The D-Boyz are rappers Lac and Stone, former Cash Money Records artists with star power of their own. The duo recently released Life of a D-Boy on 404 Records (home to MJG) and the album is a throwback to the halcyon days of their former recording home. With features from Juvenile, BG and Lil Wayne and even beats from Mannie Fresh, Lac and Stone were served well by keeping a good rapport with their fellow New Orleans natives. Add to that mix the likes of Jazzy Pha, TQ and Wacko & Skip, and you have a classic mix of rap funk from the 504. Peep as the D-Boyz give you a run down of where they come from, where they’ve been and where they’re heading by pushing rhymes like weight. AllHipHop.com: How did you both connect with Cash Money?Lac: I came up like two blocks away from Baby and them, when they were staying in the 1200 block of Saratoga, I was in 1400 and we all hung in the 1300. It was just like I always knew them. I used to do like a little rapping thing, it was a play thing for me because I felt like wasn’t no real rappers coming out of New Orleans anyway. It was just something that I liked and the when I did decide to get serious with it, that’s what I chose to go deal with it. It took them a minute to get me there and then when they got me there… wooh! Yeah, that is how I hooked up with them. [laughing]Stone: Yeah, me and Juvie was talking and I let him hear some songs I was working on and Juvie suggested I should go over there. So I went and hollered at Baby with the album, he liked it and I was there ever since. Lac: Stone forced his way over there. The bus was leaving to go on tour and Stone ain’t ask nobody. Stone came there with his luggage and everything, put his luggage underneath the bus and got on there, and took him a ride. [laughing]Stone: And we were there ever since, keeping it real, that’s all. AllHipHop.com: That said, when did y’all leave Cash Money?Lac: I think I left like March 3 or March 1 of 2003. I was there since like ‘97. I just got sick and tired man, you can only cook so long on the back burner, then you dry out. So I was like while I still have a little water in the pot with me, I’m going to get on up. I got up but when I got up I had to make a few things right. Because a lot of things went undone because we were on the road like nine months out of the year. A few things I had to make right and once I got that together, I got back at it. I was just going to do my music thing until something popped. I was going to make some money off of it, because if I know how to do nothing, I know how to make some money. I ain’t in DC where they’re printing it at but I know how to make it. The next thing you know Kill comes behind me, when he came behind me he had to take care of a few things. I was in the studio and he couldn’t even come in the studio, because he was trying to take care of a few things. Then the next thing you know, we did one song. Man, I ain’t have to run behind him but I had to hold up for him until he get comfortable to be able to say what he want [to] say.Stone: I wanted to say, what I wanted to say, but I come from a life where n****s are really out there with it. Where a lot of stuff is talked about, I really lived it, me and Lac real D-Boyz. So I was like hesitant to say some things. You really have to come from that life to really say what you want to say, because it’s really like you’re telling on yourself. So we had to pull back and we got back into music but we decided that we just going to do our own label. We were already D-Boyz, we took that name with us from Cash Money because that is how we were coming out around there. We hauled up the group and left. So we just started to do D-Boyz at Tammity, we just went from there. The only thing with the Cash Money situation, man we was getting money, we wasn’t getting them checks from royalties and all that but we was getting enough checks to keep a n***a off the block and that was the biggest thing for us. When you come from the hood this is what people don’t realize; “how can you put up with it?” Man when you come from New Orleans it ain’t nothing but a murder rate. Everything murking stuff all day long. So when you traveling the world and you seeing some checks, that’s better than your other situations because it’s legal dollars and everyone wanted legal dollars. That is one of the things that helped me and Lac put up with that situation, because even though we wasn’t where we wanted to be towards putting the album out we were getting eough checks to keep our family straight. Lac: It used to be sometimes, I have an attitude problem so I know I’m dealing with that addiction right now too. That is part of my problem, like I used to click out and be gone for like two, three months. And be done took one of Baby’s whips. I don’t pick up the phone for nobody but Stone. And then pick my check up or have somebody go to the office and pick my check up. I ain’t been around in six months and still got a check. Stone: They made sure we get it, so we were good on that note. One thing the world needs to know, they’re looking at the D-Boyz and really haven’t had a chance to understand us around Cash Money. But we are some really gangsters that have lived it for real, and we are having a good time with it, though. A lot of people in different hoods on welfare and they’re D-Boyz doing they’re thing, and big ups to everybody putting up with the struggle. We talking because we lived it and when they know who we really is they going to understand. They’re going to see themselves in us and they going to understand the struggle. AllHipHop.com: What is your relationship with Baby and Cash Money now?Lac: We ain’t got no beef in the industry, we ain’t got no beef on the streets. It’s real out here. If there was a problem on the streets, I guarantee we wouldn’t be able to do interviews right now because we would be trying to keep it cooking or make it cook us. I can’t be running around here fake beefing and talking about a n***a on a song and it ain’t real. It’s serious out here, you can’t play. Where we come from, we can’t play. Stone: If we have a problem with Baby either he’ll see us or we’ll see him, on some real real s**t. Lac: I could pick up the phone and hit him up like “What’s up B…nothing, bam bam, holler at me.” He might not want to talk to us any more for a year. He might not pick up for me, but it ain’t no beef. We deal with them all, it ain’t no problem with the D-Boyz. D-Boyz go any where on 85 and everything else beyond that, so we are good on that note. D-Boyz “We Gangsta”AllHipHop.com: Life of D-Boy how did it come together? Lac: How it came together, just doing songs, that’s it. It’s just us, we’re going to do us. And before you know it, just like everything else we do, we do it. It will be like, “Kill I got a beat man, we need to get in the studio and do a song.” He might be on the way to the studio and just coming up with something he might want to say and we will be on the same page. When he gets there that is what it is. Stone: We had a couple of songs that we felt we tried to get there. We rode to the beat and thought about it like man I’m feeling this. You know we have a lot of directions like “The Streets Keep Calling,” there were a lot of directions we wanted to go with that song. Lac: We were under a lot of pressure, the storm had just hit and we in Atlanta. FEMA hadn’t really even kicked in so we were really out there getting it how we lived. If you had anything back home, we really couldn’t get to it, because they had the floods, watering all up and National Guard ain’t letting you in your house. You can’t get to money, you can’t get to nothing. So it was sort of like get it how you live. You got to make a million dollars out of 15, you know.Stone: Whatever we was coming up with, we was going there. And as we were going, every time we made a phone call, we was like Lac we hooking back up we making our album. We told Juve, “Man whatever, I need to be on it.” We called [Mannie] Fresh, it was the same thing: Whatever man I’m at the studio, come meet me or I will come meet y’all. We right here. Everybody we called, let them know, we were working on the album. We only reached back to the same people we had been working with because that is who we’ve always worked with. We were used to working with them so we went back and said “look, know we working on ours,” They were like “I know you don’t think you’ll about to do this without calling us.” Everybody just came together. We didn’t have to call nobody twice, we didn’t have to look no one. Everybody came together. So right after that we shot a DVD, same thing. We didn’t have to look for nobody, everybody was ready to support the situation. When somebody sees you doing your thing, they are going to ride with you, if it something that is good and they like it. Lac: Real recognizes real. If you real it ain’t really hard to maintain it. It’s just like we keep it thorough. The understanding been laid down where everything is understood. They ain’t on no bull, they ain’t on no fakeness, n****s just doing them and they respect it, so everybody is cool with that. Go to their studio, they come to our studio, we meet in the middle — whatever, we get it done though. AllHipHop.com: One thing about the album is that you have the old Cash Money drive but it doesn’t sound dated, it sounds fresh for now. Was that on purpose?Lac: No, it’s just us man. We giving you us, the real way. It’s cool to say Cash Money sound because that is what the world knows — the Cash Money sound, the Hot Boyz, the Big Tymers. But it’s New Orleans, it’s just what it is. You might say, “ I was on the phone with Lac and Stone and they sound like they got an accent, do you hear the way they say baby and the way they say this…” It’s just New Orleans, that’s the way we live. That’s why it sounds like what it sounds like — it’s us. AllHiphop.com: What do you want people to take from this album?Lac: The realness… Stone: The life of a D-Boy, the real life you can see it. I want them to feel like a movie, like your not watching it with your eyes but your hearing it like we’re painting a picture. Your riding, you’re understanding the life of a D-Boy and what they go through in New Orleans. Also I can dare to speak like it’s a universal thing, you can see it, feel it and you can respect it. We somebody who wants everybody to get money and we know what it is to struggle, gas is high and people are trying to get it. I’ma do my thing but I’m going to let people know I’m here for you too if I can help you. The realness of the D-Boyz.
