No Jumper - The Too Short Interview: The E-40 Battle, Women in Rap, New Business with Snoop & Cube

Episode Date: March 10, 2021

Too Short is back on No Jumper to talk about his business ventures with Snoop, Ice Cube and E40 and how he still makes money after being in the game for over 40 years! Legacy! https://www.instagram.com/tooshort/ https://twitter.com/TooShort https://www.facebook.com/tooshort/ ----- CHECK OUT OUR NEW SPOTIFY PLAYLIST https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5tesvmDS8h50LkjnSAWMOs?si=j6sJD6DkR4mk5NZZWnlK7g FOLLOW US ON SNAPCHAT FOR THE LATEST NEWS & UPDATES https://www.snapchat.com/discover/No_Jumper/4874336901 CHECK OUT OUR ONLINE STORE!!! http://www.nojumper.com/ SUBSCRIBE for new interviews (and more) weekly: http://bit.ly/nastymondayz Follow us on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/nojumper iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/no-jumper/id1001659715?mt=2 Follow us on Social Media: https://www.snapchat.com/discover/No_Jumper/4874336901 http://www.twitter.com/nojumper http://www.instagram.com/nojumper https://www.facebook.com/NOJUMPEROFFICIAL http://www.reddit.com/r/nojumper JOIN THE DISCORD: https://discord.gg/Q3XPfBm Follow Adam22: https://www.tiktok.com/@adam22 http://www.twitter.com/adam22 http://www.instagram.com/adam22 adam22hoe on Snapchat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

No Jumper coolest podcast in the world. And today we're back with two short. It's been about three years since we last did this. Okay, three years. It's time to tap back in. Taping in. We got a lot of new lingo, a lot of new social media formats, a lot of new artists out, a lot of new shit. Things are changing.

If you were to just think off the top of your head what has changed the most in your life in the last three years, what comes to mind? What comes to mind? Female rappers. That was literally the first thing that we talked about. on the last interview. Which I don't think there's anything wrong with that because that that frontier has certainly changed. Damn right. And I love it. I love it. It's long overdue.

It's something that I have been an advocate for, which is females talking shit long before it was really, I'm not going to say popular, but long before it was like done by so many females. And it's just shit talking, you know. They're trying to categorize it and stuff and say is hooker's shit or stripper shit. It's just shit talking, man. It's funny because you kind of predicted the future

because in that interview three years ago, you said, if I was a female rapper, I would be damn near butt naked in my videos, et cetera, and then now we have WAP. You called it. You called it for sure. I don't think I called anything genius. I just saw something

that there was a space for it, you know. And people were not either, you know, just not doing it or being talked out of it, but there was a space for it. Just super sexy. I mean, guys in the male rap world, we went way over the edge of whatever the fuck a long time ago, so take it to all boundaries. It's one of my hip-hop things that I really love about hip-hop is that we get in our little boxes

and we think that we become, you know, hip-hop authoritarians or whatever fucking word is, and we fucking think we know it all at some point, and then bam, it just goes that way, it goes that way and you can't predict the next wave you can't say what's good and what's not what people don't like it's the shit yeah and i mean let's be real sex is the easiest thing to sell in the world to expect some large percentage of women to not want to utilize it when it's the easiest way to make their shit move to make some money when it's the number one thing that people want to see it seems like an almost impossible ask uh yeah and um it's not just sex it's like you know the low bearing fruit violence and shit like that controversy all that shit sells i mean we we

you just got to sit around on the sidelines long enough to realize oh shit if i do this i can get in the guy i feel like in hip-hop this whole um you know trying to fast-track it and shit just to whatever you want to get to the fact the quick way i think like the online beefs the social media beefs that you just come out of nowhere like man fuck that dude oh fuck his whole crew fuck your whole side of town. That shit is partially people just trying to go for some clickbait, trying to get some, you know, some free publicity and shit. And it

works. From time to time, it works. Start a little beef online. Go back and forth. Now we're all paying attention trying to see who's talking to most shit or who's making the craziest videos. But now, the long version of that is death on top of death, on top of death, starting these fucking beats

that jump offline. And I was just, I'm saying this shit because I was just talking to a young artist yesterday and I'm and I just was being a little funny and I'm like it's dangerous to be a rapper now and the motherfucker was like it is and and you know it just is it really is oh yeah like whoever would have thought like hip hop is almost like it's almost like a gangster like you choose to be a gangster right like because I I work out and my personal trainer is from Iran he knows nothing about hip hop so I'm like kind of always explaining songs and artists to him.

And it's kind of shocking how often I have to basically be like, yeah, this song is basically about how this other guy allegedly killed his friend and he wants to say basically that he's going to kill him back and yada, yada, yada. And it's pretty crazy because, like, coming from the world that you come from, there was like a big wall between rap and the streets. And now it's like, it's so easy to push rap when you intermed. mingle it with the streets that a lot of people just can't resist. I mean, it was where I'm from, the world I come from, it was really close.

It wasn't much of a wall, but there was a wall, so to speak, that certain things are not mentioned and certain, you don't bring certain parts of the street into the industry, not willingly and shit, and you just kind of leave that shit alone. Like, even with a lot of early, you know, 80s, 90s LA rappers. You know, a lot of rappers are affiliated with their neighborhood. They're from somewhere.

But you didn't get a lot of a lot of guys, you know, saying I'm from such and such and fuck them over there and fuck. It just would have added to a lot of shit. And it was almost like, it wasn't like out of fear or any reason like that. It was just because it was unnecessary

friction to sit there and advertise and offend the flames of some enemy shit or something. And hip hop is such a loud voice That's like if you fucking make these disc songs like that That get real life shit not a disc in the form of traditional hip hop But this now dis Of fuck your dead homies

That shit is real Definitely And you know that's one thing that we've had conversations about recently Which is that you know When you look at the NorCal rap scene There's a shitload of rappers who are basically famous For taking their issues with different people in the streets and just airing it out in records and they can get a couple million views off of

that shit and you know the the internet feeds upon it LA it feels like there's a lot less of that and I think part of it is because there's just such more of like an order amongst street stuff gang related stuff that doesn't really seem to happen as much up north how interested are you in observing that style of rap they call it drill in a lot of the places but Northale's been doing it for so long They don't call it drill. I really don't, in my following of this and in my knowledge of it, I don't really pinpoint it in any area like it's only in Chicago or it's prevalent in the bay, whatever.

I really like, there's a lot of rappers that aren't on our radar who are, you know, they're in the streets. They're there. And they're rapping this shit for their homies against the other homies, whatever. It's like rappers that never get to, you know, awareness. They're not on our radar at all, and they fucking get murdered. And the only reason I know this shit, because I've watched a little crazy-ass shit, like clips on YouTube about rappers that got killed in 2018, 2019, 2020. It's like a little fucking show, like a little show is where it shows

you, you see, like, the rapper song, maybe even the diss song he made about somebody else, and they can tell you a little backstory real quick, and then tell you how he got murdered. YouTube, very good at sort of compiling all this information together. And you watch one of these little clips and you're like, well, I've heard of like, it's like 25 rappers. And you're like, I heard of three of these motherfuckers, but it's 22 hopeful MCs that didn't make it through the fucking year. Just on some street shit, just on, you know, just with the homies, whatever, the same way I came up. But like I said, the wall that was there was keep that street shit, street shit, you know, the music shit was like, it looked on like a positive

thing. Like, we're trying to get one of our homies on so that we get some legitimacy to this fucking thing we got, you know? But you are in the business of working with artists and signing artists and whatnot. If you saw an artist right now and he's getting a million views of video and, you know, he's somebody that wants to work with you, was thinking about signing to you, whatever. How do you feel when you see him talking about smoking somebody's homies or talking about such and such drive-by that happened, yada, yada, like in your mind, is that just too much risk to take on as part of your organization knowing that this guy's a target? I fuck with street dudes, man, and I really don't, I don't judge the quality of your music based on how deep you are in the streets,

whatever. I just think that a lot of that realness that we want from an emcee comes from that lifestyle. Not necessarily being a gangster, but just coming from nothing and turning it into something. That shit is just, it just makes for, like, good writing and good fucking music and good passion and shit. So I don't try to preach to the homies. and I can tell you from experience from just being in the game a long time as you're in the streets

by not by choice just by that's your circumstance that's where you're at and you are a really good writer and a really good rapper and you make beats and you know you got something but you're in the streets you might be participating

on whatever level you're in the streets usually it doesn't work out in the long run if you can't find a way to separate your street life from your music life. If you can't personally, not the homies, not the hood, whatever, just you, if you can't find that balance of where you're supposed to exist,

it usually doesn't really work out. Like you get two, three years into it, guys building a nice career. It takes fucking five, six, seven years to get on. And like just grinding, grinding, like fucking going to college and getting a master's degree, ask most rappers, take about eight years, 10 years to get your shit cracking

from when you dreamed it and when you're living it. So in the meantime, during that process, a guy's getting some really good momentum, and what happens, he gets killed, what happens, he gets locked up, what happens, he gets some kind of fucking situation where along the way you just can't make the fucking journey. And it's a lot of times it's related to your street activity.

So I don't know, man, it's really hard to separate from that. And a lot of cases, I would have to say, my case, and probably a lot of others, there's a little bit of luck in there. A little bit of luck, a little bit of time, and a little bit of right place at the right time. as opposed to wrong place at the wrong time, which it could fuck a, man, that put you way off course. I mean, we have a bizarre expectation for rappers now

where, you know, like I watched the video of King Vaughn being involved in this situation that led to his passing, and it's like, it's a big part of me that was just like, fuck. Like, why would, why had King Vaughn even have to be in this place? Why did he even put himself in that environment? I wish that King Vaughn had just stayed in the mansion, in the Airbnb security. People want to fuck with you.

They can come to you. But that's kind of a crazy thing to expect of rappers that they're going to completely remove themselves from all social situations and being around people. But that is kind of what happens. I was talking with Ben Baller about Dr. Dre and Eminem the other day and about just being at some house party with them back in the day and some crazy shit happening.

And I'm like, you know, once these guys get to a certain level of fame, they just don't be out at a house party. They just, they choose to remove themselves from all risk like that. As a young guy, I was at all. times in a very Oakland, East Oakland potentially violent environment where

the people I'm with, the people we come in contact with the shit, it just was some young wild shit. And before we would go to an event, so at first I'm just a little homie, I'm just trying to get on the mic and bust rhymes. Then I start popping, and the homies,

everybody was pretty much trying to do some street shit. And the homies, you know, a couple of, the homies is like smart. They're like, look, this shit getting on with you. We need to make sure you keep doing this. Just like we got a homie who looks like he's going to NBA. Your gangster ass will try so hard to keep him legit because it's a part of you.

And the same thing goes with any sport or even academics. You got a little smart kid and he's getting an academic scholarship and you're like, bro, stay on course. We need you to be a lawyer. You know what I mean? And you try so hard to get the one homie out. That's how it was with me. And I just think that in those,

situations because you said the first thing you thought was why was he why was he there why didn't he stay home like we we out here this what we do we're not going I'm not staying fucking home but before we would go to an event and we knowing we got straps with us it's gonna be so many other motherfuckers are straps my fuckers gonna have more straps in a motherfucking car but motherfucker gonna try to sneak as many as they can in and as you just know you just have to assume they're in here they're out there it's a lot of fucking firepower where we going and where we're at

So my guys will always, like, come to the place with a plan. The plan is we're going to try to get this in there just like this, just how we're going to do it. All night, I want y'all to, when we get the things in, we got to get at least two things in, and one of y'all stand on short and just kind of shadow him with the thing. The other one, you know how we move around. The other one's going to be in such and such car. When we get there, you go off this way and kind of like,

act like you're not with us and just kind of watch the crew. You, if anything, jumps off immediately run to the, don't even fucking look. You go to the car. Don't fight. Go to the car. Get more things. Take whoever with you. As soon as it jump off, you two walk short the fuck that way, go to that car.

We think about the shit before we get to the thing. Wow. And we get up in there and it's like, if we're not involved, everybody look for each other, back up to the wall, you know, and just kind of like see who it is and then react. All kind of shit. It's like multiple plans, and we're not planning this shit to be the baddest motherfuckers in the world. We're just planning shit to get home. This is all like, bro, we're going into this shit.

It's going to be wild. We all coming home. So that's interesting that you guys are even paying that much attention at that time to the risk, because I feel like a lot of people just go to the club, guns on him. We had a couple of homies in the crew that was like, hey, y'all, we're about to, you know, let's get home. Right. And I always would say that shit. We go far or we go a few or we go many are like, let's get everybody home.

And that was just a thing, bro. It wasn't even about, let's beat the fuck out of these motherfuckers. It was like, we're going home. So you're going to, of course you're going in to win, whatever the fuck situation is. But getting home is very fucking important, not leaving somebody on the fucking ground. Or it just was a thing you've got to think through. And I've been saying this shit lately because it's bothering me. I keep saying to the rappers and their homies protect the bag, the legitimate bag.

I mean, you're going to protect all the bags. But the legitimate one, keep that motherfucker. that shit opens up doors and takes you places and other little homies that's smart in the hood they might get on and be able to work with the homie and the legitimate hustle, you know what I'm saying? Whatever the fuck, like think that shit through. That juice card that I don't want to say no names,

you know, so-and-so rapper, that juice card that he got to get in the fucking Grammys and the goddamn, you know, private jets and the VIP parties, that's a fun thing to live. We don't want that motherfucker sitting in jail for three years come out may not even be hot when he comes home. We don't want that motherfucker dead at a funeral. Right.

We want that motherfucker like the president of USA with a fucking secret service detail. But did it occur to you back then just of how fucked up it was that you had made it, you'd become successful at the thing that you had wanted to always do and then all of a sudden you're still in these environments where you just are constantly dealing with this threat of violence?

It's a choice. Yeah. And I feel like a lot of people think back a lot of people get to that point where you come from that and you get to a certain level and you get the far as fuck the way as you can from that shit some people do that like if you become a movie star you get gated

gated house you get fucking know it could be out of necessity for like protection and survival but it could be just because that's what you strive for other motherfuckers no matter what level they get to they never stop going back to where they came from they never leave the people that were in there when they were not big. You know what I'm saying? You keep those lifelong friends.

I'm one of those people with the lifelong friends. But you've got to know how to navigate the waters, man. You can't. I never jumped on a jet and my homies. We're like going to do some legitimate shit on the jet and the motherfuckers is doing crime, like big time smuggling in some shit while we're doing legitimate shit. We're not mixing that shit, man.

We're not. We're not. We're protecting the bag. Yeah, no, I hear it. But I mean, you know what? The biggest difference nowadays is that, that back in the day, if an artist wanted to, you know, say something provocative about some street shit, you had the media companies, you know, you had the source who were going to kind of stand in the way of whatever you wanted to say.

You had the label, which is maybe a certain point going to say, like, no, we don't want you to say this on your record. Now everybody is their own media company. Everybody can hop on Instagram Live and say whatever the fuck they want. And that just, like, causes the pace of these beefs to increase so much. and it also just allows there to be no like you see rappers post stuff all the time and then delete it right away and that's understandable. Also added to that is the

the true factor of being vouched for or having to just you can't you can't really get away with it. They're not really going to elevate you talking to shit you're talking if there's not some kind of chatter out there that's really him. He'd do that shit so it's a lot of

I'm going to prove to you I'm that guy and in the subject of the song is sort of kind of gangster criminal at nature and you say you got to prove this shit you know what I'm saying like before okay let's just take me for example I have not pimped on a lot of holes in my life I'm from Oakland California I talk a lot of pimped shit

from day one a lot of pimped homies a lot of pimped environment a lot of real shit the shit I say is really real shit but every too short story I ever told you was not a too short story it might have been about my homie it might have been about some legendary shit. It might have been a true story that was dressed up a little bit. It just was music. And it was pimp music. So I wasn't held accountable if out of a 25-year career, I was actually pimping on holes for two years. And the other 23, I was not. And I was hanging around pimps who really were. They were not going, get you a fake ass away from me. You ain't no real pimp. It was like, I'm representing the culture.

and I don't think that that same thing could happen right now because you've got to like be it. You know what I mean? They'd be like that too straight. You know, fucking pimper or some shit like that. And it would make the music not valid because I'm not at the same time incriminating myself saying I'm pimping and pandering and human trafficking and shit in a song

and then actually doing it at the same time where I got to go to prison to prove myself. Like, you know what I'm saying? And I can think of that. I can think of a rapper. who are like coming out right now who talk a lot of crazy ass gangster shit and are quite obviously like not about it

and it's like the audience is very, very good at picking it out because they can fucking tell when somebody ain't really with shit. But these criminal incriminating interviews are I think now too. Right. The fuck, yeah. You think that's a problem? I think it's an individual problem

that you are proud to prove to social media that you are really the guy that you're describing. You have to prove to these mothers. You don't have to prove nothing to nobody ever. You could be the richest motherfucker who dressed like a bum every day and when they call you bum

who cares? The fuck yo, you're like, motherfucker. I drive a raggedy-ass car and dress raggedy every day and go home to the fly-as fucking house. That's the life I want to live. And I actually know somebody who does that and never seen the motherfucker anything other than happy. Drive around a beat-up ass truck

regular ass fucking clothes, house fly as fuck and just that's what matters. Do you ever think about how nice it would be to just have the money and not the fans? I think about what if that was more popular because I think what happened to me was I was famous and broke I was street famous from fucking selling tapes in the streets and I hadn't even got my weight up to where I could get my first car yet

and I was too sure it was famous I was too sure it was so fucking famous that most of the time when somebody said that's too sure somebody else said no it's not like that's how fucking famous I was I'm like and I accepted the fan of it. that I was not as popular as too short, but I am him. Right.

And I tried to catch up with that shit with the, you know, somewhere in life. That's crazy that that used to be a thing that could happen, that a rapper's identity could be so much bigger than them. Like, now it's kind of tied, like you couldn't really. Because it's social media. You got the pictures and shit, but it wasn't, I had no fucking Instagram. Right. No shit.

We all know people, though, or people who like seem like they're doing pretty well for themselves and they're low-key. But that's the interesting thing about rap is that that's not really celebrated. Whereas if you were to look at like, you know, people in the political world, the corporate world, etc., is very, very, you know, they're not as thirsty for fame as we've kind of been taught as normal. Yeah, they're not thirsty for bragging about wealth either. Right. You know what I mean? It's like they just acquire it and kind of just keep on doing the things you want to do in your life.

So I think that you've got to get a little controversial in your take on what this is. mine, I look at mine in a tribal kind of way. Like, fucking, I think back to like some shit where I'm a fucking tribe member in an African tribe long before

Africans were any kind of, you know, slaves or anything. And in my natural culture, I want to get a bunch of fucking tattoos, a bunch of fucking piercings. And each time I get one of these markings or one of these things is because I did something to,

something more fucking brave or something, you know, where I earned it. And then I start acquiring things like property, like goats and shit. And I'm trying to like, you know, the chief of the tribe has the fucking baddest, fucking finest daughter.

Same thing in a fucking Native American kind of setting. And I'm trying to like, you know, work my way up to be a chief or be a fucking leader in the tribe. And I step to the chief and I'm like, I want your daughter. You know what I'm saying? Well, who am I at that time?

fucking, I got to come in that motherfucker looking like some shit with some shit, I got to be fly. So I'm working to be flyered in all you motherfuckers to get status. And I just think that that shit never went away. Like that showing off of getting more tribal tats or getting more fucking piercings or whatever

the fuck a thing you do to your fucking ears or your mouth or your nose. Just some shit that puts you above. You earn it and you wear it as a badge of honor. I think that's embedded in the DNA of a lot of what hip hop is and a lot of what inner city culture is you're like i'm about to get a

Cadillac and put all the fucking fringes on that motherfucker everything gold everything fucking plush and just let everybody see it's just it's culturally but i think the ultimate aspiration is to be so clearly successful at what you do that you don't really need to flex or stunt and that's kind of a crazy thing about being the position you're in you're too short it's like your name just carries weight because of the things you've done throughout your life to the point where you having a new Gucci sweatsuit every day is just, it doesn't really matter. It might be cool.

But when I was young, money, we've rushed and bought all-go jury. Like, you can't get, you got to have diamonds on that shit. Okay, give me all fucking diamonds. And that fake-ass shit is fake. You got to get like some name branch. Give me all Rolex shit. You know what I mean? Went from a fucking Cadillac.

to a goddamn BMW to a motherfucking Mercedes, you know? Like, like, and, you know what I'm saying? Like, you just stereotypically go through that phase, and I really, I don't knock anybody. I don't care who the fuck you are, but a young rapper especially, I do not knock you for earning that shit and then flossing that shit. It's sort of like a fucking right of passage that you got to do,

but, you know, nobody's really going to tell you when you're young. That's a big fucking mistake. It's too much fucking fun. You know what I mean? But later on, you figure it out. If you get a long career, you got time to work it out. If it's just a flyby career, you're going to look in the driveway and see that fucking beat-down four-year-old Mercedes and the fucking, you know, everything getting old and the chicks getting... I can think of an artist who was popping about maybe four years ago who got in advance from a very famous rapper.

And I believe spent it all in one day in one trip to the mall at the Gucci store and the jewelry shop. And never got another bag. Within, you know, a month, he's completely broke. And within a year, I'm hearing stories about him doing, you know, industry robberies, like robbing cameraman, you know, like taking the cameraman's fucking shit. Which is a pretty, that's a pretty barbaric crime, if you ask me, because the cameraman obviously ain't about shit. He did not come here ready to defend himself. and that's that's that's that's grimy man it's not it's not

it's not grimy if you took the cameraman shit to shoot videos and try to get yourself back in the game because you just didn't have a budget anymore to shoot videos and you needed that shit that's that's necessity but if you took it to just sell the shit and get some pocket chains that's pretty grimy yeah and the crazy thing about the situation I'm referring to

and hopefully nobody knows what I'm talking about but that another rapper his video was still on the camera. So then he had to negotiate with the other rapper who took it in order to get his own video off of the camera. I'm not sure if it ever worked out. The only thing that would make that story better if there was like some opioids involved.

That is certainly a possibility. If he throws some opioids in there, I'm like, I love this story. And that there is a problem with me also. What, you have an opiate problem? No. I did not have that problem. I was schooled by pimps at a young age. who told me don't go that route, and it comes in many forms, but it's never, never go that route.

And also, you know, if you look at rock and roll, it seems to have some sort of creative thing that makes genius in music. I don't know if it's playing a large part of music right now, but there's something in that thing that I stayed away from and staying away from forever, but, you know, to each his own. Staying away from opies. The reason why I say it's a problem is the overdoses in the mixture and the not learning how to do your drugs. Right. But these days it's infinitely harder because you're just going to get served some fentanyl and you're going to be immediately ingesting like a hundred times worse.

I said knowing how to do your drugs is knowing your fucking drug dealer. You know what I mean? Like knowing how to get what from who and it be the real shit. So, you know, I was, I'm a connoisseur over the years, not so much these days, but over the years a connoisseur of intoxication. And I've really, the one thing I wanted to try to never, got to fucking try was DMT. I really wanted to take that route. I bought it. I went and did the whole research on how to administer who you get, what you do,

and I just never took the leap. I bought it for, not for intoxicating purposes. I wanted to see where it took you. You know, because the experiences that people describe, I wanted to fucking see where it took me. But I didn't do it. Still open for it, but at the same time I hadn't done it yet. But opioids,

man, I'm enjoying life too much to mix that in the other shit I'm doing. I don't think it's going to mix. Yeah, if I took a Xanax right now, I'm going to be tearing up Popeyes. I'm going to be buying multiple pints of ice cream. Like, it'll ruin my life in various ways. But that's at least one of them. I wonder, do people who first indulge in these, you know, these name fucking, the sipping syrup and all this shit, do people before they indulge for the first time, do they really know that they're like indulging in heroin's first cousin? or kids or whatever the fuck, like heroin's family, you know? I think most people, like, you go through a phase in your life where you're just taking drugs, but you can't really afford a lot of drugs.

And that's when it really becomes a problem is when all of a sudden you hit a lick or you become a rapper or something goes well for yourself. And now you can afford, you can afford infinity drugs and you just have no, like, throttling mechanism to stop you from taking that to its logical conclusion. Once you start sipping syrup, the kicking the habit of it is very similar to trying to get out of heroin. Like, it's got to get fucking sick and go through shit. And it's like, it's the same shit, man. The supply and demand with Lean is so bizarre these days because people just are charging such insane amounts because it's so hard to get. But it's actually a very

low-level opiate. And if you are willing to, you know, shoot up heroin, you could get the exact same effect and a much, much lower price point, which again, I wouldn't recommend anybody do. But it just says a lot about the fact that lean is such a designer drug, that that image, that that taste is such a big part of it. My experience, my bad experience was a motorcycle crash, fucked up my big toe enough to where I needed surgery,

had the surgery, and they gave me the oxy coating, what is it, oxies, whatever the fuck. They gave me this shit. And the first night, after the surgery, it was one of those surgery, you get the surgery and go home the same day. So the first night, I wake up at like, fucking four or five in the morning and it's my toe whatever happened at the surgery whatever

medication wore off and this motherfucker feels like they're inside my toe digging it out i rush and grab those pain killers take one go to sleep wake up same thing when i wake up toe is killing me so i wake up like the next afternoon and its toe's killing me so i take the pill and i'm like blink of an eye is 7 p.m and i fucking um same thing i take the pill and i take the pill again blink of her eyes like two in the morning. I'm like, what the fuck? Like, I'm like, from the first time I did it in the middle of the night to, like, it's going by that fucking fast.

So I did this shit for one day. And I'm like, this ain't cool. Like, I'm literally in pain from a surgery. And I go, I can't take this shit. And I fucking just, I mean, I can't take these pills. I could take the fucking pain. I just fucking rode this shit out, man. And I gave him pills to somebody else.

I couldn't fucking do that. And I don't know what that. shit does you, but to me, if you flash and three, four hours go by and you're like, what the fuck am I? What the fuck have I been doing? I don't want that goddamn drug. But at least you had that instinct.

You know, there's a lot of people... Get hooked. Yeah, you take a Xanax one time. It feels good. You're like, well, why would I not keep doing this every day? But a lot of young people don't have the life experience to have known somebody who's a fucking zombie from that shit. Man. So, yeah, that's just

my problem is not the experience of it or the way it makes you feel you being in control of it and handling. It's just the mixing and the OD, man. And that added to, like, I know it's a very morbid conversation we're having, but added to the fucking violence that's in hip-hop. That shit is depressing, man. It's depressing because we mourn the fuck out of Biggie and Tupac for so fucking long.

We still ain't stopped mourning the motherfuckers. And outside of continuously holding up their legacy, we're like deep inside you, you would have got three biggie, three more Biggie albums or five more two-pac movies and a couple more albums. Like you just wonder all the time, what would that have been? And this is like, I can't even fucking mourn enough for all the rappers. We lose all the talent that's dying young.

It's too much to keep in the, you know, it's too much to just fucking process, man. Like we lose a lot of what is. When Pock and Biggie died, I was fairly young, but I was here about how the industry really reacted. really reacted in a very strong way where all of a sudden, you know, they weren't at, the labels weren't as eager to put as much violent content on records. All of a sudden you couldn't have a gun on a magazine or an album cover or anything like that, which was previously sort of normal. And now it feels like, you know, we've lost a ton of rappers even in the last year.

And it's, you know, it feels like people are too numb to it to even try to really initiate some sort of change and say, hey, all this violent shit isn't cool, all this, whatever isn't cool. Hey, 40 water in the building. How you feeling, man? Oh, I forgot you had to no jumper. Yeah, yeah. What's up, bro? Oh, I was going to tell you, okay, when you're getting there, just let me know,

because I got to have Mickey's sitting in the session found the other part to the... About hour. It's good. My bad, man. Sorry about that. Amazing. So that's a very, very real friendship for you guys. Did it get a little stronger through the versus battle?

It's always been like this. Same shit, man. Same shit. way back. We weren't even, long before we ever made a song together, it was the same friendship. Right. Like, that's how we got to the point we made a song. Some crazy shit happened. And the radio

station wanted us to, like, hate each other. Like, man, let's make music. Fuck then. It's got to be rough to follow up on versus the Gucci and GZ one, which obviously, like, a certain percentage of people are just going to tune in because they know that these guys really had issues. With you and 40, it's like, people know that you guys are guys

that get along. It was easy what we did, man, because we're like, what would you do? What would you do? man, I wouldn't go in there battling out going that motherfucker. We looked at verses. We looked at every versus and said, we studied the shit. What did they all do? Everybody went in there with a strategic plan to win.

We like, nobody ever just stopped and just said, fucking do a show. We jacked the platform and put on the fucking concert in the middle of the fucking Christmas vacation. Ain't nobody going no goddamn where. And we also made it educational. We made it fun as fuck. And we like,

we just used the platform to do it, area style like what the fuck what would you know I don't expect anybody else to do what we did with that platform because I don't think that's really what it's for but if you give it to E40 and two show and say do what y'all want to do that's that's what you get was there was there else you could have imagined yourself being up there with or was 40 just the only logical choice yeah not it wasn't it worked anybody else I would have probably had to do the so-called battle for a man but we did we had a fucking ball like literally and it could go back and watch it again.

I promise you. Look at the fucking show. We were battling. It was definitely a fucking battle. But it wasn't like we give a fuck. Who cares what you say, who won? Or I don't give a fuck if I won or because we like battling like almost like team members against each other. But yeah, definitely we was trying to outshine each other.

Like it wasn't automatic. Right. But like, you know, I listened to the Joe Button podcast when they talked about it. and they're sort of going back and forth, song by song, trying to figure out who won each round. Two short an E40? Yeah. Wow.

Well, I've heard them do that about a lot of battles. I'm not sure how in-depth they went with you guys and shit. I never heard anybody analyze ours. I would love to hear that. But that's interesting, like, how much do you care about, like, when you're going into that? How much do you care about, like, winning or anything like that? Like, are you going to play a son that you don't particularly care about

because you feel like the audience is going to respond a little bit better? Man, I'm the guy who loves social media negative comments about me. me. I love this shit because the shit is mostly funny and whether it's true or not, it's just entertainment. It's like, that shit is amazing.

I love I love like just going to like Instagram or something and like they sit. There's like a picture of this cute baby and it's like comment one. That's a cute baby. Comment two. Oh look at that little outfit. Comment three.

Like hair's cute. Comment four. That baby got funny. And then from that point, it goes about three more comments about the baby. And then it goes, fuck you. You probably support Trump. And I love that shit, man. I love it. Yeah.

I have a three-month-old now all of a sudden. And that has been a weird thing to get used to is like, oh, I'm going to have to block some, you know, maybe a dozen people every time I post my baby because somebody's going to feel the need to try to get some jokes off. That feels weird. But I don't know, man. You kind of, if you got, if you have it in you. It's entertainment. These motherfuckers make these comments and they have like three followers. And it's like some profile they made up this morning just to get online and talk bad about people.

I love it. I think it's a stupid-ass way to use the platform with this fucking hate shit and this fucking criticism, judgmental shit is dumb as fuck. But, you know, that's what we're doing right now. Just don't be the guy because it's a stereotypical older dude thing to just really get in there and just be arguing with everybody who has anything. Not me. Yeah, I know you don't do it, but that's like,

there's certain people in the game who do that way too much. And I'm like, bro, you are elevating your trolls so much. Even if you agree with them, they're still going to massacre you. Right. But it's just by elevating your trolls to the point of, like, thinking that they're deserving of a response, that's just a, it's not a good standard to set. Yep.

You can't win. What's the saying that can't beat the internet? Yeah. As soon as you go against one person, it's you against the whole internet. Mm-hmm. Um, hey, another interesting thing in life right now. Yeah.

The comments. Love it. That's a fact. What? So from your perspective, when you do something like the versus battle, you also have to figure out how you're going to, you know, obviously you get a check, but you're going to figure out how to monetize it in the long run. So then you and 40 put out another album together.

Was that kind of an immediate thought? It was like, all right, we're going to put out something to monetize this. We thought about the fact of doing that separately. And we caught one. when that each one of us was doing it. He's like, oh, you're dropping an album? He was dropping his the night before. I was going to drop mine the day of. And he's like, yeah, a night before, blah, blah. I'm like, that's a damn good idea.

Dropping the night before. And then it was like, thought about it. Two days, one by, a couple days and by it. Like, hey, you know, it'd be cool. If we drop it on the same day, we should hire a PR and have them work both projects at the same time. Like, yeah, good-ass idea. And go half on the PR instead of like, you buy yours, I buy mine. And then called back a couple days later It was like You know

So I don't know Everybody in the team members I don't know Somebody's like Well damn we might as well just bundle the albums together Hey hey That's a damn good idea too You know shit

It was not anything Pre-plan or shit It just kind of like made sense Right Was it odd I feel like a lot of people Might have You know

Younger fans and stuff They might have been Encountering the two short catalog For the first time You encounter much of that of like sort of people seeing you with their fresh brand new eyes at all? I know the word that I got is because quarantine, you know, families at the house, a lot of mothers kind of, I don't want to say freaked out their kids, but kind of like, you know, know the words

to two short songs and two short songs are very, an E40 songs too, and moms and dads kind of showed a different side to their kids. They're like, didn't know that was you, parents. And they you can't hold back. If you're like a true fan, you can't hold back. And, you know, hey, your mama used to be young one day, man. You kind of accept that she was about that life. If I found out today that my girl knew the words to multiple two short albums, I would be like, what were you doing at that point in your life that this was, you know,

because sometimes you'll see like a girl who's clearly a stripper in public, and she's singing along to these songs. And you're like, oh, yes, sis. I know you're a stripper because you know the words to all these songs. but not like some fucking dental hygiene assistant fucking I got like a lot of

professional female fans too fucking like doctors and lawyers who just into that shit it's a it comes from maybe like high school or college or something and then it goes to you're in the professional world

but in your car you're always by yourself I know newscasters all kinds of motherfuckers and like when I get in that car and this is a normal thing with with fucking I hate to call it Ratchet Hip Hop, but I can't find a word right now that just describes it that you would automatically get it because hip hop that makes you act ratchet.

That shit is popular in like private worlds of like, I'm home alone. I'm in my car by myself. That shit is fucking popular. And you get to the club on some random night and you notice like some chick who's not supposed to know knows all the fucking words, all the Ratchet songs. That's her in the car life. That's her traffic jam life.

That's our shower life. That makes sense. No, that was one thing I got from watching our last interview was that you really talked a lot about how there's that value to stay in in the clubs, strip clubs, how it will really keep you in touch with, you know, what the people want to hear musically, what people are interested in hearing. And, you know, automatically just off being older and having a kid now, I haven't been going out as much, but also for the past year,

it's basically been very, very few opportunities to leave the house, at least if you want to be safe. How has that affected you? And do you feel a little bit more out of the loop? Last summer, I did a lot of mixing and mingling, and I, you know, kept as much normalcy going on, which was up until that second wave, it wasn't as much frowned upon.

You know, like people were like, oh, you have mixing in minglinglingling. Are you tripping? You tripping as quarantine. Like, a lot of motherfuckers is like, I'm still out there. I was still out there. If you live in Texas or Atlanta,

It didn't really seem like anything changed. So then when the second wave hit, which I really, in my world, it really hit home, like, around Thanksgiving. I did my little shit, and it was just seeming like the world just got so fucking small with things to do and places to go. And people who weren't all the way goddamn, you know, just fully quarantining. I was like, fuck it, man. I just fell back. And from, like, Thanksgiving up until shit, yesterday. Like literally yesterday

It was the first time I really just went somewhere And just where people was at and shit I just went into work mode Man it's so easy for me To go into work mode Even when it's not a fucking pandemic And just go for the next 60 days I'm really just going to do things

And work related just because I know when you put in that kind of work In the trenches it pays off later So if I fucking like Just spent the whole pandemic year in the trenches fucking making all kind of shit I could go have a fun summer next year because I did the fucking work I can probably take off

three months and just just kick it I've been working like that my whole life I put in like 90 days or like some specific projects and I take 30 days of like I'm gonna be like a rock star and like I might call you back three hours later I might not show up for my obligation or just I just get out there and rock start out

and then I get back on the focus right do you feel like you're happier when you're working your ass off though because I'm the type of person I go on vacation and I enjoy it and it feels like oh my God I feel the stress leaving my body but that at the same time I feel like I'm more at home when I'm working my ass off and really grinding towards something I don't even know a vacation is bro like I never I never go anywhere exotic or vacationing unless it's attached to a bag like work like I just I don't know it's always work with me you got lay on the beach just for a couple days man I know you book a fucking show or engagement or

event on fucking Saturday, Sunday, and you leave on Wednesday if it's the right city. Well, you pay for the whole thing and, I mean, obviously that's convenient. If you got to negotiate as much as possible that lingers, whatever, but what I tend to do is

I give myself really good excuses, so I'm doing a show. Let's just pick Miami. I do a show in Miami on a Saturday and I host a party on Tuesday. So I have to stay a few days. So you get to relax, you get the multiple bags.

Yeah, and I'm like, we're going to add, we're going to do the, we're going to consider this as Tuesday pay for the trip and Saturday is just take home money. That's how we look at it. It makes sense. One more question I wanted to ask about the battle of 40, though, is how do you feel like you guys as rap styles match up? Because when watching the battle, it is, it stands out so much that you very much have like a more concrete rap style and his rap style is so fucking meandering and all over the place and dip it and dive it. and all over the beat. Like, what are your thoughts on how well you guys mixed together? And does he affect you if you're recording together?

Have you guys recorded together in some memory? We've recorded a lot of songs recently. We've recorded a lot of songs over years. We recorded a double album together like 10 years ago, nine years ago, I don't know, something like that. And dozens of songs. We can't even get together. I don't think anybody could tell you how many songs too short

in E40 recorded together. But the thing is, we don't, We don't, we do, we critique each other if we're doing a song together or even not together. I might call and hear something like, man, let's put that like that like that, like giving each other like pointers that you might or might not do. But when we're in the studio together, we're trying to make a dope-ass song. So sometimes it could be the wording, the way you phrased it, the way you delivered it. I don't know, the ton of your voice. And we just kind of like make suggestions to each other because I trust it's just.

vice versa and it makes the song better but the fact that the flow is so different doesn't really matter because every time we work on something there is this one undeniable goal that's going down it's gonna be a dope song that's we just that's automatic but you have to spit game in the in the definition of Bay Area game you got to spit game and then it's got to make sense. So if he does these metaphors and tell you something, he still is mandatory

that he has to bring it around. And it can't just be like a line for line slick shit to say. It actually has to go with the hook and the title and it got to make sense in the E40 way and then it got to make sense in a too short way, which mine is a little more basic delivery. Get the

game in detail. Very specific to not wandering off of the game or making it so that you can't understand what I'm saying. And his is like almost like, like I'm shooting you with a nine millimeter at point blank range. He's fucking just like hitting you with like some fully automatic Oozie that's just like

and it's sporadically fucking fucking shooting your earlobe and your neck and you're fucking like it's, you know what I'm saying? Either way we're going to kill you. Definitely. But yeah, when when you guys, okay, so is that something? that sort of bothers you a little bit about other rappers is that in the whole era that we're in where nobody's really writing their verses out and everybody's punching in that there's this lack of cohesion in verses that can sometimes be really grating if you're a rap fan who sort of wants

each verse to to make sense in a way and if somebody's saying like hey i just sprayed up your block and i fucked your bitch and i live on the moon and it's just like and i'm high yeah and i'm high for no reason also i'm high it's like i wish that there was a theme or something some kind of cohesion. Okay, so that rewinds back to what we said

earlier. You're describing your hip hop. And as long as you keep wanting your hip hop, you leave a whole open thing

for all this other shit that who gives a fuck about what your hip hop is. And if they like my version, super,

super fuck you. So, um, I like the shit that if you can make some stupid-ass shit work,

and I can call a stupid shit because that's my opinion. Man, that shit. is dope. Like it's, let's put, let's put it in this perspective. All right, all of us in this room go to the studio. Who the fuck in this room can make a hit record? I would assume mostly just you.

And to the people who know how to make a hit, I ask you, how easy is it to make a hit record? Because for some of us, it's easy as fuck. But for some of y'all, you're sitting that motherfucker all day looking at the instruments and the machines and you ain't, you ain't going to do shit. So I say that to respect the craft, man, respect the craft. If you got a fucking record, because I make really good music. I never, you know, my prime is past, but a billion streams is dope as fuck.

So you're going to judge somebody who can get a billion fucking streams, 500 million fucking streams, and say, man, that shit's just whack. It's not whack. There's something in there. There are some ingredients that that person figured out how to cook up

and touch people emotionally and make them like this fucking song. You're looking for the words, something else is in there. There's something else cooking in there that's better than the words. And that's that kind of hip-hop. But I feel like we went through an era where we kind of saw so much SoundCloud rap that didn't really have a lot to say. And then there was like a reaction to that where all of a sudden people seemed very turned off to people having no lyrical content.

All of a sudden, the pendulum sort of swings back to people wanting to hear a little bit more in detail and wanted to make a little more sense. I'm never going to forget this quote. I don't know which rapper said. it was a female rapper and she was being interviewed. It was a video clip and she said, I don't like smart rap. I don't even want to hear all that shit, smart rap. I get it.

She's like, I want to listen to music. I don't feel like fucking going to school while I listen to music to fucking decipher that slick-ass metaphor. Some people don't. You might just want to fucking bounce to this shit and fucking have some rap rhythmic fucking, you know, chants going on. Fuck what the fuck is saying.

I like a lot of. songs that I really don't give a fuck what they're saying. I like a lot of songs that I never even stop to figure out what it's saying. Right. Like Young Thug in particular. Like, Young Thug has songs that you can figure out the shit he's saying. But some of that shit, some of them phrases,

I don't give what he's saying. That's my shit. Right. And then somebody else goes, they know every word. I'm like, I don't care that you know, I don't know the words of two short songs. Shit. And you know, it sounds just rap either because when I think about it, my parents like, turned me on a shillot rock music when I was young. That you don't know what the fucking words are?

I'll play somebody, a old ass song. But you make your own words up and this shit is dope. Yes. And that is a really crazy thing to go through. When you look up the words to old rock songs, and you're like, Jesus Christ, I had no idea what this was about. Yeah, you were saying something about a butterfly and they was talking about fucking getting hell of high, like some other way of the phrase that was popular then. It's, um, like I'm saying, man, keep your hip hop in your box. be open to what's not in your box you know don't take the judge out of it I know you might be in the business of judging

I don't know I don't know a little bit but the business of judging is is what social media is like okay show me what you got now I'm going to critique you I don't like the way you pat that together I don't like the way you want you know and I'm in that whole celebrating shit

you know I look at some shit I look at a fucked up clip and find what's dope about it not what's shitty about it That's just me. And the whole thing, too, though, is that if you want to last in the music industry, you have to accept at a certain point that the more you know, it kind of like stops your ability to judge what's hot. Because if you have 30 years of experience of listening to rap, you might have too

analytical of a framework when you first hear a new song that's popular. And you might think, it sounds exactly like young thug and this beat that cadence. It sounds exactly like this guy I heard 10 years ago, et cetera. And that right there is oftentimes. kind of useless in terms of grading how commercially successful a song could be. Right, right, right. There's no gauge in logic. There is not. It's kind of like being, you know, it's easy to be happy when you don't know shit. And like when a 12-year-old hears a rap song and they love it so much that they want to listen to it every day a hundred times, you shouldn't take that

lightly. They know what they like. And the chances are that their ears are a lot like a lot of their appears. And then when they're through it, the song like a year and a half later, it's done, here we go. That's my jam. Yeah. That's a fact. I mean, do you ever think about why rap doesn't always seem eager to let its legends, it doesn't seem interested in allowing its legends to really prosper in the long term, which is very different from, you know, in rock music, where you're just, you're used to the Rolling Stones being very significant, even into their 70s. And sometimes it feels like rap is almost set up to kind of close the door on our legends.

It's like the streets. You know, a street legend is a story to tell, a street legend there, but you've got to get the fuck off this corner because new motherfuckers is taking over and a lot of people hang out in that corner for a long time. They could push that motherfucker until your 30s or 40s, but you don't see a lot of motherfuckers

active on the corner in their 50s, you know what I'm saying? There is an expiration date. And hip hop keeps trying to push that expiration date. and that expiration date was 30 when I was 30 there was like old ass rapper 30 you know I turned 30 in 1996 in 1996

30 was like damn right fucking you don't keep rapping 30s like it was never a thing and you had a lot of your biggest career moments after that I've been on that wave every since and then it when I hit 40 and it was like you know the Jay Zs and all then was approaching that time and it was supposed to be like

well 40 ain't going to happen and a whole lot of 40 happened a whole lot of 40 happened. A whole lot of 40-year-old rapping happened. And, you know, I'm here now, and I'm really close. I'm like 55 in fucking, like,

a couple months, few months, April. 50 fucking 5. And I'm like, since I was 15, I started rap when I was 14. I started making money off rap when I was 15. So in a couple of months, it would be a solid 40 years of rap, being a rapper, paying me.

And never having to go get a job. nowhere and never just shit it all the money came from being a rapper and I'm not really in my career right now trying to get a hit record I'm not trying to do any specific thing except extend this story of I got my biggest hit record when I was 40 I had already had like 10 fucking 15 golden platinum albums and been on another the fucking dozens of other people's gold and platinum albums when I made my biggest record. I was at a point where they're like, oh, that career

was over, they had already ended my career supposedly two times before and I'm like, no, I'm still going. And now it's like in the legacy rapper status, a legacy artist is a person who, an artist

who reaches a certain level of, I never have to have a record on a radio in rotation. I don't have to release album all year around people are going to call me and ask me to do things that are going to make me a lot of fucking money because of my legacy. So, Rita Franklin

ain't got to go get no day job. She ain't made a record in 20 fucking years, but her phone fucking keeps ringing, and she keeps getting that bad because she's a legacy artist. And there are tons of them out there. So when you reach that status, in hip-hop, it's an infancy thing for, like, hip-hop.

It's not a lot of, if it was a group of legacy rappers hanging out together. There's not a lot of rappers who just can live on your legacy. We got dozens, but it's not a lot. Dozens, but it's not a lot. And I'm hoping that the bigger this thing grows that artists strive for that status.

And that means that you make a statement like, man, I hear 25. I ain't rapping no more. I'm going to be up out of this shouldn't be rich. That's cool. If you can do that shit, that's cool. But in the world of a person who loves making music, I didn't get in music to get pussy I didn't get music to get rich

I was making music when I wasn't fucking a lot of bitches and when I wasn't getting a lot of money. I was making music God and know how to do it and I love doing it so that's the reason why I continue to do it and if I could just make that be a thing or help make that be a thing that

rap is like the fucking blues it's like fucking jazz I could be 77 motherfucking years old blowing my saxophone I mean it's just it's the same thing It's a craft. It's not purely a way to get rich. And there's so many people who can't separate the idea of being a rapper and someone just having this hairbrain scheme to make a lot of money.

Like to a lot of people, these have to be the same thing. Yeah, because imagine this. If you're a rapper and you found a way in your craft to make 50,000, 75,000, 100,000 a year, can't really get past that. But God damn it, the wife, the kids, the home, everything's stable. and you're doing it off hip hop. It's so many people. It's rappers who have international followings who aren't as popular

in the States. They get on that fucking plane and go to fucking France and Japan and Amsterdam and everywhere and get that bag and come back home and they live really good lives off hip-hop. So the judging shit, man, it's just the judging shit. You're telling me I'm an OG, I'm telling you

you young and whack, it's just judging. It's too judgmental. And you're not understanding that. This fucking industry is a multi-billion dollar industry. It's so much room in there to not be a rapper and make a fucking life off hip hop. You could be a producer. You could be a fucking manager. You could be the guy at the label.

You could be a middleman. All you do all day is middleman deals with rappers and other people and fucking live a life. Like hip hop is big. You can middleman fucking merchandising deals and licensing deals if you even know what the fuck that is and just get money all day. day just because you know rappers. I know a little guy right now who all he does is get in the way of rappers in their world and make the shit comfortable and better than what they would do and make the video shoot

or the fucking flight or whatever, just make it better. And he's fucking bawling because we don't really feel like doing that shit. Definitely. Yeah, there's so many different paths that you can potentially take. But, you know, one example that kind of comes to mind is when I think about Ducey J having so much involvement with Meg the Stallion's career and doing beats for her and being all up in her shit and everything. And I'm like, that's, that's amazing that he's at this stage in his career. And he can really, like, he actually put out an amazing album a couple months ago, too, but he can really, like,

aid and abet her in her career in a very genuine way that, like, adds some of the credentials that he has from all the years that he was making music. And, you know, there are so many different ways that you can sort of add value to someone else's situation. Yeah, you know, I commend the Juicy J's Fat Joe's, the JZ's, the people who, you know, Puff Daddy, I'm naming OG hip-hop artist, you know, fucking Bust of Rhine, Snoop Dog, E-40, motherfuckers who just, no matter what the age is, you keep eating off this hip-hop and you keep feeding other people, giving other people opportunities, helping now being a part of you,

are the fucking culture. So I just, I don't think that us as the older generation, and I respect my OGs and hip-hop before me to the fullest. I don't think that we are the keepers of the gatekeepers. I just don't see us that way. I just see it as one big fucking fraternity, and I want the little homies to take that route I took. I want you to have so much fucking fun in your 20s

that it's just you can't, you look back on your own life and can't believe that you got to do that. I want you to get so much fucking motherfucking money off this shit that when you think about the times when you did it for free and it was a struggle, you look back and go, God damn, look at what I got. I want you to experience this shit that we experience. and fucking, you know,

however you want to do it, do it your way. Hip-hop gives you that opportunity to do it your way. If you want to be a star for one or two years and branch that shit off into some other industry through your profits, do that shit. Like, this is what this is, man. But if you want to fucking, like, do this Fat Joe E-40 fucking shit and fucking command your rap career

until you in your fucking 50s, until your fucking kids are your production manager during your business partner and your fucking grandkids are fans at your show. Like, I got homies right now with fucking 12-year-old middle school grandkids. They fuck with this shit. So, you know, that's how long we've been doing it. Definitely. Yeah.

When you think about, you know, I think about somebody like 50 who was like my favorite rapper, like pretty much when I was like 16 to like 20, 21. He's different than you, I think, because he's been super successful with things after rap, But it seems like once he realized that rap wasn't really going to be the thing that was making Michelle a little money, sort of fell back on making it. You strike me as somebody who's like really deeply in love with making music to the point where that's just, you're not going to lose interest in that. Don't let a guy like 50 cent fool you with his hip-hop status.

50 cent, because I've watched a lot of shit and pay attention to a lot of shit, that's my homie. 50 cent appears to be Mr. TV production. producer who is all into the next production, man, 50 cent is the quickest motherfucker out there to jump on a hot record due to remix or be on a record with somebody like Pop Smoke, you know what I'm saying? That's true. Like 50 Cent has never not been in rotation on the radio, some kind of way. He's been on that way.

He loves hip-hop, is the point I'm making. He loves it. And as much fucking money you get wherever in the world, you can't quit hip-hop. Hip-hop is, that's that fucking ex-girlfriend. that you're going to fuck forever, man. You can't stop doing it, man. So name me somebody who quit hip hop. Dr. Dre can't quit.

He's still, Dr. Dre has been teasing us with an album called Detox since the early 2000s since the 2000. But then he kind of like stopped teasing us. And then he just recently said, I'm back on detox. Oh, wow. So. That's crazy. Even if he ain't fucking giving us no music.

And didn't a Dr. Dre song leaked recently called greedy bitch or some shit? Really? And it's like the homeboy leaked it. I can imagine what it might be about. But I'm saying that when you say the homeboy leaked, you got to do the quotation words. The homeboy leaked it. That's hilarious.

I got to look into that. I didn't even know that. But I'm just saying the point I'm making is Dr. Dre, after a billion fucking dollars is still leaking hip-hop records and still fucking talking about another album. Like, at what point do you not make another album? Billion dollars? Me, if I was Dr. Dre, I'd release so much.

I wouldn't even even. fucking release albums. I would start a platform and I would put all my unreleased songs on that platform and just give it to you because, you know, you join a member, you pay whatever to fuck, you know, get the money, but I would just be like, here, this is the songs that I

got made a billion dollars and this is what I did right before that. Dre's super interesting because it feels like at a certain point he became such a perfectionist that he almost... I would let that go when, because he's at the status now where it's They call it fuck you money.

Yeah. So if Dr. Drake came out right now and tripped down a bunch of stairs and was hula goofy, he could get up and go, fuck you. Facts, do you feel like you got fuck you money or how close are you to that? I got a fuck you attitude. So that's just as valuable. You know what I'm saying? I didn't hit no billion dollar lick, but at the same time, anything you bring my way,

I can pretty much say fuck you if I'm feeling like it ain't beneficial for me, you know? Definitely. I'm not susceptible to like criticism and shit that shit don't hurt my feelings I feel it And I love it if it's true man

I love true criticism And I love funny shit If it's shit ain't funny If it ain't true And it's just like a fucking Dickhead dumbass stupid kind I'm like I just know who you are

You're like you're fucking weenie Yeah No it's easy At a certain point I think you guys got to be able to let it roll off your shoulders Okay, so in terms of new music, in terms of new stuff, what does two short have coming up throughout the rest of the year? What are you excited about right now?

I'm one-dimensional right now, and it's Mount Westmore. That's the group with myself, Ice Cube, Snoop Dog, and E40. The group is not called Mount Westmore. The project is called Mount Westmore. And I don't have to tell you a lot of detail. I just tell you that the shit is dope as fuck. it's not a album, it's a business venture that is based on future

touring, all of us collectively, multiple business deals of licensing kind of aspects and business ventures together could be anywhere from restaurants to whatever the fuck. It's just we're going to be a business in the name of the legacy of all four of us. Does it stem from the desire to basically like just have some leverage and have some control because you guys all have so much to offer

in terms of your identity, your music, your likeness. Like, if you feel like working together, you could do more. We got a lot of free time during the quarantine and you just keep thinking and thinking what can I do. And the shit came up. It came my way from Ice Cube and E40. And me and Snoop had already been talking about doing some shit together. It was like, fuck it.

Let's just do all of us do it. And it's definitely from an economic standpoint where logically the things that we're we've been doing individually, how we come together on a show, but you've got to book us individually would be a different number if you had to book us as a group. Right. You know what I mean? And then you get all four of us individually and the group aspect of it. So there's all the things that you could do together added to the fact that everything we

already got going on individually, that this is not going to get in the way at all. So it's not one album. It's a business deal. And the music is going to come out in a rollout format to where we'll probably pre-announce, here's volume one. And in a timely matter, you'll get volume two, three, four. And the beautiful part is this is not a dream. This has already been recorded.

The quarantine gave us the time to really, like, set everything up. All we're going to do from this point is just have fun shooting a bunch of visuals and just rolling out the visual version of it and the release dates of it and just give it to you like that. And, you know, let's get past this quarantine shit, get out and do some shows and show you what hip hop looks like past the expiration date. That's really interesting, though.

Like, you guys all joining together like that, would the idea be in your perfect world is the idea like drop a project and then do a big-ass tour around it to promote it and stuff? Sort of loop all that together? See, there we go again. We legacy artists. We don't need a fucking project to tour.

We don't need shit. the object is just to fucking do business. This is not about a record company format of, hey, put the album out, do this, no. We are literally not even looking for a record deal. We give two fucks about a record deal. No, I definitely don't need that. I mean, we might do a record deal, but we don't need it.

We're not asking labels for anything. Everything is being done without the system of any label. So instead of doing a deal with a label and work, working out recording budgets and marketing funds and shit. We're just doing like a deal with a certain company. And we do a deal with a company for 300,000, 500,000. And that goes into the fund of the company. And we do what we do as a business, as an LLC.

And everything that comes into the LLC and business ventures funds the shit. Of course, we don't get distribution from somewhere, but literally we never need a traditional record company deal because we're joint forces as a company, and the company has money. So just trying to give, like, rappers a different outlook on how you could do this because we're individuals.

Snoop Dogg is not going to jeopardize anything Snoop Dogg, any bag he's getting for this group. Neither is Ice Cube, movie Snoop Dog, all his endorsements, E40, all his business ventures. None of that shit comes into play. As a unit, we become a whole new company, and that company is its own thing. That's super inspiring, and I feel like there's a lot of other groups of rappers that could definitely benefit from doing something similar.

Like all the artists that you just named, if you guys are from a similar generation. If you got a 10-year run in and then you guys always find yourself on the same show? Like in the career slowing down, you know what I'm saying? The bag is what it is. It's cool, but it's just like, imagine if you and the guys who like might have the similar fans got together and said, let's tell the international promoters and the local. promoters and the motherfucking people that, you know, like you appeal to a lot of platforms in a certain way.

Your fans are not my fans. Like, it's a whole world that you can fucking pimp the fuck out past the end of your career and expand this hip-hop shit. Damn. That's motivational. Extended. I like that. That's actually super exciting. Has that been online? Is this like already written about

and I missed it? You got it. Damn. The project is out being talked about. The PR, we hired a couple of PR firms and the campaign starts really soon. It hasn't started yet. We're in the grassroots stages, but the fact that the visuals and the music is already

done when we actually go here, it's never going to stop. Damn. That's very inspirational. I like that. Too short. Always coming with some knowledge. Yes, sir. I'm a hip-hop, a hip-hop a legend.

A beast. A business beast. Too short. No jumper. Coolest podcast on the world. Check us on YouTube, SoundCloud, iTunes. Like, subscribe nojumber.com if we want to support and check on my man's shit on streaming services