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6/22/2009   Sorry I’m late. I was doing an interview with Alchemist and he kept talking and talking.  (laughs) That’s Al, boy. He’s a genius.  You’re rocking the Brooklyn Hip-Hop Festival. In looking at stage shows today, it seems more rappers are bringing less people onstage with them. What do you think of the shows with hundreds of people onstage?  That’s wack. I mean, you do that when you first get into this game. Shit is exciting and you do that in real ‘hood joints. For real performances, people pay to see you and see you perform. You want to make sure you give them a good show and when there’s a thousand motherfuckers onstage people have to pick out who’s who sometimes.  How do you draw the line between who gets onstage and who doesn’t?   I mean, it depends on where you go and where you perform at. Some places nobody gets onstage and sometimes other people get to hold down different sides of the stage. You go by the show and who’s gonna be there and the caliber of performers and the caliber of the audience. I’m doing a ‘hood joint tomorrow in the middle of the ‘hood and there’s gonna be a thousand motherfuckers onstage. Those people don’t give a fuck as long as they get to see the person with the mic. They don’t care.  Obviously you’ve been performing for a long time with Jada and Sheek. How do you guys prepare for a show?  We rock. We’ve been doing this for a minute so it’s a natural chemistry. Shit, if somebody ain’t on the right side of the stage, you know to fill up that side. Same with the left and the middle of the stage. You keep the crowd happy and you try to hit every angle of the crowd and you try to perform for the upper tiers as well as the lower tiers. It’s just about giving energy and performing for the crowd.  You’re an experienced performer but you can’t kill every single show. What do you do when you see the crowd might not be 100% with you during a performance?  You give 100% percent. You rock. I rock. I do a show and I rock. If a show’s getting away from me, I rock harder. I get up close and personal with the crowd. I talk to the crowd. I get into the crowd. I work.  Will you be on the road a lot with your LOX fam?  Yeah, we should. We’ve been working. We’re busy and we’re trying to stay busy. I also got a book coming out through Random House, so we’re definitely going to be busy. And the new music is sounding great. We’re working. No Security is in stores and Sheek is coming up next. Kiss’ album did great. Sheek is coming in September or October and the LOX at the top of the year. So I think we’re on a good roll and a good pace. And we got Bully, Bucky, A.P., Large Amounts, Snyp Life and a whole long line of D-Block.  You guys have been pushing the next generation of D-Block pretty heavily this past year. Are you happy with the response you’ve been getting to them?  Yeah. We’re working. I mean, you can’t ask for things overnight. We work hard and we work harder. Things aren’t going to happen overnight. If they don’t get enough then we just have to keep on working hard. But the D-Block fans are embracing them. Are we going to do big, incredible, crazy numbers? No, we’re not. But is that important? Sure it is, but that ain’t what we really out for. We’re out to get people to know them and we’re out for them to establish a career for longevity. We’re not here to hit a homer right away. If we do, good. But we’re going to try to accumulate some base hits and some runs batted in and all that.  Are you comfortable with the team you have or are you looking to add some new artists to the stable?  I love the team we have. I love the team we have. I would love to find a hot young lady that could spit, that would be able to work and fit in with the team. I would love to find that. Other than that, I think we’re pretty much covered. That would be the only thing we need to draft.  You’re working on a mixtape with Green Lantern. How do you approach doing a mixtape versus doing an album?  I don’t really switch anything. I do what I do. I’m an MC. What my heart is thinking goes to the rhyme I’m gonna say. I’m going to pick a beat I like and I’m going to spit what comes out naturally. I’m not one of those people that says I’m going to do this and that. I’m going to do music and I’m going to do a lot of it and I’m going to pick the best music. And that’s like my process – to find different zones, different beats and different ideas and make sure the ideas are different but they fit in together and basically make sure that I fucking rhyme hard on beats and with shit that makes sense, with good bars.  Are you done with the LOX album at this point?  No. We ain’t done.  What do you need to finish the album?  We ain’t giving details for what we’re doing with the LOX album. Just wait ‘til January, ‘til the top of the year. We ain’t breaking down none of that.  You’re keeping it top secret from me?   Yeah. We’re keeping it top secret from everybody. We’re going to work with the hottest producers, up-and-coming and huge. We got about 10-12 songs done. But that doesn’t mean we’re going to use them all. We don’t know what we’re going to use. We’re going to make a whole bunch of other songs. There you go. I just told you.

By Brian Kayser

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