Blueprints of G-Funk: Hutch (Cold 187um) of Above the Law Breaks It All Down

From the smoky studios of Ruthless Records to the birth of G-Funk, Hutch has lived the chapters most rap historians only quote. In this episode, he sits down with MC Eiht and Steele to pull back the curtain on:

• Origin Stories: How Pomona, CA & South Central Los Angeles kids armed with Parliament records and street tales helped redefine West Coast sound.

• Ruthless Inside Scoop: First-hand memories of Eazy-E, Jerry Heller, and watching Dr. Dre’s creative evolution.

• The G-Funk Formula: Crafting Livin’ Like Hustlers and the production tricks that sparked a new era as they developed a young rapper and producer: Snoop Doggy Dog & Warren G.

• Street Politics & Business Moves: Navigating drug dealing, major-label pressure, and sample-clearance nightmares.

• Legacy Check: Why Above the Law still resonates—and Hutch’s blueprint for tomorrow’s producers.

Whether you’re a day-one ATL fan, a West Coast historian, or just hungry for real game, this convo is a time capsule you can ride to. 🎙️

Tap in, rate, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Thanks to chronic Goals, this is not your average shows.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
You're now tuned into the rail.

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Streets.

Speaker 3 (00:17):
Welcome to the gainst the Chronicles podcast, the production of
iHeart Radio and Black Effect podcast Network. Make sure you
download the iHeart app and subscribe to Against the Chronicles.
For my Apple users, hit the purple Michael on your
front screen. Subscribed Against the Chronicles, leave a five star
rating the comment what do it do?

Speaker 2 (00:32):
Won't you ship? I ain't doing ship man, Just another day,
another dollar, you know what I'm saying, Uh, getting ready
for this summer. Man. I think I'm finna go back
to coaching. Manh you going back over there? Yeah's man,
I'm uh, you know, when we're not doing the podcast

(00:54):
and you know, got a lot of things going. You
know what I'm saying. We do the podcast and we
trying to get our other show going. You know what
I'm saying. Uh, we don't like to talk too much
because you know, sometimes when you talk, you give other niggas.

Speaker 3 (01:11):
Stealing right now, but.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
You know, we got the podcast going, I got this
other show we about to kick off. You know, you
doing your thing on the side. I still got motherfucking
shows and ship coming up. I got a show coming
up in Cleveland. Then I got uh, I got Bakersfield
coming up. Then I got Atlanta coming up? Are you

(01:35):
going out to atl Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:38):
Who you on there with? Ain't you on it with? Ball?

Speaker 2 (01:40):
MJZ Ball, m JG, Scarface and somebody else.

Speaker 3 (01:44):
That's a good card right there.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
So, you know, but most of my days, you know,
when I'm sitting home writing songs or you know, we're
not doing the podcast. Uh, I feel that, you know,
maybe you know my my knowledge of you football, you
know is you know my son, you know, Karan is

(02:09):
in college now. A lot of my you know, past friends, coaches,
you know, they have now moved up in the organization,
you know, president's vice presidents and you know. So I
got a call from two you know, three great good
friends of mine who's still in the organization. Shout out

(02:31):
Corona Chargers. So one of my good one of my assistants,
he's now vice president. So he gave me a call
and asked me would I come back and coach eleven
twelve year olds.

Speaker 3 (02:45):
Man, he put the magic on you because he had
called me out of like, man, you had the wrong number.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
I guess you know it never burnt me out coaching
with the kids. It was a lot.

Speaker 3 (03:00):
You was a it's a coach. I was a president
when I ran my organization. I ain't doing itever again.
Them parents is off the hook man crazy.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
I never but see, I guess that's and I guess
that goes.

Speaker 3 (03:09):
With it's fun coaching.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
I guess that goes with through the organization and where
you come from. I could honestly say coaching for the
Corona Chargers for twelve thirteen years, I never had not
one bad incident with a parent. You now, I don't
know what motherfuckers might have been saying behind closed doors
or behind my back. You know, I coach with Snoop,

(03:35):
Yeah right, I mean I coached a year at Snoop's league.

Speaker 1 (03:39):
Yeah, I never had that.

Speaker 3 (03:40):
Yeah, you know, speaking the wis we're about to hit
them with the megaplex tonight, megaplex? Is we on this
motherfucker ranking. So when I get this speaking like that
in the building, yeah, you know, it's nothing but out at.

Speaker 2 (03:53):
I don't trip off of stel with the soul trained
Don Cornelius, Mike Tonight. You know, we ad the result, we.

Speaker 3 (04:01):
Got the improvise. But see, I made sure y'all had.

Speaker 1 (04:03):
This stuff and the thing. So that's what we're doing.

Speaker 3 (04:07):
At the improvise. You know, you missing the thing and
I'm mixed, Max, So I wanted to make it look
like you know, it's the interview money.

Speaker 2 (04:12):
We got the We got the creator of g Funk
in the building. You know what I'm saying. Indeed, with
whatever your dispute is right now, you know what I'm saying,
sit back, kick back, and relax, man, and we'll take
you through a little history. And y'all you know my
man one seven is in the building. Let me cut
my damn phone off.

Speaker 3 (04:33):
So I'm gonna start it right off. Man, you know
I'm gonna jump eight. Tell me I like controversy, right,
It's not really controverse. It's just facts, man. Some people
think it's you know, telling the truth is dangerous, man.
The truth is a very dangerous thing nowadays, you know,
because you have so many people out here trying to rewrite.

Speaker 1 (04:52):
History, history hustlers.

Speaker 3 (04:55):
So then correct me at any point if I'm wrong.

Speaker 1 (04:58):
Get it.

Speaker 3 (05:00):
You are responsible man for creating a new production. Sound.

Speaker 1 (05:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (05:06):
That took a lot of the OZ stuff. You know,
you y'all incorporated a lot of live instrumentation in yall music,
right you had, you know, of course, y'all that Hugs,
that Willie Hucks Lineax, that Willie Huck's bloodline, you know,
the Mac and several other great songs you know.

Speaker 4 (05:22):
Rock Brown, Yeah, you know, yeah, you know my uncle,
my father, you know, they wrote for a lot of
the Motown stuff. So I grew up in it, like sonically,
you know, all I know is soul in my life
so far as far as that's concerned, you know. So
I had to integrate that and being a musician, I
had to integrate that into when we started developing Above

(05:44):
the Law because I was on you know, out of
the homies, I was the only one that was a
musician out of everybody. Everybody else was more like DJs
and rappers. I was like more than a musicians. So
I was my role was to do the music because
I knew the studio from Hella Young. So I was like,
that's like when you just do it. We didn't spend

(06:07):
our money and that that's how we created. That's how
we created that sound. You know what, a lot of
people don't know what we really created it to be
different than n W A when we came to the table,
it was like, Okay, how we gonna fit in?

Speaker 1 (06:20):
You know, how we fit in?

Speaker 4 (06:21):
We were talking about the same shit really, you know,
just the reality was going on in the hood, but
from a different perspective. So I always wanted to I
wanted to bring something different. The dop part about it
is that easy back to play, so he didn't have to.
He could have been like, well, let Dre do. But
I had actually developed a buzzer law before we got
the roofless.

Speaker 3 (06:42):
Yeah, this is what I want to go back, man,
because y'all from different parts of the city. A lot
of people think the Pomona is the I E. But
Pomona is actually La Pomona is.

Speaker 2 (06:52):
People get stopped, people get that confused, just the last
stop before you hit the I E. You know, and
a lot of people probably weren't too familiar with you know,
because back in the early you know, hip hop days,
I don't know, you know, where were you at, hutch
I know where I was when I first discovered hip

(07:16):
hop or street music. Well, for me, it was it
was it was listen. It was getting a hold of
one of Toddy t and Spades tapes. That's what turned
me on to street music. Now, before that, we used
to you know, my family is rooted in Mississippi, so

(07:37):
we used to take family reunion trips. And with Mississippi
being down south, I guess a little more closer to
the East Coast, my cousins had rap records. Now I'm
I'm eleven twelve, I never heard of rap music, you know,
Like I said, back in them days, I don't know

(07:58):
how it was. But out out here, nigga, all you
had was top forty Casey Cason and ship like that,
you know, Pat Benatar and Duran Duran right, it was
more euro pop exactly, or it was super dance. Hip
hop started coming, I guess in the form of techno
hop for you, the early night Dogg in the Wax.

(08:22):
Even before that, it was a lot of you right,
or or or or or the mixed dudes. You know,
we we we heard ship, you know, craft Work or
It's Time or Electric Siberian Knights, Electric Kingdom and ship
like that. That's yeah, definitely. So my first being turned

(08:45):
on the street music was being introduced to the Tide
Spade mixed master Ken tape. That's where I got my
first taste of niggas talking about, like you said, what
was going on? Because I was a young nigga trying
to gang bang there you go, you know, trying to
trying to indulge in the street activities me.

Speaker 3 (09:09):
As as they to. You know what I noticed by
them coming from it was a lot more pimping going on.
It was like a more of a smoother player.

Speaker 1 (09:17):
Like the biggest blade is, oh yeah, it's the biggest blade.

Speaker 4 (09:23):
That's an international blade. Whole boulevard is the international blade.
So in the seventies that was that was huge going
on into the eighties. We grew up around all that
pimp and ship, but we hustling, so and you got
to realize, like our connection is Pomona, South Central and Compton.
It's that because we hustled, you know what I mean.
We was in the dope game, so we weren't allowed

(09:45):
to gang bang. Really, we was allowed to be from
a neighborhood. We was getting so much money in the eighties,
we went like our big home that was the mind state.

Speaker 2 (09:52):
Y'all were y'all like, I mean, because that was that
was sort of like Todd, you give me Todd lived
in Track, New But I don't know if you really
want to say, Todd was like, I'm traged new get me.
But everyone in the hood knew him, and so he

(10:14):
got that that respect from a lot of the homies
like he knew like like he talking about niggas that
I was those were my ol g's, Like when I
was with brother and their old rector was a pop
locker and ship, like those are niggas. That to them
was bangers. Them was my old g bangers. So it

(10:37):
was sort of like in where you where you was
representing Pomona, What was that? What was the what was
the what was the outlook like? Or was it pimping?
Was it banging? Was it drugs? Of all three?

Speaker 4 (10:50):
Because you got to realize back then pimping was really
huge and gang bang was at his all time high.
But then you got to realize it's the crack era
right when crack first hit. So ahead our city hard.
Our city is more like if you look at our city,
it's more industrial, it's more like warehouses. Back then general
dynamics with everybody, or when they was doing when they

(11:11):
opened the Ontario Airport, so a lot of people from
La moved out there for jobs. So most of us
are the kids of La people moving to Pomona. So
when we started growing up in it and the drugs came,
it kind of like tore that little city apart, like
it was a war zone basically because it was a

(11:32):
lot of money. There's a lot of money in the
eighties and Pomona like crazy money, you know.

Speaker 3 (11:37):
And Yo was glowing because word on the street. Allegedly,
that's how y'all knew easy. Yeah, that's how we met.
That's how we all met. The connection is you know,
law lay law, rest in peace, go.

Speaker 4 (11:49):
Mad and Big Am, which was our boss at the time,
like the head of our whole little thing, you know,
our whole little organization.

Speaker 1 (11:57):
They knew easy.

Speaker 4 (11:59):
So what they do we was we was making like
mixed tapes at the dope spot and was like, you know,
giving it to the homies, niggas jumping their low riders
and big ass trucks and rolling around bumping and ship
you know. Now, mind you we hustled with niggs from La.
We hustle when niggas will come all over, you know
what I mean, Because back then that's how it was.
You got a dope from the city, you go with
these other cities exactly know what I mean, That's how

(12:21):
it was. And it was that connection definitely, you know.
So what happened was they got they had a spot
that they it was. It was a front, it was
a it was a barber shop that was really a
trip house really or a crackhouse and you know, like
a Grand Citrus station where you come and get you work.
So they bumped it. They bumped it. The Homies was
a little homies. My brother Eve, they was out there

(12:43):
bumping it at the spot.

Speaker 1 (12:45):
Law heard it. He said, give me that tape. It
was a demo living like hustlers.

Speaker 4 (12:48):
He took it to Easy that was about to go
on straight out of Compton tour and he was like,
I'm anna signing niggas when I get back, tell them
niggas don't do nothing.

Speaker 1 (12:57):
Mind you.

Speaker 4 (12:58):
It's when we first we started getting out rhythm at
this time, like getting money. We get money, like I mean,
and now we're a little grown like we out of
that teenage phase like that young were probably like eighteen nineteen,
so we filling out that we.

Speaker 2 (13:10):
Buying cars that world. Mentally, you can't tell me my challenge.

Speaker 1 (13:15):
Yeah, we ain't listen to the big Homies and none
of that shit.

Speaker 2 (13:20):
So so so Lauren Cube.

Speaker 4 (13:24):
They was on the break, Lauren Cube came to one
of our parties. It was like, man, and they went
back and told Easy like, man, niggas out there tripping, Man,
niggas get money, the niggas wild, Man, they ain't listen
to none of nothing were talking about. Man, then we
can go crazy. The niggas might be locked up by
the time we get off tour. So Easy called me
and said, hey, Man, I see what you're doing out there.

Speaker 1 (13:46):
Man, So how you know how? Motherfuckers told me Man,
you out there wild? Man, y'all out there wild.

Speaker 4 (13:50):
And he said, how I'm gonna sign you motherfuckers if
you're gonna be in prison? Homie Like I can't. I
can't put no niggas out in jail. And I was
like he was like Man. I was like, well, you
gotta show me the bread because I'm making real money
right now in the game.

Speaker 1 (14:03):
And the homies was like, man, what they gonna do.

Speaker 4 (14:06):
So we go out on the camp and to and
we see everything, the whole lay out, all the money,
all that shit the road there.

Speaker 1 (14:13):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 4 (14:14):
So just he said, come out, let me show you,
said you want. He said, all right, little nigga, you
wanna talk that shit, come out here and see some
real money. So I go out and I saw some
real money, legitimate money. So we come back. We we
probably played maybe two three months, you know what I mean,
and we shut everything down.

Speaker 1 (14:31):
They get off tour.

Speaker 4 (14:32):
We did Living like Hustlers, and we already had a
lot of it done because we was taking our work
money and finishing the album myself. So by the time
they got off tour, I was like eighty ninety percent done.

Speaker 1 (14:42):
You know.

Speaker 4 (14:42):
All me and Dre did was bumped it up to
because I was doing them a little spots here there there,
you know, like that, and Dre me and Dre bumped
it up to a twenty four track with the audio
achievement and bumped him up, recut everything, mostly everything, and
then we did like three songs that we did. A
last song I want to say, we did Freedom was Speech,
and then we did this record called Kicking Lyrics.

Speaker 1 (15:02):
Everything else was done already.

Speaker 3 (15:03):
For the last song. Of course you did that because
back then the Ruthless had all the posty. Because I
was listening on the way here, Rion showed his ass
from that moment. Oh yeah, he was on their busting.
Rihan showed his ass on there the rin on them
Posse cuts dog. Rihan shows up and shows.

Speaker 4 (15:18):
Him it was the coldest, you know, shout out to
the mc wren man. You know, emc wren is probably
one of the coldest MC's. It is that I witnessed.
Definitely that I witnessed what I witnessed him make records,
you know what I mean. Besides that, it was probably Doc,
but Wren is probably the you know. And it's crazy because,

(15:39):
you know what, we got the witness as some young
niggas coming up in you know, in the streets. We
got the witness like greatness on accident. Like for instance,
we didn't even know that shit was gonna work because
when we met them, it was still in the embryo
stages of it blowing up, like it hadn't blown yet.
It hadn't blown So when we first met them, it
hadn't blown up yet, you know what I mean. And

(16:02):
by the time we looked up that shit was worll known,
you know, like we didn't we didn't think we we
we knew fuck the police was a big record and
all that. But when you're looking at it from dope
man all the way up, like you're like, this ship
might not work.

Speaker 1 (16:18):
And y'all gotta realize.

Speaker 3 (16:19):
And you were there.

Speaker 1 (16:20):
You were there. It's the late eighties. It could work
or not work, you know what I mean.

Speaker 4 (16:24):
So that's why I tell everybody that that the Witness,
that ship is amazing, Like the Witness, everybody just coming up.

Speaker 1 (16:29):
Yeah, music was.

Speaker 2 (16:33):
Music hadn't taken that turn yet, not for us, not
for us as us in the West. It started turning
on the East coast. You know, like I said, you
went from you went from the the UTFO era, the
Riots and era, Big Daddy Kane, Biz Markie you know,

(16:58):
the run DMC, Beastie Boys era, and and then that's
came rock Kim. Yeah, that's came EPMD.

Speaker 1 (17:10):
ME.

Speaker 2 (17:11):
That's what changed a lot of how you know, we
started looking at rap right because rap was fun, right,
you know, it was fun. It was gimmicky, you know. Uh,
we had niggas like Young MC, tone Lok, you know,
wild Thang, everybody Wild Thang, you know that was that

(17:31):
was one of the you know, that was one of
the pop songs of all time.

Speaker 3 (17:35):
You know, came it was soft as Mediicati cutting out.

Speaker 4 (17:38):
Yeah, because I come on cause I think I think
we came from you know, W always say this, I
always say this them.

Speaker 1 (17:45):
You know, the music is a reflection of the environment.

Speaker 4 (17:49):
So I think the way we came out, when we
came out, when we all collectively came out, will that's
what we saw.

Speaker 1 (17:54):
So we just rapped about it.

Speaker 4 (17:56):
It wasn't really like it wasn't like a big you know,
it wasn't like a big jump. It's just they gravitated
to it. Because if you think about it, everybody everywhere
we went was going through that ship the reality of
the hood, you know what I mean. It wasn't about
dancing at that point, because it's you gotta realize. Were
talking about gang banging as all the time, all all
time high in the crack era.

Speaker 2 (18:16):
But I I I took gang banging for what it was.
It was gang banging. I never thought that gang banging
and music would cross each other because I was gang
banging listening to Egyptian Lover. I was gang banging listening
to Young and See You get Me. Because Ryan Ryan.

Speaker 4 (18:39):
Pays turned the corner too. That turned the corner for
us right when Ice dropped it because it was more reality.

Speaker 2 (18:44):
Ice Ice Ice dropped six in the Morning and it started.
It started making nigga. Oh wow, nigga, we could talk
about you know. But then, like I said, we had Todd,
and Todd was motherfucker and create. Todd was already creating
what Ice Tea had put on records. See, Todd didn't

(19:08):
have the avenue of records yet Ice t did because
he was fucking with Unknown and Unknown had techno. How So,
even though Ice Tea had put out You Don't Quit,
which wasn't a street record, then he put out Dog
in the Wax, which wasn't a street record, Okay, but

(19:28):
being in La him seeing the scene listening to just
like Todd said, remember he's seen Ice Tea and all
of that niggas and they heard his tape. They knew
the direction you give me because Todd was like nigga,
remember he had that vision, Like fuck that what if
you think.

Speaker 4 (19:46):
About the Better Ram, think about the Battle Ram, There's
no there's no other record that we can kind of say,
like I said, definitively, that's like the record that's like
our holy grail.

Speaker 2 (19:56):
Really, yeah, that's what kicked it off.

Speaker 1 (19:58):
Like that's kind of.

Speaker 4 (19:58):
Like it like the record that was a record, and
so for us that was like, okay, that was everything
that we was going through at that moment. Like we're
talking about reality. I think that that spent that launched
the boys in the hood, that launched records.

Speaker 1 (20:13):
Like right, because that's when it became more reality. My
nigga told the story.

Speaker 2 (20:17):
Remember he was like he like, and then we got
it before it even hit the record, like we got
it on a TDK tape where he was busting off
of he would busting off of the original battle round
was off the rapping Duke. And remember he turned around
and flipped, he flipped Houdini, the motherfucking the freaks come out,

(20:40):
the clucks come out at night, and then motherfucking clucking
got you busted. And then he turned us like damn
because that's what ship with Niggas was already seeing. But
I didn't know that it was possible to do that shit.
You get because from what you've been hearing on the
radio and from at the high school dances and the DJs, like,

(21:05):
don't nobody got no shit.

Speaker 3 (21:06):
Like this real?

Speaker 1 (21:07):
You know, you know what was crazy? What was crazy
about what you're saying?

Speaker 4 (21:10):
If you think about Easy like you think about Easy, right,
you think about what Easy did. Easy looked at what
todden was doing, and he turned it into more of
a commercial street. And I don't mean commercial in a
bad way. I mean like, no, it's what he did.
What he did is he said okay. And I could
see Eric's vision now after the fact because he said okay.

(21:32):
He said, look, okay, if we're talking about it, let's
dress it up like it came with the whole program.
He didn't just come with the song. He came with
the look, all the image, everything.

Speaker 1 (21:45):
You know. He brought that shit to life. That had
a vision.

Speaker 4 (21:48):
And I think what's dope is what Toddenham did is
that they gave us a blueprint to like the reality
of it, but Easy put.

Speaker 2 (21:59):
It into more easy. Easy was an Easy was a
He was a dope dealer. Get me Todd Niam wasn't
remember Todd was like nigga. I never planned on making record.
I just wanted to make a better tape than the
nigga across the street.

Speaker 1 (22:17):
Right.

Speaker 2 (22:18):
Spade was making the tapes. Remember, like he said, Spade
was taking all his wraps from other niggas and putting
them on tapes and selling them right, and they were
going so good. Todd's vision was never nigga, I want
to make a record niggas and sell platinum or like
that's I'm gonna.

Speaker 1 (22:37):
Tell you something. But that wasn't even his vision. No,
that wasn't even easy vision. Easy just had the vision
to wear this could be bigger than just the hood because.

Speaker 4 (22:47):
Nobody was a lot of us. None of us was
thinking and platinum or goals.

Speaker 2 (22:51):
No, but it was really easy got to easy, got
to rub shoulders with these motherfuckers who were putting out
these cheesy records. Right, hit me, I'm a hustler if
I turned around, because let's just I don't know what
the fuck boys in the hood gonna.

Speaker 1 (23:10):
Do, right exactly.

Speaker 2 (23:11):
I'm not no rapp. Remember Todd says seeing the nigga
coming out of Lonzo's and he like, nigga, what the
fuck you doing over here? Or they got me rapping? Now, nigga,
you're not a rapper, you're fucking drug Then you're a
hustler that the hood, Like he knew, I don't know
what the fuck. But once boys in the hood hit
that's right, Once it hit that ship, took off like WildFly.

Speaker 1 (23:33):
I will agree with you on one thing. Hey, he
thowt like a drug dealer.

Speaker 4 (23:36):
He got because when everything started left collectively popping, he
looked at it like.

Speaker 1 (23:41):
Modope, mo money and come on, that's that's the way
he look at it. Let me go ahead because I
won't say what he did.

Speaker 3 (23:52):
Yeah, I'm sorry for colling. I gotta get it for
I forget. Now you seeing something you see some of
above love or some content some members of the I was.

Speaker 1 (24:01):
Saying we connected with them, but see it's you gotta realize,
go Mack. He from South Central.

Speaker 4 (24:06):
So in the in our clique, a lot of people
in our clickers from South Central and the cats is
in South Central got money with niggas from Compton.

Speaker 1 (24:15):
So it was that connection.

Speaker 4 (24:16):
So that's that whole connection, you know, And that's how
we collectively all plugged up together.

Speaker 1 (24:22):
That connection. So you Pomona, Yeah, we was out in Pomona.
So so half of us is you gotta realize that.

Speaker 4 (24:29):
Me camg rest in Peace and my brother Djao, we're
from Pomona. But we go and then the rest of
our clique like my my, my, my other brother. Won't
my brother a are from South Central, so half of
our clickers from South Central and the other half from Pomona.

Speaker 3 (24:45):
Okay. So originally in the at year in the Bah
the Law, it was cocaine, right.

Speaker 1 (24:52):
Well that's later cocaine. I bought cocaine to the table.

Speaker 3 (24:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:56):
Later that it was gold Man Chaos one A seven,
and then KMG that was yeah.

Speaker 4 (25:05):
Four, and then there's two more cats and I clicked,
but all of us because it used to be the
Ranch Boy. It used to be two clicks, to be
two dope clicks. It was the Ranch Boys and the
HBC so come from Yeah, that's where it comes from.
But we put both clicks together and created.

Speaker 1 (25:20):
Above the Law. Okay, I got that's what I wanted
to cruise that. Remember everybody had dope cruise Oh yeah, yeah, yeah,
the Enterprise.

Speaker 4 (25:27):
We had our shoe you know what I mean. But
we was a young thing of all of that. We
was a young about y'all. And I want to confirm
it to that, so you can you know, I'm gonna
ask you some ship man, so it's all good. It's
a leged MANX. Y'all got a lot of equipment because
y'all had that O G.

Speaker 3 (25:42):
Sound right, y'all was able to get them real funk
sounds right. Yeah, dude, Ike Turner said, did y'all buy
Ike Turner's equipment when he was smoking?

Speaker 4 (25:50):
Turner used to buy dope from us, and we bought
like half of his studio when we was like seventeen
years old. He used to come. He brought all that
shit because his house. We had a spot in North
side Pomona. If y'all know Norse Side Pomoa's a borderline
of a city called Clarimont. Yes, right, I turned to
a house in Clarimont. It needs to come down. He
didn't want to go all through Pomona, so he just

(26:11):
hit our spot and like man, what man? He would
come upon his bass pianos, all that ship, everything over
half his studio.

Speaker 2 (26:19):
Oh No, Crack was a motherfucker man, And I heard that.
I heard that on the Man. Crack was a motherfucker nigga.

Speaker 1 (26:25):
Crack Hot.

Speaker 2 (26:25):
You taking your motherfucking baby grant and give it to
a nigga for fifty dollars.

Speaker 1 (26:33):
It ain't gonna come back. But that's why they want to.

Speaker 2 (26:38):
They want to cut that deal because they wanted to
make you think no, I don't need that much, my
young brother. Just give me a little fifty or double
leuve or something, because they won't make you think they
coming back for it. But Nigga ain't coming back for
He coming back selling some motions.

Speaker 1 (26:51):
The next thing, exactly the next time he came coming
back motion else.

Speaker 3 (26:55):
Let me ask you, y'all have some hell of equipment
with songs? Did y'all make white turners? Living like us
is the whole thing because you living like us in
a do spot. That's all that we wrote that record
in the Dope Spot.

Speaker 1 (27:12):
Show. All that ship you heard on the first album
is wrote.

Speaker 2 (27:15):
My ship was flow on me.

Speaker 1 (27:16):
That was one. Yeah, that was my ship.

Speaker 3 (27:19):
You and Cam she had a certain tone to itself,
man to where you know it was it.

Speaker 2 (27:26):
Was you had they had to me. They had the
distinctive New York because you know a lot of New
York niggas would go switch up back and forth, and
they would go back and forth. That was something that
me and the Chill appreciated being groups back there because
you know, everybody started off with the groups and Ship.

Speaker 4 (27:47):
Knew us before we got down us when we was
in We all met each other in high school We
used to go to this, it's out here in Clarimont.

Speaker 1 (27:54):
We should go to that. It was the battle on
that on that remember that that college station. Oh yeah, yeah,
yeah yeah, Biggs.

Speaker 3 (28:00):
Yeah, chill.

Speaker 2 (28:02):
We used to come all battle on there. Yeah, the
battle snoop. I used to battle a lot of niggas.
I was a battle rapper in my in my beginning stages.

Speaker 4 (28:11):
But then everybody grew up. Where you got the everybody
you got a little older and start selling dope.

Speaker 2 (28:15):
That's where you got the m C from. Because I
just I considered myself to be a true just MC
even though I was calmmed in and tragnew and all
of that. I got a lot of my influence from
New York, you get me.

Speaker 1 (28:29):
So we didn't have a choice. So exactly that one.

Speaker 3 (28:31):
Knows to the college station and just bus, oh.

Speaker 4 (28:34):
Yeah that we just you could call in, you could
call in from you just pull out there and call
in and say, hey, I want to get in. And
it's the Dust Brothers. The Dust Brothers who they was
in college at the time, the Dust Brothers who produced
some Bacie Boys. They used to run the show. They
was in college at the time, and they just if
you if.

Speaker 1 (28:51):
You could get up there, you get you call in,
when you go to the door, you call it, I want.

Speaker 4 (28:56):
To get in, woo whoop, and they'll just let you in.
And then you get out on there and you bus.

Speaker 3 (29:01):
This you know this doue. Yeah, yeah, y'all had some
mother cats. Like when did y'all win because y'all had
Snoop and Warren first?

Speaker 4 (29:08):
Yeah, yeah, Snoop, well Warren, you know we had Warren first.
You know, Warren was studying under me as a producer.
He used to always be talking about this kid, Snoop Dogg,
Snoop Dogg, Snoop Dogg. When when he come back out
of it, I think Snoop was in Mississippi somewhere. He
was somewhere, and then he came back and he bought
him right to me. And then Nate got out the

(29:28):
military and he came. That was originally two one three
we had him, but that's when we was at Ruthless.
They would have been on Ruthless, you know, so.

Speaker 3 (29:36):
Y'all was giving them up to go get them signed over.

Speaker 4 (29:38):
It, Well, they would have been signed to us. They
would have been yo. Because you got to realize above
the law. We were our own thing at Ruthless. We
never operated up under like Dre or Easy Another. We
was our own thing. We had our own studio. We
had you know, if you came over there, it's like
a label within a label. If you came over to
our spot, it was like that, you know, out out

(30:00):
shout out to Bark Palladino, you know what said the
Eds recording studio. Yeah, and then shout out to Donovan,
you know, out of your achievement. But when Snooping them
came around, all Snoop used to do is just sit
in the corner and freestyle.

Speaker 1 (30:15):
And I was like, that kid got it.

Speaker 4 (30:16):
So finally we was gonna put him on and I
guess Dre got a tape that they did, and Dre
pulls up on me and he said, yeah, I heard
this tape.

Speaker 1 (30:28):
I heard you got this kid, Snoop.

Speaker 4 (30:29):
But I want to do something with him, you know,
at the time we was about to break camp, like
he was like, I'm you know, I'm I'm gonna do.

Speaker 1 (30:35):
This thing with sug and I want, you know, I
want to.

Speaker 4 (30:38):
See if I can sign this kid, if that's cool
with you, Because I had him under me at the time,
I said, no problem do hard y'a might as well
do it because we was kind of stuck in the
contract we couldn't do.

Speaker 1 (30:48):
See.

Speaker 4 (30:49):
The story that people don't know about when we had
had two one three is that it's at the same
time the NWA broke up and the Click split, but
we were gonna go to death Row too because none
of us wanted to be under Jerry Heller no more.
Had none to do with Easy really.

Speaker 3 (31:05):
So everybody was bouncing because Jerry, right, yeah, that's real
talk like that.

Speaker 4 (31:09):
You know, I'm giving you some real I'm giving you
some real food right now. So since we couldn't since
we couldn't leave, I was like, well, shit, I want
to hold them up. So we stayed and you know,
stayed with Easy because contractually we couldn't leave Above Law.
Cocaine couldn't leave at the time, so it was we
was in a fresh contract because my contract when I
when I signed to Ruthless Sony, which is Ruthless Epic,

(31:33):
was over Epic.

Speaker 1 (31:35):
I took Cocaine there. He was.

Speaker 4 (31:38):
It was the other artist that I brought because it
was a three album Dealer was Above the Law, Pop, Broken,
Lonely and then Cocaine was above the law two unnamed groups.
And then remember and I feel that Slot and dra
Ball Poor Broken Lonely there our artist year, so that
we bought with that deal, but ours was a newer deal.

(32:00):
So Pop Broken Lonely got stuck there and they were
allowed to go on and start death Row. We had
to stay. So that that's how it broke up. And
then and then we didn't we didn't have Snoop. We
were just developing Snoop. We didn't have him like under
paperwork like that was more of a development thing, that's
trying to find the sound. And and then we had

(32:22):
Miss Kelo, we had Cocaine. Well, Cocaine was really the
person that was in the chair at the time.

Speaker 2 (32:26):
What y'all find from She was hard as fucking that's
a little homegirl. Was hard as a mother, fall all
over a home that was my ship. You don't even
rapping up like you don't know that cut nigga all
over ho on the Minister Society soundtrack, all.

Speaker 1 (32:43):
Over say she a female me?

Speaker 2 (32:45):
That motherfucker was hard at fun?

Speaker 3 (32:47):
Did she go un the rufless?

Speaker 1 (32:49):
We did well?

Speaker 4 (32:50):
We signed her the jive and uh we did a
record on her and then she got sick. She got
see she had kidney failure or something, and then she recovered.
But then once she recovered, she didn't really want to
do it no more.

Speaker 1 (33:03):
She got married.

Speaker 3 (33:05):
And that's what happened with females usual. That's why it's
hard with female artists. They have a kid, they want
to focus on their kids, and you go, yeah, you
know what they're supposed to do.

Speaker 4 (33:12):
She was amazing, she and she I talked to her
once a week. She's amazing though, she's she has a
great life and you know, but she was incredible. And
the thing is, like, like I say about was that
we all knew that Snoop would be Snoop.

Speaker 1 (33:29):
To be honest, That's why I couldn't be a hater.
I couldn't be.

Speaker 3 (33:32):
Let's talk about the business, because it is a business
behind it. You could have theoretically said, hey, Drake, you
know what, I'm gonna let him go, but I gotta
have a piece of that. Yeah, you know I've done
this and that so I feel you know, do this. Yeah,
you could have done it if you want to, and
you just so you just would have.

Speaker 1 (33:48):
Just killed game because me and Dre like this, you know,
and Drake would have followed my.

Speaker 2 (33:52):
Play, well you offered any production on his project when
they were starting to work on it.

Speaker 1 (33:58):
No, you know why because we split.

Speaker 2 (34:01):
Right at that time the Ruthless Death Row.

Speaker 1 (34:04):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, even though we even though we did
work on the deep.

Speaker 4 (34:10):
Cover soundtrack, because I got a record with Cocaine on
that I produced, and I was gonna produce. I was
gonna be on deep Cover. That's why they emulate me
on that. It's one eight seven that's undercover of cop.

Speaker 3 (34:24):
I was you seeing that on them?

Speaker 1 (34:27):
Yeah, that's that's that's why they did it like that.
I'm on the line.

Speaker 4 (34:30):
I'm on the Somebody said they seen some notes that
they turned into that I was on it, like featuring me,
Snoop and Dre.

Speaker 1 (34:39):
You know, they seen the notes from the studio.

Speaker 4 (34:43):
But it's crazy because if that would have happened, the
vision that sug had for me and Dre was more
like Jimmy jam and Terry Lewis at hip hop.

Speaker 1 (34:52):
That was his vision. You know, we wasn't thinking like that.

Speaker 4 (34:55):
We was just thinking about getting because you know, I
studied under Dre for like two years almost too ears,
you know, just just making record, learn how to make
it back.

Speaker 3 (35:03):
You learned the sonics from Dre. What is the biggest
pickup you think you got from Dre?

Speaker 4 (35:09):
I would say probably it's two things. He always told
me keep it simple. And he always told me like,
if you have a complex idea, always know what's the
most important thing as you as you layarn it, you
know what I mean, don't don't never lose sight of
that simple idea. So and sonically, I think sonically I

(35:33):
didn't really because I had my own sound in my head.

Speaker 1 (35:36):
I always tell people a producer has his own vision.

Speaker 4 (35:39):
So even though I might listen to how you do
it and how it's laid out, I would say I
had my own sonics in my own head. So if
I wanted to make you know, because creating g funk
was like it's like a gumbo, you know, it's like
taking jazz funk classical. It's all these different things rolled
into one blues. So for me, he taught me how

(36:02):
to make the madness of it structure. You know, when
I was just a kid trying to throw everything in everything,
and he was like, oh man, turn that down, what's love?

Speaker 1 (36:12):
Turn this around? Okay, do this.

Speaker 4 (36:14):
But my vision was always to put the singing on
top of it and all these melodies and bring cards
on top. That's why Warren say that cards, melody, strings
and all that. All that stuff was you know, that
was my whole theory.

Speaker 3 (36:27):
Warren definitely give it up.

Speaker 1 (36:28):
Though.

Speaker 3 (36:33):
One thing I will say about shout out to Warren Warren.
Warren always go tell the truth, though there you go.
Warren is never gon Lie. Warren is one of them
dudes go say, well, and he's gonna tell the truth,
no matter whose feelings it might hurt. So shut out
the g dub you go. So was was it any
ever any hard feelings? Were easy because he knew y'all

(36:54):
was obviously about the bounce.

Speaker 1 (36:57):
No, but it was a direct It was a I wreck.

Speaker 4 (37:02):
Check that we weren't leaving, because when we wanted to leave,
we you know, we sat, you know, we sat with everybody,
you know, sugar Dre, everybody's in the room and shads.
He just told everybody said, look you can go.

Speaker 1 (37:19):
He did, just like this. You can go, you can go,
you can go, you can go.

Speaker 4 (37:22):
He said, but a bther law coming with me, you
know what I mean, that's the future on my label,
So I ain't letting that go, basically saying he already
had a run with them, you know what I mean.
So he told michell A the d O C. Dre,
y'all can go with sugar if you want to. But
y'all but a buzz of law. You ain't getting a
buzz of law. And and and the thing is, I

(37:43):
think we probably could have gotten out of the contract,
but it would have been heavy to get out of
a contract that you know that early.

Speaker 2 (37:51):
Record company wouldn't after your first first I mean because
usually you usually you saw back then he was signing
for like seven albums, that's so. And then and then
Epic Sony was a major motherfucker. They were major.

Speaker 1 (38:13):
So you know why we left Epic, right, you know that?

Speaker 4 (38:19):
Because they announced that Drey wasn't gonna do the second record,
he wasn't gonna do black Mouth for your life. In
our contracts was Dre had to always assist me. He
had to be the head, and I had to be
the the like the apprentice all the time, you know
what I mean. And and that's just untold in the paperwork.
But once they found out I wasn't the apprentice no more,

(38:43):
and I moved in the first chair. They was like, no,
it's a breach, and that's.

Speaker 2 (38:47):
How they dropped the project.

Speaker 1 (38:50):
That's why we went to Warner Brothers.

Speaker 4 (38:52):
So you know, and it's and it's and it's crazy
because living like hustlers, if living like hustles, don't get
done and stuff like this. In his contract he had
incentatives like you get a pool in your house, you
get this. And I was the young dude in there
doing all the work. I was going home and hooking
everything up and coming back like here we go ja.

(39:14):
And you know, because he had he had, he had
it where if he was done in sixty days he
could get a new pool and fifty thousand dollars extra
on top of that. It was ship like that going on.
He had the football and send him. Yeah, but he
was a guy. He was a guy then you know
he was Yeah, was the break. He was the time

(39:34):
Brady of our team. So it was it was it
was solid, you know, and plus for me as a
young producer, I just wanted to get my music hurt.

Speaker 3 (39:42):
This consistent though. Man, there's none of your motherfuckers like
Jerry Hiller.

Speaker 4 (39:46):
Yeah, you know, I love Jerry Hiller, but I hate him,
you know, for for the reason of this.

Speaker 3 (39:52):
It's the business behind it.

Speaker 4 (39:54):
Yeah, you know people people say, people say this was
it still ain't going on. It wasn't fair, like I
have to defend Cube on one thing. Cube left because
it wasn't fair. That's why that's you know, And it
wasn't fair to the degree of like it was because
Jerry Heller was making it too easy that it was fair.

Speaker 1 (40:15):
But it really wasn't, you know what I mean.

Speaker 4 (40:18):
Like for instance, if you say, like say they you know,
Straight out of Compton was like a major success because
it was a major success most of those records that
were done. He's highly instrumental in that.

Speaker 1 (40:29):
Right.

Speaker 4 (40:30):
So now when they get ready, now when it blows up,
it's like being a ballplayer, you need to renegotiate and
want to renegotiate. They didn't want to, you know, they
didn't want to change it up. And I take it
for two I take it for two things. Eric was
a young executive and Jerry was having his way with
a young executive.

Speaker 1 (40:47):
You know, he didn't know the game like that.

Speaker 2 (40:49):
I could pull the string exactly because he didn't really
like he didn't he was a block hustler wasn't a
corporate record exactly.

Speaker 1 (40:58):
No, he Jerry, Jerry.

Speaker 2 (41:00):
Figured all the ship that I want to get away with.
I can basically manipulate through this young dude.

Speaker 1 (41:09):
But you know what, but you know what I loved
about Jerry Hiller.

Speaker 4 (41:13):
We would never be who we are without him walking
us to epic priority Warner Brothers.

Speaker 2 (41:21):
So is that your Is that your catch twenty two?
Do you feel like do you feel like your dues
were paid by getting fucked over?

Speaker 1 (41:32):
Well?

Speaker 4 (41:32):
I think I think our dues was paid by not
but by taking the taking a can we say, the sports,
by taking that rookie deal and just getting and just
getting it, just going on a championship.

Speaker 2 (41:43):
Because I have a sort of I have a I
have a similar complaint like I wrote all my raps.
Nobody ever wrote a rap, which means I should have
kept all the dyme of publishing. But a nigga stole
my publisher. He didn't write none of my raps. But

(42:03):
the story that you get when you talk to some
of his peers or people that know him, is you
should be grateful because look at what you turned out
to me, even though a nigga fucked you for your
first two three years of publishing. Look where so doing?

(42:24):
Is that the same? Should we feel like? Fuck it?
I had to pay my due because I tell everybody
when you come in this business, you're gonna get fucked.
There's no INFENSI but don't take you're gonna get fucked.
Sure you look at that and go, hmm, I got fucked.

(42:48):
But look at me now.

Speaker 4 (42:50):
Well yeah, in a sense, it's almost like a passage
in a sense, in a sense, I'll say this, I'll
say this. When me and you came in the game, it.

Speaker 2 (42:57):
Was it was easy to do that, if exactly, very
very easy because we didn't know shit green as fuck
so and we were just trying to get out of
the streets honestly, you know meigause my father was a
fucking assembly line worker for General Motors, and my mother
was a motherfucking CNA or a nurse's assistant or whatever. Right, Yeah,

(43:18):
he had no you know, I didn't have no none
of that.

Speaker 1 (43:22):
So we you know, like I said, I was, I was.
I was. My parents had retired at that time. They
wasn't even really in the music business any longer.

Speaker 4 (43:32):
Motown had passed, so they were just living off publishing
and living off living their life.

Speaker 1 (43:37):
They were just like, did you get this right? Did
you get that right? Yeah?

Speaker 4 (43:40):
Kind of what all they told me is go get
attorney before you signed anything, right, and then make sure
that you know all your ship is in order, like
you know in the liner notes and who wrote was
and who? But then put it like this when I
was like you, when I got the fucking line of notes,
it was a hundred motherfuckers on the song that I wrote.

Speaker 2 (43:59):
I didn't get and I was like, what the fuck
is this? I was seventeen, green, selling crack. I had
a struggling mama. Father was, you know, in another state.
Like I started writing raps Nigga, and Nigga saw me
and heard me and was like, Nigga, I'm finna make
me a meal ticket. And I didn't know nothing about

(44:20):
publishing writers and all.

Speaker 1 (44:23):
Of that shit.

Speaker 2 (44:24):
All I'm like, Nigga, I'm like here, I'm like, Hutch,
I just want my shit to be heard.

Speaker 1 (44:29):
That's right.

Speaker 3 (44:30):
I didn't publishing too well, No.

Speaker 1 (44:32):
I mean really it was. It was.

Speaker 4 (44:34):
What it was is that when we sat down and
put everything together, every it was so many people with
their names on it, and they publishing companies and there
you ain't never gonna see no money for real.

Speaker 1 (44:44):
One hundred motherfuckers on it. It's like like he's saying,
if you wrote the song yourself, why Joe blow on
the song? Why the nigga that played the whistle on
the song?

Speaker 2 (44:51):
Why my name was on that motherfucker? But I wasn't
getting no money from nigga. The money was going to
grandma's hands, And I'm like, who the fuck his grandma
was tip for fucking my ship was going there grab
ball's heads and I'm like, hein my father fucking grandma?
What is this ship? We was in three different deals.

(45:13):
We was in law House, uh huh.

Speaker 4 (45:15):
We was in a record, we was in a production deal.
We was in law House Publishing, and we was in
Ruthless in epic and it was four parties in our dia.

Speaker 1 (45:27):
Yeah, right now, I.

Speaker 3 (45:29):
Was signed to laylaw right.

Speaker 1 (45:31):
He bought to the table? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (45:32):
He who bought to the table. Definitely it was I'm
gonna tell law House because it used to be a
bunch of g niggas that hung around niggas and learned
the game and they would come scoop niggas. I remember
this one nigga that I ain't gonna say his name
because he's still on me to this day. But he
came to the crib and scooped me up. This when
I was living in bel Monsha. I was twenty four,
twenty four years old. He came and picked me up

(45:54):
in the BMW. I said, okay. He text me up
by Ice Tea's crib and he tells me, Okay, we're
gonna get you some khakis and some loakes, and you're
gonna start seeing you from the hood and we gonna
take you there and get a deal. They would position
me to go get a deal. But what wouldn't work
it is I wouldn't gonna do the phone you shot
out many y'all. I'm not from no game, even though
these niggas, I'm not saying I'm from your neighborhood. All

(46:18):
the shit y'all got going on. But a lot of
ghetto executives was looking for deals back then because they
can do. If they bought an artist to the table,
they man could go get a deal and you signed them,
they gonna do a deal somewhere you wind up getting.

Speaker 2 (46:32):
It was a lot of young It was a lot
of young talent floating around. When when our when our
artistic expression started to evolve, when you started having niggas
like Hutch eight Chill, Easy Cube, you know, and for
the most part in the term nigga, I'm fresh off

(46:56):
the porch nigga, I don't know nothing about but how
motherfucking break down the rock? And I know this a
five people. I know this is five. I know this
is ten dollars. I know this worth twenty nigga publishing
contracts and motherfucking nigga. I saw a ride on magazine
Nigga with a nigga in a limousine and a big

(47:17):
dookie chain on, and you said, that's me. That's that's
that's what I need right there, And once a nigga
give it to me, I'm thinking, I'm complete. You couldn't
have told me back then, nigga. You get paid alright,
and you get paid for writing your wraps.

Speaker 1 (47:32):
You know that, like really you know.

Speaker 3 (47:34):
That she was influential back niggas. I'm gonna tell you
what made me want to come to California was an
album cover. Yeah, my homeboy. You know you got a
homeboy in the early days of hip hop that just
know about every hit. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, he got
the new album. He got the new album. I went
to was passing Homie Mike stoop He on the stup.
We living in a progect at that time. I passed

(47:56):
his stupid. He said, Nigga, you heard Ice t Yeah,
I said, who is Ice? And it's the sixth in
the morning, and I hear from the beginning to the end. Man,
I say there and did that. And I looked at
this nigga on the cover with that bad wall, that woman.
You know this man, it looked like he had to
get the bag.

Speaker 2 (48:15):
Oh yeah, that was the power and our album album.

Speaker 3 (48:18):
Well whatever that album was that I wanted to be
that nigga. I said, I want a woman like that.
I want a chain with an oozy like that, and
I want a silk soup just like that.

Speaker 2 (48:28):
Then he had to cover where he was in the
porch with lem and yeah, man, that's.

Speaker 1 (48:35):
Heard standing over him and.

Speaker 2 (48:39):
Evil that's either hm G or Evil East Evil.

Speaker 1 (48:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (48:43):
I wanted to be that, And I'm gonna tell you,
I think that's why I gravitated so much as slanging,
because I really wanted to beat that ship was really
in life to me. That was like a moment in
my life to where everything in Cleveland became real small
to me. After that, I was like, man, I'm trying
to get somewhere, and I'm gonna do whatever I gotta
do to get somewhere. Man, Cleveland was the ghett was

(49:04):
motherfucker place in this so much. There's a lot of
people that got a lot of money out of Cleveland.

Speaker 2 (49:09):
You take them trips, man.

Speaker 3 (49:11):
A lot of jail time came out of Cleveland too,
a lot of jail time, a lot of jail time.

Speaker 2 (49:17):
Oklahoma, Detroit. Yeah, then was the Then was the places man.

Speaker 1 (49:21):
Little Rock, Yeah, Yeah, y'all.

Speaker 3 (49:25):
Y'all was heavy really and you hear it on the albums.
Man like y'all was really heavy into the dope game.
And actually you got you got cracked a little. Yeah
you did some did some fair time. But that's it's
behind me that it's behind you met, thank god. Man.

Speaker 2 (49:42):
And this rap this rap game sometimes, well, how have
you result to some of your old ways? If you not,
because it's like you said, our era of music didn't
get its just as if you see niggas today, right,

(50:04):
can you imagine if we got our just dude, with
real with our you know, if we got the right
money and we got the right deals and what was
old to us. You know, you see niggas pushing rolls,
Royces and bent Lee's and niggas private jets and helicopters
and shit. We got fucked in our area. We got

(50:27):
really fucked in.

Speaker 4 (50:28):
We kind of still had to have like if we real,
like we real niggas, you know, honestly, we still had
to keep our toe in the water exactly. I mean,
because the money wasn't streaming like that. For us, it
wasn't no you know, even even when you think about touring,
like we wasn't playing no big shows like that, not
not real tours.

Speaker 3 (50:45):
Y'all was considered like I think people like to see
m W's.

Speaker 2 (50:51):
I got to piggyback off a couple of niggas, you know,
I got on a couple of tours.

Speaker 3 (50:55):
What was in the major movie? I think that made
you even it made you a stuff.

Speaker 4 (51:01):
I think what I'm trying to say eight is like
think about it, the type of rap that we did,
they wouldn't even cover us, Like I have done tours
with a bunch of East Coach motherfuckers and stuff, like that,
but like real, like our real essence of that, in
our real heyday of it.

Speaker 1 (51:17):
They didn't want to book hardcore rap. They didn't want to.

Speaker 4 (51:20):
It wasn't trying to book that, you did, you had
to jump in with a gangstar or.

Speaker 2 (51:25):
Yeah. Yeah, like that. Our first show at the Celebrity Theater,
it was us, it was them, it was low profile
and it was gang star.

Speaker 1 (51:34):
That was our first show.

Speaker 4 (51:36):
That's in peace Guru too, shout out my nigga primo,
what's good.

Speaker 2 (51:44):
It's crazy because you see how wide open the music
that recreated is today. You see niggas banging and dope
selling and killing left and right. But you know, we
couldn't get radio, we couldn't get ready. We were so
because I think of the publicized ship that they put

(52:07):
on gangs back in our early eighties and whatever. Then
movies like Colors and shit like it really terrified motherfuckers.
So to have these young black men coming out of
cities like Pomona camped and Long Beach and representing, you know,
to the extent of but this is, this is what

(52:30):
we're about, this is what we know.

Speaker 4 (52:32):
And then you know, we dare to call ourselves you know,
the most hated, you know type of things. When you
call yourself most wanted and you call yourself above the law,
you already gotta get ready for you know what's gonna come.
And that was when we got Our first single was
Murder Rapper. Shit, it got banned, so.

Speaker 1 (52:47):
You know shit.

Speaker 2 (52:48):
I had an album called Music to Drive, so you
know that was That was one of the reasons why
Sony and Epic decided to drop the C MW shit
and just go with MC eight from now on. GOT
because Compton's Most Wanted put fear in a lot of
promoters clubs, you know, as opposed to saying MC eighty

(53:12):
is coming here, as opposed to going ship Compton's Most
Wanted is gonna be here tonight. You're already attracting all
the worst of the worst.

Speaker 3 (53:21):
Y'all gonna have see. You gotta think about how our
promoter think. Right, they already scared because they say, man,
that motherfucker who have a gang and his people up here,
they go start and the enemy comes biggas, GOT will
tear up some ship. And it might have been some
ship that got tore up in that at that time,
was some ship going on a just though still think

(53:41):
about this.

Speaker 4 (53:42):
The only way really we really could even get any
traction is the going them hoods and bus is the
we couldn't We couldn't sell no records. If we couldn't
do that, like we had to do that. I think
our era in hip hop was gladiator. You know, it
was a gladiator world. It was like to build your career,
you had to go to them high schools and enemyighborhoods.
You had to go to them their clubs, record stores

(54:03):
of the enemy neighborhoods.

Speaker 1 (54:04):
You had to do all that. If else you wasn't
gonna get felt. They wasn't even gonna feel your shit
because it wasn't no Instagram, it wasn't no radio.

Speaker 4 (54:11):
Rapp was paid played overnight or college radio. So the
only way you gonna get to the to the kids
in the hood is to go in their hoods and
serve and service them.

Speaker 1 (54:20):
You know.

Speaker 2 (54:21):
It was no other way, like you know, because that's
where we was going. We was hitting college radios at
midnight to do interviews and yeah, and certain in certain towns. Yeah,
you wouldn't go on the major radio. You would go
to college radio at twelve. Look at jo you look at.

Speaker 1 (54:37):
Your promo tour. When you look at your promo tour,
you go see your press day.

Speaker 4 (54:42):
Your press day will start from ten o'clock in the
morning to five o'clock in the next morning like that.

Speaker 1 (54:48):
Especially had to really start trading off. Will go interview. Now,
I'm taking a nap. You go do it. You know,
we had to start trading off like that. That ship
was so crazy just to get your ship hurt.

Speaker 3 (54:56):
I remember, you know, I remember hearing Bahama d on
an interview and she was so mad. Dog you can
get hear your lyth. Boy. She was just like, I'm tired.
You'll ask me all this dumb ass stuff at.

Speaker 1 (55:05):
Four o'clock in the morning.

Speaker 2 (55:06):
She was.

Speaker 3 (55:07):
She sounded like she was on one.

Speaker 2 (55:09):
Yeah, because because when you're doing the ship all day,
it becomes it becomes just frustrating and yeah, I.

Speaker 4 (55:17):
Have my press day. Epic we would do ours and
they be waiting the hallway to do theirs. We was
like like a soul trainer.

Speaker 2 (55:24):
That was when that's when the epics and the Sony's
would get cheap and they would run all the hip.

Speaker 1 (55:32):
Hop sea like our press day would be the same day.

Speaker 2 (55:36):
Fuck it, we're gonna put a poster out and we're
gonna put all three of them on the poster. We
ain't gonna even give them their own I remember they did.
They ran that campaign when Cocaine had to change his names, right, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (55:49):
Who am I?

Speaker 2 (55:50):
It was we had we was dropping, We was dropping
music to drive By, Cocaine was dropping his record Who
am I? And then I think y'all was getting ready
to drop Yeah, I was just yeah, yeah that three
cars added three card promotion. Every time you will go
in the record store, it was music to drive By,

(56:12):
living like hustlers and who am I? Because Cocaine had
to change his name, so Epic would not put out
no record with Cocaine.

Speaker 1 (56:21):
But they had already had a problem with a buzzer
low before. It was like no way.

Speaker 3 (56:26):
That's why they liked y'all, niggas. Do you know that
because y'all was profitable, they ain't have to spend no
money for you on y'all. They will put y'all all
on the same flyers and all that stuff. Even if
you're going to seal three hundred thousand.

Speaker 2 (56:39):
If you sold three hundred, then they was gonna flip
you back. Oh, another good run. They gave you another run.
That's what they did with me.

Speaker 3 (56:46):
You know the cold part about that math. Now check
this math out. Tell me what this makes sense? All right?
Three million, three, three hundred thousand dollars a six six
dollars a pop. I'm gonna free it is.

Speaker 1 (56:56):
That it's way more than they gave us. Tell you
that it's like one, let's.

Speaker 3 (57:04):
Say it's one point six How much how much was
y'all budgets?

Speaker 1 (57:09):
Fifty? If that?

Speaker 2 (57:10):
No, my budget was never two hundreds my budget when
I when I was able to get Unknown out the deal,
then they cut my budget by one hundred grand between
anknown in Orpheus because that's what's my deal. A known

(57:32):
got a deal with Orpheus. Orpheus had a label deal
with Epic. Okay Orpheus had. Orpheus was owned by Charles Huggins,
Melbmore's husband. Okay, So Orpheus had a deal with Capital,
but they track record was garbage as far as hip

(57:55):
hop concern, only success they had was with Melbamore. So
Capital was basically like Nigga, We about to be done
with y'all. They had put out garbage like Arabian prince.

Speaker 1 (58:11):
Right.

Speaker 2 (58:14):
They Basically Orpheus was trying and it wasn't sticking. So
we basically walked in the door at Orpheus Capital when
Capitol was shutting the door. Our first album is a
comptant thing, got over the Orpheus Capital, but Capitol had

(58:35):
just closed the door on them. I think we did
about two hundred thousand. It's a comptant thing. So Epic
ended up giving Orpheus a deal. So that's how we
got and they were given they were giving Orpheus a
quarter of a meal. Okay. Orpheus just did nothing for

(59:01):
CMW Records. They didn't bring in a producer, they didn't
write a song, nothing. They took a buck sixty off
the top, right, okay, which laugh about ninety grand. Let's
do some math real quick, unknoon took ninety grand and
will pocketed. He'd give me probably four or five grand

(59:26):
and give slip about four or five grand. And that's
how we were doing comptences most wanted records.

Speaker 3 (59:32):
Let me do some math from y'all, real quick, okay,
So above the law always so between three, let's give
them the benefit of the doubt. Three hundred thousand, right, yeah,
records they generate one point eight million dollars, and I'm
with y'all getting to do it.

Speaker 4 (59:47):
Yeah, we probably was getting and I'm saying two hundred
and fifty thousand all in that's recording, that's what samples,
that's what money in our pock.

Speaker 1 (59:55):
We probably only see as the group. We probably would
only see, like he said, like eighty as the group
after everybody law House, getting his studio, getting theirs and
all that, only.

Speaker 3 (01:00:07):
For them to come back and tell you, hey, we're
going to do another album. But you still owe us
millions of dollars because.

Speaker 2 (01:00:14):
Because that doesn't account towards, that doesn't account for the
money that we gave you.

Speaker 3 (01:00:18):
The money gave you, you have to pay off that
little five or ten percent that you're getting on.

Speaker 2 (01:00:22):
Then you get seventy cents a record, so you have.

Speaker 3 (01:00:26):
To pay that back off your seventy cent You owe forever. Absolutely,
so if you look at now, you go still be
in the red, even though you may have sold up
the date.

Speaker 4 (01:00:34):
Man, you're not really in the red if you sail
three hundred thousand, because you really already passed it. But
what they do is they end up piecing.

Speaker 1 (01:00:42):
It's like the statement only be like for like say,
for instance, it only be for seventy thousand records. This
is the lick, right, never is for all of those records.

Speaker 2 (01:00:52):
My my lick is I never received the royalty check.
I never received a royalty check. I would always get budgets,
and that's how I would get money. I never got
a royalty check because because what would happen is Sony
would give me one hundred and eighty grand, right, then

(01:01:15):
they would turn around and go, you did two videos,
then was eighty a piece. Okay, So now you're at
about three hundred and something grand.

Speaker 1 (01:01:27):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:01:31):
To negotiate your whole deal took about three months. We're
gonna charge you for that. Okay. You did a promo
tour that costs about thirty forty grand. We're gonna charge
you back for that. At the end of the day,
I think I was getting what ten eleven points a record.
One point is equivalent to what seven cents, So I

(01:01:54):
was getting maybe seventy cents a record. They expect me
to pay back that fucking four hundred thousand out of
seventy cents.

Speaker 1 (01:02:05):
Yeah, there is there, There is.

Speaker 2 (01:02:07):
The but then they're gonna go, They're gonna come back
and they're gonna go okay. Similar like Music to Drive By.
You sold four hundred thousand records. Okay, we spent four
hundred to do it. You owe me four hundred out
of your seventy cents. But Music to Drive By just
sold four hundred thousand. They've made a profit of almost

(01:02:30):
two point something million dollars. But that you would think
they would go, okay, we gave you four hundred. It
just made back two point five. We're gonna go minus
four out of that two point five. There's two point
one here on the table. Now, let's splay bet.

Speaker 1 (01:02:48):
You with video. They're gonna hit you with manufacturing.

Speaker 2 (01:02:50):
They're gonna hit you, and that comes out of your
seventy cents. That don't come out of the money that
just hit the table, right.

Speaker 3 (01:02:56):
And the whole thing about it, it's like it's the
equivalent of going into a bank and getting a loan
for something them a car loan, and the people at
the bank telling you, well, no, you're not gonna get
that truck. We gonna go get you this and you
pay for it.

Speaker 4 (01:03:12):
But the way we used to look at it is
like he just said, we just used to look at
the front money and fucked it back in because we
ain't gonna You're not getting back in.

Speaker 1 (01:03:21):
At the record blow.

Speaker 4 (01:03:22):
We got touring, we got merged, we got we We
looked at it like a bigger picture because early in
the early days, they never showed us everything. They only
showed us everything when we ask, you know what I mean,
Like now people can really see where shit is going.
But it's foolish because it ain't like it was with us.
We we actually had CDs or cassettes or wax, so

(01:03:45):
we could account for the ship. But then they put
all of that other ship in it, like he said,
like they put the video budget in it, the samples,
all these things that went against us in all these
other parties that's involved Sony Ruthless, law House.

Speaker 1 (01:04:00):
My thing, my thing is, no, my thing is. My
thing is.

Speaker 2 (01:04:07):
You're the creator, you're the writer or whatever, And I
get it. It's like like you said, it's like a
it's like a bank loan, Right, Sony gonna come in.
They gonna go, Okay, you the new artist. They say
you hot, they say your shit is cracking.

Speaker 1 (01:04:27):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:04:29):
I don't know if you're gonna sell one copy or
one million. So this is what's gonna happen. I'm gonna
go pay to do your record. I'm gonna put you
in the studio, I'm gonna get your album cover done.
I'm gonna bring in artists and this and that, and
I'm gonna do all this stuff. So basically, I'm finning
loan you a million. Right, I'm fee the loan you

(01:04:50):
a million dollars. But instead of going, Now, some niggas
they do it too, if you know how to negoti
So instead of going, you're gonna give me back my meal.
Like so when the money hit, I'm taking my million
off the top. After that we can do sixty forty. No,

(01:05:13):
they go, I'm only gonna give you seventy cents per
record you sell. That's what they do to you. That's
how the record labels look at you. I'm gonna give
you seventy cents per record you sell. Now this million,
I'm finna loan you. You're gonna have to pay me

(01:05:36):
back that million out of your profit of seventy cents.
But I'm gonna own ninety something percent of this fucking project.

Speaker 4 (01:05:49):
Plus you gotta realize they only pay out of portions.
Like when you get a royalty statement. Say you get
a royalty statement, say it's January, right, that statement might
only be from June to September.

Speaker 1 (01:06:04):
Right.

Speaker 4 (01:06:04):
Whatever it did between them months is all that check is.
That's another hustle. That's the other hustle. Don't understand we
actually got an other right now, right, and we can
keep talking all night. Okay, I want to ask you
this question, man, I asked this to everybody that was around. Okay,
at one point Easy was gonna tell Jerry to kick Rocks.

Speaker 2 (01:06:23):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:06:23):
Absolutely, he was gonna fire him. I know that for
a fact.

Speaker 3 (01:06:27):
Did Easy seem like he was sick to you in
the last days? Absolutely not. Do you think it was
some foul play with that? Absolutely? You were the fifth
person I've heard say that Easy eating. And these are
the people that was around him every day. Man, he
didn't have no sickness, and it was just like one
day we look up and he's dying of aids.

Speaker 1 (01:06:46):
Well, yeah, I mean.

Speaker 4 (01:06:49):
He gotta you know when when when he got at me,
it definitely was a changing of the guards. And once
those guards change, once all those once he made his
chest play, it seemed like it all went bad. That's
all I can tell you and I know the moves
he was gonna make. It was gonna reunite n w A.
We was gonna revamp the label without Jerry Heller. This

(01:07:11):
is real talk. As soon as he made that clear
to Jerry Heller, it all went bad.

Speaker 1 (01:07:17):
He wasn't. You know the thing about Eric, Eric wasn't.
He wasn't.

Speaker 4 (01:07:20):
It wasn't like G fourteen Classified Dog. It was he
was like, this is what I'm gonna do. And once
he let him know, it seemed like everything went downhill
with no breaks.

Speaker 1 (01:07:28):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:07:29):
You know what I would like to see, and even
though that's a long time ago, what I would like
to see is some kind of investigation happened, man, to
find out what really happened to that man. Yeah, because
I talked to too many people to tell me, man
is I've had people that my family that passed away
age and stuff.

Speaker 4 (01:07:44):
And the thing about it, man, I think it's tragic
because what easy getting on for is the rapper died
from ads. But he's the He's the reason why all
of us exist. There is no ice Cube the superstar,
there is no Doctor dreda billionaire, There is no me, the.

Speaker 1 (01:08:00):
Creator of a sound called G funk. There is no
all of these things that happened.

Speaker 4 (01:08:05):
You know, if it wasn't for Eric right, you know,
the world would be a lot different without Eric right,
like just ideally, I'm telling you he's the one who
had that vision. And it's sad because I wish that
would happen too, though, because that's true, it did go
bad from there.

Speaker 1 (01:08:19):
I don't know. He just I don't extremely get sick
and just die in a week. I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:08:25):
It don't sound right to me. It never has sat
right with me, to be honest. Yeah, you know I
talked to this son shouting my hown boy. Yeah, and man,
I appreciate you coming by dog. This is like the
man me and ain't been back in a thousand we've
been having some legendary people. You know, people like to
call themselves legends. Man, that word is through around too loosely.

Speaker 2 (01:08:44):
Now. I think people just like to hear the backstories
of you know, it's like a good documentary or a
good story that you didn't know. You can only put
together pieces or think or assume ship and then you
know it just people just like to hear backstories of

(01:09:07):
original ship, how shit got started, and especially when you
come from an era of music that had the whole
world turned up. A lot of our stories aren't told about,
you know, the inception of uh this reality music that
we brought to the forefront, and it.

Speaker 4 (01:09:28):
Never was and it never was. We never coined a
gangster rap. I don't want to say that on this
It was always reality wrap for us. It was we
never that's what corporate corporate put us in.

Speaker 2 (01:09:39):
That corporate Corporate America named as gangster rap because of Fox.

Speaker 1 (01:09:44):
They needed to check and put us hand in the store.

Speaker 2 (01:09:47):
I mean, because of that's what LA represented. You get
LA represented gangs. Come on, now, you know it was
movies like Colors it was.

Speaker 1 (01:09:57):
It was.

Speaker 2 (01:09:58):
It was reports on the rus gang violence and drive
to let.

Speaker 4 (01:10:02):
I want to let people know that our ship was
based upon reality. All of the shit we did was
based upon the reality of what we saw.

Speaker 2 (01:10:10):
Music.

Speaker 1 (01:10:10):
Always remember this, y'all. No matter what, music is the
reflection of the environment. That's it.

Speaker 4 (01:10:16):
If we don't have it to talk about, if if if,
if we didn't see that in our neighborhoods, we wouldn't
have it to talk about. That's the reality of what
was going on.

Speaker 1 (01:10:25):
You know what I mean.

Speaker 4 (01:10:26):
So for them to do that, which is fine, I
don't really give a fuck. But what I'm saying is
that nobody got up and said we're gangster rappers. Nobody
said that they put us in that box.

Speaker 3 (01:10:36):
Well, that concludes another episode of the Gainst the Chronicles podcast.
Be sure to download the iHeart app and subscribe to
The Gangst the Chronicles podcast For Apple users, find a
purple micae on the front of your screen, subscribe to
the show, leave of common and rating. Executive producers for
The Gangst the Chronicles podcast Norman Steel, Aaron M. C
a Tyler. Our visual media director is Brian Whatt, and
all your editors tell It Hayes. The Gangster Chronicles is

(01:10:58):
a production of iHeartMedia networking the Black Effect podcast Network.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple
Podcasts wherever you're listening to your podcasts