After being shelved on Interscope Records, rapper Planet Asia is preparing to release his long awaited album, The Grand Opening.Releases from Asia were delayed soon after he signed with the major label, due to music industry politics. “I left Interscope because of the label drama,” Asia told AllHipHop.com. “Tom Whalley went to Warner Brothers and he was the real mothef*cker. He’s’ the dude that signed Tupac and he signed me. All the mothef*ckers that I wanted to use, everyone is using. I wanted to use Kanye, n*ggas is using Kanye. N*ggas is using Jake One, all the n*ggas that I said was dope.”</ The result was the rapper moving to Avatar Records and recording new material for his latest release, which features such heavyweights as Ghostface Killah, Rasco, Jake One, Supa Dave and others. “Everybody thought I was on some super scientifical s###,” Asia said. “I am on some Godbody s###. I aint on that weird s###, I’m a gold chain n*gga.” Gold Chain Music is the name of the label Asia heads up, which he says will focus on bringing his idea of authentic Hip-Hop to lovers of the genre. “We are taking it back to the golden era. And No, I am not taking it back in time, but we are making golden era hip-hop music as far as the rules of hip-hop that n*ggas live by in terms of being original,” Asia said. “We just came off a tour of Europe. They treat you like a real star over there. They like the real hip-hop over there and that’s what is missing here. I come from the crack culture, but they rapped so they didn’t have to sell dope. Now they got n*ggas rapping to sell dope.” The Grand Opening hits stores tomorrow (February 24) on Avatar Records.
