AllHipHop.com:
It won’t be juicy enough for AllHIpHop rumors or illseed, or anything like that—
Devin: (laughs) I mean,
you’re still recording personal, or no longer recording, personal?
AllHipHop.com: You know
I’m still recording!
Devin: What’d you
say, Niki? (laughs)
AllHipHop.com: I want
to know if you’re actually friends with Scarface and Dr. Dre, or do
you just look at them as folks you’ve worked with.
Devin: Ah, man those
are my brothers! Both of them, those are my brothers. (laughs) At the
drop of a hat, whenever they need me, I’m there!
AllHipHop.com:
Are you going to be on Detox or anything new with Scarface?
Devin: Well, actually,
when I was mixing all these records on the Suite 420 album, Mike
Dean came through and we was choppin’ it up. He wants to be involved
in the next project that I do, you know what I mean. He wants to do
some work together. The feeling is mutual; I’d love to do some work
with ‘Face, anytime. I know how he goes into a studio. I know how
his work ethic is; I know that he’ll come out of there with some heat.
AllHipHop.com: What
about Detox are you going to be on that?
Devin: Yeah, that would
be cool.
AllHipHop.com: In relation
to Hip-Hop would you rather earn the respect of your peers and the public,
or make lots and lots of money from j###### tunes?
Devin: (laughs) Of course,
I would like the love and respect and the appreciation of the music.
To me, the money only comes after all that is established. You get the
love and respect, and the money and stuff is like the proverbial icing
on the cake. Everybody knows how money comes and goes and what you can
do with it. How you can blow it and whatever. You can make money all
kinds of ways, doing a whole bund of different things, not just because
of Rap. I like the appreciation from my peers, and my family and my
friends, of what I’m doing, I feel good. I can feel good about whatever
I’m doing, and that goes a long way.
AllHipHop.com: I ask
this question a lot, and I want to get your perspective on it. Is there
such a thing as commercially successful Hip-Hop that still possesses
a cultural soul?
Devin: Yeah, those are
albums like The Chronic, 2001, a couple of Geto Boys albums.
That’s when the underground artist makes commercialized fans cross
over to them, and make them come over. Millions of people have heard
this album, yet it’s still underground and raw. 2 Live Crew did it,
Too Short did it, Ice Cube did it, KRS-One did it; a lot of artists
and Rap groups have done it. But, you just got to be really true about
what you do. And then you got those followers that are true fans that
will really support you and show their number with the units sold. It
lines up sometimes for a lot of artists.
It can be done. It’s not
by you going into a studio and you trying to make it happen. It’s
not done like that. It’s going to be done by you doing what you’re
doing, by you continuously doing what you’re doing, on the grind.
Then you have these followers that’s been followers for a while and
somehow they multiply one year. Then out of nowhere—BOOM—that next
album everybody knows about you and you didn’t have to do a commercial
song to make it happen.
AllHipHop.com: That
goes perfectly into my next question. Have you ever been tempted to
make a Hokey-Pokey dance song for the kids?
Devin: We laugh, and
kid, and joke about it in the studio a lot, you know what I’m saying.
But, when it comes down to it, when you start recording a record, your
heart starts to get more involved into a record and it’s hard to just
follow a trend. Nah, I don’t do that! I don’t go in there trying
to make a commercialized song, or a song that everybody would like.
I would love for people to love all the songs that I make; but, that’s
when I’m finished with it. That’s not before I start.
AllHipHop.com: In an
interview that you did with HipHopDx you were saying that you’d like
to have Willie Nelson on a feature; were you serious or just joking
around?
Devin: Both, I was just
tripping; but, I would love to. It would be an honor for me to be on
a track with Willie Nelson. Not just because of the similarities of
smoking weed; but, doing music and having storytelling type songs. We
have a little something in common there. There are a lot of people who
I have run across who have asked me about that. It wasn’t just out
of the blue to where I woke up and wanted to do a song with Willie Nelson.
It’s like people who’ve approached me like, ‘Have you ever thought
about doing a song with Willie Nelson?’
AllHipHop.com: I want
to pick your brain a little bit more; I’ll let you go in a min. On
420 you have a skit called “Twitta,” do you have an actual Twitter
account?
Devin: [laughs] Well,
you know, the people at the label twisted my arm, man. It was like,
‘You have to do a Twitter, Devin. That’s the way of the world. It’s
the sign of the times; you just can make it without Twitter.’ That
type of s###, so I got a Twitter account. It’s called TheRealDevin420.
AllHipHop.com: One more
random question, one of my favorite tracks is “Write & Wrong,”
I’ve always wanted to know its back story. Is it a purely conceptual
album, or did something like that actually happen to you?
Devin: There was a time
when I was getting approached a whole bunch about making it in the Rap
game. ‘What should I do, Devin? I got these hot tracks and I want
to get signed to y’all label. I want to do this; I want to do that…’
So, that just brought about it. Hey, if I write a song about it
I wouldn’t have to talk about it too much, or be approached with it.
They’ll hear the song and that’ll be a reference to ‘and I won’t
have to say nothing no more. (laughs)
AllHipHop.com:
(Erupts with laughter) I can’t stand you!
Devin: That was pretty
much it. I just wrote a song about a lot of artists that was pretty
much in the same boat that I was in, you know, still tryin’ to make
it. They wanted some advice, so that was my advice, at the time.
AllHipHop.com:
What would you like to say to your supporters?
Devin: I appreciate
the support of not only, Suite 420, but for all the support over
the years since ’93. That’s where the bulk of my fans come from.
They’ve been around since then and I appreciate that. It’s coming
from the heart, coming from the Odd Squad, coming from the Coughee Brothaz
and everything we’ve done since then. You’re the reason why we’re
here doing what we do and trying to keep coughee sippin’.
