. I understand you went to jail shortly after our last interview. Yeah. It was some small shit. It was like thirty days for some old shit. I had to get that squared away. My real jail time was years ago when I was younger. I haven't been in jail lately. It's just little shit here and there. Everything is good and straight now. You've been in the game for awhile without an album. Have you ever thought about giving up? I'm not going to front. I've thought about giving up a couple times. I stopped writing one time like, "Fuck it." I'm about to hit 29 and I was tired of the shit. I wasn't going to quit the music forever, but I was just going to play the background. What woke me up was my pops. My pops played the streets a lot. He's real intelligent, but he just played the streets a lot. I remember that time when I felt like I wanted to give up. My pops was like, "Yo dog, when you give up, that's when shit is about to happen. If you give up, you're going to lose." From then on, I was just like, "Fuck it." I started getting my shows up, then I went on tour with Linkin Park and MOP. When me and Pops were airing shit out, that's when I knew I was made for this shit. I gave up a couple times, but I'm glad I'm back on it. When is the album coming out? The album will probably be out at the end of the year. Is it done? I got like sixty joints, all new fresh shit, plus The Antidote. I have The Antidote Part 2 ready. I have the album ready. I have a lot of ammunition right now. I have all this shit homie. Are you going to drop something before the album? I'm doing a movie right now. We've been shooting for a month and a half right now. The production is coming out real good. Look out for that. It's coming out good. What do you want to say to your fans? Each one, teach one. One hand washes the other, both wash the face. Keep it real, because all you got is yourself. You have to be real so at the end of the day, you don't have a bunch of yes-men. Be real no matter what you're doing, if it's school, music, or whatever else. Always be optimistic. Life's crazy, kid. Life is an ill ride that takes you crazy places. You have to focus and be disciplined. This project got me disciplined where I sat down and just did it. I got the beats and I wrote the shit. I just want the fans to appreciate it.

By Brian Kayser

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