The Questlove Show - QLS Classic: Too Short

Episode Date: December 16, 2024

Rapper, record producer and Hip Hip icon Too $hort talks about getting his start in Oakland, his legendary collaborations and breaks down the trinity/triumvirate of Bay Area hip hop from which all hyphy flows. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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From 1979, that was a big moment for me. 84's big to me. I'm Sam J. And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick a year, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. With our friends, fellow comedians, and favorite authors.

Like Mark Lamont Hill on the 80s. It was a wild year. It was a wild year. I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Listen to look back at it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Questlove Supreme is a production of IHeart Radio. This classic episode was produced by the team at Pandora. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to QLS Classic Episode 49 with the king of all freaky tales.

Too Short. September 2017. The joys of doing this show y'all is being able to nerd out on our favorites And Todd, Too Short Shaw Is no exception, y'all He's an example of a self-made Millionaire upstart

Literally starting his own empire Selling out the trunk of his car And the tails he has to tell, boy, man This is one for the record books Please enjoy The Great Too Short, QLS classic Supremia

Supraima Roll Call Suprema Subima Subra Roe Call Supremia Subra Ro Call

Supremma Subra Subima Ro Call PB &J Yeah It's my favorite sandwich Yeah What's my favorite word?

Neumanoid Outsu Microscovig Siliconovolta Supraima What Supreme Roll Call 45 Lattery

Alright let's go Suprema roll call Yeah It's Fonte Yeah All in your world. Yeah. Someone wanted a threesome.

Yeah. I want a 75 girls. Roe Call. Suprema, sub, sub, sub, sub, Supreme a roll call. Supremma, sub, sub, sub, sub, supremo roll car. My name is Sugar. Yeah.

I'm too fly. Yeah. I'm too sexy. Yeah. I'm too high. Roll car. Supriva, Supraima,

So, Supraima, Supraima, Supraima, Supraima Role car. I'm unpaid. Bill. Yeah. Doing my part. Yeah. There's nothing I can say. Yeah. A total. Suprema, roll call. Yeah.

Your thug, thistle. Yeah. I'm about to get turk. Yeah. You better blow that whistle. Roll call. Yeah. Superima. I respect. Supremia roll call. Supremia.

Sucrema. Supremma roll call. I'm too short. Yeah. You know what's up. Yeah. After this show. Yeah. I'm going to give my. Dick suck.

Okay. And your face has a hunter. Suprema roll call. Suprema. Supremma, sub, sub, supremo roll call. Supremma, sub, sub, suprema roll call. Ladies and gentlemen, lot here and too short coming up with the man. Your reign is over, speed.

Okay, I would be remiss to say that, um, and practicing for an hour the words, the world's longest word, which is indeed numino or microscopic silicone volcanic coniosis.

And what does that mean? I have no got to. Is it a medical term or something? It is, yeah, I looked up in the medical dictionary. Yeah, I was like,

osis is like that suffix is something. It's 45 letters. And I... It means after the show I'm going to go get medicine. Thanks a minute. Ladies and gentlemen,

welcome to a another episode of Quest Love Supreme. I think this is going to go, I think this may rival Heather Hunter is our most ex-rored. I cannot wait to even get into it. You can't wait.

This is, oh God. No. What did she say? Wet her whistle or something? Is that what you said? I said, blow it. Too high. Anyway, anyway, so, yeah,

we're here at, well, technically, are we in live at Cannes? or do we call it? We're at the village recorders. Now it's the village recorders. I mean, oftentimes studios change titles. I don't know what they were, but I think they've been the village recorders

since 1967, 1968, something like that. Is that right? Many, yes. I was looking at short because he'd been here. I was just like, is that right? Well, he's not 67 years old. Oh, that's, okay. But, yeah, I mean, the history of this place is,

yeah, you know. A lot of Steely Dan, Fleetwood Mac. And many a death row classic created in these hallways. Yeah, and breakfast in America by Super Tramp. A former Masonic temple. And doggy style by some doggy dog. Yeah, like, are we in a church?

I don't understand. Let's say yes. Wait, we even recorded here, right? This is where... I've never been here. In the 1920s, it was a Masonic church in the 1920s. Oh. Then it became a recording studio and the Rolling Stones did Goatshead Soup here,

Angie and all that. Wow. Long history. Phil Collins' face value. Really? Yes. This is what gave us the in the air tonight? Yeah.

Cated reverb. I don't know if it was this room, but yeah. It might have been. And then the orchestrations for Wise Up Ghosts were done here. Hence, didn't we record here once? Well, we weren't here. We watched it sort of like via satellite. Okay.

Well, thank you for this debunking that. Sorry. Anyway, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome. Wait, I didn't even do my... Intro. I'll be honest, I spent so much time. trying to pronounce the word that I forgot to actually craft an introduction. But this young man needs no introduction.

He has taught us all how to Mac. Yes. Yes. Let's just get into it. Ladies and gentlemen, the legendary Todd Shaw, aka Too Short in the motherfucking house. What's up? Yes. How are you today?

man doing good man and enjoying it uh you know the journey of hip hop where it's taking me man i'm joining it a lot i see to this day well of course i mean your your your story is uh never ending you know so it's it's it's probably you know things are still happening today that we you know have yet to discover and and and find out um i got to ask you um you know it's in your daily life, how many times do people out of the word bitch to you? Like, is that your, I'm Rick James, like, do you get tired of, like, do you just want to just be Todd Shaw and just like, yeah. Yeah, it's the most random places, the most random people at the most random times, and they yell it from blind sides. Like you'll be in Whole Foods or, like, in church or.

Yeah, like a little voice to go past the aisle. I won't even see who it was. I just, bitch. And then people think that they think it up and they're like, I'm going to walk over to him and ask him, what's his favorite word? I'm like, are you tired of that? Yeah, well, you know, it's, it's the thing, man. It's the thing that if you, if it goes away, you lose something, you know?

So you'd be more worried if, you know. They didn't. Yeah. If no one said anything and they forgot about it. For day past without a bitch, I would be remiss. Exactly. All right. So, of course, I know your history, but for our listeners that, you know, for the two of our listeners that are unfamiliar with your folklore, tell us, where were you born, sir? I was born. Okay. I'm about to ask the question I hate the most. Like, what do I call you? I call you Mr. Two, Mr. Short, Mr. Shaw? I'm from Oakland, man. You got to have a multitude of names in Oakland, at least five. So I go by Short Dog. I go by Short. You can call me. Tide.

All right. I got you. Close. Close homies. me dog, any variation. All good, all good. A couple people called me two. What's up, too? So you were born in Oakland? I was born in L.A. I was born in L.A., and I moved to Oakland right after ninth grade.

A lot of people don't know that, but the reason why it's so Oakland is because when I got to Oakland, that's when I started rapping. When I got to Oakland, that's when they started calling to the show. When I started rapping, I started rapping about Oakland. They never really had any connection to L.A. at all. Okay, okay. So, well, I got to ask. because the

Oakland of 2017 is hardly what the Oakland of 1987 was what are you just your general views of what Oakland has become which is now more Silicon Valley based

I mean gentrified Yeah you have to have your own personal opinions about that A lot of people you know it's not just happening in Oakland it's happening in San Francisco right across the bridge. Right. And it's happening in a major way because of Silicon Valley is going, it's going really fast. Like, neighborhoods being taken over and, you know, just people are being priced out and moved out quickly. So where are they moving too? I think it's the reverse

white flight. I think the suburbs are coming back to the city and then they're right. But where are they putting, like, for anyone that you grew up with? They putting them out in them cheap ass houses they built 20, 30 years ago. They fucking fall apart the little track homes. Well, what's the suburb is it? Yeah. Like, where, where, where, where? is it literally? Like, because I know it's too exude, spend like to live in Oakland. Okay, you had a city like Antioch.

30-minute ride from Oakland and a lot of people dipped out the Antioch for the suburbs, you know? And from what I'm hearing now, some little rough areas out there. It's getting a little shady. So that used to be the suburbs where people escape, but now that's...

Because slowly but surely, you know what happened. This is my theory. You've got all the people who like, people, you know, even as the bubble burst after the bubble, all this stuff. People are scraping up all their money, man. I'm about to give me a house out the way, man. I'm getting out of this crazy.

I'm moving out of the way. People have been saying that. So at some point, I feel like the bubble burst, the gasoline prices went up. Shit just made suburb life real fucked up. You got to sit there in a two-hour traffic jam both ways every day. During rush hour, you know, get to see your fucking kids and your family. You go old and they don't even know you.

So I think a lot of people decided to, you know, the price of gas and the fucking stress on the highway. Like, fuck it, I'm just going to go get me a three-bedroom apartment. My kids, like, fuck the, no more yard. You know what I'm saying? Like, fuck it. And that's one angle, but the other side is you're from the city. And now you're looking at neighborhoods where you're like, shit, this shit was a tough-ass neighborhood five years ago.

And now it's just like, you know. Starbucks. Blind-haired white chicks walking down the street, untouched, like, safe as hell. So when's the last time you've been to your, because I know you also moved to Atlanta, When's the last time you've been to Oakland, like as you knew it, like where you grew up in that area? Like, has it totally changed? Well, I'm from East Oakland, and they're not gentrifying East Oakland at this point.

Now yet. It hadn't made that fun. There's always one area to slas. But they jumped on West Oakland because it's the closest to San Francisco, and they took downtown Oakland because it's right adjacent to West Oakland. And it's moving outward. But I'm one of those people who I feel like, people and places are going to progress.

You're not going to say, let's stay the way we are, because you just can't. You can't make hip hop stay that way. You can't make anything stay that way. It's changing. So Silicon Valley, they were sitting out there in San Jose

and Livermore and out there in the middle of fucking nowhere. And they decided one day, we're taking San Francisco, and they took that shit. And then... I mean, the basic theory is that, which I guess is that

the hidden message is that, Of course, it won't be like, okay, no poor people, no brown people, no black people allowed. Like, their version of that is the rent will be five times highest it ever was. And you have to have 19 jobs in order to, you know, I mean, I know people now that work in tech worlds in which they're sharing a house with seven people made for four. So, you know, I just visiting Oakland. I did a show in Oakland like three weeks ago. and it was not the Oakland that I remembered. Did you invest?

Did you get a little piece of property before to blow up? Well, you know, I think it's a little too late to like get little areas because you get a 1,200 square foot house the size of a tiny studio apartment or something in San Francisco for $2.3 million. Yeah, that's the most expensive in the country. Yes, it is. It is. You don't get a yard, a driveway.

and they just get a little box $2 million. Two million for a walking closet. So players like me, we moved to Vegas. Where's cheap and the house is a good. Big. I've always had a spot in Vegas. That's part of life.

But what do you do in Vegas besides go to this? Dude, everyone literally, like, for my perspective, Questlove Supreme guest, like, literally, I don't know what it is about September. They're all like, yo, dog, I just moved to Vegas. Like, when, I missed that memo, when did Vegas become the new, what is it like? Can't go outside. Is it taxes?

Is it why are people moving in Vegas? It's probably the best value real estate wise on the West Coast. More than Arizona does it. It's kind of the same thing. But Vegas, you get all these fucking world-renowned restaurants and all this big time production shows and fucking freaky shit every weekend and shit is just fucking Vegas. Oh, yeah. That's good than no short.

It's all right. All right. All right, so take us back to Oakland, 85 of Oakland. Wait, wait, wait, can you get a place in Vegas like him? Like, seriously, I'm not kidding around. Yo, dog, I tried a residency out there. It's tough. I mean, you got to speak the language, you know what I mean?

And it's just like, it's a certain, a lot of the music that I like does not entail do do do do do Oh yeah Very bad Yeah Like I went to a club No I mean the manager

I went to a club To watch Steve Ioki spin And you know Their modus operandi Is every five minutes Has to be New Year's Eve countdown

Oh wow Every five minutes A moment It's like the drop The cake and the confetti That's too much pressure You know what Actually

I did a a DJ gig with Snoop once out there and this motherfucker actually played intimate friends in the nightclub. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Yes, it was like, but I mean, he was Snoop so he could get where you're that.

Yeah, we're a celebrity. A bigger year celebrity, right. Snoop will play Harold Melvin and Blue Notes at a Vegas club at two in the morning. Nobody would challenge them. Nobody would challenge them. It was the most amazing thing I've received. All right, so. Oakland, 1985. Yes.

Can I say Is that safe to assume that 8485 is where the legend of Too Short First of all, how did you pick your moniker, Too Short? Well, 8485 was the legend of crack That's what that happened. Two Short came a little bit before that. I appeared, I moved to Oakland, 1980.

The year I moved to Oakland is the moment I started rapping that same summer. I started rapping, and it was just like a novelty thing. got to high school that year my brother and his friends nicknamed me short and they gave me the nickname short because I was like the shortest person

in the whole fucking school like it was a dude named Shorty that was taller than me I mean you're not that short though was everyone like six foot three I was 5-2 when I on my 19th birthday I was 5-8 on my 20th birthday

I don't know how to happen so in high school in high school I was fucking 5 too You had a spurt, huh? Somewhere in there after I turned 19. But so because I was shorter than somebody named Shorty, they just called me short. They're like, we can't even think of a nickname for you. We can't call you Todd. Fuck that. They're like, can't be Todd. So, they came in with Short and I fucking hated this shit because it was a joke.

Really? So somewhere down the line, I saw the movie Penitentiary. Too Sweet. Too Sweet. And I was like, Too Sweet. When Leon? Oh, damn. He beat everybody up and he got all the pussy.

I was like, I think I'm going to be too short. I put a twist on it. I see. All right. So what was, how did hip-hop culture even find its way to the West Coast in, like, what year? So, so 1979, right before I moved to Oakland. rappers delight came across the airways. Now, before Rappers Delight,

you would hear rap, but not have a name for it. It was sort of records like King Tim the Thirds, certain parliament records, George Clinton was always rapping, talking and rhyming. And there was a lot of records that have rap in it. And when Rappers Delight came, me being a elementary school drummer,

high school, marching band type kid, I instantly heard the cadences and I related it to drum patterns and I was like You told me when I first met you You told me that you dabbled on drums So you were a serious drummer? Yeah I was in the elementary school band

It was school fucking marching high school A couple years That's type of shit I was a drummer Snared drum, tenor drum You know Damn all right And I immediately recognized the patterns

As something I could do And I just tried it It was 1980 singles were coming out left and right. It would be Curtis Blow. Then it would be Spoonie G. It would be Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five. It would be the sequence.

You know, records were just coming out back to back. I'm like, I can do this shit. I can do it. And I found a record, it was a jazz record, all instrumentals. And one of the instrumentals on there was kind of funky. I can't remember what song. It might have been a Grubber Washington track or something. but they were doing cover tunes.

Right. And I wrapped to it. I just had like, you remember those little recorders that you might do an interview with or something? You pressed the buttons down. I sat that shit next to the speaker to my mother's component set, got down on my knees,

and just wrapped some words. And it was like, it was, you know, shit. I knew I could do it. It was one of those things like, you look at the roof and shit, and you're like, I'm about to jump off this fucking roof. So it wasn't a thing where, you know, There was like party jams in the park and this crew battle on that crew and that sort of thing.

I invented too short in my bedroom. The whole shit, every step of the way, it was always like my little home recording thing just kept getting bigger and bigger. My father had showed me how to take this little hand-me-down stereo he gave me. You take the inputs out, you know, the outputs you're running, the speakers you're running. So I said I would take that shit loose and hook it back up and move it to the other side of the room. I was real big in that shit. So I started getting parts, trading components with the homies. Like, man, I got an extra record player.

Let me get that cassette player. Oh, okay. You know what I'm saying? I really was trying to get my hands on a dual cassette player. I was trying to get my hands on a microphone and a mixer. I knew what I needed. Steve is proud of you right now. I love everybody's stories from that era of trying to figure out how to fucking record shit

with like a fucking two cassettes and a microphone. Making the Paul's tape. It's just like everybody's got that story of like, how can I put together a system? where I can fucking record. Like a fucking home studio. Like I gotta get my voice onto a tape. Can I ask you a question about the Grover Washington?

Was it, is it inner city blues? Or do you remember what song it was? I don't remember. I can give you a clue. This was a jazz record. It had four songs on it. They were all instrumentals. And I want to say one of them was a remake, a replay of Brickhouse.

You know what? Okay. So those records No, no, no, that's the thing. Shout out to Gene Brown. Oh, hold on. All right, so, okay, here's the deal. When you threw parties in the 70s and 80s,

he's basically describing, there's a slew of records that came out in the 70s. It's like their version of, now that's what I call music. Wow. Where you don't hire DJ, but you have a record that just has all the hits. But the thing is that it's too expensive

to license these songs. Like, you don't go to Motown. be like, yo, can I get Brickhouse? You just get a local band to replay all them songs and put on records. Like right now, that's my record collecting obsession. I got all to cover. I got Gene Brown going through every record store down south, give me all them party records.

Like, I have at least, like, you know, 30 versions of various bands doing, like, you know, casing the Sunshine bands, let's get down tonight. weird things like various covers of billy jean like right now playing stupid covers yeah i heard yeah you played some uh exactly right like let like when i play escapade yeah yeah all that stuff like marching band versions so yeah more than likely that that was the investment like you just get party records and that's the next phase was rappers and you know disco records they all had the b side of the 12 inch so i would um Oh, the instrument.

Music always came out on Tuesdays. I got a little ingenious. I'm like, I'm going to the record store every Tuesday, and I'm going to buy every new 12 inch that comes out or everything that grabs my eye. So I get these 12 inches, and before they can get popular in Oakland, I'd flip it over and rap to it and get around the streets.

And claim it as you're, really? And I just claim it. It is what it is. Right, right, right. A few records, people will come in there and go, hey, man, something like, stole your record. I would get it out there first But that was the trick

Was to try to find the dopest beats And all the shit was coming out of New York It was New York hip hop It was those independent labels That were putting out all the 12 inches 1980, 801, 82 those years What did your folks do? Were they like supportive of your rapists?

Both of my parents are accountants Wow That goes My mother graduated from Dillard Moved to the West Coast Met my father And she kind of put him through college You know

Wow That situation. So your money is right. She used to say shit like, I fucking did all his homework. I took his chest. That's my damn degree. No, but seriously, your money is right, right? Like more than the average.

I'm the child of two accounts. Exactly. All right. I can't get it. You have to be because, I mean, the way that your hustle, at least when you started, was it up all night records, was that your first label or was this 75? We started with 75 girls. Then we did a label called Dangerous Music.

Right. And then that evolved into Up All Night Music. So 75 girls, was that you or who was behind that? There was a guy named Dean Hodges, and he was a very colorful street character. He played a low-key. He wasn't a loud guy, but he, you know, it was 1985, and he drove an 85 bin. So he was doing his thing. And he wanted to be, not physically, but mentally, he wanted to be a fucking rock star.

Does that make sense? He didn't want to be on stage playing a guitar, but he wanted to fucking walk. and be a fucking rock star. He wanted to look like it. Rockstar and he wanted to be around rock stars. That's ditty all day. The aspiration of the rock star lifestyle. So he provided us with,

I was friends with his little brother. A little brother brought me around. I'm popular all in the streets and shit. And he just provided us with the best equipment, man. He had all that best shit, the lind drum and fucking all kind of rolling shit and all these guitars and shit and modules and shit that you never seen it.

And he was booking sessions nightly. We do the 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. sessions Get the half-price graveyard shift. And we go to the studio just every night. To me, I look back at those years like, that was college. That's what it did for me. It really gave me the opportunity to when I got signed to a major and when I started making records, I had tons of experience.

I had been in studios. I have been in mixed sessions. I had been working with musicians and punching shit in and out and learning recording techniques. So with the history of the Bay Area and its relationship to music, which, you know, I'll say next to New Orleans,

next to, I mean, at the time in the 70s, Philly was still immersed in Chicago also. Were you rolling with actual musicians and, like, what was your interaction? The first musicians that I worked with through 75 girls had all been, affiliated. It was guys like Marvin Holmes and Greg Lefeyas

and these guys had played all around with cats like Rick James and just, you know, like Minor Williams. These dudes were like in, they, Bay Area musicians have always been connected with musicians everywhere. And it's still like that to this day.

It's still they still breed that out there right now. Get your skills together in church. You know, get your, learn the jazz. You know what I'm saying? You know, young cats playing jazz out there. Because I was going to say, because the choirs is kept,

especially when you listen to your catalog now, I mean, you really didn't even pimp the fact that, you know, live musicianship was a big part of your musical presentation. Yeah, that was sort of a secret. And, yeah, well, but I'm saying, like, the level of musicianship, especially, like, with, like, on life, is too short and all that stuff. I could tell like these are cats that had

actual professional. My engineer, his name was Al Eaton, and he he's a guitar player. And he played keys and he would, I'm sitting here relating to him as an engineer, but honestly, we're sitting here co-producing songs together. We're like making shit happen. He's a kind of engineer who,

you leave out the room and come back and he put a little riff on there and then looped it and shit. You're like, what the fuck? Like, I come to the studio. He literally gave me life is too short. the basis of the track, which was, you know, Scoorway Crushed. And the ghetto, Donnie Hathaway.

He started those off. He called in the guys and told him, no, you got to dig it. He was talking about to say. Like, he was, you know, super, super engineer. Didn't you do some work with Bohannon? No.

It wasn't, I don't think it was that, but he wasn't him, Hamilton. No. Which one was it? The Bohannans in my life are street guys. Okay.

Let's clear that up. Big Ted and a little tear. They're pretty popular around the town, but I'm... Okay. Okay, so I got to ask, and this is not even playing the stereotypes, but, I mean, if you're coming from a two-parent household and both are accountants, I mean, it's almost like the basis of the Cosby show. How are you?

Now, I mean, I came from a two-parent household and got called out immediately on the streets because the motherfuckers knew I was not street. You know what I'm saying? Like I was, no, I was a dweeb and knew it. How did you balance, like, did you keep your home life? To make something like this happen, you have to have, the cars have to line up, and then certain shit has to be organic.

It should just, it can't just show up from L.A. walking to a city like Oakland go, hey, I'm too short to rapper. And they're like, okay, homie, it don't work like that. Yeah, what did you do to get that? What did you do to get their respect? My brother and my mother moved to Oakland a year before I moved there. Okay. So the high school I went to in

10th grade, I had an older brother who was in 12th grade and he had already went there for a year. That makes shit. Easier. Yeah. I mean, the first day of school they're like, hey, you got to see this little dude right here? Don't fuck with him. I got that. Okay. My brother and his friend. So I was crazy-ass school, wild as hell. Myfunkers getting their ass kicked

every day. I was told, people were told not to fuck with me. So a little-ass motherfucker, don't fuck with him. So I got that part. And then around my 11th grade year, I met this guy named Freddie B. And he's born and raised in West Oakland, grew up in East Oakland. Okay. Always was a little kid that got in trouble.

So he's been to juvenile hall. He's been to the little camp. He's been to the senior camp. He knew every motherfucker in the city because of where he lived and what he'd been through. So when I started rapping with him, for one, one, it was cool to have an older brother. But even my older brother, his homies, weren't connected to Oakland like I ended up being connected.

They weren't out there in every neighborhood. You can't just go from hood to hood like that. You can't. So here my rap partner knows everybody in the whole fucking city. So it was his idea for us to start selling tapes. He was the one who said, we made a few tapes. He's like, let's go sell this shit. I'm like, sell it to who?

He's like, just close. Just go sell it. So we first went to a spot where they sold. eat and asked them if they wanted to buy the tape and they were like the fucking want to buy a tape for her. They were like, just listen to it. So somebody put in the car and they listened for about 10, 15 minutes and one dude,

we only had one tape. And one dude was like, I'll buy it how much? It was like $5. And as soon as he bought it, that started the whole shit because somebody else said, I want one too. And we're like, well, we only got one, but we'll be back. We'll be back tomorrow. And then we came back. We sold all the drug dealers tapes and then we said, what next? there's more drug dealer's three blocks over.

You customize it one tape at a time or would you doop and doop and dupe and dupe and dupe So we go to my little home studio and we make a... What are you working with by this point? I had acquired a radio shack set up. I got the realistic whole... Oh, the realistic mixer.

The micy's, the mixer and the little effect thing. Put a little double effect on your voice in. And a nice cassette player. So it's going through the right channels, depending on the quality of the cassette you use, is the playback. So we sell, I can make a little, a cheap-ass fucking cassette sound good.

I knew how to set the levels, set them a little bit into the red, so it plays louder than, you know what I'm saying? Right, right. We had the shit figured out. And, um... What kind of cassettes did you use? For the cheap customers...

No, no, the good ones. Max-Sail? Max-Sail? The Macsale? Or TDK? Anything Max-Sail, M-S-T-DK. That was all the good ones. Shout out.

The cheap shit we used to use, everything was a radio shack, all the cheap shit. Radio Shack sold three 30-minute cassettes for $1.99. This sounds like shit, though. Oh, radio shacks. A $1.99 for three cassettes, 15 minutes on each side. We sold them for $5 each. Every $2 make you $15. That was our hustle.

And then we started doing these customized tapes. We started customizing the tape to say, your name is so-and-so, you drive this car, you're from this block, these are your homies, this, you know, anything you wanted us to say out of pen and paper, like, we'll be back tomorrow. It's like a dub plate almost, like... Brilliant. We sold those for 20, and that's how I got in Oakland.

Those tapes were only purchased by, at first, by, like, the kingpins. It started with one guy, this one guy was, he said, I don't get a fuck about that rap shit. I don't want to listen to a fucking rap shit. Like, like an OG, right? Just say my name. He's like, no, he said, if it ain't about me, I ain't listening to that shit. And he was really like the kind of guy that we were scared of.

Right. And out of fear, we went and made him a tape. So look. Oh, my God. So he never acknowledged. We just, like, a handoff and then walk away. He never acknowledged that he listened to it. He never said he liked it.

He never said shit. One day a guy comes up to us and we were on, I never forget, we were on 89th Avenue. He's like, do you know what the fuck I am? My name is King D. And I run this block. You're on my block. And he was like, if you don't make me one of them fucking tapes, like you made hot lips. That's the other homies named Hot Lips.

Wow. And Hot Lips was a tough guy. He couldn't have a name like Hot Lips and that'd be tough. I'm not laughing. You might be listening. I'm just saying, I shit. Or is he? No.

Oh, yes. I'm good. His specialty was the one punch. That was his special. Hot Lips. One hit of course. That looks. So King D runs up on us and cusses us to fuck out, like, straight, like, I'm going to fuck you up. You, both of y'all, you're going to get fucked up if I don't get one of the tapes like he got.

And not the cheap tapes from Radio Shack. Next day, bam. So shit would happen like this. We'd be sitting on the bus stop and a fancy car pull up and go, hey, is it you too short than Freddy be? We're like, yeah, like get in the car. You're like, what? Wow. They're like, big son he wants to meet y'all. Take us some neighborhood and he's like, Yeah, I went one of those tapes too. What? So then we spread around the city. We went to all the kingpins.

Everybody, it just started being a kingpin thing. All the bosses wanted a custom-made tape. And that led to the trinkled down of, I remember I had a homie name, Yogi. Yogi drove us around all these little tough neighborhoods one day. And he was like, real scary dude. He's like, you see this? This too short and Freddie B. If they come over here selling tapes, buy them.

If you fuck with him, I'm fucking you up. It's a shit like that was just because he liked the music. So it was so. It was just you couldn't, you couldn't plan it, you couldn't make it happy, you couldn't, it had to have an organic list, the only way. Time out. Am I the only one that's thinking he needs to pitch that story to Netflix right the fucking answer? That's like snowfall all right. Have you already visited?

I don't even want, I want two shorts career. I want the beginning. It is like a snowfall cousin or something. Yeah, it was the same years. Wow. Yeah, it sure was. This story is pre-crack. And you're out of high school or you're still in school at this point.

I'm in high school. That story to me is like, I need to see this happen. Yeah, seriously. How come no one has no one ever pitched like? I want a tape. I want a thief tape. Are you able to, assuming that these are one of ones, did you keep like a version for yourself in case they popped it or, yo, my tape messed up?

Well, we did not know. We were future stars. We did not know we were any kind of famous. It was the hustle. We were like out. Have you found any of your joins on eBay? It would be a fun thing to do. People in the Bay always come to me and go, man, I still got my tape.

They have the customized tapes. They have the ones they copy. You need to. It's a guy. Have you ever heard of Mike Mosley? Yeah. Yes. From Vallejo?

Yeah. He personally got, had, had, was on a mission back in like the 90s. And he was taking all the two short tapes he can find and put him on reel to reel to preserve them. And he's like, I still got those reels, bro. I got to hear these joints And it's at an hour It's like a half hour each side

Or 15 minutes on each side Most of them Oh you did the 30 minute joints Yeah You really did use the radiosack joints And it was all I was an expert at the pause mix I could stop on the four and

Hit the and And you get no noise When you let it back up on the end So you weren't looping shit And none of that stuff Nope We were wrapped to the record ends Pause it

And jump back in So making a transition to studio work, how hard was that for you? In terms of just like leaving your comfort zone, leaving your hustle. Wait, no, look, I'm going to tell you how, it was the drum machine.

It's 1984, 85. It's the drum machine. It's like, you know, heavenly music, if you see one. It's like, oh, right, right, right, right. It's a drum machine. If you let me touch one of them motherfuckers, first they just had that one with the time. Beo, shoo.

It's like, that's cool. That's cool. That's cool. But when they came with the drums, like Lynn drums, like if you could touch that shit, that shit was like, I mean, yeah, you're not going to get me in a studio with a drum machine and not, you know what I'm saying? And I'm listening to everything hip-hop. So I'm listening to those records that are Lind drum records and just, you know,

we're just like, okay, okay, it ain't even know music and nothing. I'm like, I can do this shit. Like it was never, ever a moment of possibilities. It was like, this is definite. This is it. How did you go from 75 girls to job? When did they come into the picture? Well, 75 girls, we never did any contracts.

We never had any agreements. It was like a family thing. It was the best shit that could ever happen to me in the world because the guy who ran the label, who owned the label, he would literally go to the studio, pay for the studio time. He would pick up the mix down, you know, pay somebody to mix it, pick up to all the shit, take it over to a manufacturer.

and he'd get the shit manufactured, then he'd get all these boxes and shit and drop him off at the distributor. Then he keep checking back to the distributor, go back and pick up some money and keep doing the shit. And me and his little brother, we hung out with him all the time.

So I'm sitting there just watching where you go, what you do, the whole process, just watching. He would even tell us, and make you go out and pick up some boxes and drop them off the distributor. So I knew the guy's name. What's up?

Walt, what's up, man? You know, everywhere, even to the people that did the graphics, the artwork and shit. So one day, he decided, that he literally told me and his little brother, get the fuck out of my house. The fuck out of my house. I'm not saying, fuck with this music shit, no way.

He's fuck out of here. And just, that was it. And then, and then we just sitting there like. Just on a whim? Things were going good, I presume. But that was, that was not his hustle. That was not his money. It wasn't good enough.

So I guess at some point, he just was like, I don't want you all in my house anymore because, you know, that's where all the fly equipment was. That's where everything gravitated around his house. Right. And, you know, it was a hell of experience, man. It was the kind of guy who, you know, you just walk in the house and there's three chicks sitting on the couch and their underwear, topless and dancing over there. And somebody's at the table smoking cocaine. Somebody over there is snorting the line and all kind of shit.

And it just was that house. It was that place. Now, as you're coming up, is there competition? You know, are you, I don't know how, like, I know E40 was more. in the 90s or whatever. But I'm just saying that surely you're not the only horse on the track that's like. So what me and Freddie B. did in the early 80s put us way ahead of anybody that could ever claim any kind of hip-hop legacy in the bay. Nothing happened before too short of Freddie B.

Nothing. So Freddie B, you know, he's a preacher now, but he had to go through his journey. Right. And his journey took him right out of high school and into prison. And that's when I started making records on a larger scale. So he kind of missed the beginning of that. And, you know, but Fred, Fred, I give him a lot of credit for my journey. He was, when he came to our school, he was coming out of jail and had to go to

continuation school and earn his way back into the regular school system. Right. He gets back to the school. He becomes the fucking editor of the paper. He becomes the principal's best fucking student friend. he acquires the fucking keys to the entire school through, I don't know, I guess he fucking stole him copy. I don't know what he did.

Right, right. He stole the principal's stamp, signature stamp, as well as every pass that gets you to leave campus, walk around campus, all kind of shit, hall pass, he stole them all. And the stamp. And he just, he was, that was Freddie B. And he was, and he fucking, Eddie Haskell, y'all ass so fast.

Morning, Mr. Cleaver? I'm worried you today. And then we're going like, do they fucking know who this guy is? We got the past key to every lock at the school, every gate. Really? Fucking with Freddy Vee. And that was my rap partner. So he was that guy, man.

And, you know, it was just a no-brainer to get in the studio and make hits after the legacy that we built, the foundation that we built. 2%. That is the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter, and on my podcast, 2%, I break down the science of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world. I'll be speaking with writers, researchers, and other health and fitness experts, and more to look past the impractical and way too complex pseudoscience that dominates the wellness industry.

We really believe that seed oils were inherently inflammatory. We got it wrong. Many of the problems that we are freaked out about in the world are the results. of stress. Put yourself through some hardships and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person. Listen to 2%. That's TWO percent on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you remember when Diana Ross double-tap Little Kim's boobs at the VMAs? Or when Kanye said that George Bush didn't like black people. I know what you're thinking. What the hell does George Bush got to do with Little Kim?

Well, you can find out on The Look Back at it podcast. I'm Sam J. And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick a here, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. Including a recent episode with Mark Lamont Hill, waxing all about crack in the 80s. To be clear, 84 is big to me, not just because of crack. I'm down to talk about crack on day, but just so y'all know. I mean, at this point, Mark, this is the second episode where we've discussed crack.

So I'm starting to see that there's a through line. We also have AIDS on the table right now. Thank you for finishing that sentence. Yes. I don't think there's a more important year for black people. Really? Yeah. For me, it's one of the most important years for black people in American history.

Listen to look back at it on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care what you're saying. Yep, that's me. Clifford Taylor the Fourth. You might have seen the skits, the reactions. my journey from basketball to college football, or my career in sports media.

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follow at Clifford and at TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. As you're making this stuff, I mean, eventually you're going to, When's the idea that you're going to actually start to have to perform and get on the stage? We had another element. All this shit happened by accident, too, we did not plan the shit out. We taught ourselves to be DJs. That's nothing to do, right?

Teach yourself to be a fucking DJ in the fucking early 80s. So we wanted to DJ the house parties. We had rhythm, so it couldn't have been that hard. So we knew all the fucking gangsters who are our customers, and people would throw these house parties in Oakland. the index card, such and such address, dollar for a drink, dollar for entrance, all this stuff, those type of parties. And we DJ for a hundred bucks, something like that.

And at every house party, when midnight hit, we tell everybody to come around the turntables and we're going to rap. And they wanted to show it. They were like too short and Freddie B. People wanted two short and Freddie B to DJ their parties. They wanted us to rap. They wanted to see the shit. So we're rapping at these house parties.

Just in the living room, the fucking DJ setup is in the kitchen. Right, right. The bedroom is the VIP or some shit or the bar, you know what I'm saying? You know that shit. Right, right. If it's a fight, I got to stop the music. Everybody goes outside. We watch the fight, and then we come back in.

Those parties. Y'all going to take that shit outside. So most DJs who really were DJs couldn't go there. They'd probably take your shit. They'd get your ass with, you know what I'm saying? It was DJ-wise, we probably had two guys who did the hood parties too. because they had the past but I think doing those parties

the kind of people who are at those parties are like you know that fuck that shit like you really got to rock it but you were protected but I mean like how rough were these were these parties but it wasn't no protection at a random ass house party it was just like you just in that shit man

ain't no you know shit bullets and shit start flying on protection it was you just got the pass to beat amongst the crowd But that was, I feel like, man, all this shit happened to, for a reason. We're sitting here rocking these house parties all over the city. The first time I ever did a show in the city, the whole fucking crowd knew the words to my songs. I never had a record out.

I've never had a record out. They asked me to open up for UTFO, 1985, Roxanne, Roxanne, Roxanne. I was like, okay, I'll do it. The promoter was Lionel B, Bill Graham, and Lionel B knew about me because he's from Oakland. The Bill Graham? Yeah, because, you know, he had a... Oh, he controls all of them. Yeah, he had a black division called Bay Area Productions.

Wait, y'all know y'all got to tell us. The Bill Graham. Bill Graham is the legendary promoter. He, I mean, he is the, he was the tastemaker of the whole hippie love movement. So he was the Grateful Dead Promoter. Okay, all right. The Never Ending Concerted the last two years. Yeah, the Fillmore East.

So he's, he made stars out of Hendricks. Wow. You went through him. then you became an international store. So the Doors, Hendricks, Joplin, they all had to go through Bill Grant. And too short. Yeah. I mean, he controlled, he controlled.

Like, he's the original Al Heyman. Wow. So I get on a Bill Graham show. It's UtFO. They're headlining. Roxanne, Roxanne's the hit. It's early 1985. Right.

And it's probably like 5,000 people, Oakland Auditorium. I've never seen a crowd more than 100, 200 people at the most. I've ever seen my life. And I mean, I don't care, man. I went out there, I put on a black leather suit. I went and borrowed a hat so I could look like Run DMC or some shit. And I got some instrumentals. I remember one of the instrumentals I did was Friends, Houdini.

I can't remember what the other ones were. It might have been, I think I did something off of Rapin Duke, instrumental. Da-ha-ha-da-ha. And I went out there and sang the lyrics to the songs that I would sell on the tapes in the streets. And the whole crowd for 15 minutes sang. every word with me word for word. I get out of stage and people are like, who the fuck are you?

Like, who the fuck are you? And how the fuck did you do that? But that was just how that's how it happened, man. Like everywhere I went from then on, everybody knew the words. So can I ask, I mean, in retrospect, I'm trying to figure if there's another example of someone that has no variety in their own hometown.

Before they go national. It's almost like Go Go X. You know, like Chuck Brown can control. the whole DMV area between Master P? Yeah, but even he He started out in the Bay in the Bay in Richmond.

Oh wow, that's right. Yeah, but I'm just saying like A cat like took Brown. Ghetto Boys in Houston. Yeah. They were famous in Houston doing shit and then it broke out. And then Houston loved them.

Like that's the birth of Houston hip-hop. It's Scarface and Willie D. Now usually the narrative is that once someone ramps up their situation, Same thing we look at Miami, look at Miami. But I'm saying that usually if someone tries to ramp up their situation, usually like that's when... Apprehension, like people like...

Well, no, I mean, like usually, I mean, that's when... That's the tipping point or that sort of diminished returns. But, I mean, that's not that way with you. Like, were you intimidated at all? Like, okay, now I've got to take this formula and make it national so that... Hmm. I knew. I was told...

in the early days, in 85, 86, when I got in the studio, they were like, you can't do the stuff that you do in the streets. You can't curse in the records because you can't market them and sell them and get them in the record store. There's only people that can curse on records are comedians. And I took it. I was like, okay, I made two albums with no cursing. And the two first albums on 75 girls.

And then it came time for us to do our own thing. And I had always had this song called Freaky Tales. I always had it. I had been writing freaky tell since I was 16. It started off with like 10 girls and it ended up with 75. And the official version has like about 40 something. But I was on 75 girls record. So I was going to make a song about fucking all 75 girls.

What's the minute count of? And by the way, that label was named after Johnny Guitar Watson line. I can't tell you the name of the song, but Johnny Guitar said in one of his songs, I wrote up on a horse and kissed 75 girls at the same time. and my man, Dean Hodges, was like, that's me. On the horse, steady-fire goes at the same time. So, I don't know, man, I forgot what I was saying. No, no, no.

40 girls. Yeah, your freaky-tails. The first two records were clean and then you decided the free details. I said, just let me record this song, Freaky Tills. If I record this, I already had the baseline. I had the drum pattern. I had the lyrics. Just give me the fucking studio and record this

and watch what happens. I knew it. I knew it. We just, everything that I'm living on right now is started off, like financially started off with Freaky Tills. So was that when Jive came into the picture? Jive picked up that album. Freaky Tills on the album called Born to Mac. Born to Mac, yeah.

And we recorded the whole album before we released the single. We recorded the album. We did the artwork. We had the shit ready to go. And we said, we're going to take this song, Freaky Tills. We're going to press up 2,000 cassettes. When we sell those, we're going to press up 2,000 more. We're going to sell the cassettes until we get 50s.

$15,000. We get $15,000. We're going to buy albums and cassettes. We're going to press the whole album up. And we're going to sell us to $5 a pop. So the first watt, we get, you know, the first $15,000 is going to make a 60 grand. And then we're going to take that and we're going to flip another 15. And we did the shit like, whoa, woo, woo, whoa. I mean, Jive got wind of us. We were probably up to about, I don't know, a few hundred thousand.

And we just kept flipping the shit like because we were from drug dealers. why stop a good formula where you own it? I mean, did you... Because that puts you in the category of being Barry Gordy and Smokey Robinson at the same time. So I signed up with Jive

because Barry Wise called me personally. I didn't I wasn't listening for no dollar amounts no nothing. I wasn't thinking about that. I was thinking about what it would be like to get the music to the whole world. And then I was thinking like people signed to Jive because two

was on job. Pimp C and like, they're like, EGK, E40 and Spice one. I'm too short over it. I'm signing it. I signed a job because Houdini was on that motherfucker. Hume O.D. was on that motherfucker.

Carol's one. It just signed up. Will Smith with the Fresh Prince was on that motherfucker. Like, Billy Ocean was on that motherfucker. I was like, I was like, I like, I like job, you know? So, you could call it the gift and the curse,

but I would not be too short the Mega Star without Jive Records but also, you know, the independent run would have probably been a lot better to do it with those albums I gave Jive. But at the same time we never stopped our independent hustle. I put too short on Jive, but we kept

selling independent shit. We never stopped and you know, it was not I think we did the right thing. Did they still let you do your own thing? You still record it in Oakland and all that? Yeah, Jive is a very controlling label back in those times. they were very controlling with the artist

trying to get you to record at Battery Studios and then they fucking walking in the back door watching, looking over your shoulder and they're trying to send you to London over there to record. Never, never, never, never. So this is how I ask you at least. Never, I never even talked to Jive that much.

We didn't really communicate a lot in the early days. Okay. This is how I handled Jai. Born and Mac was the album that they called me and they were like, we wanted to take over this album. So they picked up Born and Mac, sold a few hundred thousand copies and, you know, we got to deliver a new album.

So when they got born in Mac, it was already an album. So they obviously got it all in one delivery here. Here's the album. Take over. But the next time, they were like, okay, we're ready to make the new album. We're going to send you the upfront budget to start the album. And I'm like, shit, the album's already recorded. Everything.

We got the artwork. Everything's done. So life is too short. Yeah. So we send it to them. And they just send the front and in the back end at one time. Just here you go. So I was like, I would record an album before.

the one that's out would play out. I'd record the next one, get the artwork together and shit. Prince. I would send Jive without them ever calling me. I would send them, before I even got the first, the upfront money to start the album, I would send them the artwork, all the songs mixed down, and I'd send them handwritten, by handwriting, the fucking credits. And I'm like, send me the damn checks.

Like, here's everything. Because they said they had a thing called delivery. What is delivery? Right. This is the fucking delivery. We didn't have to do. any clearances or any, we never sampled nobody's shit, we never fucking, you know, even if we did like replays or some shit, you know, that's cool.

Interpolation, right? But a lot of our shit was like, we were motherfuckers in the studio, hitting the shit and shooting from scratch. So it wasn't a lot of. So for the songs that you had to do interpolations on, like say with Life is Too Short or, or, you know, the ghetto, like, how was that handled? Was it just like, we probably, did the average white band get the old? and like, wait a minute, that's our shit.

You know, like... No, we did it in advance. Drive was on point. Oh, okay. They were on point. I mean, that was just unprecedented. Well, I mean, but that also came out in, like, 87, 88. One of the best things happening to me music-wise was Donnie Hathaway's wife thanking me.

I was at a Lela Hathaway concert and it was like, her mother wants to meet you. She was like, I just want to thank you. Oh, you probably came through, like, like, game buses for the... That was college movie, but then probably. She said, thank you. That was a big deal. Because I remember when that record came up on the, And I was like, I was like, just take all the publicist.

I don't want that shit. I take it. Have you ever gotten denied? Like, hell yeah. Hell yeah. I can't think of who, but. Someone. Yeah, too sure it's not about to butcher my fucking music.

It has been, it has been said. So in promoting, I know that you were on the, was, was the NWA tour like your first national tour? Like, were you ever? on any of like the Def Jam tours or those? Nope, nope, nope. Got a couple of little opening act spots

through once again Bill Graham and Barrier Productions. Right. And where I opened for could have been like Houdini or whatever fresh. Any L.O or none of that stuff like were you mixing and chopping it up with your contemporaries

of 86, 87, 88? In the early days, I remember the show I got to open up for was when it was when a check out my melody was the hottest shit and it was public enemy had one song

and it was you know Russell sent them all out young they were all young I'm not sure of Slick Rick was there yet but it was the 87 87 88s crew that was under a rush management

and it wasn't run DMC probably who didn't he was headlining run DMC was bigger than all that shit but I remember it being public enemy Eric man Rakam

and the city just being excited to see them for the first time so I probably got to go out and do like two songs. But I remember back then motherfucking rappers didn't talk to each other a lot. Like if you're on the show with another rapper,

it wasn't like, what's up, homie? Like you sit there motherfuckers and you just look, look away and don't say shit. Like, no matter where you from, like no matter.

Well, I don't figure like at least with Public Enemy, like they're very diplomatic. I was about to say the only ones to talk to you was like Houdini and Chuck D. Wow.

Not even Flavent flag. Nobody was talking. Nobody was saying shit. Flavent. Flavent. APMD was on the, on those two or two. Okay.

Me and Eric Sherman became really good friends. I was like, E, do you realize we used to stand next to each other and don't say shit? Wow. He's like, oh, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

No, if you ever want to embarrass the fuck out of yourself back in the 80s, walk up to LL Cool J and say, hey, what's up, man? And watch him ignore the fuck out of you. Really? Damn, he's been annoyed niggas for a long time. Was he just aloof?

Like, oh, I didn't see you there. No, no, no. L practiced that shit how to stare the fuck at you and not say shit. He looked at you? Like, are you really talking to me? Like, you got some nerve. I never did it, but I watched people do it. Like, don't, don't.

So by this time, the whole time, your accountant parents are down with your new endeavors? Oh, well, that's another story. What's your family think about, Natasha? So my parents were the last ones to find out I was too short. I knew I was not the only one on this earth I knew I was not Yeah no one believes me when I told My dad found out about the roots like on our second album

When did they find out about you or about you? I probably was I hadn't made any albums yet But I probably was I think I was working on the first album And it was that time they were like All right college time And I'm like I think I'm going to make a few records first Oh no

Oh my God That's amazing thing I wasn't going to Juilliard. I had a record deal. What the fuck? Pops gave me the speech about, man, it's great what you do. I heard some of it.

It's great, but it's not. But you're going to go. I'm going to make a living off doing that. I'm like, all right. I lied. I lied a lot. My mother found out I was a rapper by, she found this rap book that I had written.

And she never came to me and said, like, do you rap? We didn't have a conversation about the rap. She slipped a note into. in my rap book. It's like a nine-page guilty-ass letter. That's almost worse. She's like, I didn't raise you like this.

I didn't like. I know she was in shock. Oh, it's like finding the players magazine. Yeah, right. Yeah. She found your lyrics. She was hurt. Disappointed. Found freaky tales. She was hurt. When did they finally like? When did they finally be like, okay, good.

When did they finally let up? Well, my mother watched, she, I often, I never talked. her about this, but I think that she knew I was full of shit around 1986. I had been fucking with 75 girls and it was

the time when his brother, when the owner of the label Dean, kicked me and a little brother out. And we had a struggle man. We struggled for like, we went from balling in the big house to like you know, just can't even fucking afford food and shit. We were like we was doing bad for about six months.

Really? And during that time I was good, I was, I was, I was real shabby man I was like you know I wasn't really like fly and I remember my mother came down for my birthday and I didn't ask for shit I was not like 19 or something right and she brought me all these fucking clothes and shoes and shit and I was like I needed it at the time I was like cool but I look back on it now thinking like my mother probably seen how shabby I was she knew get some damn clothes boy so you know the struggle was um was real and then uh later on when I finally could could call home

because I had called him many times and lied and said, I'm doing great. That shit's on the radio. I'm bawling. I lied like a motherfucker. So when it really did do good, I remember doing a show in Phoenix.

And of course my mother had to come. But then when she really got there, because I'm like trying to be all proud and shit, but when she got there, I was like, fuck, I can't do the show in front of her. So I How'd you pull it off? I told her,

I was like, don't let my mother go in the crowd. They're like, well, no, you go in five minutes. She's out there. I'm like, there ain't going to be no show. Somebody ain't better to do something. I'm not. I can't do this shit in front of her. So we got her backstage.

And the show went on. It was that type of shit. Wait, was it just on a regular spot date Or was it like NWA tour time? I think we're on tour. We're on tour. Wait, she was backstage and it was safer? Well, I'm saying she couldn't, she could not ever see me perform ever.

I couldn't, I couldn't show. Has she yet to see a two short show? Nah, hell no. Wow. Has she heard the music? She's heard of music. She's seen TV stuff. She's seen videos.

She's seen the clean version. Oh, okay. She, she, she, okay, look, this is my, mother. They're like, Mrs. Shaw, do you know, do you know your son's like the dirtiest rapper out there? She's like, I never heard him cuss. I don't, I, people,

people say that. Wow. I don't know what you're talking about. People say that. I'm sure he does it, but I haven't heard it. And she just, she wouldn't play it. She had every album I ever made in plastic. What about your pop? Has he heard it? See, your father don't have that conversation with you. You know what I mean?

Like, he's, we don't, we don't talk too short, man. We just don't. Like, he's, He couldn't come to me and go, you know, I've been bumping that one song. He couldn't do it. This is the long 30-year version of the white elephant in the room we're not going to talk about. What about your brother, your older brother that you spoke about? My older brother is this is his role.

He's like, I'm like, man, people like my music. He's like, it's cool, but you'll never be run DMC. I'm like, I'm like, why ain't trying to be running DMC? He's like, I'm just saying, you ain't never going to be shit because he's like, these little people around here like him, it's like, your shit's whack me. He's like, I'm bumping L, I'm bumping him. He's like, you ain't like that.

He was the East Coast player. He was the, no, to this day, he would just destroy your dream if you walked in there and said, I'm going to be the greatest drummer in the world. He's like, you're a good drummer, but you ain't never going to be the greatest. Right, right.

Was that motivation for you? Years later, we talk shit. I'm like, I'm like, I should, talking right now. I'm your fucking big brother. Like, I'm the big brother. I'll be looking out for you. And he's like, he's like, all those years, I put you down. I was making you. I was making you strong, man.

I was fucking. He's like, I knew he was dope. Like, man, shut up. He was, hey. We used to walk down the street, arguing like a motherfucker. Arguing about everything in the world. Me and my brother, we would argue to the death. That's crazy. To this day. Yo, so what was

tour life-like? during that period. I mean... 1989, straight out of Compton, the first tour I ever went on. Tell me about it. First stop was Nashville, Tennessee. I had my girlfriend take me to the airport in Oakland.

I've been with her for like about a year and a half. I really did love her. She was beautiful. Oh, wait, you're talking in past tense. She was beautiful. I was so in love. It was my young love. I used to be with my girlfriend every day,

And I was like, babe, I'm about to go on tour. I'll call you when I get there. I call me every day. The first night, pandemonium, first night. I didn't call home the first day. I never fucking called home. Never again. It was like sunshine.

I never coming home. And then, you know, I did that tour with NWA. And the very next year, Ice Cube quit. And he went on, he did America's Most Wanted. and me and him, me and Ice Cube is right. We went on another tour the very next year. So for two years for the Ice Cube tour and the NWA tour, everything you could think about, young rock star, that was me.

I did it. Was that when y'all did, 5,000 girls? Well, y'all did the nothing but a word to me record? That was the second tour, yeah. Okay, got you. That was my record. I love that joint. So, okay, it would be remiss to say that as a Philadelphia

growing up on the East Coast, I'll say that at least between, like, in the early 90s, the idea of opinions and cultural differences between the coast. I mean, it was definitely a thing. What were your feelings like when you would read the sort of, like, did critical claim or any of that stuff mean anything to you? Okay, so early on, I made money. early on I'm famous as fuck

early on I'm rocking crowds my self esteem is way to fuck up there I'm rapping I've considered myself nothing of sexy sex symbol nothing I'm me I got money and I won't even fix my fucking teeth I'm like fucking I'm just

I'm just doing it you know I'm just doing it man it didn't bother me at all to be on TV with a fucked up grill I was like I had a pool in my back car I don't give a fuck I have a fucking Mercedes and you know so I would

look at the media's interpretation of all of hip hop mainly like the source or something. I read the front to back. I've been on the cover of the source early on, one of the first sources. I wasn't like treated badly by the source. But I would look at

the reviews that I would get. And it'd be like, you know, can't rap, you can't rap, you can't rap, meet the beats, blah, blah, blah. And then the shit would go platinum. I'm like, like, ha-ha, motherfucker. But I would, but I would, you know, I would also watch the media take the New York guy, and you probably can relate to this as a Philly guy,

the one guy with the one fucking song that we fucking love and make this motherfucker, make a star for that one song. Like, he can't even prove this up. And they're like, he's our guy, blah, blah, blah, blah. For the whole year. And I just, I watched that shit over and over again. I'm like, they don't, they, they, they, to me, they just didn't get it.

See, it's, all right. We got beat friends. I think it was, when did I come out? I came in California probably the summer of 1990 and I specifically remember Tarique had short dogs in the house album and now he's

very particular about like his MCs or whatever and I was like well wait why because I remember like something in the source or whatever and they're giving you like two mics or whatever and I was like well why would you buy this? because it's got a bad rating the source, like, whatever.

And he was just like, you don't know. Like, that was his shit. And I was like, all right, well, if he says it usually, I mean, Torek was always right. I was wrong about NWA because that's another thing. Like Tarek had straight out of Compton. He was like the only East Coaster I knew that like OD'd on West Coast stuff. I mean, he had Hammer's first record.

Oh, wow. But yeah, I mean, he. Which wasn't a bad album. No, it was. Yeah. And that's the thing. Like, Torek just, because he watched, you know, MTV Raps, he just purchased everything

that was ever on YomTV Raps. And it's like, it's like you're, you're, what I call the flat-footed approach to MCN, to me that's like a t-cito or jeans and t-shirt. Like some shit, you know, like, or a Chuck.

Easy. Yeah. Which, I mean, that, that to me is the hardest thing to do now, more than any sort of bar. Rhyme scheme. Yeah. Any iambic pentameters. decide, you know, all that. It's the tortoise and hair shit. You know, you have a billion emcees that do,

and you just stay flat-footed. So at no point is no one in your ear like, yo, you should get dancers like, blah, blah, blah. Or you should, you know, you just basically stayed on your path and tortoise and haired your way through everything. Hip-hop culture. A microphone and a cassette was all I ever needed

to make my hip-hop work. world successful. Just a blank cassette and a microphone. But it's weird because when money enters the photo, then people start switching up these shit starts. So my counterpart, the first person, you know, E40's my homie forever from day one, we've been homies. So E40's up the street doing his thing. But when we talk about Oakland, my counterpart was MC Hammer. MC Hammer, if you let me tell it, was going around Oakland. he was very famous for dancing

he was popular for his run with being around the A's organization and stuff he's popular and a lot of his friends went to high school with me I knew his whole crew but Hammer had a dude named Ace that they used to dress alike and be at the clubs

doing the same dance moves and shit and then they get a crowd around him and people like he was he was popular so I knew who he was as a dancing dude I knew that was Hammer I didn't know his fucking name I just knew he was

dancing dude, him and A's they be dancing. And then he came with these records. And it's like, one day you see him, he's got like four bodyguards, he's got like an entourage of like, you know, like 20 people. And it's like, I remember the shit clear as day. Somebody was like, who fuck is that?

I don't know. Who fuck who that is? Like, you know? Right, right. I'm popular. I'm famous. We mobbed deep. We look in this motherfucker.

Everywhere we go. I don't know who the fuck that is. I don't know. I heard it a few times Man, who are they? They're like coming through the crowd Bodyguard, excuse me, excuse me, pardon me. Then one day somebody said, man, who is that?

And somebody else said, that's a hammer. I was like, this thing ain't got a record, nothing. He's like, it became more famous for that. Pumping circumstance. And for the music. And then the music came with it at the same time. Like, he walked in the fucking door with an entourage and four bodyguards

and his first single was just coming out. And he just, that was, so having him as an example, I'm like, I'm not doing that. Can I ask a question? Mm-hmm. Who were you thinking about when you wrote short but funky? Well, I was doing lines of hammer. We all, all right, all right. I had a lot of songs that had hammer references, but it was between me and him all of our moments.

But it was an outright distal. Like, I mean, what was your relationship like? Like, did you guys ever? So I'm saying shit like that in the record. We walk in the streets and shit, talking little shit about each other to our mutual homies. Right. Never going to ever be any friction

because they thugs and we thugs and we all know each other. But Hammer would do shit like sit on the fucking couch with Arsenio or something and say, like, where are you from? Hammer, I'm from Oakland. Oh, how's hip hop out there? Well, you know, I'm the only rapper from Oakland. Wow. Like, I'm never going on Arsenio.

You're going to sit on there and tell the whole fucking world a lie? Like, he would do shit like that. And he was just, that was his character. or so I pulled back. And it had got to a point where we were like, man, we should just, let's just go there with him. Let's just go there and just all out go there. And Lewis Burrell, Hammer's, big brother.

Yeah. He called us, he said, man, I heard, you know, I know what's going on. I know who y'all know. I know all this shit. He's like, man, we just got off tour. He said, we're just getting off tour. We come at home. We've been through hell out here on the road. Somebody had got killed. all kind of shit had happened

he was like he's like right not asking like man we're not coming home this bullshit like we're not and it was so real what he said we was like all right all right all right it's all good it's all good so basically the way it escalated the most

just took a phone call just like man we don't want this bullshit and it's because we all been we all been family and friends from day one but damn why can I have it research yeah right now that was good that's it everybody got

Just one vocal. What was the record for you when you were with Jive? Which was the biggest selling record? Like, when did it kind of? Life is too sure. It was the biggest seller. But it sold, I think, a lot because of rumors. That was, you get your, the rumor where you did in your young career?

What was your rumor? That you were dead? They thought you were dead. So the album drop is sold 300,000 copies out the gate. We jump on the tour at 300,000 sales, and we get off tours at 800,000. So the tour did a lot in that case. And I get off tour and the sales go up to like about maybe like 1.3. It's just hot. It's just going.

And then they kill me. They said, too sure I got shot in the head in a crack house. What? And I was having memorials in Texas, and I was going. For real. I was dead to a lot of people. You know, you came social media back then. Like, you died, and it slowly, the story goes slowly.

Why? And the crank-hound. You couldn't put a K-Mack call in, you know, to K-D-A-Y or a K-Mack. Sales went out the route. Who's going to stop the rumor? Right, right, right, right. That shit went $2 million. But the crackout?

Damn. Yeah. I mean. Man, Two shirt is funny, man. I've had people walk up to me. It's me and my boy standing there and a dude walk up and say, damn, man, that's fucked up about Two Short. Like, what happened?

Like, man, my uncle's at his dope house last night. Two Shirt sat at the kitchen table and smoked Coke all night. And then my boy, like, do you know him? You know what he looked like? You're like, man, I don't know him, but I'm just saying. My uncle knows him. I'm standing right there. I don't know where my uncle is.

Some of shit. What led to the retirement? I think, I guess your first retirement. Wait, we didn't get short of the pimps out. Oh, yeah, we got short of the pimp. Yeah, you know, I'm sorry. I just got, can you tell about the, I don't know. I felt like that to me is the least where you even got more.

You got more. No, man, I got on board, you know, early because of Tariq. but with making Jordy the Pimp and I guess getting where you fit in came after that, correct? Oh, getting where you fit in, yeah. Shorty the Pimp started some new shit with me.

I had been working with Al Eaton, who was my guitar playing keyboard, playing engineer. And Al is really good friends with Felton Pilot. Felt and Pilot was... Felt and pilot was MC Hammer's guy. So they got all that money and sold all those records, and they built this whole whole.

compound over in Fremont, California. That's when Hammer bought the big house up the hill. They was like, you know, running Fremont, California. And Al, my guy, in between two short albums, he went over to visit Felton. And when he came back, he was like,

man, I've seen it, I got the vision. So I'm coming in the Al's studio to make a new album. It's going to be the Shorty the Pimp album. And Al is like, here's the new rules. That's the engine. here's the new rules.

He owns the studio and he got new rules. He's got a white girlfriend so you can't say the word nigger in his house no more. He's like, he's like, I'm not really trying

to have any like profanity in my house. He's like, and I'm a, he's telling me, I got the fucking deal. I'm the fucking artist. He's like, and we're going to start making records for white people because hammering them,

you see what they doing over there. He's like, if you ain't making, you ain't making records for white people, man, you got to make records for white people. Like, what the fuck? How do you do that shit? And all I can think about is like pop shit.

I'm like, I'm not making no pop shit. He's playing these little beats. He's trying to be like felting and hammering him and trying to. I'm like, so I called in. That's what I'm saying. Like you, I know the temptation was there. And you're watching, by this point, Pock's about to hit digital underground. Like all these Bay Area cats are just coming up.

And you just, tunnel vision. Just, how did you resist that? temptation. So I got, I had a guy on my team named Am Banks. I was about to ask you. Oh, yeah. Producer. Am Banks was part of a couple of crews in the early days. He'd been around. I knew all about him. He worked with MC. Ant. Then he worked with Pooh Man.

And Poo Man was everybody in the game had to have a drug dealer backing you. He had to have a money man. So Big Bruce was their money man. And Bruce was like my homie, homie because I knew all the kingpins. So Bruce got cute. and then Poo Man and Banks and all

and they were just kind of like out there a little bit didn't have that structure and I was on jive platinum balling I saw Banks at the cable company and he was like you know he went for it he was in his little hoopty whatever he just went for it he was like man you know I make beats or something I was like I know I know you

and we decided we was gonna link up this is the same exact time I'm fucking at the cable company probably paying my bill I'm probably there because the shit got cut off or something And you got to go there to get it cut back on. The nigga wasn't paying bills on time back there. And then I'm at the present moment,

mad in the fucking car by myself about this fucking shit with Al and the fucking engineer is fucking with me. And he won't fucking. I'm trying to make this music. And he's fucking trying to get me to work on these whack-ass tracks and be like hammering. I'm like, so I'm telling Banks the situation. He's like, all right, I'm coming to studio tomorrow.

Then I find a guy at the same time, this motherfucker was riding a 10-speed. with a backpack, with a pistol in it, with a bunch of heroin. And he's from D.C., he's from Maryland, from Landover, Maryland. Right. And he fucking is really good friends with George Clinton and Michael Hampton and all those guys. Right. He's like, he's a student of, you know, he's got to play with a,

who was the, who was the problem's best fucking guitar player? The other one before. Gary Shrider, Gary Shrider, Eddie Haysland-Going. So Shorty B was a student of Eddie and fucking Mike Hampton. So he fucking knew all this shit. He could play Parliament anything inside out. He was like, I knew he was a drug dealer. I knew the crew.

He was, you know, whatever. He's like, come over to the Acorn Projects. I know some Acorn, niggas, so I'm not, wasn't scared to go to Acorns. He said, come over to Acorn Projects. He sits in front of this fucking projects where he lived, brings the amp out on the guitar and the guitar, and just sits there and shows me all this shit he could do.

So I'm like, you need to come to this fucking studio. Let's go. Because I knew the phone. He's playing the phone. Right. So I get Shorty B and Ambanks to come to the studio with me at the same time. And I'm like, I walk in on Al Eaton like, watch this shit. And Al was, at the time, he was fucking with me, man, because I wasn't with the shit.

Was he just for more money or just? He wanted to be like them, man. Really? He wanted to be like them bad. He named his fucking dog short dog. And he was fucking, I come back to make a new album. He keeps saying shit to his dog. Short, sit the fuck down.

And I'm like, this is, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, we're about to kill this thing up in here. So, on top of that, he's doing this new thing, and he's going, he's like a, oh, fuck, the fucking computer rebooted. And then he sits there and does like this.

So he did that shit to me for like two days. I come back with Am Banks and Shorty B. And Banks is like, hey, how you work this shit? And I was trying to resist. And Banks was like, look, just sit over here and just I'm gonna ask you whenever I can't work something

I'm gonna ask you no more computer glitches right no more motherfucking working glitch we we made shorty the pen and I feel like the next album's getting where you fit in cocktails getting it were all a little bit better because we didn't have that early

fucking battle and shorty de pen probably would have been just as great because that's when we took the journey on the fucking freestyle and with the guitars and the bass and the And we brought a digital underground's keyboard player, Pee We over. Because Shorty B, my guitar player, used to go do a lot of tracks with Shock 2. And a lot of people don't know that Digital Underground and Too Shrek. We were using the same musicians during the same years.

Two Pockies come around all the time, fucking hang around with Shorty B and Peewee. It was just, you know, we were really into the musicianship. And we fucking, we sat out, we sat him on the sidelines. So what is he doing now, like in terms of? Which one? Ow. I heard rumors that Al passed away. I'm not sure.

So you guys lost contact with each other? But I really, I can't remember the reason why I was so fucking mad at him. But there was a time where he was coming back going, man, let's work together. And I was like, fuck that. I'm still salty about the old shit, man. Is Aunt still in Oakland?

Aunt Banks is in Arizona now. Arizona, okay. Now, when I met you, when we first started coming, I think you were living in Atlanta at the time. Like, why would you choose Atlanta? Like, what makes, is this a change of pace or a scenery? 1992, 1993. Check the stats.

Those were the most violent years in the history of Oakland as far as murders go. And it's wild as hell. It's been wild as hell some years lately. It was so wild at one point. I told the young homies, I was like, man, it was way wilder back then. and there's like no fucking way. So we sat there and looked up the murder stats. I'm like, and y'all, y'all ain't, we was up in the numbers.

Like, niggas was getting knocked down a lot. And it was a very violent city for the reasons of that's when they started locking up the kingpins. Right. And then all that. Every party. Like, you know, we got Port of Oakland. The Port of Oakland is bigger than the Port of San Francisco. So, you know, wherever you got those Baltimore-type cities with the port,

that motherfucking dope was finding his way. So you wonder why a city like Oakland is what it is. it's because we had the Army base. We had a Navy base right in Alameda right next door. We had all this military shit, all this pimp shit, all this fucking dope shit. And it just made this little-ass town, which was also part of a large metropolitan area. The Bay Area is probably, you know, 7 million people or some shit. So even though you're like, Oakland's population is less than 500,000, we're still in this big metropolitan area.

And Oakland is the place where if you fucking 30 miles away, you want to come. get the best dope. You're like, I'm about to drive down to Oakland. A lot of times when you set up shop selling dope, the customers aren't from the city. They come jumping off the freeway from the suburbs, come get that good shit and go right back home. So,

Oakland was that city where it was a lot, a lot, a lot of fucking, you know, just street money, all that shit and all that type of shit. So for self-reservation reasons, you're like, I got out of, I got out of here. But you picked Atlanta out of any place. Well, 92, 93. It was a whole lot of money.

And a lot of kingpins getting put away. So when the kingpins get put away, second in charge might not be the same leader. Third in charge might not be the same kind of leader. And then you start fighting for leadership. And it just the little armies break off and the little factions. And who wants where homies are now knocking each other down. So I'm sitting here hanging with the homies.

I'm getting phone calls like, you still hang around the niggas, huh? I'm like, we all used to be homies. Like, we ain't the homies now. And I'm telling you right now, I'm not trying to miss you. If you're with them, I ain't trying to miss you. So, there's my friends telling me this. Whoa. Okay, so just saying that once you get established,

do you still stay in the same area that you were? I mean, by the point, you were too short. I bought a house 60 miles outside the city with the pool and all that shit. But then we had a house in the city with the studio in it, you know, right on the corner, right in the open, everything. And then I fucking, every day in my life was just in the streets. Even when I was platinum, I was standing on the corner with the drug dealers and just, I hadn't, it took a long time.

Kind of Atlanta kind of got me out of that. Like, before I moved to Atlanta, I knew for a fact, in the midst of the drug war, which was a major drug war, in the midst of it, I was so close to it that it is no way I could have avoided it. Well, you know, and everything going to happen. I was going to either be real close to something or it's going to happen. And I didn't pick Atlanta. I didn't choose to move. I didn't say I'm leaving and shit.

You know, we all played it like you're supposed to. to play it during the fucking war. You kind of play a low-key and watch your fucking back as much as possible. But I went to the Freaknik. The Freaknik is the time the Freaknik was my birthday weekend. Oh, my God.

So I get to Freaknik. Can we explain? Can we explain? What is the Freaknik? It is Black College weekend. It is Black College Marty Grail. Yeah. In Atlanta?

In Atlanta. But it's older. It used to be. I think the last year was, what, 95? They tried to bring it back in like 95 was terrible, 96 was vacant. Yeah, that was when they tried to bring it back and they tried to organize this.

So the fricknik in 1992, which I didn't go, was this big-ass picnic that just was the best picnic anybody ever fucking went to. So in 93, the word was out. You got to go to fricent. It got to me. I'm like, we're going to see what this shit is. And it shuts Atlanta down.

Like, there's certain pockets you just can't drive. So I leave violent-ass Oakland and pop up in Atlanta and Atlanta's so much different than Oakland. In Oakland, if I see a police officer if we just make eye contact we gotta have a conversation.

He's got to pull me over. Fuck with me. Right. Fake ticket, real ticket, whatever ticket, and we just fuck with you. In Atlanta, you pull up next to a cop and he's like, too sharp, what's up, man? Wow.

So I'm like experiencing all this fucking shit that ain't happening at home and it's like parties and shit with people really party. and ain't nobody getting shot and it's like people in the streets just having a good time

and all these college campuses and shit and I was just like fuck when the Frick Nick ended I didn't leave I stayed for another two weeks and then I told one of my homies who was from Oakland

living in Atlanta I said man I'm about to go by a house in Oakland I'm probably going to spend I'm probably spending about 500,000 get something up in the hills

somewhere and he was like let me show you what you get for 500,000 in Atlanta so So. And estate. We just looked at houses and shit.

And I went back to Oakland, funerals, shootouts, all this shit. Not me, but I'm saying. Right, right, yeah. But it's just going down. I'm like literally like the homies that I know.

Like we all were a big click of homies. They're killing each other. And it's a small-ass city. So it's real easy to kill the motherfucker in a small-ass city. Because they ain't nowhere to hide. So I wait until August. And we prepped to go. we prepared to go to Jack the Rapper in Atlanta.

And it just was out in, I wasn't going out there to buy a house, but I was just so in love with the Freakness experience and so looking forward to the Jack the Rapper experience. When I get there, I just snuck off from everybody and literally went and bought a house. Wow. Please tell me what area.

You put up Rocket Mortgage. South West Atlanta, Cascade Rose. Yes, Swats. Yes. Yes. So I snuck and bought a house. It just was like, I gave him 3,000, picked out my lot, picked out the house I wanted and started to process and shit.

And didn't tell anybody. I didn't tell nobody until the shit was like really going to happen. And I started putting my crew together, man. I was like, I'm telling y'all. Fuck with me, fuck with me. I helped a lot of people relocate. I was going to say, were you rolling in your Oakland year? Like, how deep were you rolling as far as like when there's a two short show or whatever?

Are you the 10? I mean, I can imagine. Were you 10 deep? No, you're, like, I bring like 200 niggas everywhere I go. Everywhere. Why? Too sure? Why?

We would go to shows. I would like, we would do shows, like, maybe like drive an hour outside of Oakland. And I'm like, all right, look, man. How would you get them there? We all drunk. How do you remember everybody's name? I have homies. I've been known for 25 years.

I don't know their fucking name. I'm just saying. I'm like, homie, homie, homie. I'm like, you can. So look, we, everybody had cars. Everybody had money and a two-short show was like a field trip. It was like, we're going to drive fast on the freeway. The highway patrol ain't going to catch us because they're going to see 50 cars speeding.

Who's going to get caught? Not me. Right. That was our thing to get on the freeway, do 100-something miles an hour and lawless and just, we were all 20 years old and fucking with a bunch of crack money. Right. I was the rapper selling a million records, and I was the brokeest one in the crew. Wow.

I was, you know what I'm saying? I was not, I wasn't nothing. I was nowhere up in status in the crew. I was the rapper, like the mascot. So we go to this show and I'd be like, look, man. And one thing about our crew is we didn't have a leader. Nobody could ever say that it was a leader. So everybody was fucking just like, I'm going to do the fuck I want to do.

Right. You could reason with some people, but you can't, nobody could boss anybody. So I'd be like, look, man, we're going to do this show. These people, look at the crowd is here. I'm like, let's not beat up the people that came to see too short. Because some shows, they'd be like, man, so got disrespected. And I'd be on stage watching my guys beat up my fans. I'm like, stop.

And then I was the promoter. I'd give the promoter hell. Like, I'd even say some shit like, man, let us all in this motherfucker. We don't have to all be backstage. Let my guys in the crowd. That was my thing. Just let them all in because I was like, I can't go in. It can't happen.

Right. And then probably be crying. I'm like, dude, okay, man, just take a thousand off my price or something. We're all going in. We're going in. Like, I used to push security out the way, all that shit. Just, like, this, like, get the fuck out the way. We're going in anyway.

We just walk in. I had a bad rap at first. Yeah, because y'all took up all the space in the club. I had a bad rap at first. It was bad. So how do they take you just not being there? So look at this. So when I moved to Atlanta, I literally,

it was not a move it was a movement I rallied up a whole bunch of motherfuckers I brought a whole I brought my immediate staff I had everybody relocate I helped everybody get you got a place you got a move you got to get your car like whatever the fuck you need to do and banks came we all came we came we showed up literally with like a mob

and then we recruited a bunch of our college kids who were out there already we found the homies who have been living out there already we just started a whole click we linked up with the LA crew because you know I got a bunch of cousins and family. My man, Via tell you.

How deep was it in Atlanta? We had a fucking army. V. Johnson. From day one. So, I mean, I showed up in Atlanta with a cause, man. Like, you know, I was fucking, I had already been coming out there since, like, 89 and shit doing shows and signing autographs and record in stores and shit. And coming back to go to Magic City when I do the show.

we go to Maddo City after the shit I knew the Atlanta style I knew I had friends in Atlanta People don't even know I lived in Atlanta for a year Wait so can we talk about that right there though Just right there Being in Atlanta

The strip culture And the difference between that And the Oakland scene We didn't have no strip clubs in Oakland I mean I figured That's what I figured So when you got to Atlanta You didn't have Atlanta

Strip clubs in Oakland though And strip clubs in San Francisco Are like really just for prostitution Right so but when you got to Atlanta It was like I mean I know from living in Atlanta It's different classes You get a table dance of five dollars and fucking uh you can go spend a hundred dollar bill all night and get dances all night for five

hours them days over though days over them days over when i got to alana you could be like every strip club had a photographer with a polaroid and you could be like i want a picture with that bitch right and then she'll come over and she'd be butt-ass naked and you'd like just put one hand on her vagina or something take a picture what that's like before nickies before gentleman club Or look, no, a bend over and spread your pussy for my picture. Wow. And they'll do it. That was like normal.

How much, how much for, where the picture? $10. Okay. I'm just pricing things out. He said, how much for the, I thought he was going to say. How much was the pussy? No, how much was the pussy in that? While we talked about it.

Back then, the pussy was some callie weed and some probably like some food. Oh shit. It's not like another country. Wow. Wampas. Strippers used to tell me, I heard you got that callie weed. I'm like, yeah, we're going to kick in a smoke. Wow. I used to keep something on me and let them smell the bag.

They're like, nigga, where are you going after this? Wow. Not anymore. 2%. That is the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter. And on my podcast, 2%, I break down the science of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world. I'll be speaking with writers, researchers, and other health and fitness experts, and more, to look past the impractical and way too complex pseudoscience that dominates the wellness industry.

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Now, I mean, much was made about the album number 10, the Gittinit record. as a retirement record. And if we know anything about life, black people don't retire. Especially that rappers. Especially not rappers. But of course, my sucker asked me.

I think that might be my favorite two-show record. Yes. I love that record. I was like, oh, man, this last record? Damn. But, I mean, what made you start that campaign knowing that you weren't going to get out of the game? It was the numbers.

It was my 10th album. Right. I was 30 years old. and at the time 30-something year old rapper was like oh that's nicking rapper that was like

man you really about to be a granddaddy rapper so it was just a play on the numbers I felt like at that time in 1996 you you could not find rappers

that had 10 albums even your favorite rappers didn't have 10 albums and then just to make that statement album number 10 that's why I named it that it was like I was just sitting there saying

you know look man I've been in out of the 10 I got plaques I was really just bragging and the whole retirement was like some big willy shit you know cigar shit yeah I retired though the retirement party we thought it out as a promo thing that the retirement party would be the dopest album release party ever you know and it was it got a lot of fucking attention like I've heard about it yeah so saying I retired was probably like the best marketing plan I ever had what was your deal with job How many albums do you have on your contract? I had like one album after that. And a part of the reason was to wake them motherfuckers up too.

I was like, if I'm hanging around, I want a whole lot of more money. And it was, you know. But I fucked up, though, because at that point, I could have got the fuck out of there. And I had no idea that in a couple years, the Jive was going to fucking stick their dick in Britney Spears and forget all about hip-hop. Wow. Yeah. For a long time. They stole in sync from RCA records

And they was like, fuck hip hop I remember an A&R guy, an R lawyer I was going to say, what was like dealing with Barry Weiss And just In general I remember an A&R lawyer I think his name is Peter Thea I fucking hated Peter Thea

Peter Thea try to sign us They try to sign a little brother Oh okay Peter Thea told me one day I think he's at RCA now He's a racist He's not a tauterius. He's our stat savant person.

Like, he knows every state and all the credits. So I was selling tons of in sync backstreet and Britney Spears. And they were totally neglecting R. Kelly and everything R&B and hip-hop. And I'm sitting there having a conversation with Peter Thea about the next thing. And, you know, everything sold. Us not in the budget. I was, no, motherfucker you guys got the biggest groups in the business. How do you have a budget?

So Peter Thia said to me, one day, It's the day I totally stopped liking Jive Records. I went from just dealing with it and doing the business to like, I don't like y'all anymore. He said, we're getting back in the rap game. I said, when did you get out? Right. I was like, what the fuck did that happen?

I was like, whoa, they got out the rap game. I didn't even know. Wow. So as far as like movements are concerned and stuff, Well, first of all, I mean, first of all, buy you something. Yeah, too. Yeah, man, I love that record. Favorite joints ever.

But, I mean, you've also done, like, historical collaborations with. Buy you something is dope as fuck because we're at the studio. I felt like it was done just for the moment. There's a drum set in the studio that only has, and I always kept the set in there miced up because I like to get like a little feel or a little, like a little snare to loop or something. Was that you drumming? No, that wasn't me. Oh, okay.

So, I think, I think, we always had a lot of drummers around, I don't know. It could have been Tony T. from D.C., it could have been, okay. Could have been Pee-Wee played drums and Shortybee played drums. They all could play anything. Okay. So, somebody sounded drums and start kicking that beat.

And it's only like a little-ass set with, like, maybe one time, one crash and hi-hat and snare bass drum. And fucking, somebody just kicking. The guitar only had, like, two strings on it. So somebody starts kicking the drum and then Shorty B hits the bass line, right? Right. Boom, boom, boom.

He like to play the chords on the bass. Right. Got that from Eddie Haley. Oh, right. Really? That's the parliament thing. The bass chords are all soulful, all bluesy and shit. Yeah, yeah.

So they start playing that beat. And then fucking Eric Sherman freestyle, the verse. What y'all know? Ha, ha. I, no pen, no paper. So it was instantly that song. His first verse, that be, that baseline. It was like, that's the shit.

Like, just leave that, that, that. I wrote my rap, and it was a song. It was just, it was two minutes and something long. Where did you have recorded that? At my studio Atlanta. Okay. I literally always thought that song was too short, and I didn't even being funny, but that's just funny that you said that. Yeah, because it just happened like that, and then

we immediately, we took the rough copy to the club, the fucking staticy copy, and it just instantly just instantly did it. You know, Eric Sherman played a trick on me, too. I never really had a lot of New York love. Not a lot of fans or anything. Like, not a sales or anything.

And he asked me, would I come fly up to the Apollo and do that, just do that song during the show? They were doing a Def Squad show. You know, not the Eric Sherman show with Def Squad. Right. Him and Keith and Redman. Yeah, so you're going to bring you out. So, you know, I'm cool.

I'm chilling. You know, I'm just going to do this shit, whatever. but he didn't tell me that the record had broke in New York and that they were loving it. You didn't know? I didn't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. Played a trick of me, man. Put me out on stage. The motherfuckers the song came on, they went crazy. I came out, they went even crazier. And I'm like,

when did this happen, man? Where am I? Exactly. I remember arguing with a dude on the elevator that I told him, he was like, he's the bellman. We in New York City and he's like, so what do you do? I'm like, I rap. Like, where you rap at? rap everywhere. You're like, what's your rap name?

Too short. You're like, oh, yeah, you know, he asks me a question. Somehow it gets to, I do shows with a Big Daddy Kane. Right. He's like, get the fuck out of here. I'm like, I'm like, shit, Big Daddy King open for me. He's like, fuck out of here.

Like, now you're like, now you bullshit. Yeah, that's what I wanted to ask you because when you moved to Atlanta, that kind of makes sense to me because I'm from the South from North Carolina. But like, the South and the Bay always seem to have some kind of kinship. Like, y'all some country niggas in the thing. And, like, we always got it. But, like, in the South, like, your records always ran.

So, like, did you, at the time when you were on job and just throughout your career, had you generally sell more records in the South than, like, in the North or anywhere else? I am also one of them kids who spend every summer in New Orleans. Ah, okay. So I'm there for the sound of New Orleans, the whole second-line vibe, the Mardi Gras,

and Bayou Classics. I'm there for that shit, the ball of the bands. I'm a kid looking at that shit the whole way. The marching band is going by aardi grasades and all this shit. My cousin's marching the band. I'm marching the band,

but we played and stepped in turn. Their niggas marching the band. They're dancing and doing everything on radio. So, I just think when I started making records, there was a bounce in New Orleans. It's like you swing the beat and they do a little different dance.

And I made a song called Iron Tripping just trying to do. do that New Orleans bounce. And I would always go in there and try to do something that on my brain, I'm like, they don't like this in New Orleans. they're going to like this in Texas or something. I would know about certain sounds

in certain places. Trying to cater to them. My way, though. Not like pandering. Yeah, exactly. Right. I always knew how to just work the drums. You know, when you got go-go drums, you're like, oh, that's go-go drums.

You know what I mean? So that was that. I was in tune with the South. And I think a lot of rappers who jumped on the bandwagon later, producers, rappers, whatever, they kind of adapted to it as it became. I was there from day one on the South shit. I was, they had records that, they had dances that just went with two short songs, you know? So I fucking came to Memphis Coliseum and came out on stage.

The first song was, I ain't tripping. The motherfuckers jumped out their seats and started dancing like an ant farm. Doing some shit called The Gangster Walk. I'm like, what the fuck? That shit looks crazy to a performer. Were you genuinely shocked at, as far as like the, well, the cameos that you later did, like, given 90s. Well, that was another thing. The stuff with Big and.

The retirement also brought that on. The retirement announcement, they were like, before you go, let me get a verse. Let me get a verse. And then it was Eric Serman. It was me being on Biggie's song. And then Jay-Z, because I did something with Big, Jay-Z was like, you got to do something. You got to do something on. So then Jay Z, I got on, Jay Z, I'm then Foxy Brown.

I called him a little fucking start calling. I was like, but I also figured something else out too. Living in Atlanta, we had a friendly East Coast, West Coast rivalry going, you know, DJ play certain songs. We try to see who turn up the most. And I actually started making friends with New York people. Because they was out of their element, too. So. It's neutral ground.

So when I got to Atlanta, I started taking more trips to New York. New York. It started being, you know, I'm hanging out in fucking Washington Heights. I'm doing different shit, and it's not so isolated to me anymore. And trenches taking me around New York to fucking crazy-ass areas at 4 o'clock in the morning

and shit. Oh, Lord. That can go so wrong. When did the, how did the record you did, the Call Me record with Lil Kim for the Booty Calls? Yeah, that's funny. How did that go across? Call Me was a Jive's idea

for, they got the Booty Cause soundtrack. And they were like, it'd be dumb. did his booty called, used to do a record with Lil Kim. So they parlayed the shit. Probably gave her a nice little chunk of change, started to come to do the shit. We get in the studio in New York. We worked at Battery Studios,

and we came up with the idea to call me. It was originally the sample actually, you know, call me if you need someone. That's where it started. Right. And we later determined we didn't want to use the sample, and we changed the melody a little bit, but just kept calling me.

Right. We sat in the studio, we got the vibe, and we were like, cool, We wanted something. So this is what we're going to do. I got a dope-ass studio in Atlanta. We're going to fly you on your folks down. This is me, the little Kim.

We're going to fly you on your folks down. And we're going to finish the song up and get the money, whatever. So Jive is in on the play. I'm in on the shit. We booked the flights for Kim and her manager. Get them first class, New York to Atlanta. I'm like, that's a little Kim. You know, I know Biggie's my homie.

And Kim is his chick. So I'm respectful. I'm not going, there's no plan to try to fuck with Kim and I'm like, I'm gonna treat her like royalty she's gonna get, you know, to the hotel to the studio, man, she's gonna get back home safe. Niggie, I'm there to pick her up and Biggie comes walking out the airport, no Kim.

Oh, wow. And he's like, hey, so what's up with you and Kim? What y'all doing? Wait, what? Wait, what? Wow. He's like, no, look, but he played it cool though. He was like, doing a song for the booty call soundtrack.

He's like, oh, yeah, she missed her plane. She's going to be on the next plane. He kind of screamed me to see if I had the right answers. Wow. Wow. But she did finally come. She came on the next flight. I took him to my mama's house, fed him some soul food dinner from that night.

I had just got a shipment of two ounces of some good-ass California weed, which was really hard to get at the time. And I sold him one. I didn't give it to him. That's right. That's right. And everything was cool She got on next plane

We worked on the song And it was cool Another soundtrack question The juice soundtrack M.C. Poole Was that you? That's my artist But it wasn't you

I thought That's Poo Man And he was And he fucking We always thought Sex Poo Man Was him I thought it was him

I thought it was you He tried to mimic my voice Since he was young He tried to do my voice Like a lot of You know He tried to do Two Shred voice

Poo Man is a big motherfucker too To be trying to wrap up Yeah, because I thought I saw pictures of him in the source But I didn't know if it was You know, I didn't know if that was covered I always thought that sucks money Murder was like

I thought it was short Damn, we right here Brum So he was someone He was a totally different guy Poo Man Is he's still around Okay

I brought him on stage I did a 30th anniversary Showed my band And brought him out Gotcha So with With the rise of, okay, with when I heard you on the van's joint, and someone was like, I forgot who it was.

I was like, yeah, man, you know, short used to be in the skate parts and all that stuff. Is that true? You were just bullshit? No, so the group that did the pack. So these were some kids that just were from Berkeley, man. Little Bee was in it. He's... Yeah.

So I was going to do a show up in the... Way up North Carolina somewhere where we had to leave from the bay and drive three hours and the promoter had a driver, you know, come get us in a van. And this motherfucker played the pack on their little mixtapes. And he played it.

I was like, what the fuck is that you listen to? He said, The Pack. I was like, play it again. We got a long-ass ride. We listened to it two times. I was like, you know them? He was like, yeah, I know him. and I was like, man, I need to meet them.

So the van dude, he was like, I'm going to hook you up with him. So we're talking and shit, and he's going to hook me up with the pack. So we plan on meeting at a hamburger stand. And four dudes showed up, but they weren't a pack. I wish I would get screening you before. So the dudes was like, they was like, so look, man, we just want to know how we're going to get paid. And, you know, when we're going to get in the studio? I'm like, I'm like, dude, what the fuck?

What are you talking about? He got a Hennessy bottle in his hand. He's like, man, he's talking shit to me, right? Right. And I happen to borrow my homies Bentley that day. I never buy Bentley's and Rose races and shit because I'm just like a Porsche or Mercedes. I mean, my homie's Bentley, I'm pulling up

like Big Willie at the hamburger stand. And these motherfuckers are barking out orders of me on how this relationship is going to work. And then he's like, I'm like, so which one of y'all is the pack? Who's the pack? He's like, look, man, we from Berkeley like the pack. But we ain't the pack. The pack, first, before you can get to the pack,

You got to go through us first. I'm like, how the fuck up? So I get a phone call for my homeboy from Frisco, and he's like, man, I heard he's just looking for my son. I'm like, my son's in the pack. So I cut the middleman out. My homie is a little uno's daddy. Right.

I get them to come over to his house. Then we get it going in. And it's like, you know, the pack, I think two of them skate. Elle, the producer, young Elle and Stunner, they skate. And then Little B was just, when I met him, little B, I don't know what the fuck his little image is now with the bass guy. Crazy. When I met him, he was like a little thug.

He was like a little street cat. We had to actually wait for him to get out of jail to start the project. Oh, wow. He was in juvenile hall when I met him. Little B is like the Dalai Lama of Internet right now. No, he set the trends for all that shit. Like, McCona and like all those got things. He made it cool to not be good.

and not be good but you're not being good on purpose yeah he's definitely these motherfuckers are now rapping offbeat rapping like they can't rap and that's the style yeah it's it's under if it does but it goes it goes so um

yeah um the pack came to me they were kind of like working the skater images a little bit and I just you know I'm an opportunist man And when I met Little John, I was like, that's the wave. And I knew that Little John had a sound that was hot. And I was like, I'll help you do everything you can in the world if you promise me that you'll keep giving me those beats you make.

Did you meet him in his Morehouse days in Atlanta? I met Little John. He was already working for So So Def. He was doing some producing with like booty shake music. And he was DJing a lot in Atlanta. I love the way he DJed because he DJs and he works the crowd up in a frenzy with what he's saying and the music. So I was like a little John fan as a DJ. And I approached him.

That's how I started working here. I was like, man, you need to let me rap on your beats. Like when you got on that pack record, suddenly just all these rumors of like, yeah, Too Short used to skate back in my day and all that stuff. I did the same thing with the pack. I knew Young Elle had these beats. I went over the house. I went over to Young Elle's house.

He lived with his mama. He had the coat closet. When you first come in the house, they opened the coat closet and it's his studio. Microphone booth. Nope, not the mic. It was the studio. The entire studio. The studio.

The microphone was wired from the coat closet to his bedroom closet. So you go in the bedroom and you wrap in there with his clothes. And I was impressed. I was not impressed by the fact that they figured it out. Did they know about The Legend of Too Short? Did they know who was amongst them or was it just like we heard about you? No, they knew. No, they knew.

Okay. And I was really impressed that they had no track record, but every time they would bounce down the song, it'd be a really good mix. Like, this shit sounded good. Like, who's doing this shit for y'all? They took me to the setup. They're like, we do it ourselves. Like, man, y'all got some help from somewhere. And they just, Elle just had that ear, man.

Like, some people just get it immediately. And Little B would write the hooks. Elle make the beat. And then the other two dudes just had to come with it, with 12 or 16 bar of verse. It was magic. And sometimes it was not on beat. When I met them, they had 60 songs.

I'm like, what the fuck? So it was almost like seeing you re-contextualized for, you know, the new aught. And then, you know, like a. So when Blow the World. whistle comes along, then it's like, can you explain what the Hafei movement was supposed to be or was it just? Okay, so.

Was it a real thing? So now you got, you got two short, you got E40 and you got McDray. Now, nobody from the Bay will ever dispute. All Bay Rap comes from these three people. Can you, before you go, can you explain the legend of MacDray for those that don't know? This is a part of it. Okay, Hill later, right? He's E40

from Vileo. Okay. So I get a head start on everybody. I'm like, they never get me on sales, they never get me on who came first, they never get me on

biggest records. I got them. I set the fucking tone. So now you got me, then you got MacDrey and E40. And they're coming out of Vallejo. We all homies. And Mac Dre is to the bay.

He's the one that gets up, does the dances. He's, he's a month. to people. He's, he touches him. He's one of them. He hugs him and he's, they love and they're like, man, Dre's my guy. A man of people. Forty's the Kingpin. He's like, you can't get past the security. He lives in a big gated house. He's always been his rap image. His real life image has always been, I'm a boss. And then me, I'm the Oakland nigga, you know, I'm just, you know,

short dog, you know, I talk shit. I'll do the pimp image. I do all of shit. And everything Bay Area rap comes from the Pimp, the E40, the boss, and Mac Dre clowning and just being, you know, was hill. So, Oakland had a thing called the side show. The side show was just a bunch of people in their customized cars hanging out in Taco Bell parking lot that's adjacent to

the East Oakland, Eastmont Mall. And we just come out there Saturday night and just hang out. The side show evolved into the shit you might have seen on DVDs when they're doing the donuts and shit. Motherfuckers is acting all the wild and all this shit and jumping out of the car and all that.

So the side show evolved from one parking lot to the next generation was like probably like the early 2000 they were like wherever we're at if we stop and we like the music we're about to have a fucking party

and then they would just block off main intersections back streets freeways they didn't give a fuck and it's like hundreds of kids you know like not don't picture kids

these motherfucking like gangsters like just wilding if you want to see it go to YouTube and look up Go Dumb USA Some Oakland shit Go Dumb USA is to It is what it says

It's dumb Muffer's on top of the The public bus And the bus is riding They just dance on top of the bus So Mac Dre And the Vallejo boys

How all these dances they do They like You go to Vallejo They're very colorful They're very original They're very not Oakland They're very not

San Francisco Valleo is Vileo Always has been So They do all these fucking dances and all this shit and they got their own slang words and they got their own,

they're 30 miles away from us and they're fucking, they might as well be on the island. Right. Because they are not copying anybody for Lajo is original. So, Mac Drake brings that element

to what a side show would be. You know, I even want to say the ghost riding the whip part probably came from Dre and them. Like they seem to be more like the ones that jumped out the car and knew that the car

would go at a certain speed without you touching the gas or the brake and then they, at that same speed and you never lose the counter. Was Turk and Keek, were they, Vileo guys too? Like, Kik and all them? Yeah, I think, not Kik T sneak, Kik T's from Oakland. Oh, Kik is Ok, got you.

But Turf Talk is, that's E40s fan. I think turf is from Vileo, but I might be wrong. Okay, got you. I might be wrong. So the Haifie movement starts. The hyphy movement, to me, is what Kik to Sneak was doing in Oakland with the side shows and just the whole Oakland vibe of what Keith was talking about,

and then Mac Dre with the pimps, silly shit, dancing and clowning and shit, and ghost riding and all this shit. So they took the ghost riding and dancing of Vallejo mixed it with the burning rubber and crazy car driving in Oakland, and they mentioned it in the one thing, and I don't know where a hyphy came from, because it could have been called anything,

because, you know, really it was a real street culture thing. And the reason why it couldn't be a hip-hop solid, solidified, movement is because the hyphy movement was you've got to be high you've got to be fucking high on drugs the drugs were was ecstasy and cocaine and fucking them little niggas snort heroin

and shit and then get in the car no. And then getting the car. You got to be drinking so it's DUI right off the rip it's um it's fucking a lot of weapons you know what I'm saying it's always a violent act to go

with it and then it's I'm watching it right now as you talk And then it's like extremely overall, it's just hell of disrespectful, just overall. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's some female stuff going on and you don't look like it might be right. It's just, but it looked like it's exciting, you know. It's a watch from the internet.

It's like someone to get freaked on and some dope, but they're going to get freaked on anyway, you know. That type of shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's freaking didn't go bad. That's like freaknik's fucked up cousin. So the music was great, by the way. Right.

The music was hip-hop, street. treat shit, but it made you want to dance. And it was really big in the clubs. And the Hafei movement was like, if it was just about the dancing and the music, I think it would have been something for the world. But when you got to be... Drug culture. Yeah, and I talked to Big Von

over at the radio stage. He was like, man, it was really hard to promote it on a commercial level because it was not commercial. So everybody involved was expecting the next crunk movement. You know what I'm saying? And if it came short of that, they weren't happy.

When they stopped doing it, the music kept going. It was the same music. It's still the same music right now. And I'm like, why are y'all letting go of your shit? It's like, man, it ain't blowing up.

Like, you... Yeah, I felt like they gave up too early on the joint. Exactly. It's almost like, it was their neo-s-soul. Like, they gave it a good two-year run and just like, ah.

And you know who picked it up, right? Who? Must have on the beat. Yeah. Yeah. He got that tempo. All his early beats was like straight,

Bay influenced Tiger came out on that Bay sound Right City bitch Yeah It was It was

Oh yeah Yeah I was Well damn Yeah Because Honestly it was more The tempo

Than anything I had hope for it Because like Just for me personally I like my hip hop Somewhere between 90 110 BPMs

Just a little bit You know what I mean Hype was 100 to 110 I know It's like I had hope for Great energy It's still alive.

It's just not named that anymore. It's still alive. They still do the same exact dances. They still act the same goddamn way. They just don't call it hyphy. Did you ever have any, do any work or have any kind of deals with JT, the bigger figure? Well, me and JT, we like-minded. So, you know, we don't do agreements together and shit, but we work together.

And we, you know, he's family. Like, you talk together. I was like Snoop and shit. We love J-T, man. Because J-T can make something out of nothing in a minute. He never comes with his hand out. And the last time I heard of Figg, he was in Africa. He was in Africa buying that property or some shit.

He put something out. Really? Yes, for real. This was recently, too. Then I heard he got shot in Atlanta. That's the last thing I heard. I don't know. Who is this person?

Wait. JT. The Bigger Figger. He's the one when the game came out. He's like, oh, I got albums on the game. Like, yeah. Fig is he's just, he's just Who, like who?

I mean, now he asking journalist's question, who do you still listen to? Like, okay, for for you, even if it's old shit, whatever, like what is just your go-to you in the car you driving? Like, what's in your Well, I'm

about the funk. I was, I'm officially, no doubt about it, one of the clones of Dr. Fungerstein. When they were cloning him, I'm one of those. And I hear the funk. I hear it. The funk is in the drums.

It's in bass lines. It's in rap cadences. It's in the way people sing. It's there. It's in pop music. You know, the funk is there. So I love a lot of that new funky shit that Mike Will produce type shit. They're fucking, you know, even if it's fucking, what's my man who've been killing him lately, Metro Boom?

And it's the funk. Like, you hear that little funky the Migos is funky as funky as fuck. up. Like the way they worked the auto tune, they bring the funk to a song that wasn't even funky. And I think that's another thing that auto tune was misinterpreted about was that it wasn't so much as how skillful is the person working it. It's just, they got these beats that they do that aren't very melodic. But then if you listen to it and why it's so catchy is that little melody that they're doing with the auto tune, no matter how stupid what they're saying could be, it just, it feels good. It feels good. It's a good vibe. what was I saying? Because I smoke a lot of weed.

Just talking about anything that got the funk. Oh, so what I'm listening to now is I'm just the funk I'm so prejudiced against all other music. Like I love the blues, the funky blues. I don't like all blues. I love jazz when it's got the funk and I'm just that guy who...

What's not wrong with that? But I feel like I was so safe of me, so safe to have a career and say, if it ain't fun, It can't leave out of this room. It's got to be funky. I was in the studio with Puffy in the early days. And he walked in the studio.

I was in there. A whole bunch of motherfuckers in there. It was smoking. It was drinking. Everybody's having a good time enjoying the song that was on. Puff walked in and said, I can't dance to this shit. Scrap, they threw it off. That word.

Killed the whole session. It was over. It was over. So how did the world its feel come about? Because I love that song, but it's not danceable. But I mean, the shit is a jam. Man. It's a slow...

Nice, man. I mean, I'm thinking like Puffy dancing with the fucking... Oh, yeah, no. I can tell you why I didn't get kicked off the chopping block, whatever the fuck I'm trying to say. Okay. I can tell you why, because the beat had been made. The hook was on there.

The hook is Carl Thomas. And Puffy's verse was already on there. He's on the first verse. So when me and Big went to the studio, we did our verse the same day. It was already beat, hook, Puffy's verse. He could already dance to us and he was cool. Yeah, basically.

So he set it off, so that's why I stayed. He probably conceived the concept of the song and, you know, The World's Field, Pimps and Hulls and all that. Yeah, I don't know, like, I used to, that was a song I used to always play on the album because I don't even know if you noticed, at the end of the song, you say bitch. You're the crazy-ass, man.

Bitch! And it starts right back over. If you put the song on repeat, it starts right back in perfect time after you say bitch. Right in rhythm. Dog. is amazing. All right, which leads to my last question.

Sure, dog. What is your favorite word? No, no, no. You have revolutionized the word bitch would not, you make saying the word bitch the funnest thing on earth. I mean, to the point where, like, you know, even with Chappelle taking it to next levels and all that. No, he was the original.

And beyond. I mean, you're the real. Like, how did you feel when people started taking your inflections? I mean, yes, I know that, you know, E40 can claim all this language or whatever, but it's like you, biotch. It's like that is originator. It was exclusively something that was only said by myself and Freddie B. Did you feel some way, like, once you heard death rowing those guys, like taking biotch?

I'll tell you, Freddie B went to jail. my career blows up. He kind of didn't get to have the... The glory. Yeah. And I carried it on. And the first person I heard say it was Ice Cube set it on a bitch as a bitch.

At the end he goes, bitch. And then AMG sampled it. Well, DJ Quick sampled it for AMG. Bitch better have my bitch. That's the same thing. So that opened up the curiosity. Like, well, maybe I can use the ep of it. because, you know, it just slid by.

And then I had a friend of mine who we were in the bathroom smoking some weed at a party one night with a dog pound, we didn't there smoking with dads and corrupting a stupe. And my hungry was like, man, I just got to ask, man, what made y'all say bitch like Too Short? And Snoop told the story. He said... In front of you? Yeah, he said when I... First time I got in the studio and they just put me in there, he was like, man, we grew up on Two Show.

We grew up listening to Too Short. Like, first time I got in the studio, they turned the mic on, I just said, bitch. When he said that, I mean, there's no anger. There's no bad vibe. So basically, I look at it like this. Cube opened the floodgates. Defro, they kind of gave it to the world. They did.

Because for a second, I really thought it was there. So they gave it to the world. And then when I heard an argument one day that Too Short got bitch from Snoop, what? That's why I wrote Blow to Whistle the way I wrote it. It was almost like just the taking back of it. I was saying some things that nobody could dispute as far as the numbers. Like the whole first verse is mathematics.

And I'm like, when I just say I've been rapping for 225,000 hours, that was 10 years ago. And anybody who would stop and put that on a calculator, and who could even figure out how to would realize that average is about 20 years somewhere in there. And I was just like, I've been rapping longer than you motherfuckers. I've been rapping more and just talking shit.

And then I put the, what's my favorite word in there? The bitch and I'm like, I'm reclaiming ownership of my shit. I'm like, I leased it out. It went all around the world. Everybody gets to say it. It's my gift of pop cultured, but it's mine. And we know it now. So if you notice,

I love Snoop to death, hang out with him a lot. But if you notice, he don't say it that much anymore, right? Nah, you don't. No, you're traveling. Well, sure. Do we cover everything? I think we got, I'm trying to think.

You sure there's not an obscure beast? I know we're going to be like, I know. Why did we ask? No movies, right? Yeah. Oh, well, no, he was in Minnesota. Right, right, right.

He was cooking the ribs. You really know how to grill? You really? Nope. No, no. And if you go back and look at Men's Society, then fucking ribs was burnt. It did the scene.

So many times the shit was cooking all day. Look, I'm the only motherfucker in men's society. I'm the only motherfucker that pointed a gun at O'Dog. O'Dong was a savage. And they gave me the role where I got to put the shotgun on here. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, back then, that was, like, folklore. Like, people thought O'Dog was real.

He's somebody. You're right. He was the homie. But, you know, I'm 51 years old. Uh-uh. Yeah, I was going to say, you're... Oh, dog. You are no way...

You're convince me that you're 51 years old right now. And you ain't tired. You ain't tired of the party, but I mean, not a life, but at the party. The last two nights all night. I mean, it's a lifestyle. Yeah, I know, but this is amazing to me. I take naps. Okay.

Thank you. Thank you. You take vitamins, too, or is that just... Yeah, I do all that good stuff. Okay. You got to listen. We want to be like you. I'm semi-healthy, but, you know, I'm 51 years old, and I got a lot of new music coming out,

and I just, I feel like I'm not making records. to compete in hip hop. I'm making records to compete with the definition of hip hop. People keep as old as I keep getting, they keep saying that number like, man, you can't rap when you're 30. Then I turn 40, they're like, man, 40 old-ass rapper. It's like my age is the age they keep saying it's too old.

So I'm like, I'm going to do this shit. You're the Chuck Berry of this shit. Yeah, I think you are, yeah. You might be the oldest in terms of like still relevant to put that record. to me right now is I want to know and I want to be in the race of who's going to be the oldest rapper. You know. To make a

relevant hit record. Oh, that's hard. And not be like, this nigga is 62 and they not be like, oh, that's old ass Johnny. Like, no, like, that's my shit. Like, who's going to be the... But relevant, I mean, that's relevant, though, like, because I'm like 4-4-4. But see, it can happen. It can happen.

It's going to happen. It's going to happen. I feel like it definitely happened with him because again, it's his... He's going with a proven formula. His flat footed, his flat-footed, t-shirt, style will never ever go out of style. You know what I'm thinking? It will never, ever go out of style. Thank you

Too Short for coming on Questlove Supreme. Yes, sir. I'm not. We ain't done reflections in a minute. So, Fontegolo, what did you learn today? I learned that Poo Man was a totally different guy from Tushu. Straight up and down. We made a We made a disrecord about him.

It's called getting where you're fitting. It's on the album. Oh, it's on the off. Really? We ripped his ass because he went and made a record and talked about a few of us on a record. So we... Did you not get him on-jive records? Like, did you...

I got him to deal. Personally got to do it. Yeah, I was going to say, like, these are cats on-jive. He has somewhat success and comes to us after one album and goes, man, I think I want to get off the label. We was like, okay. Damn. You're off.

Yeah. Okay, so two things. I learned number one about your parents being accountants. That's fucking banging and them being together. That just says a lot about a man, period. Oh, have you been married before? No wife, no kids. No.

That's why you're looking at a young guy. No. That's why. No kids? Hold up. No, no. It's a lifestyle. It's a lifestyle.

I do have somebody that keeps putting on Wikipedia that I have a wife and kids, but I don't. You have any kids. And I got something that I want to learn. You said you got a lot of stuff coming down. the pike and I know you've been doing like some interest in other kind of stuff. Can you just give us a little tape? I wrote a book. Okay.

I got a 30th anniversary documentary dropping. Just highlighting a 30 year career. I got an album coming out called the Pimp Tape. And it is exactly what it says. It's a Pimp Tape. And then preceding the Pimp Tape will be a mixtape called Hella Disrespectful. I need you to come back. You feel like we're talking to Mark right now?

Yeah. What? You feel like we're talking to Mark right now? Of all the years of like stuff that you've done and like all the ladies and everything, like how do you escape kids? Yeah. How you make it by? Easy.

Little John said it in the front of the window to the wall. He said, oh, skiske, skate. Not every time. Everybody make a mistake and get lost up in sometime. I've been a skater from day one. I was like, you know, see the strap up or we aiming at something. Well, look. All I ask for you.

Read your own audio book. That's what I ask you for the people. Do your own audio book. That would be, please. Steve, sugar, Steve, do you learn? I learned the entire history of Oakland hip-hop and from the beginning, it sounds like. He could have been in studio, rents.

Me and you are essentially the same age. Also, married, unmarried, no kids. But he's never been married. Oh, here we go again. That's what I'm going. That's what I do. And Atlanta, and a whole bunch of stuff I didn't know. But I like your balance as a person.

I don't know if that sounds weird, but you're, you seem like, you know, the right percentages of things. Yeah, I've never been in love with fame and shit like that. I'm the first person when you walk up to say, hey, are you a too short? I'm like, I look like him, don't I? Yes. That's you?

Dude, we, that's a bunch of cards. This is amazing. But July don't work. Man, invest in Vegas. Hey, that's been going on for a long. Take your Hamilton money, man. Yeah, all that. Right.

By the way, my book was written completely in jail. Oh, wow. Wait, wait, wait. This is some questions we didn't. We didn't. When were you in jail? 2015, June and July, I went to court on June 15th to go. show him the proof of my community

service for a DUI I got. And the prosecutor lady bullied me and she was like, if you fucking present that paper to the judge, I'm going to make sure that he knows that there's some false entries on there and I'm going to make sure you do it. We're in jail. I don't charge you with felonies and all kind of shit. So

I had to go in there and lie to the judge and say I didn't have the paperwork. And the judge is like, you lied to me and told me that you weren't, that you were bringing this paper and you didn't bring it? And the acts of prosecutor, what should we do with him? She said, give him 30 days. Did you know who he was?

The judge? Yeah. No. Or did the judge know who you were? Yeah. It was a high-profile case. And he said... How'd I miss this?

She said, 30 days. He said, well, I'm going to give him 90. And then said, bailiff, take him right now. Better than a year. And I can't do him. That's 90. That's 90. That's that.

He kept me in there five fucking weeks to the day. And so you just finished your book that way? Started and finished your book? Well, Jill was such so full of shit. with the fucking the shit that went on in there like L.A. County jail is like it's not humane at all.

It's fucked up. So during the day there was so much bullshit going on that I would sleep all day and then I, when they, lights out of night, I'd wake up and like write

to like this little light and I was just right all night. So I did my time away from everybody else. Like I slept all day every day. I'm so glad you were mine. I would have been mad and shit like motherfuckers like,

yo, y'all are asked them about it. I was thinking about my name in the book some shit I wrote in jail. Ain't that wrong with it Everybody knew who you were like You got love in there

Was people talking to fuck with you? Well, they know They know They know They know Man, I was in the high power section Man I was in the cell next to

I was about to say Was the minimum Yeah You couldn't come in contact Any other prisons I was in the cell Next to where they had Chris Brown

Next to where they had Shit Night So what was the meals Like in that section I know it was a little different Slice the garlic real thin Right That's what I'm thinking

Just a little man of oils Yeah That's good fellas for my mind. If you're not a snacker, if you don't like snacks because they will not eat the meals, you will not. They have some shit in there. Commissary. There's some shit in there called cow brains. Wait, what?

And you couldn't. They had this one thing that they gave it to me, and I was like, I'm cool. I don't want that. And I was like, but just curious, I was like, what is that? And the guard said it's shit. I was like, no. I was like, no, for a bro. In the kitchen, when they're cooking it, what do they think they're making?

What is it called? He said, shit. Damn. No, that's sloppy Joe, right? And they started purple spaghetti. Purple spaghetti. Why would it be that color? You ask these questions, and there are no answers.

Purple spaghetti? L.A. County ain't right, man. Wait, why did our episode just get lit in the last... In the last... No, I didn't know he was like, though. That's crazy. Five weeks, I wrote every night, damn it every night I wrote, and it's all in pencil. It's about 300 pages. I don't know what the fuck.

I haven't read it back yet. Wow. Okay. Has anybody read it? I let one person read and they was like, it's pretty good. I don't know. They might be gas.

It's my people. So I don't know. But I just feel like I don't give a fuck this good or not. There's some shit I wrote in jail. And I might even fucking release it in handwritten in pencil. It's in pencil because you can't have a pen in jail. Look, this is all I'm going to say. This is all I'm going to say as far as.

What did you learn today? That you. you really really should get an agent to for you to pitch to either Amazon

or I can't even say the end word Amazon you really I'm telling you there is an engaging well fucking story of your childhood

hustling these tapes and we hear Disney has a new platform. I do have an offer. It was an offer on the table to do a mini series. Like a three-prime miniseries. Based on your... I feel like there's... I think there's... Based on your youth?

Streaming up. The young story is your shirt before the career. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, thank you very much for coming on our show. I like snowfall, by the way, too. I like snowfall. I've been watching that. You've been watching? I've been on it. Yeah. It's awesome. On behalf of

of Boss Bill, unpaid bill, Sugar Steve, Von Tickalow and Libby Laia. And our guest, day to be short. Don't you love how I was giving you new titles? I mean, I could be a lady, but I just talk about the way you call me a fucking lady sound old. I know I've got a birthday coming up.

I don't like it. Thank you, though. We were born on the same day, so it's... Not in the same year. And on behalf of the Team Supreme, y'all, this is Questlove. See you next go around. Only One Pandora. Thank you.

Quest Love Supreme is a production of I-heart radio. This classic episode was produced by the team at Pandora. For more podcasts from Iheart Radio, visit the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. 2%. That's the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. I'm Michael Easter. And on my podcast, 2%. I break down the signs of mental toughness, fitness, and building resilience in our strange modern world.

Put yourself through some hardships, and you will come out on the other side a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person. Listen to 2%. That's TWO% on the IHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care what I'm saying. Yep, that's me.

Cliver Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, my basketball and college football journey, or my career in sports media. Well, now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifers Show. This is a place for raw, unfills of conversations with athletes, creators,

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I'm Sam J. And I'm Alex English. Each episode, we pick a hear, unpack what went down, and try to make sense of how we survived it. With our friends, fellow comedians, and favorite authors. Mark Lamont Hill on the 80s. It was a wild year. It was a wild year.

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