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8/7/2006 What's up? Everything's ok! I'm working on promoting this new mixtape A Dollar and a Dream, making sure everybody knows who I am. How's it been going so far? I'm definitely getting everything I wanted out of A Dollar and a Dream. When I first came out I was an unknown name. I got to get on MTV and they treated The Good Son (first mixtape) like it was my album. I've been all the places in New York. I'm the bootlegger's favorite right now. Getting into the mixtape, you're definitely flexing on "The Throne." I'm just at that point I think all artists reach where you get bored waiting on people and labels. I feel I'm one of the best out right now and I'm going to show that on the mixtape. I actually did a video for it and it should be out soon. Now you're going to get a visual for such a dope track. How much swagger can be too much? I think you shouldn't go overboard. As a person, you need to stay true to yourself. Anybody who knows me as a person knows what I say is honest. I think swagger becomes too much when that's all you can do and you can only talk about yourself. It's not good to just brag about yourself, but hip-hop was also built off that braggadocio. There are a million New York rappers right now. Why should we check for Spot? The difference is I'm just better than everybody. There's no way to reinvent the wheel. Listen to my music. I had a pretty hard life growing up in the projects. It was vicious. I bring a dope perspective and lyricism back to the game. There aren't too many young lyricists coming, and they definitely aren't coming from a street angle if they are. What was your inspiration for the song "A Dollar and a Dream"? Being from the projects and being poor, I decided to get my money together. I figured everybody has to have a plan to achieve your dream and you need money, but how much do you really need? I'm showing people that you don't need too many resources to put your plan together. A dollar symbolizes the bottom and it's the backbone of our nation. I figured if you only have one dollar and a dope-ass plan, you can get to where you want to go. How did you get to where you're at now? It's a strong grind at the end of the day. Being a third-generation immigrant, I saw my grandparents and parents trying to come up. It was a solid foundation for our family. I'm from the generation where kids are out in the street. I figured if I could stack a little bit of that instead of blowing it on bullshit I could take some of my boys with me. I've made enough money doing multiple things where I can just focus on my dreams now. How did your first mixtape The Good Son do? We put that out in November. Before that I was a nameless face in a sea of rappers. Everybody rhymes with their crew and their label, so I really wanted to set myself apart from the corner rappers. Waiting for somebody on a white horse to scoop me out of the hood wasn't going to work, so we put The Good Son out. Putting this out definitely made me one to watch. The new one, A Dollar and a Dream, is even doper than that. You also produce. How's that been going? The production thing is dope. I want to thank the rappers who gave me a chance early on, like Grafh, Black Rob, Jim Jones and Papoose. I was getting tired of producers giving their best beats to rappers with the budgets. I'm in the studio all the time so I figured I'd learn it. Mario Winans took me under his wing and helped me chop samples and showed me some keyboards. Nobody's going to know my sound better than me. Are you going to do a lot of outside production? The funny thing is I get a lot of requests, but as of right now I've been so busy trying to push my career that I haven't had time. There are a lot of artists who gave me a shot to work on music with them and there are others who inquired. In a short while you should see my name popping up more. You and Sickamore have done a lot together. How did you guys link up? There's these rumors floating around about who's the next great rapper. Sickamore being the person he is goes from hood to hood trying to find who's next. He put me on his I Can Make You Famous Volume Two with Tru Life hosting it. My track got one of the biggest responses. We've been in the studio a lot and we're both using our connections to get the best beats and best graphic designers and all that. How did I Can Make You Famous Volume Three, which you hosted, change things for you? It made me a name. Most of the rappers already knew me because I was ghostwriting and ghostproducing. I knew a lot of these guys from the streets. I'm only 21 now, so if you look back three years ago, I was fresh out of school. Now that the public's embraced me with open arms, the rappers feel more secure working with me. There aren't too many rappers buzzing like me in New York right now. I definitely have to give props to Kayslay and Clue. Kayslay was the first dude to give me support. He was spinning my songs two or three times in a row. You have a very famous uncle. How is it working with Jimmy Henchman? A lot of people don't think he has a great musical mind because he's a great businessman, but he knows how to push an artist to their apex. The best thing I learned under Jimmy is be your own boss. He's a street dude and he's not holding anybody's hand. He has a lot of relatives and dudes from the street he can help, but he can't hold anybody's hand. He's helping me with my King Day Records. He's taught me about branding my label and signing other artists so you can still have money coming in when you don't feel like rapping anymore. Me and Jimmy also argue all the time. He has so many records sold in his resume and I'm basically a new rapper but I'm pretty much considered a musical genius. He has the proof and sometimes it's hard finding the right lane. Since I only rap about my life, I know people can agree. We both come from two different generations so sometimes he may not see the people I'm making music for. But at the same time, to get mainstream acceptance, you have to reach other people too. It just so happens that I have a lot people joining my core fan-base every day. Does Jimmy Henchman's "thug" image precede him and is that not fair? When you look at a businessman who's built a management company from scratch and has fourteen years in the music business, I don't think you can be this boogieman people think he is and continue to get new artists like Game and Rick Ross. It's obvious that he's a very good businessman. I think a lot of that has come from hate and a lot of executives, this is hard to say, aren't from the street so they don't know about the relationships people build in the streets. If he was such a boogieman stars wouldn't be flocking to him. Do you get involved in the day-to-day issues at Czar? I used to be a lot more hands-on a year and a half ago. I wasn't that focused on being a rapper. I was getting my money up and I wanted to help other people out. I would listen to tracks or write hooks for other random people. Since I dropped The Good Son, I've put all my focus on Spot. I thought it would take three years or so but it's been on an accelerated course since Sickamore got his Director of A&R job at Atlantic. I'm working on making myself the hottest rapper under the sun and I don't think I'm too far from doing that at this point. Will we see over you at Atlantic soon? I don't align myself with any business because people get hired and fired every day. I have interest from pretty much every label at this point. We're just focusing on King Day and doing what we have to do and promoting A Dollar and a Dream. We're doing what we have to do. I'm not in a rush to sign. I don't have to sign the first deal I get. Me in particular, I'm not really hurting for money. We're just waiting for the best situation to pop up. What's your plans for the rest of the summer? I've been making a lot of promo runs from state to state, gassing up the Lex and hitting the road with my team. We're producing a mobile content show To Build a Kingdom. It's focusing on King Day. We're going to film and show viewers an inside look at building a fledgling record label. We just got offered a mobile distribution deal. We'll be on MySpace and YouTube as well giving fans that. The single "The Way We Ride" is also getting up in BDS spins, so I want to thank all the DJ's who are behind that. What do you want to say to everybody? If you have a dream, follow it. Don't go to people in a desperate time because people will take advantage of you. You're never too young to make it and sometimes it may take longer, but you will get to where you need to get. For more information check out http://kingdayrecords.com and make friends with Spot at http://myspace.com/kingday.

By Brian Kayser

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