As the NBA’s All-Star weekend approaches and seemingly every hip hop celebrity in the world gets ready for their featured party in Dallas, many heads are turning towards the Dallas rap scene, curious as to who the major players are in the “Big D”
If you know anything about Dallas hip hop you know that many people have tried to categorized Dallas as solely a “dance song” or “ringtone song” city, but some people in this area beg to differ. Since 1994 T-Town Music & More has been located in the Pleasant Grove Bruton Bazaar. The store has provided listeners with Dallas’ best hip hop music, mixtapes, DVDs.
The owner of T-Town Music & More, George Lopez, built his empire from this location and has been in the game for some time now. Whether it was developing relationships that helped up and coming labels like Rap-A-Lot, Swisha House and No Limit Records, or running T-Town Music & More, or creating one of Dallas’ most well know rap groups, DSR, George Lopez has built a hip-hop empire in Dallas that is seemingly unparalleled to any other hip-hop executive in the city.
“George Lopez will be remembered for years to come. He took the Dallas sound and spread it across the country as well as possibly making the greatest sacrifice for the city.” – Kiki J K104 Hip Hop and R&B of Dallas
“George is definitely a pioneer and he’s a trendsetter. His store helped break a lot of artists and his street tactics and marketing go so under looked in the market.” – Play of Grammy Award Winning Production Team Play-N-Skillz
AllHipHop.com: So, just so our readers know, tell me a little about who you are what you have done here in Dallas?
Goerge Lopez: I’ve been in the music business for a long time now. I’m like an old school DJ/ retailer/ promoter/CEO, I’ve done it all. I started DJing back in 1983. Been in the mix music wise for a couple of years now. Opened up a record store in 1994, T-Town Music & More, we were the first ones to bring Screw music to Dallas. I was part of the whole movement with Swisha House, Hump at Sucka Free Records, D-Wreck there at Wreck Shop. Pretty much I was the one that brought all that music over here. I was bringing the Swisha House music, Wreck Shop, we were pumping the Rap-A-Lot music pretty hard out here. I was the new record store in ‘94, but I hooked with those guys in ‘95 and ‘96 . Worked with Master P, pushed a lot of No-Limit stuff out of my shop. A lot of people knew me because I used to push a lot of No Limit, also a lot of Houston music. For years, people would come to the music shop. They knew we had everything, No Limit & Rap-A-Lot had to offer. The DJ Screw mixtapes, the Swisha House mixtpapes, the Lil’ Flip mixtapes, people knew we had it all.
From the first day that I met OG Ron C, to G Dash, to Michael Watts, to Hump at Sucka Free, to D Wreck at Wreck shop. You come to my city, let me know I got you. You know what I’m saying?
Music-wise, we got tons of stores in Dallas. I made sure that their product was in a lot these stores, because I believed in the movement that come out of Houston and the movement that came out of the South. So being that said, everything that was going on with shows, features in D-F-DUB, you know I made happen
AllHipHop.com: Can you tell us about some of the artists that you have really worked with and that have worked Dallas hard? What artists have really killed the streets for your company? What kind of movements do you got going on?
Goerge Lopez: The first guy that I stared working with out of Dallas was Kottonmouth. I mean he sold crazy numbers and he was a beast in the streets. You know he has a lot of hits and he is a legend here in Dallas. I also worked with Pimpsta, Mr.Pookie and Mr.Lucci. I worked with them for about two and half years. Everybody knew how many numbers they moved. I worked with a lot of people man. I was blessed enough to work with Big Al and his crew. When I was young I would go to the Twilight Skating Rink, which was a big skating rink here in Dallas, the legendary Dr. Rock, Dr. Funk, those were like the big type DJs in Dallas back in the 80?s that were doing their thing, Then I started hearing the whole new movement going on, that was the Nemesis, Ron-C, Fila Fresh Crew, Fresh Roc Production, I started getting a lot of knowledge on the Dallas scene, so you know, I was working with artists that were building up and bubbling. But me learning all that, me working with Houston artists, I was like, You know what? I need to have a Dallas movement of my own started. So we put a group together called DSR and we sent flows to Ray Face and the Boss Hogg Outlawz and the Color Changing Click, which was Chamillionaire and Paul Wall, they was already doing his own label thing. We sent some flows out to his way. We sent some out to Swisha House, and they check them out. So that’s how DSR kind of just started, you know the new movement in Dallas and this was like 2001.
AllHipHop.com: Who was in DSR?
Goerge Lopez: DSR was Fat B, Big Tuck, Tum-Tum, Addiction, Lil Ronnie, and Double T. That’s six artists. It wasn’t that small to begin with because I worked with a lot of artists and I didn’t know what I wanted and a lot of new artists that I was working with were pretty good. So really when DSR the name first started, I had actually like 17 guys and it was like I liked all of them. Now with us starting this movement, now you got all these other Dallas artists making their own movement for Dallas and I love that. People say, “Man, are you against it or do you hate it?” Man you know what? This is the way I look at it, “bad press is good press.” You got your good press out there that’s good and you got your bad press out there. You got people saying, “What do you think about the whole dancing movement?” I say, “Dog, we don’t dance, we boogie down here. This is what we call the boogie movement.” What do you think about that, people say this, “people are writing in magazines about this and that, about one hit wonders?”
Look if this one hit wonder can make two or three million dollars and put the city of Dallas on the map, I will congratulate them. You know what I’m saying? Cause if it was so easy, why didn’t someone else do it all these years? You know what I’m saying, I respect everyone’s hustles and I respect everyone’s music.
Me as a retailer I’m going to get people that want to buy dance music, I got people that want to buy trapin’ music, I people that want to buy this and this and that. I’m here for it all, I’m a retailer/DJ, and so me if I like good music, I’m going to push it.
AllHipHop.com: Tell me a little bit about some of the artist that you have coming out right now.
Goerge Lopez: Right now I got my marketing company called Jin Ent. I’m really trying to buildup my marketing company. I’ve been in this marketing company since ’07, slowly and gradually. Right now the three artists I’m working with right now hand and hand. I got a Latino rapper, and I hate to say Latino rapper because people categorize him already, but when you hear his music. His name is Rock. He’s from Pleasant Grove. He’s got a song called “Gotta Get The Cash”. I’m getting ready to start pushing that real heavy.”
Another artist I’m working with, he’s got his own company called Bonecide Entertainment. His name is Bone. He’s got a song right now on the radio called “Ringtones” Ft Rizzo and he’s got a new song called “Goodtimes”, and that’s the record that we are pushing right now. You might have seen him on the new Ozone Magazine; he’s on the front cover of January’s edition. He’s going to be on the front cover of Block2Block Magazine for the All-Star edition. He’s bubblin.
And Big Tuck of course. Me and Tuck since day one. You know what I’m saying, I’m managing him right now. I got my marketing company that is 100% behind him, Jin Entertainment, so it’s like right now I’m in the mix marketing, promotion, distribution, anything you need and that’s what I’m doing. We got a distribution called Music Access; we are located here in Dallas. People are comparing us to Southwest Wholesale, that was the biggest distribution in the south; they closed up a couple of years ago. There was another distribution that was out of Gonzalez, Louisiana that was real big that was pushing a lot of southern music, well they shut down now, so right now the only thing in the south is Music Access Distribution. It’s me and my partner Robert Gonzalez, and we are pushing a lot of music here in the south now. The whole movement, I’m behind it 100%, all these artists that need distribution they are coming through us. It’s about you networking. We’ve gotten so far because of the people we’ve networked with.
We’ve networked with the key people in the game. Not just anybody. We deal with the key people in the city. We go to Miami, we deal with the right people, we go to Atlanta, and we deal with the right people. I mean these are the movers and shakers that we deal with, we don’t just go to anybody. I mean we cool with everybody. We keep our business nonstop on conversation, emails, phone calls everything non-stop every time, and that’s how when you are pushing your music you have to be on top of your game. If not you are going to fall into the cracks because there are a lot of rappers that are trying to get on. People don’t understand that this is a business and a business runs with money but that it also runs with relationships and networking and that a lot of the stuff we built on.
