October 5, 2018 • 37 mins
For most fans, the music industry can be a relatively obscure enterprise — we might know our favorite singers, MCs or bands, but often we have no idea what goes on behind the scenes as managers, labels and government agencies attempt influence, spread or suppress the music you hear. In this episode Ben, Matt and Noel meet with J. Prince, the founder of Rap-A-Lot records, to learn more about what the music industry does — and does not — want its listeners to know.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. M Hello,
(00:24):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is Donald. They called me Ben. We are joined
with our returning guest super producer, Casey Pegram. Most importantly,
you are you. You are here that makes this stuff
they don't want you to know. Today we are diving
into something that many of you and your fellow conspiracy
realists have asked us to do for a number of years.
(00:48):
We're touching on the concepts of conspiracy and music. The
music industry is cutthroat, it's brutal. It's often described as
a z grow some game. But wait, Matt, Noel, Ben,
you might be saying none of you are kings of
a music empire. Sorry, as if you will, We're not
(01:11):
even really that cultured, right, So, as we know on
this show, the best way to get closest to the
truth is to go to a primary source, and luckily,
with a three C happening this weekend, we were able
to get one of the primary sources for the music industry.
As a whole. Yeah, somebody who has been at the
(01:33):
top of his game for a long long time within
this industry. And I guess the best way to introduce
the person we're interviewing today would be through just a
little bit of background. Noel, would you do the honors? Yes?
So today we interview a guy um who I was
not intensely familiar with by name alone. His name is
(01:54):
James Prince or j Prince. But when you start digging
into his legacy and his his past as a music
mogul and trend setter and just all around forward thinking guy,
you realize that he laid some of the groundwork for
many of the hip hop record labels that we know today,
especially from the nineties and early two thousand, things like
(02:16):
Cash Money Records, No Limit Records. These kind of singular
forces have owned and operated independent hip hop record labels
that then were able to connect up with majors or
at least major distribution companies in a way that they
were still able to set the tone in the rules,
but they used the parts that they needed from the
bigger players without totally cow towing to their every women desire,
(02:40):
like we know can be such a problem with big
record labels, and we talk a lot about that with
Mr Prince. But he founded um a label called rap
a Lot Records in and then the first album was
dropped in that's right. And Um he did this when
he was at the time working at a used car
lot that he owned and braided. And he did it
(03:01):
to get his brother, who was a rapper who went
by the name rap a Lot, to get him to
keep him from becoming a victim of the situation that
they lived in in Houston, Texas, in a neighborhood called
the Fifth Ward. And he talks a lot about that,
and so he um kind of assembled a group called
the Ghetto Boys. The most famous of their tracks that
I'm aware of showing my age and my squareness, but
(03:25):
is Damn it Feels Good to Be a Gangster, which
is prominently a huge song but also prominently featured an
amazing scene in the movie Office Space. He also uh,
he also managed Devin the Dude. If you're if you're
a fan of that he is a great song called
that I Got High. Actually, Devin the Dude has a
bunch of tracks. I'm gonna go listen to him after
(03:47):
this interview, But I think That's an excellent way to
show the context because one of the most important things
is he did this by himself, right, he did this
by himself. He was always kind of hustling and investing
and looking for is to make a buck, and in
doing that and in all of these various endeavors throughout
his life, not to mention the fact that he was
a very successful and continues to be boxing manager managed
(04:11):
a little guy the named of Floyd Mayweather a minute. Yeah,
so this guy's been around and in that in those
journeys that he's been through in his life, he's seen
some stuff. Specifically some stuff they they the record industry,
the music industry, the government, the government, the boxing industry,
all of these people do not want you to know.
(04:32):
So let's you know, they'll take our word for it.
Let's hear from HM. Let's jump right in. Our guest
today is James Prince. He's the founder of rap a
Lot Records, a legend in the music business and beyond.
His memoir, The Art and Science of Respect, is available
now as you're listening to this. You can get the
book today on Amazon, or you can head over to
(04:53):
Apple Music and listen to James Prince read the entire
work in audio book format. Thank for coming on the show, sir,
h Yeah, it's a privilege and honor to be here.
Uh what what do we call you? James? You called
me James, Jay Prince. I'm gonna go with Prince. Is
that okay? Yeah? The studio where we're recording this is
(05:15):
called Prince. This is the Prince Studio. Yeah. Wow, beautiful,
but here I am laughing and living. Come indeed, for sure, sir,
I want to go ahead. We've been listening. We were
talking about on Apple Music. You can listen to excerpts
from each of the chapters in your book. And I
wanted to just start out by talking to us about
creating goals in your life and everybody's life, making plans
(05:36):
and then overcoming challenges as you're making your way. Yeah.
I notice it's really important, you know, to create a goal.
And then you know, I have a formula that's called what, when, where,
and how that gives me clarity on accomplishing that very
goal and I'm trying to attain and you know that's
in part. You know, it's some part to have structure
(05:57):
and discipline in your life to be able to accomplish
these goals. So you know, I don't know where my
life would be without it, absolutely, And you also discuss leaders,
followers and loners, and can you just tell everybody kind
of where you found yourself and how you've evolved. Yeah,
I mean, I'm from Filth Ward. I'm from Fifth Ward
(06:20):
as a as a place in Houston, Texas, and I
always found myself in a position where, you know, even
walking to school, you know, I had to make up
my mind if I was going to be a leader
or follower all on them because I witnessed these type
of uh individuals in the hood that I'm from, and
(06:42):
I chose to be a leader in spite of all
the pressures and you know, the temptation and different things
I was surrounded with that tried to force me to
follow them. You know what I mean. It's like organizations,
believe it or not, that existing the hood that tried
to pray to you to follow them in spite of
(07:03):
all of those obstacles, I chose to be a leader
because you know, I understand that in order to be
a great leader, you have to be a good follower
as well. But that's following things of the light not
the dog. So you talk a lot about how when
you grow up you were constantly felt like you were
be encircled by sharks that were trying to get at
you and take away what you had, And so much
(07:24):
about the rap game is about turf and about owning
certain blocks, or you know, all of the things that
kind of trickle down from the things you hear about
anything growing up in an area like this. You started
an independent label, you know, with rap Alout Records that
sort of set the tone for a lot of the
labels we know, like No Limit Records, cash Money, these
indie labels that had bigger distribution deals but put out
(07:45):
tons of content all the time. You sort of set
the model for that um. But this is not something
that the record industry does we know it today, or
certainly as we know it back then, is really a
fan of how did how were you able to kind
of like push back against the model of the standard
record deal the record industry and forge your own way
in a way that people picked up and kind of
carried on and still due to this day. Well, you know,
(08:08):
the models, the majors, the powers that be didn't embrace me.
I wouldn't welcome to the table in the beginning. So
I had no choice but to do it my way.
And I'm glad I had an opportunity to do it
my way because you know, I learned how to do
it my way in the hood, and I learned the importance.
You know, my hustle always been you know too, you know,
(08:32):
put product out there. You know what I mean to
make money if other words, I never liked the major
system dropping one album a year or two albums every
two or three years. It never made sense to me,
you know, I felt like a lot of money was
being left on the table. So my objective was, you know,
(08:52):
I had a lot of artists. I wanted them all
to eat. So I'm like, we have an opportunity that
may not be here long, so let's milk it while
we have it. And that was my whole model behind
putting a bunch of products out and with that insight
into the music industry we have. We have a lot
of fans of you and your artists listening to the
(09:14):
show today, and there there are a ton of things
that they are probably not aware of when they listen
to a song, when they purchase an album. It's often
said that there are forces in the music industry operating
behind the scenes, and most fans and most listeners are
not aware of those And this gets into territory that
(09:38):
some people might call conspiratorial. You know, it's no secret
that prominent people of color who are at the top
level in various industries, including entertainment, but almost any industry,
have been persecuted by the same government that says it
is here to protect people over your over your time
(10:00):
and in your experience building this empire. Have you seen
this actually happened to people, to entertainers, to musicians, to
to you. Yeah. You know, I was about to say
that I was a victim of that myself, you know,
and I witnessed uh uh in my hood. I witnessed
a lot of my friends associates be victims, but I
(10:21):
thought they were victims because of you know, being in
the ghetto or being in the hood. You know, I
found myself being a victim of the very same thing.
And then I realized that this was bigger than just
being in the hood. Uh. You know, I was attacked
by uh, every alphabet letter you can think of, you know,
(10:44):
for a long time, you know what I mean, and mainly,
you know, I feel it was because of my success,
our content of the songs that we wrote and put out.
You know, back when I started rapple. You know, this
was at a time where you know, rap wasn't as popular,
(11:05):
so our swagger, our movement, you know, with crowds and
everything was was a threat and people was discriminating against it.
You know, we got kicked out of office buildings over
and over again because of how the artists dressed. You know,
they felt like they didn't have suit song. And you know,
it was different and it was new. You know, it's
(11:27):
not everybody looking out of the eyes of what's taking
place today, but imagine you know, in the beginning, all
of this new styles taking place, these new movements, you know,
you know, black guys and nice vehicles. It caused a
lot of problems and I became like enemy number one,
(11:47):
you know, and to the extent where you know, I
feel like they were trying to kill me because, uh,
the d A had a guy that I called consider
a hit man because he had killed eight people. You know,
they put him on me and his sidekick, Chad Scott,
the other d A agent, you know, he was roll
cops that you know actually Chad Scott just got indicted
(12:12):
a few months ago. Um, you know, ten indictment charges
are the very things that I put the spotlight on,
you know, over a decade ago. They're just catching up
with him with a lot of these different things. So
it was real. And that's Chad Scott and Detective Schumacher, right,
Johnny Schumacher, Jack Schumacher. You know, from what we understand,
(12:34):
Chad Scott had a record of various like punishments from
the DA for his behavior beforehand. Is that correct? Yeah,
that's true. When I went and had a meeting in Washington,
d C. With a lot of these guys, you know,
I told him this guy that stole rap a lot
pieces threatened my life, you know what I mean. He
(12:55):
had done all of these things, and before I can
make it home good, they found a up a lot
of pieces in his locker, in his disk or like chains. Yeah,
so they reprimanded him and I think put Schoemalk on
a disk job. But was that enough? I read in
(13:19):
this article from The Advocate out of New Orleans that
Chad Scott was the guy who was the basis for
Denzel Washington's character and training day, um where he you know,
would like basically kind of run his own many gang
operation from the position of power of being a police
officer or a law enforcement official I guess a d agent,
(13:41):
and that gives you a lot of access, right And
I think one of your artists did a disc track
about him, and he was a fond of playing it
at full blast when he would make big drug arrest
or whatever. Can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah,
Notice guy, you know, he was a clown when he
was in Houston, and he became what I can sit,
a bigger clown in Louisiana. You know he was, but
(14:04):
he learned all of that from somewhere and he, you know,
he the head guy in charge at the time with
Jack Schumacher, officer that used his weapon over eight times
eight times a better, which is totally abnormal for any officer.
I guarantee you if you do research, it's hard to
find the officer that used his weapon so many times.
(14:27):
So my investigators had an opportunity a lot of people
don't notice, to interview his lieutenant who he was under,
that had retired, and the lieutenant you know quoted, I
never trust this guy. You know, his stories would change
all the time around these killings, you know, and when
they pulled me over in the dark that night, you know,
(14:49):
I felt like it was a hit because they that's
the first time I've ever been pulled over one time,
to be pulled over to be told to pull over again.
And the direction they gave me to go was dark.
You know why you want to pull me over in
the dark where two vehicles was already there, which was
(15:11):
Chad Scott and I don't know who was in the
green jeep. But I chose to pull over to the
service station where it was light and it was a vocus.
You know. They say I was swerving, as if I
was drunk or something. You know, they do that a
lot in the hood to justify what they pull us over.
I wasn't swerving. You know. They wanted me to pull
(15:32):
in their dog to do something because they know a
licensed gun holder, and that's the first thing. Also asked me,
where are your guns? So in a lot of the
killings that Jack Schumaker done, it was always a weapon
there in questionable. We're seeing so much of that now,
I mean in a big way where it's always an
(15:54):
excuse to take lethal action when someone maybe has a
gunner is or is trying to reach for a gun
and they're just trying to show you they have or
will telephone. I mean, it's just always kind of the
first go to thing for an excuse to do that,
and it sure does seem like an awful lot. There's
me There's another question there too, is is that of
frequency of dirty shootings accelerating or people just hearing more
(16:19):
about the ones that had been occurring. You know, are
there more skeletons in the clubs. There's so much more accountability,
right with the internet being what it is and all
of that. Um, So absolutely, I think that's good. And
obviously we are not anti police law enforcement show at all,
none of us are. But it's just you can't deny
that there's certain patterns that are that are interesting and
(16:40):
and very troubling. I would say we're anti corruption for sure. Unfortunately,
corruption is historically a problem. We found a quote from
an earlier interview that you did where you talked about
a conspiracy taking place to kill off and destroy all
future black entrepreneur yours, and in in this interview you
(17:03):
say this is um they wanted to prevent people from
doing the same thing that you and wrap a lot
and cash money, and various other peers in the space
had also done. And then you say, and I was right,
have you have you seen examples of this and do
you feel like it's accelerating, do you feel like it's lessening,
do you feel like it's a it's a constant thing. Yeah, yeah,
(17:27):
I witnessed this and I made that statement years ago
before everything has taken place to where it have right now.
You know, I saw it common because I saw you know,
artists in the same position that we were in, and
the offers from the majors. You know, they took those
(17:49):
type of offers off the table. You know, we are
no longer. And I spoke with key individuals that was
in the companies with the majors, and they straight up
say that's over. We're not giving those type of deals
up anymore. So they regrets to the three sixty deals,
you know what I mean? And when I was coming
through three sixty deals mean, and they like own everything
(18:12):
that you like, you pay them back or they give
you an advance, and then you're kind of working like
in dentured servitude almost. Yeah, that three sixty they're gonna
eat everywhere you eating, which they criticized when I came through.
They criticized me for managing or being able to get
a percentage of management from an artist that I put out.
You know, they created this after I took an artist
(18:34):
that nobody wanted anything to do with. We created a
buzz and had success the majors with some of the
key individuals. You can't manage and promote the artists at
the same time and turn around and done a three
sixty deal the same deal I was, you know, not
(18:54):
to the extent of the way they're even doing it,
but the management side. But I couldn't, you know, they
oh that was like a sin. So you know, I
witnessed them, you know change. They man don't want to
see another j Prince Master, p Cash Money, Tony Draper
with that distribution deal, with marketing, including the whole infrastructure
(19:20):
of the deals have changed, and I saw it before
it got here, and I guess it's true. The closest
thing I can see to that is like a Jay
Z for example. I mean, like that's the highest profile
dude that's running every aspect of his business and promoting
other artists and you know, has his label and is
also an artist himself. But I don't see a lot
of examples of like the old way, like you know,
(19:42):
Puff Daddy and guys like yourself and master P. You
just didn't seem like there's much opportunity for that to
happen anymore. But is that maybe kind of not the
worst thing in the world, because you have all these
artists being empowered by the Internet and being able to
push themselves out, and it's sort of this like democracy
of like people's attention. If you're really good and you
can succeed on your own without a label, well you
(20:03):
definitely can succeed on your own, but you know, by
no means is that something that they wouldn't want. You know,
everybody would want access to that kind of power, and
you know, speaking of jay z M, they kind of
under the old law, as I would say, in my era,
so that deal was earned like way back then, but
(20:26):
they're trying to prevent that from this day forward. And
when we say they think, something that would surprise a
lot of fans of any type of music is that
at the top, from what I understand, what the majors,
there is a relatively small group of people that are
making these calls to green lights something or to end
(20:49):
end someone's success. Just is that an active thing that
they do. Is there really some sort of like maybe
a room almost like this one where where I mean
a much nicer room there are more cigars and that
where people get together and they say we're gonna shut
We're gonna shut these people down. Yeah. I think I
(21:11):
told his story in my book. I wrote about a
story where you know, I called myself, I gonna create
a situation where the majors was gonna being war. And
I went to I think Capital Records, and I'm interviewing
with a guy, you know, to tell him what I wanted.
(21:33):
And I left Capital and went over to Giant to
speak with Irvan Aisof. And I'm trying to use this
offer that I got against Irvan Aisof to only you know,
witness that Irvan Aisoff knew everything that was offered to
(21:54):
me over there Capital. So you're like floating the south
and to kind of do a little bit in this
test to see what they now, Yeah, which kind of
blew my mind. So at that point I understood it.
Right then, Okay, these guys are working together. You know,
there's a network, a system in place where they're sharing
information and I witnessed this on so many different levels.
(22:15):
But you know, it's, uh, it's interesting, and it's a
surprise to those that that don't know, and you know,
they can't shut you down. I'll give you another example
about David Geffen. You know, because you know, the Ghetto Boys,
we wanted to release a record with the same lyrical
content as he was releasing, you know, with other artists
(22:39):
with Rick Rubin, and he chose not to release our
record and basically gave Rick Rubin the freedom to you know,
going do another deal elsewhere, and if you know, the
lyrical content was the the same as the other rock
and roll artists. Geffen was actually asked about that in
(22:59):
an np our piece and he specifically cited some lyrics
about violence towards women that he had a problem with
that we're kind of a little on the gory side,
and he said that was his position on it. But
I understand, like with death metal and heavy metal and stuff,
there's there's lyrics that are interpreted all kinds of ways too.
But what do you what do you say to that
that it was specifically about violence towards women. Yeah, I
(23:21):
think he full of it. And uh, you know, but
it was his company to do what he wanted to do.
But you know, it's it's almost as as you you're
against a movie where violence take place against women. You know,
it's all at the end of the day, it's all
a joke, you know what I mean. It's not what
I what I mean by joke. Nobody in that particular song.
(23:44):
If you listen to the song that he's referred to,
it was like a vampire movie type of song or something.
You know, can I can I jump to some grow fast?
You were a boxing promoter for a time, were right,
(24:04):
not a boxing manager, manager manager, So you're still a
boxing manager. So are you excited about any of this
stuff coming up on Saturday, like some of the big
the big UFC fight stuff or the UFC Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I think that's gonna be a good fight. Uh Um.
I don't know who's gonna win. But I like UFC
(24:27):
as well as boxing. They're both great. And uh you know,
Connor McGregor just had his he tried his handed boxing
r and so great. So there's it depends that it
was his best. It's the best in his life, right, um.
But you know, in the same vein. In that world,
there's a lot of stuff they don't want you to know.
(24:48):
Similar to the music industry. Is there anything you can
share with us about that that whole world, Well, just
understand that boxing and the music game is too cutthroat businesses.
And with that being said, you know when you're dealing
with cutthroat situations. You know, I give you example, and
(25:09):
I wrote about it in the book uh Me and
Don King. Uh. Don King had this fight about the
name of James Page, who you know wasn't being treated
fairly at all. You know, he had to deal with
with showtime where two million a fight was coming his
(25:30):
way because of you know, James Page. And you know
James Page is only getting a hundred and some thousands
of that money. So, you know, I went to Don King.
I'm like, hey, man, you know the same right we
have to eat. You know, I'm representing this guy now,
so you know, show some respect and allow us to
eat a little more. And King said to me, brother,
(25:54):
if you want him to eat, then you need to
go and figure out a way from him. Need you
know this is what I'm so I understood that, and
uh I made some for next Moves, which caused me
to get sued by Don King for like twenty million dollars,
you know, because he felt like I had took his fighter,
(26:16):
and which I did and created a belt opportunity. I
got him the biggest pay day that he had ever made.
To make a long story short, you know, I I
warn that lawsuit and you know the headlines read at
the Prince, the thrones, the King, which you know caused
my business to try, um to a different level than
(26:37):
that's a good headline. Yeah. And often in both of
these businesses which just described as cut through, often we
see various artists, various even boxers and fighters referring or
maybe I should say, deferring to you your opinion to take.
(27:02):
Do you see these especially these younger people want to
follow in your footsteps. Do you see them learning from
you or I guess what the mask is. Do you
see them listening? Yeah? Yeah, most definitely. Uh. When I speak,
they normally listen. A lot of them reach out to
me all the time, which you know caused me to
(27:22):
want to write the book The Art and Science of
Respect because of the demand of questions that um I
be asked all the time. And uh, yeah, they definitely listening,
and you know that they are wiser, you know, because
of the information they have access to. You know, a
(27:42):
lot of them are weaker but wiser. Yeah, you know,
but uh, yeah, I I actually like some of the
things that they are doing. You know. I think that
they are more content where ownership is concerned, more alert
and on guard then then our generation. So yeah, they
(28:05):
some of them. Listen. Speaking of that, you're here in
town in Atlanta for the A three C Conference and
festival festival. In conference, excuse me, and you're gonna be
speaking about your booking about a lot of these lessons
that you've learned and what people are learning from you.
And uh, this episode comes out today's Friday. You can
go right now to A three C Festival dot com
(28:28):
and check out what's going on. There's still a few
days left. You can go do some things this weekend,
so check that out for sure. We got a couple
of quick, rapid fire questions for you just to to
close this thing out. Um, what's it like owning an island?
How's that working out for you? Man? That's a that's
a beautiful feeling to to be uh in a place
like this around it by water and I never saw
(28:51):
a darkness that exists the way it exists around water
And yeah, doll is a beautiful Do you have a
secret hideout on your eye? Yes? I do. That's cool.
How much like what do we have to do to
come hang out with you sometimes? Oh? Man, you know,
(29:14):
just just ring me, stop giving me a call and
we'll make it happy. Alright, cool you gonna take you
up on that? Um one more what you got? Oh yeah? Sure? Um.
There are a lot of rumors about you man obviously. Yeah,
do you have a pig farm or some sort? No,
I don't have a pig farm, but I do have
(29:35):
a rant with a lot of black angles, cattle and
horses on. That's awesome. Yeah, so we ya. James Prince,
thank you so much for taking the time to to
come by our studio and fill us in on a
lot of things that the music industry maybe doesn't want
(29:58):
artists and fans to know. Absolutely, thank you all for
having me dude. Courtesy message was awesome. Thank you. All right,
we're back here with just the three of us in
the studio. That was pretty intense, huh, I was intense
and a lot of lots I mean, Mr Prince rolled
in with a sizeable posse, and that was amazing and
(30:20):
slightly intimidating, but ultimately cool because they were all super cool, kind,
nice people, as was Mr Prince himself, very generous with
his time. It was a bit of a crunch, and
we felt like we covered most of the bases that
we wanted to. Absolutely, we didn't really talk about how J.
Prince is kind of a scary figure in a way,
at least according to a lot of rumors and a
(30:42):
lot of the legends about him. I I had a
I had a great time speaking with him. Reminds me
of some people that in my family that were older
than meat that I grew up with. And obviously has
been asked some of these questions before, but I think
it's horton, especially if you're listening to this and you
(31:03):
want to pursue a career in the music industry, and
it's important to know a lot of this stuff because,
as as we have brought up for in in the
earlier interview, the music industry is notorious for doing terrible
things to people who are pursuing a career in music
in one way or another, and that's stuff with Don
(31:25):
King a hundred thousand dollars out of two million. That
blew my mind. Dude, I know well, and I didn't
want to get too deep into it, but the same
thing is happening with big, big organizations like the UFC
and their fighters, where they're making just millions and millions
of dollars and the fighters get paid like fifty two
(31:45):
sometimes less unless you're a Connor McGregor. That's record. And
you know, it might not surprise the people that there
are rumors fletting around about this guy, you know, having
to maybe crack some some heads in his day or
have them cracked on his behalf because you don't get
to the top as a one man show by being
a sweetheart to everyone. Um, yeah, no, you're absolutely right,
(32:06):
the most dangerous person. Let's go to weird analogy here
talking about bread and making bread some of the old
sayings here. I am interested. Okay, Well, the idea for us,
The idea is that, uh, you can eat bread. That's great, right,
you can. If you know how to make bread, you
can feed yourself. And if you can make bread like
(32:28):
in your house, that's great. You can feed a couple
of your friends and your family. But if you build
a bread factory. Give me like a bakery, a bread
factory where you can literally start feeding everyone in your
your area. That makes you a very dangerous person because
the people that usually sell the bread, they can't sell
(32:51):
it anymore because you're making it, probably at a little
cheaper price, and you're giving it, maybe you're giving some away.
Just that whole idea of being controlled by an outside
force versus owning the means of production not to that. Yeah,
but that's what I'm saying, was that stupid? And that's
a big part about his struggle with the record industry too,
is because this is a guy that kind of came
(33:12):
in build his own model where he owns the means
of production, he does it himself, or he leagues up
with just the bits of the bigger distros and labels
that that he needs and then says, I don't need
the rest of this, you know. And that is a
model that's kind of coming back around now in terms
of independent labels doing well, in terms of um individual
artists more owning the means of production, in terms of
(33:35):
being able to afford to press their own stuff more cheaply,
or release it digitally, or make money touring and I
guess the the issue is there's maybe not millions and
billions to be made as much anymore as there were
in the old days, except for a very small elite
group of people that are still largely controlled by the
big record labels. But it's still interesting to see that evolution, uh,
(33:56):
and to see how he looks at the way things
are now. It sounds like he doesn't have a completely
bad outlook on it, but it also doesn't sound like
he's a huge fan of the current digital you know,
artists driven right. Yeah, there there were a ton of
questions that we didn't get to, and we wanted to
make sure we got to the things that were more
(34:20):
in the in the realm of cover ups, the things
that would be helpful to you and your fellow listeners.
But we left the interview with with several questions still there.
I wanted to take time to say, oh, what do
you think of this seific artist? What do you think
of this person? I wanted to ask him honestly about
(34:40):
Kanye in his recent SNL appearance. There's this whole He
gave this whole speech at the end after the show stopped. Well,
it was it was the third performance, like at the
end where you know, everybody comes out on stage and
everything kind of did another song and they had to
cut it off because it was like one oh two
or something. Uh, it ends at one o'clock the morning,
(35:02):
and then he gave just a really long speech. Anyway,
if you haven't watched that, you can find it online.
There's some interesting stuff in there that I think we
should probably explore, having to do with accusations about Democrats
setting up the black community to fail. Right, Yes, I
do remember that part. You can see the speech on YouTube,
but it might be in a bootleg version. I think
(35:24):
SNL cut it for their West Coast Chris Rock actually
filmed a lot of it. Seriously, so let us know
what you think about cover ups in the music industry,
about the ways in which the US government or other
governments may persecute musicians or entertainers. You know, how do
(35:44):
how do governments navigate or negotiate with uh cultural power centers?
You know, and we want to hear your thoughts. We
also want to give you a brief brief spoiler. We
are going to have some more music industry episodes along
(36:04):
the way. You might be surprised by who writes your
favorite pop song. That's a that's all we got. That's
a good spoiler. Should we just go ahead right now
while we have a chance and just call out the
culture kings, like officially, what do you mean? And just
say we we heard it, We heard what you said.
That's all. Oh yeah, I'm having fun with that. We
(36:28):
heard what you said. And this aggression will not stand.
No no, it will not Oh no. Yeah, but we
love you guys, and you know, we look forward to
putting out the episode that we just did together. Yeah,
and that loves you. I'm playing so yeah, Jake, Key,
Segar that's their names. Thanks so much for the Thanks
(36:51):
so much for the shout out, Thanks for the call out.
Great to be on the air, and uh We're talked
with you soon. In the meantime, you can find us
on Instagram, Face, Twitter, can find us on Here's where
it gets crazy. You can call us directly. We are
one eight three three st d w y t K,
(37:11):
so you can put the hype on STD it's always
gross and I'm sorry we do that. And if you
don't want to do any of those things, go ahead
and write us in good old fashioned email. We are
conspiracy and how stuff works dot com,
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. M Hello,
(00:24):
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is Donald. They called me Ben. We are joined
with our returning guest super producer, Casey Pegram. Most importantly,
you are you. You are here that makes this stuff
they don't want you to know. Today we are diving
into something that many of you and your fellow conspiracy
realists have asked us to do for a number of years.
(00:48):
We're touching on the concepts of conspiracy and music. The
music industry is cutthroat, it's brutal. It's often described as
a z grow some game. But wait, Matt, Noel, Ben,
you might be saying none of you are kings of
a music empire. Sorry, as if you will, We're not
(01:11):
even really that cultured, right, So, as we know on
this show, the best way to get closest to the
truth is to go to a primary source, and luckily,
with a three C happening this weekend, we were able
to get one of the primary sources for the music industry.
As a whole. Yeah, somebody who has been at the
(01:33):
top of his game for a long long time within
this industry. And I guess the best way to introduce
the person we're interviewing today would be through just a
little bit of background. Noel, would you do the honors? Yes?
So today we interview a guy um who I was
not intensely familiar with by name alone. His name is
(01:54):
James Prince or j Prince. But when you start digging
into his legacy and his his past as a music
mogul and trend setter and just all around forward thinking guy,
you realize that he laid some of the groundwork for
many of the hip hop record labels that we know today,
especially from the nineties and early two thousand, things like
(02:16):
Cash Money Records, No Limit Records. These kind of singular
forces have owned and operated independent hip hop record labels
that then were able to connect up with majors or
at least major distribution companies in a way that they
were still able to set the tone in the rules,
but they used the parts that they needed from the
bigger players without totally cow towing to their every women desire,
(02:40):
like we know can be such a problem with big
record labels, and we talk a lot about that with
Mr Prince. But he founded um a label called rap
a Lot Records in and then the first album was
dropped in that's right. And Um he did this when
he was at the time working at a used car
lot that he owned and braided. And he did it
(03:01):
to get his brother, who was a rapper who went
by the name rap a Lot, to get him to
keep him from becoming a victim of the situation that
they lived in in Houston, Texas, in a neighborhood called
the Fifth Ward. And he talks a lot about that,
and so he um kind of assembled a group called
the Ghetto Boys. The most famous of their tracks that
I'm aware of showing my age and my squareness, but
(03:25):
is Damn it Feels Good to Be a Gangster, which
is prominently a huge song but also prominently featured an
amazing scene in the movie Office Space. He also uh,
he also managed Devin the Dude. If you're if you're
a fan of that he is a great song called
that I Got High. Actually, Devin the Dude has a
bunch of tracks. I'm gonna go listen to him after
(03:47):
this interview, But I think That's an excellent way to
show the context because one of the most important things
is he did this by himself, right, he did this
by himself. He was always kind of hustling and investing
and looking for is to make a buck, and in
doing that and in all of these various endeavors throughout
his life, not to mention the fact that he was
a very successful and continues to be boxing manager managed
(04:11):
a little guy the named of Floyd Mayweather a minute. Yeah,
so this guy's been around and in that in those
journeys that he's been through in his life, he's seen
some stuff. Specifically some stuff they they the record industry,
the music industry, the government, the government, the boxing industry,
all of these people do not want you to know.
(04:32):
So let's you know, they'll take our word for it.
Let's hear from HM. Let's jump right in. Our guest
today is James Prince. He's the founder of rap a
Lot Records, a legend in the music business and beyond.
His memoir, The Art and Science of Respect, is available
now as you're listening to this. You can get the
book today on Amazon, or you can head over to
(04:53):
Apple Music and listen to James Prince read the entire
work in audio book format. Thank for coming on the show, sir,
h Yeah, it's a privilege and honor to be here.
Uh what what do we call you? James? You called
me James, Jay Prince. I'm gonna go with Prince. Is
that okay? Yeah? The studio where we're recording this is
(05:15):
called Prince. This is the Prince Studio. Yeah. Wow, beautiful,
but here I am laughing and living. Come indeed, for sure, sir,
I want to go ahead. We've been listening. We were
talking about on Apple Music. You can listen to excerpts
from each of the chapters in your book. And I
wanted to just start out by talking to us about
creating goals in your life and everybody's life, making plans
(05:36):
and then overcoming challenges as you're making your way. Yeah.
I notice it's really important, you know, to create a goal.
And then you know, I have a formula that's called what, when, where,
and how that gives me clarity on accomplishing that very
goal and I'm trying to attain and you know that's
in part. You know, it's some part to have structure
(05:57):
and discipline in your life to be able to accomplish
these goals. So you know, I don't know where my
life would be without it, absolutely, And you also discuss leaders,
followers and loners, and can you just tell everybody kind
of where you found yourself and how you've evolved. Yeah,
I mean, I'm from Filth Ward. I'm from Fifth Ward
(06:20):
as a as a place in Houston, Texas, and I
always found myself in a position where, you know, even
walking to school, you know, I had to make up
my mind if I was going to be a leader
or follower all on them because I witnessed these type
of uh individuals in the hood that I'm from, and
(06:42):
I chose to be a leader in spite of all
the pressures and you know, the temptation and different things
I was surrounded with that tried to force me to
follow them. You know what I mean. It's like organizations,
believe it or not, that existing the hood that tried
to pray to you to follow them in spite of
(07:03):
all of those obstacles, I chose to be a leader
because you know, I understand that in order to be
a great leader, you have to be a good follower
as well. But that's following things of the light not
the dog. So you talk a lot about how when
you grow up you were constantly felt like you were
be encircled by sharks that were trying to get at
you and take away what you had, And so much
(07:24):
about the rap game is about turf and about owning
certain blocks, or you know, all of the things that
kind of trickle down from the things you hear about
anything growing up in an area like this. You started
an independent label, you know, with rap Alout Records that
sort of set the tone for a lot of the
labels we know, like No Limit Records, cash Money, these
indie labels that had bigger distribution deals but put out
(07:45):
tons of content all the time. You sort of set
the model for that um. But this is not something
that the record industry does we know it today, or
certainly as we know it back then, is really a
fan of how did how were you able to kind
of like push back against the model of the standard
record deal the record industry and forge your own way
in a way that people picked up and kind of
carried on and still due to this day. Well, you know,
(08:08):
the models, the majors, the powers that be didn't embrace me.
I wouldn't welcome to the table in the beginning. So
I had no choice but to do it my way.
And I'm glad I had an opportunity to do it
my way because you know, I learned how to do
it my way in the hood, and I learned the importance.
You know, my hustle always been you know too, you know,
(08:32):
put product out there. You know what I mean to
make money if other words, I never liked the major
system dropping one album a year or two albums every
two or three years. It never made sense to me,
you know, I felt like a lot of money was
being left on the table. So my objective was, you know,
(08:52):
I had a lot of artists. I wanted them all
to eat. So I'm like, we have an opportunity that
may not be here long, so let's milk it while
we have it. And that was my whole model behind
putting a bunch of products out and with that insight
into the music industry we have. We have a lot
of fans of you and your artists listening to the
(09:14):
show today, and there there are a ton of things
that they are probably not aware of when they listen
to a song, when they purchase an album. It's often
said that there are forces in the music industry operating
behind the scenes, and most fans and most listeners are
not aware of those And this gets into territory that
(09:38):
some people might call conspiratorial. You know, it's no secret
that prominent people of color who are at the top
level in various industries, including entertainment, but almost any industry,
have been persecuted by the same government that says it
is here to protect people over your over your time
(10:00):
and in your experience building this empire. Have you seen
this actually happened to people, to entertainers, to musicians, to
to you. Yeah. You know, I was about to say
that I was a victim of that myself, you know,
and I witnessed uh uh in my hood. I witnessed
a lot of my friends associates be victims, but I
(10:21):
thought they were victims because of you know, being in
the ghetto or being in the hood. You know, I
found myself being a victim of the very same thing.
And then I realized that this was bigger than just
being in the hood. Uh. You know, I was attacked
by uh, every alphabet letter you can think of, you know,
(10:44):
for a long time, you know what I mean, and mainly,
you know, I feel it was because of my success,
our content of the songs that we wrote and put out.
You know, back when I started rapple. You know, this
was at a time where you know, rap wasn't as popular,
(11:05):
so our swagger, our movement, you know, with crowds and
everything was was a threat and people was discriminating against it.
You know, we got kicked out of office buildings over
and over again because of how the artists dressed. You know,
they felt like they didn't have suit song. And you know,
it was different and it was new. You know, it's
(11:27):
not everybody looking out of the eyes of what's taking
place today, but imagine you know, in the beginning, all
of this new styles taking place, these new movements, you know,
you know, black guys and nice vehicles. It caused a
lot of problems and I became like enemy number one,
(11:47):
you know, and to the extent where you know, I
feel like they were trying to kill me because, uh,
the d A had a guy that I called consider
a hit man because he had killed eight people. You know,
they put him on me and his sidekick, Chad Scott,
the other d A agent, you know, he was roll
cops that you know actually Chad Scott just got indicted
(12:12):
a few months ago. Um, you know, ten indictment charges
are the very things that I put the spotlight on,
you know, over a decade ago. They're just catching up
with him with a lot of these different things. So
it was real. And that's Chad Scott and Detective Schumacher, right,
Johnny Schumacher, Jack Schumacher. You know, from what we understand,
(12:34):
Chad Scott had a record of various like punishments from
the DA for his behavior beforehand. Is that correct? Yeah,
that's true. When I went and had a meeting in Washington,
d C. With a lot of these guys, you know,
I told him this guy that stole rap a lot
pieces threatened my life, you know what I mean. He
(12:55):
had done all of these things, and before I can
make it home good, they found a up a lot
of pieces in his locker, in his disk or like chains. Yeah,
so they reprimanded him and I think put Schoemalk on
a disk job. But was that enough? I read in
(13:19):
this article from The Advocate out of New Orleans that
Chad Scott was the guy who was the basis for
Denzel Washington's character and training day, um where he you know,
would like basically kind of run his own many gang
operation from the position of power of being a police
officer or a law enforcement official I guess a d agent,
(13:41):
and that gives you a lot of access, right And
I think one of your artists did a disc track
about him, and he was a fond of playing it
at full blast when he would make big drug arrest
or whatever. Can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah,
Notice guy, you know, he was a clown when he
was in Houston, and he became what I can sit,
a bigger clown in Louisiana. You know he was, but
(14:04):
he learned all of that from somewhere and he, you know,
he the head guy in charge at the time with
Jack Schumacher, officer that used his weapon over eight times
eight times a better, which is totally abnormal for any officer.
I guarantee you if you do research, it's hard to
find the officer that used his weapon so many times.
(14:27):
So my investigators had an opportunity a lot of people
don't notice, to interview his lieutenant who he was under,
that had retired, and the lieutenant you know quoted, I
never trust this guy. You know, his stories would change
all the time around these killings, you know, and when
they pulled me over in the dark that night, you know,
(14:49):
I felt like it was a hit because they that's
the first time I've ever been pulled over one time,
to be pulled over to be told to pull over again.
And the direction they gave me to go was dark.
You know why you want to pull me over in
the dark where two vehicles was already there, which was
(15:11):
Chad Scott and I don't know who was in the
green jeep. But I chose to pull over to the
service station where it was light and it was a vocus.
You know. They say I was swerving, as if I
was drunk or something. You know, they do that a
lot in the hood to justify what they pull us over.
I wasn't swerving. You know. They wanted me to pull
(15:32):
in their dog to do something because they know a
licensed gun holder, and that's the first thing. Also asked me,
where are your guns? So in a lot of the
killings that Jack Schumaker done, it was always a weapon
there in questionable. We're seeing so much of that now,
I mean in a big way where it's always an
(15:54):
excuse to take lethal action when someone maybe has a
gunner is or is trying to reach for a gun
and they're just trying to show you they have or
will telephone. I mean, it's just always kind of the
first go to thing for an excuse to do that,
and it sure does seem like an awful lot. There's
me There's another question there too, is is that of
frequency of dirty shootings accelerating or people just hearing more
(16:19):
about the ones that had been occurring. You know, are
there more skeletons in the clubs. There's so much more accountability,
right with the internet being what it is and all
of that. Um, So absolutely, I think that's good. And
obviously we are not anti police law enforcement show at all,
none of us are. But it's just you can't deny
that there's certain patterns that are that are interesting and
(16:40):
and very troubling. I would say we're anti corruption for sure. Unfortunately,
corruption is historically a problem. We found a quote from
an earlier interview that you did where you talked about
a conspiracy taking place to kill off and destroy all
future black entrepreneur yours, and in in this interview you
(17:03):
say this is um they wanted to prevent people from
doing the same thing that you and wrap a lot
and cash money, and various other peers in the space
had also done. And then you say, and I was right,
have you have you seen examples of this and do
you feel like it's accelerating, do you feel like it's lessening,
do you feel like it's a it's a constant thing. Yeah, yeah,
(17:27):
I witnessed this and I made that statement years ago
before everything has taken place to where it have right now.
You know, I saw it common because I saw you know,
artists in the same position that we were in, and
the offers from the majors. You know, they took those
(17:49):
type of offers off the table. You know, we are
no longer. And I spoke with key individuals that was
in the companies with the majors, and they straight up
say that's over. We're not giving those type of deals
up anymore. So they regrets to the three sixty deals,
you know what I mean? And when I was coming
through three sixty deals mean, and they like own everything
(18:12):
that you like, you pay them back or they give
you an advance, and then you're kind of working like
in dentured servitude almost. Yeah, that three sixty they're gonna
eat everywhere you eating, which they criticized when I came through.
They criticized me for managing or being able to get
a percentage of management from an artist that I put out.
You know, they created this after I took an artist
(18:34):
that nobody wanted anything to do with. We created a
buzz and had success the majors with some of the
key individuals. You can't manage and promote the artists at
the same time and turn around and done a three
sixty deal the same deal I was, you know, not
(18:54):
to the extent of the way they're even doing it,
but the management side. But I couldn't, you know, they
oh that was like a sin. So you know, I
witnessed them, you know change. They man don't want to
see another j Prince Master, p Cash Money, Tony Draper
with that distribution deal, with marketing, including the whole infrastructure
(19:20):
of the deals have changed, and I saw it before
it got here, and I guess it's true. The closest
thing I can see to that is like a Jay
Z for example. I mean, like that's the highest profile
dude that's running every aspect of his business and promoting
other artists and you know, has his label and is
also an artist himself. But I don't see a lot
of examples of like the old way, like you know,
(19:42):
Puff Daddy and guys like yourself and master P. You
just didn't seem like there's much opportunity for that to
happen anymore. But is that maybe kind of not the
worst thing in the world, because you have all these
artists being empowered by the Internet and being able to
push themselves out, and it's sort of this like democracy
of like people's attention. If you're really good and you
can succeed on your own without a label, well you
(20:03):
definitely can succeed on your own, but you know, by
no means is that something that they wouldn't want. You know,
everybody would want access to that kind of power, and
you know, speaking of jay z M, they kind of
under the old law, as I would say, in my era,
so that deal was earned like way back then, but
(20:26):
they're trying to prevent that from this day forward. And
when we say they think, something that would surprise a
lot of fans of any type of music is that
at the top, from what I understand, what the majors,
there is a relatively small group of people that are
making these calls to green lights something or to end
(20:49):
end someone's success. Just is that an active thing that
they do. Is there really some sort of like maybe
a room almost like this one where where I mean
a much nicer room there are more cigars and that
where people get together and they say we're gonna shut
We're gonna shut these people down. Yeah. I think I
(21:11):
told his story in my book. I wrote about a
story where you know, I called myself, I gonna create
a situation where the majors was gonna being war. And
I went to I think Capital Records, and I'm interviewing
with a guy, you know, to tell him what I wanted.
(21:33):
And I left Capital and went over to Giant to
speak with Irvan Aisof. And I'm trying to use this
offer that I got against Irvan Aisof to only you know,
witness that Irvan Aisoff knew everything that was offered to
(21:54):
me over there Capital. So you're like floating the south
and to kind of do a little bit in this
test to see what they now, Yeah, which kind of
blew my mind. So at that point I understood it.
Right then, Okay, these guys are working together. You know,
there's a network, a system in place where they're sharing
information and I witnessed this on so many different levels.
(22:15):
But you know, it's, uh, it's interesting, and it's a
surprise to those that that don't know, and you know,
they can't shut you down. I'll give you another example
about David Geffen. You know, because you know, the Ghetto Boys,
we wanted to release a record with the same lyrical
content as he was releasing, you know, with other artists
(22:39):
with Rick Rubin, and he chose not to release our
record and basically gave Rick Rubin the freedom to you know,
going do another deal elsewhere, and if you know, the
lyrical content was the the same as the other rock
and roll artists. Geffen was actually asked about that in
(22:59):
an np our piece and he specifically cited some lyrics
about violence towards women that he had a problem with
that we're kind of a little on the gory side,
and he said that was his position on it. But
I understand, like with death metal and heavy metal and stuff,
there's there's lyrics that are interpreted all kinds of ways too.
But what do you what do you say to that
that it was specifically about violence towards women. Yeah, I
(23:21):
think he full of it. And uh, you know, but
it was his company to do what he wanted to do.
But you know, it's it's almost as as you you're
against a movie where violence take place against women. You know,
it's all at the end of the day, it's all
a joke, you know what I mean. It's not what
I what I mean by joke. Nobody in that particular song.
(23:44):
If you listen to the song that he's referred to,
it was like a vampire movie type of song or something.
You know, can I can I jump to some grow fast?
You were a boxing promoter for a time, were right,
(24:04):
not a boxing manager, manager manager, So you're still a
boxing manager. So are you excited about any of this
stuff coming up on Saturday, like some of the big
the big UFC fight stuff or the UFC Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I think that's gonna be a good fight. Uh Um.
I don't know who's gonna win. But I like UFC
(24:27):
as well as boxing. They're both great. And uh you know,
Connor McGregor just had his he tried his handed boxing
r and so great. So there's it depends that it
was his best. It's the best in his life, right, um.
But you know, in the same vein. In that world,
there's a lot of stuff they don't want you to know.
(24:48):
Similar to the music industry. Is there anything you can
share with us about that that whole world, Well, just
understand that boxing and the music game is too cutthroat businesses.
And with that being said, you know when you're dealing
with cutthroat situations. You know, I give you example, and
(25:09):
I wrote about it in the book uh Me and
Don King. Uh. Don King had this fight about the
name of James Page, who you know wasn't being treated
fairly at all. You know, he had to deal with
with showtime where two million a fight was coming his
(25:30):
way because of you know, James Page. And you know
James Page is only getting a hundred and some thousands
of that money. So, you know, I went to Don King.
I'm like, hey, man, you know the same right we
have to eat. You know, I'm representing this guy now,
so you know, show some respect and allow us to
eat a little more. And King said to me, brother,
(25:54):
if you want him to eat, then you need to
go and figure out a way from him. Need you
know this is what I'm so I understood that, and
uh I made some for next Moves, which caused me
to get sued by Don King for like twenty million dollars,
you know, because he felt like I had took his fighter,
(26:16):
and which I did and created a belt opportunity. I
got him the biggest pay day that he had ever made.
To make a long story short, you know, I I
warn that lawsuit and you know the headlines read at
the Prince, the thrones, the King, which you know caused
my business to try, um to a different level than
(26:37):
that's a good headline. Yeah. And often in both of
these businesses which just described as cut through, often we
see various artists, various even boxers and fighters referring or
maybe I should say, deferring to you your opinion to take.
(27:02):
Do you see these especially these younger people want to
follow in your footsteps. Do you see them learning from
you or I guess what the mask is. Do you
see them listening? Yeah? Yeah, most definitely. Uh. When I speak,
they normally listen. A lot of them reach out to
me all the time, which you know caused me to
(27:22):
want to write the book The Art and Science of
Respect because of the demand of questions that um I
be asked all the time. And uh, yeah, they definitely listening,
and you know that they are wiser, you know, because
of the information they have access to. You know, a
(27:42):
lot of them are weaker but wiser. Yeah, you know,
but uh, yeah, I I actually like some of the
things that they are doing. You know. I think that
they are more content where ownership is concerned, more alert
and on guard then then our generation. So yeah, they
(28:05):
some of them. Listen. Speaking of that, you're here in
town in Atlanta for the A three C Conference and
festival festival. In conference, excuse me, and you're gonna be
speaking about your booking about a lot of these lessons
that you've learned and what people are learning from you.
And uh, this episode comes out today's Friday. You can
go right now to A three C Festival dot com
(28:28):
and check out what's going on. There's still a few
days left. You can go do some things this weekend,
so check that out for sure. We got a couple
of quick, rapid fire questions for you just to to
close this thing out. Um, what's it like owning an island?
How's that working out for you? Man? That's a that's
a beautiful feeling to to be uh in a place
like this around it by water and I never saw
(28:51):
a darkness that exists the way it exists around water
And yeah, doll is a beautiful Do you have a
secret hideout on your eye? Yes? I do. That's cool.
How much like what do we have to do to
come hang out with you sometimes? Oh? Man, you know,
(29:14):
just just ring me, stop giving me a call and
we'll make it happy. Alright, cool you gonna take you
up on that? Um one more what you got? Oh yeah? Sure? Um.
There are a lot of rumors about you man obviously. Yeah,
do you have a pig farm or some sort? No,
I don't have a pig farm, but I do have
(29:35):
a rant with a lot of black angles, cattle and
horses on. That's awesome. Yeah, so we ya. James Prince,
thank you so much for taking the time to to
come by our studio and fill us in on a
lot of things that the music industry maybe doesn't want
(29:58):
artists and fans to know. Absolutely, thank you all for
having me dude. Courtesy message was awesome. Thank you. All right,
we're back here with just the three of us in
the studio. That was pretty intense, huh, I was intense
and a lot of lots I mean, Mr Prince rolled
in with a sizeable posse, and that was amazing and
(30:20):
slightly intimidating, but ultimately cool because they were all super cool, kind,
nice people, as was Mr Prince himself, very generous with
his time. It was a bit of a crunch, and
we felt like we covered most of the bases that
we wanted to. Absolutely, we didn't really talk about how J.
Prince is kind of a scary figure in a way,
at least according to a lot of rumors and a
(30:42):
lot of the legends about him. I I had a
I had a great time speaking with him. Reminds me
of some people that in my family that were older
than meat that I grew up with. And obviously has
been asked some of these questions before, but I think
it's horton, especially if you're listening to this and you
(31:03):
want to pursue a career in the music industry, and
it's important to know a lot of this stuff because,
as as we have brought up for in in the
earlier interview, the music industry is notorious for doing terrible
things to people who are pursuing a career in music
in one way or another, and that's stuff with Don
(31:25):
King a hundred thousand dollars out of two million. That
blew my mind. Dude, I know well, and I didn't
want to get too deep into it, but the same
thing is happening with big, big organizations like the UFC
and their fighters, where they're making just millions and millions
of dollars and the fighters get paid like fifty two
(31:45):
sometimes less unless you're a Connor McGregor. That's record. And
you know, it might not surprise the people that there
are rumors fletting around about this guy, you know, having
to maybe crack some some heads in his day or
have them cracked on his behalf because you don't get
to the top as a one man show by being
a sweetheart to everyone. Um, yeah, no, you're absolutely right,
(32:06):
the most dangerous person. Let's go to weird analogy here
talking about bread and making bread some of the old
sayings here. I am interested. Okay, Well, the idea for us,
The idea is that, uh, you can eat bread. That's great, right,
you can. If you know how to make bread, you
can feed yourself. And if you can make bread like
(32:28):
in your house, that's great. You can feed a couple
of your friends and your family. But if you build
a bread factory. Give me like a bakery, a bread
factory where you can literally start feeding everyone in your
your area. That makes you a very dangerous person because
the people that usually sell the bread, they can't sell
(32:51):
it anymore because you're making it, probably at a little
cheaper price, and you're giving it, maybe you're giving some away.
Just that whole idea of being controlled by an outside
force versus owning the means of production not to that. Yeah,
but that's what I'm saying, was that stupid? And that's
a big part about his struggle with the record industry too,
is because this is a guy that kind of came
(33:12):
in build his own model where he owns the means
of production, he does it himself, or he leagues up
with just the bits of the bigger distros and labels
that that he needs and then says, I don't need
the rest of this, you know. And that is a
model that's kind of coming back around now in terms
of independent labels doing well, in terms of um individual
artists more owning the means of production, in terms of
(33:35):
being able to afford to press their own stuff more cheaply,
or release it digitally, or make money touring and I
guess the the issue is there's maybe not millions and
billions to be made as much anymore as there were
in the old days, except for a very small elite
group of people that are still largely controlled by the
big record labels. But it's still interesting to see that evolution, uh,
(33:56):
and to see how he looks at the way things
are now. It sounds like he doesn't have a completely
bad outlook on it, but it also doesn't sound like
he's a huge fan of the current digital you know,
artists driven right. Yeah, there there were a ton of
questions that we didn't get to, and we wanted to
make sure we got to the things that were more
(34:20):
in the in the realm of cover ups, the things
that would be helpful to you and your fellow listeners.
But we left the interview with with several questions still there.
I wanted to take time to say, oh, what do
you think of this seific artist? What do you think
of this person? I wanted to ask him honestly about
(34:40):
Kanye in his recent SNL appearance. There's this whole He
gave this whole speech at the end after the show stopped. Well,
it was it was the third performance, like at the
end where you know, everybody comes out on stage and
everything kind of did another song and they had to
cut it off because it was like one oh two
or something. Uh, it ends at one o'clock the morning,
(35:02):
and then he gave just a really long speech. Anyway,
if you haven't watched that, you can find it online.
There's some interesting stuff in there that I think we
should probably explore, having to do with accusations about Democrats
setting up the black community to fail. Right, Yes, I
do remember that part. You can see the speech on YouTube,
but it might be in a bootleg version. I think
(35:24):
SNL cut it for their West Coast Chris Rock actually
filmed a lot of it. Seriously, so let us know
what you think about cover ups in the music industry,
about the ways in which the US government or other
governments may persecute musicians or entertainers. You know, how do
(35:44):
how do governments navigate or negotiate with uh cultural power centers?
You know, and we want to hear your thoughts. We
also want to give you a brief brief spoiler. We
are going to have some more music industry episodes along
(36:04):
the way. You might be surprised by who writes your
favorite pop song. That's a that's all we got. That's
a good spoiler. Should we just go ahead right now
while we have a chance and just call out the
culture kings, like officially, what do you mean? And just
say we we heard it, We heard what you said.
That's all. Oh yeah, I'm having fun with that. We
(36:28):
heard what you said. And this aggression will not stand.
No no, it will not Oh no. Yeah, but we
love you guys, and you know, we look forward to
putting out the episode that we just did together. Yeah,
and that loves you. I'm playing so yeah, Jake, Key,
Segar that's their names. Thanks so much for the Thanks
(36:51):
so much for the shout out, Thanks for the call out.
Great to be on the air, and uh We're talked
with you soon. In the meantime, you can find us
on Instagram, Face, Twitter, can find us on Here's where
it gets crazy. You can call us directly. We are
one eight three three st d w y t K,
(37:11):
so you can put the hype on STD it's always
gross and I'm sorry we do that. And if you
don't want to do any of those things, go ahead
and write us in good old fashioned email. We are
conspiracy and how stuff works dot com,
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know News
Hosts And Creators
Matt Frederick
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
Show Links
RSSStoreAboutLive ShowsPopular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.