England is notorious for its traditionalist values; change happens in the country eventually, but not as quickly as some would hope. The music industry is no different. One of England’s hottest exports this century has to be Pop Idol which translated state side as Fox’s####, American Idol. Rap, Hip-Hop, R&B has yet to be welcomed into the folds of the English music industry; which is why brothers Mega and Mayhem, as S.A.S were elated to be given a home under the Diplomat umbrella.

In the US they appreciate the doors that open for them as opposed to slamming in their faces; which is common for any artist who doesn’t adhere to the traditional ‘pop idol’ role in the UK.

Their style and street values are attributes which brought them to the attention of Diplomats CEO Jim Jones. S.A.S. breaks down to AllHipHop.com the Rhymefest dispute, the English music biz, why ‘breading’ keeps their name underground and just where their knowledge of haute couture and modern street fashion came from.

AllHipHop.com: Why is the commercial Hip-hop market in the UK virtually non-existent?

Mayhem: They don’t let no street music come through. People don’t bother. The struggles you have to go through to get on the radio here when you are gangsta rappers like we are, is enough to make you give up. We would just rather start off in America, you know there has never been a UK rapper that is doing anything street credible.

AllHipHop.com: So that’s why you feel you had to aim for state-side recognition?

Mayhem: Yeah definitely, if we just had the UK as our only market I don’t think we would have done it.

AllHipHop.com: But you do have a following in the UK and quite a big one.

Mayhem: Yes we do, but the industry don’t f**k with us – and when I say that I mean just the industry, I am not talking about the streets. Our following in the streets don’t do the calling up radio stations and video channels to get like say other rappers followers in the UK do. Our following doesn’t exist over ground, you know they aren’t bothered about going on forums and arguing, because they are the streets and they are doing what they need to do.

AllHipHop.com: So your fan base over there is very different to over here?

Mega: In America, people follow the rappers and there a large majority of people who follow it reflect that rap lifestyle, whereas in England there is just a small percentage and these are people that are into Hip-Hop, but don’t live the Hip-Hop lifestyle. I know that I don’t pay attention to it, and I rap, I am in the streets. If you are towards the streets, you are real.

Mayhem: We call it breading over here when you follow something too much and brag about things too much, you are ‘breading’, so if you talk about an artist or play them too much that is breading. That is the mentality over here and people in the hood don’t like to go on about things too much. So our fanbase doesn’t exist when it comes to the outlets that play the music and bring it to the attention of others. But then we did the S.A.S. release party in the UK, the place was packed, with n***as from all over London and the country.

AllHipHop.com: Without the love of the majors, are the illegal radio stations still an option for you to get your music out?

Mayhem: Yeah, but after Dizzie Rascal and the other “grime” artists started to get major play with Tim Westwood the pirate stations started to dwindle. Unless you have grime or elements of pop t###, commercial s**t, you know some people are puppets and I refuse to release stuff in the UK that I wouldn’t release in the states. Just because we get a better buzz in one country as opposed to another doesn’t mean I want to be hearing my records in one country; I want to hear us all around the world.

AllHipHop.com: So how do you plan on changing this? You said there are no other gangsta rappers in England, so the pressure is on.

Mega: I don’t think we can change it in the UK. They won’t reciprocate what we are trying to achieve in this country, they shut us down. You know the government is shutting people down who have sold a million records. The average lifespan for an artist in the UK is about three albums, you know anyone I know who makes “hoodish” music whether it be grime, backpack whatever, they have only put out one single or an album and then they get dropped. There is no artist development in England, you never hear of labels doing development, there are no Black [Music Departments] of any single record company.

AllHipHop.com: Being accepted as English rappers, how do you enforce that here in the US, you know being that England is predominantly known for its pop culture as opposed to its Hip-Hop?

Mega: The more you give the fans, the more you draw them into your world, that’s what people get with us. The artwork on the back cover on the recent album is breaking it down, you know the words we use in our raps that people may not understand. You know we get that people may not exactly understand our slang, but we break it down for them. We obviously lived in America and that was where we perfected our skills on the New York streets. More people in [America] feel us, you know in Miami or LA, you know we have traveled without a record deal. We make music for a broader variety of people, it’s like you don’t make movies for just one country.

AllHipHop.com: I know you had an issue with Rhymefest, he took back everything he said right?

Mayhem: Yeah, he did. He called Cam’ron and said it was a misunderstanding, and he wanted to dead it. The only reason I think Cam’ron is telling us to dead it is because he is related to one of Cam’s dude’s cousins. So that’s what happened. We weren’t happy at being disrespected like that, but he knows he has to come back here to market his album.

AllHipHop.com: Will you be making New York your new home then?

Mega: We will probably be coming back in January and we will be settling more than likely in New Jersey. Just can’t wait to get back man, it’s been crazy.

AllHipHop.com: Your connection with the Diplomats came about because of your time in New York, knowing the same people and all that, but you also said Jim Jones was attracted by your sense of style. How important is style and fashion to you both?

Mayhem: It’s very important and has been since we were babies, as we were growing up our Mum, she had us in [United Colors of] Benetton and all that so as far back as I can remember we have been fly. Even coming up that’s what we used to spend our money on, clothes.

Mega: When we first got to the states we kinda freaked them out because they kind of frowned on us because we were wearing jeans with peanuts and snoopy on them, and I was like, “You crazy, this is Iceberg, you need to go check these out,” and sure enough people saw that the jeans were like $400 bucks a pop and then Jay-Z started to wear Iceberg and they were official then. London has a lot of things going on when it comes to fashion, and we like to represent that in our lifestyle.

AllHipHop.com: So where do you like to shop?

Mega: Everywhere, you know we put thing together, right now we are rocking a lot of Lacoste. We are wearing a Japanese designer on the front cover of our mixtape, Maharishi. We have to reinvent ourselves.

AllHipHop.com: Why do you feel you have to reinvent yourselves?

Mayhem: Because rappers be coming over here and stealing our ideas. A few years ago, we might have been seen on stage in a button down shirt, a fitted cap or BCBG jeans but we have already done that and you won’t see us in that again, ever.

AllHipHop.com: Yeah perhaps diversity is required. Did you find coming from London to the states, fashion wasn’t so much of a big deal here like it is in London?

Mega: People are more focused on things like sneakers [in New York], you know like the whole Jordan craze. You know they come out on a Friday, and you have to wear them to school on the Monday, and the only differences between peoples’ outfits may be the laces that they put in the sneakers. It is like if you are wearing old seasons ones, then you are not popping. It is more like a cult following out there whereas here it is like no-one dresses the same. I have friends that wear things I would never wear but it still looks fly in their own way. Everyone is doing their own thing here, where as out there in the states everyone is looking the same. You know when we went to our first club when were 15 or 16, we was wearing Armani blazers, Patrick Cox loafers all that. Being in the clubs at home, you have to wear shoes.

AllHipHop.com: We already determined you like to be known as trendsetters, but there has to be someone you admire?

Mayhem: I think outside of our camp and the Diplomats, I would have to say Kanye and T.I. There are people that wear one-off bits that I look at.

Mega: Fabolous is cool. He pieces his outfits together real nice and there is a European kind of style with him. Jimmy has his own style too which I feel. No-one does it like Jimmy. You know he will wear a Harley Davidson with long sleeves and then you have Cam who can get flamboyant and look he had the whole United States wearing pink and men over here in England wearing pink. There are a few rappers out there but not too many we look at for their sense of style. I think it is about being original in the states.

AllHipHop.com: How did you gain all your fashion knowledge?

Mayhem: All our fashion sense came from our mother. Until we got to the age of starting secondary school, 11, 12 and we started seeing what all the other kids were wearing. We were always ahead of those kids as well, because of our mothers’ tastes.

AllHipHop.com: Yeah, I mean you are talking about going out at the age of 15 in Versace and Armani; a lot of kids at the age aren’t doing that because they just don?t dress that extravagantly. With all this knowledge and love for clothes, is your own fashion line a possibility?

Mayhem: Yeah, but not like everyone else’s. It wont be casual either – as everyone else seems to go that way, you know not like the Roc-a-Wear or the Akademiks. If we were going to do something, it would be more of a couture line. You know Cam just started his own clothing label called Devani, and it will be in Italy for the first two years, and that is a more of a couture line.

AllHipHop.com: So the most expensive article you have bought?

Mega: Probably a Fendi coat and a Prada jacket.

AllHipHop.com: So do you have any clothing fetishes, jackets, shirts, shoes?

Mega: Hats. Designer hats. I have about six Gucci hats and Prada scullies. You know, I have like every single Gucci hat that you can have.

In Los Angeles, a pair of 26-year-olds are making names for themselves by working hard and playing hard as they chase their Hip-Hop dreams.

Reese One and Basik of the duo Bleu Collar have been on the grind for more than five years delivering rhymes filled with drunken party raps, mack-game boasts and threats to would-be adversaries.

Basik, aka The Mayor, a native of Ladera Heights, came up with the Living Legends camp and dropped two solo albums, Apex Predator in 1998 and At the Mercy of the City in 2000, before linking up with the Compton-bred Reese One, aka Chuck Taylor, for their self-titled debut in 2003.

Since then, the crew has been performing at sold-out shows throughout Cali and making monthly appearances at two L.A. area clubs. This year, Bleu Collar put out the mixtape “Los Angeles Designer Music Vol. 1” that is available for download at www.bleucollar.com.

With a new album coming next year, a reputation for ripping shows and a strong bond with the Living Legends, Reese One and Basik hope to work their way up through the L.A. indie scene to the more white-collar mainstream of bigger checks and more respect.

AllHipHop.com: The name of the group suggests a hard working attitude, but most people wouldn’t consider an entertainer as a blue-collar worker. What kind of case do you make for Hip-Hop being difficult, blue-collar labor?

Reese One: Entertainers as a whole are not blue-collar workers, but within the entertainment field we would be considered the blue-collar workers. We out there blue- collar, manual labor style. There’s nobody really doin’ it for us. We doin’ the footwork. We’re doin’ the grimy stuff. We still in the clubs — the small clubs — performing and things like that. We out there with everybody.

AllHipHop.com: Do you think it is harder being an independent artist on the West Coast than down South or in the East?

Basik: It’s way harder. In particular, in Los Angeles. It’s not hard being independent in like Oakland because Oakland supports their own. In Los Angeles they have a big-star, Hollywood mentality where everybody’s a star. Everybody’s lookin’ out for they self. They’re not lookin’ out for the next man and all that kind of stuff. So you know in other places it’s easier, but yeah definitely in Los Angeles — where we from – it’s hard as f**k.

Reese One: Yeah you never really heard about nobody comin’ from L.A. sellin’ s**t out the trunk like that. Makin’ real big money. They just don’t do it. You would look like one of the a**holes that be standing out on Melrose trying to get everybody that walks by to buy a CD. Nobody f**ks with you.

AllHipHop.com: You guys are affiliates of the Living Legends. How has that helped you out?

Basik: It started with me. I roll with them because Eligh is my cousin, and he introduced me to those cats years and years before they really, really got bigger in the independent scene. And we all started making music together, and we all just became fast friends. So, they kind of kept me with them doing tours, and it helped me put together my solo projects and stuff like that.

AllHipHop.com: You guys performed to a lot of big crowds in California, rapped overseas and performed occasionally with a live band backing you up. How important are live shows for you guys?

Reese One: Man, that’s everything for us. Especially people in our position. That’s our best form of promotion — just like come out and see us — because we got to sell you something else that you’re not hearing on the radio.

Basik: Also, I think it’s an anomaly that a group — a Hip-Hop group in Los Angeles — has two residencies in Los Angeles at two separate clubs to perform every month. It’s something that’s mainly reserved for Rock bands, Soul bands and stuff like that. We’re like the only Hip-Hop act in Los Angeles — signed or unsigned — that has a place you can go to every month and see us perform. Every first Friday of the month, at Little Temple in Silverlake, California, we have the Bleu Collar 99 cent special, and we have people come in before 11 for 99 cents. It’s like a party vibe, and we do a short set — new s**t we’ve been working on. We have some of our friends that we think are tight come up and do a few songs sometimes. It’s like more experimental and more a party. Then, in the middle of the month, toward the end of the month, we do Temple Bar which is in Santa Monica — same owners but at Santa Monica — and it’s a straight show, a long set. We just try to give you the best Hip-Hop show you could possibly ever see.

AllHipHop.com: You guys take a lot of shots at disloyal woman on the album. Do you feel like you had an uncommonly large amount of bad encounters with ladies?

Basik: I just think it was the period of time. I had a person ask me — like someone that has known me for a long time and heard that album – like, “Man, you used to be a little more considerate to girls that you wouldn’t even call them b*tches and stuff like that.” I just think it’s a point in your life — like maybe at that time when we were writing that album because I am mean we kind of wrote that album all in one fatal swoop — maybe at that time we was just illin’ with a bunch of girls. Me and Reese pretty much have the same sense of humor, so we look at things similar, and we just laugh at stuff. We get mad at some of the same stuff. Probably just in that period of time we just met a lot of no good b*tches.

Reese One: But, I did have a girlfriend for a long time that I loved and adored.

Basik: And now I am married. Of course, I love my wife, so there you have it.

AllHipHop.com: The album is practically free of any gun talk, but some of your mixtape material is more violent. Is that like you said before about being in a different vibe when you make a CD?

Basik: Yeah. You know I don’t really say much ‘cause I am not tough at all. I am pretty much like only going to fight if it needs to be a fight, but I would think Reese is harder than me. [Reese laughs] He ain’t a violent soul. I just think he’s just harder than me.

Reese One: When we did the first album too, the other thing is that we was kind of reserved about what we was doin’ a little bit because we were coming in with the Living Legends. So we were almost not used to that crowd. You can’t tell which songs we did on the album like toward the end, but they kind of got a little more aggressive. We got to the first mixtape, and it was funner. It was more of like I said a release to do something like that. To really talk about how I was feeling. I am not like no super-hard dude, but I do get into a lot of s**t. I rap about it. Like, if I go to a club – somebody is suing me right now because of some s**t that happened at a club – sometimes when you’re a young dude, you’re going to get drunk, you’re going to be out and you’re going to fight. I don’t think nothin’s wrong with it.

AllHipHop.com: Reese, are you worried about clashing with that other West Coast MC that calls himself Chuck Taylor?

Reese One: Nah man. You know what people have asked me that. The thing is that my name’s Maurice. That’s my name. Neither one of our names is actually Chuck. It’s a nickname. It’s a moniker. I’ve had it for a long time, but he put it out there first. So, he can have it.

For more info, visit www.bleucollar.com.

Meanwhile, in Hollis, another

storied street guy—Curtis Scoon—was seeking to trade his hustling

past for a hip-hop future. Though he’d helped friend Freddie “Nickels”

Moore recuperate from the Quad shooting at Moore’s 201st Street home in

Hollis, Scoon still figured the music business to be safer than the streets.

Indeed, by 1996 Scoon left

the streets behind entirely, a decision that infuriated Hollis hustlers, especially

because he had moved back to the neighborhood. Through an introduction made

by Irv Lorenzo, Scoon pitched Roc-A-Fella Records about promoting Jay-Z’s

single “Dead Presidents II.”

Scoon was excited

about working with Jay-Z, as he’d taken the rapper’s boasts on songs

like “Dead Presidents II” about moving “crazy weight”

literally. But Scoon soon found that Jay-Z shared a background similar to Tupac

Shakur’s: He’d made his name not on the streets but as a hype man

for Jaz-O. Scoon went ahead with his “Dead Presidents II” promotion

anyway but discovered that radio programmers preferred to play the single’s

B-side, a duet with rapper Foxy Brown called “Ain’t No N***a.”

It was a disheartening moment for Scoon, but he wasn’t giving up on hip-hop

just yet.

Thanks to a chance meeting

with Jam Master Jay on 203rd Street and Hollis Avenue, when Scoon loaned the

RUN-DMC DJ $2,500 in exchange for an introduction to some of his music business

connections, Scoon had a meeting with Def Jam’s Lyor Cohen.

Scoon and Freddie “Nickels”

Moore had put together a tribute album for southeast Queens hip-hop legend and

Tupac Shakur associate Randy “Stretch” Walker, who had been killed

near his Queens Village home on November 30, 1995—one year to the day

after the Quad shooting—and the pair were hoping that Def Jam would distribute

the project.

When Scoon arrived at Def

Jam’s Varick Street offices in September 1996 carrying commitment letters

from the likes of Puffy Combs and Digital Underground frontman (and Shakur’s

former mentor) Shock G, he found that Cohen was much more interested in waxing

philosophical about hip-hop’s East-West rivalry than distributing the

tribute album. “Lyor was talking a lot of bulls**t about the tragedy of

Tupac’s death and how hip-hop violence was escalating,” Scoon says.

“He wasn’t telling me anything I wanted to hear.”

It was obvious to Scoon

that Jay’s stature in the music business had been greatly diminished with

the fall of RUN-DMC. “Nobody gave a f**k about Jay,” Scoon says.

“And when I realized that, I asked for the money back.” A few months

after the meeting with Cohen, Scoon confronted Jay in a park beside PS 192 in

Hollis, pulling him aside from a group of people he was talking to and asking

for his money. Scoon says that Jay confessed that he didn’t have the money

but would pay him as soon as he did.

Two months later, Scoon

says, the $2,500 was paid back in full.

Jay’s connection to

Cohen may not have resulted in a deal for Scoon’s “Stretch”

Walker tribute album, but the former Hollis hustler was being eagerly courted

by Irv Lorenzo. Irv made his move one night in early 1997 when Scoon was partying

at the cavernous Manhattan nightclub Tunnel. “He compared me to Suge Knight,”

Scoon remembers. “He told me that he’d sought out a relationship

with Suge and really admired what Suge was doing.” Scoon was mystified

by Irv’s admiration for Knight; by then the Death Row empire was crumbling.

After “gangsta rap”

hearings in Congress and relentless criticism from anti–gangsta rap crusader

C. Delores Tucker, Time-Warner sold its interest in Interscope back to the company

in 1995; Death Row’s biggest star, Shakur, signed to the label only after

Knight bailed him out of prison after the rape charge, had been murdered and

the East Coast was eclipsing the West thanks to the rise of Jay-Z and Biggie.

Worst of all, Knight’s

thuggish behavior frightened off music industry executives from dealing with

former hustlers. “He messed it up for guys like me,” says Jimmy

“Henchmen” Rosemond. “He made people feel like you can’t

let guys who have this kind of background into the business anymore.”

Irv, however, still saw Suge as an iconic hip-hop persona and believed that

Scoon had the potential to be the same.

Irv’s obsession

with his own street cred was particularly strange at a time when his career

was vaulting him beyond hustler acquaintances like ’Preme. The work he’d

put in with Cash Money Click and on Jay-Z’s instant classic Reasonable

Doubt caught the attention of Lyor Cohen, who hired him as an A&R executive

at Def Jam. “It was a unique time because Lyor had nothing,” Irv

says. “They were gonna fire Lyor and take Def Jam from him. So basically

the guy just ran with me.”

Def Jam had slumped

in the post-Chronic era, signing third-tier talent like a female MC

named Boss (whose 1992 debut Born Gangstaz was a rote take on the West Coast

sound) and Los Angeles–based one-hit wonders like Domino. “We were

pretty cold,” Russell Simmons admits. “We didn’t have no hit

records.” Simmons, however, rejects the notion that the label’s

dry spell was caused by the West Coast’s dominance of the hip-hop scene

in the early nineties. “Trends are bulls**t,” Simmons says. “We

just didn’t make good records. We weren’t very focused.”

Whatever the reason, the

label’s lack of focus began affecting the bottom line: Where once Def

Jam was making massive hit records with modest budgets now it was a multimillion-dollar

money pit with major label backing. In 1994, Sony decided that it had had enough:

The company sold half its stake in Def Jam to PolyGram for $33 million.

Cohen believed that Irv

Lorenzo could reverse Def Jam’s flagging fortunes, but Irv says that most

of his colleagues were not convinced by his signings. DMX was Lorenzo’s

most controversial new Def Jam artist: His dark, paranoid lyrics and growling

voice were starkly at odds with hip-hop’s optimistic mid-nineties moment

epitomized by Puffy’s smiling, pop-friendly stable of rappers.

“The people who worked

there used to clown with me and say, ‘Who’s gonna buy his record?

Dogs?” Irv remembers. “ ‘What the f**k is this bulls**t? He’s

barking. No one wants to hear that s**t.’ But I thought they were clowns

up there. I was like, ‘Y’all don’t know what’s going

on the streets.’ ” Fortunately for Irv and for Def Jam itself Cohen

ignored the chorus of Lorenzo critics at the label, many of whom called him

“Snotty Gotti.” “Lyor gave me carte blanche,” Lorenzo

explains. “He let me do what I wanted to do.”

While Irv Lorenzo was solidifying

his status at Def Jam, Curtis Jackson was just beginning to make his presence

felt in the southeast Queens hip-hop scene. Jackson was born on July 6, 1976,

in South Jamaica, to an absent father he never knew and a teenage, drug-addicted

mother, Sabrina. Most of Jackson’s family was immersed in the drug trade—as

an adolescent, he was sent on drug runs to pick up cocaine for partying relatives—but

his mother was a hardcore hustler who worked for an organization in Fat Cat’s

territory on Sutphin Boulevard and 150th Street.

“Sabrina was slinging

rocks out on our block for a dealer named Hilda,” remembers former Nichols

organization lieutenant Joseph “Bobo” Rogers. “It was a small

operation, full of crackheads, but it didn’t bother us any.”

Sabrina may not have rankled

Fat Cat’s crew but out on the block she exposed herself to the very worst

the streets had to offer. Unsurprisingly, after years of hustling on one of

southeast Queens’ most dangerous blocks without protection from a major

player like Fat Cat, Sabrina was murdered. Someone—the assailant has still

not been caught—poisoned Sabrina and then left the gas on in her home,

killing her.Click

to purchase Queens Reigns Supreme : Fat Cat, 50 Cent, and the Rise of the Hip

Hop Hustler.

While some youngsters may have seen him on Comedy Central’s Reno 911 and just laughed it up at the show’s slightly off centered humor, those who know Chino XL, know he’s no joke when it comes to the mic. When he was younger than Lil Bow Wow, Rick Rubin took what he saw as the next L.L. Cool J and brought a new energy to the West. His lyrical content and his swagger were way beyond his young years, but was it too much for the young superstar, or was it too much too soon for Hip-Hop? Whatever the case was then, Chino strikes again with upcoming release Poison Pen on Activate Records.

Chino XL carries himself like a superstar. Like his tough rhymes, he has a tough exterior, and plethora of interesting stories to tell. AllHipHop.com shows the Hollywood by way of New Jersey star in candid light, and you?ll be wowed by Chino for a whole new set of reasons. Believe it.

AllHipHop.com: You’ve been away for five years, what’s been going on in your world since we last heard from you?

Chino XL: I’m supposed to talk about getting into trouble and all that tough guy s**t ? [mimicking other rappers] I got into trouble with the law, and went back to the streets, and all that type of s**t that happened, but you know what – I just took some time off to spend with my babies too, we made it out the hood and we moved to Miami, then we moved to California, and I had enough money to put them in school and take them to Disneyland and get to do all of the s**t I didn’t get to do when I was a kid. And you know also, I wasn’t ready to be recognized everywhere I went, and I cant really hide cause I don’t look like anybody else, so I stand out like, ?There go that n***a, right there,? and I really wasn’t ready for that, I didn’t really count on that.

AllHipHop.com: How can you want to be a rapper and not count on that?

Chino XL: When I first started rappin?, I was a little ass kid, it wasn’t no videos except for [Run-DMC?s] ?Rock Box?. I’m still a young mothaf**ka, but Rick [Rubin] used to get me fake ID’s so I could rent cars and all that to make me look older than what I was. It was crazy, but even so I still perceived myself as being like everyone else form my hood but then when videos came out ? instantly, it was like, ?What’s up, Chino??

AllHipHop.com: Speaking of crazy situations, I know one thing that prompted you getting back in the studio, was the illness of your two-year old daughter who was diagnosed with a rare type of cancer, can you talk about that a little?

Chino XL: We essentially were told that she was diagnosed with a rare neuroplast seratoma which is like so rare that one in two million people get it. They don’t know if it’s ecological, it’s not genetic because neither her mother or I have anything like that in our family. I had thought the worst thing that happened to me in my life was when mothaf**kas put a gun to my head and that type of stuff, and I’m you know I’m like a superhero type mothaf**ka, nothing can happen to me. So when that happened, it was the first time that something happened that was out of my control. That’s the first time I ever had to do that, and believe in the doctors, and basically shut the hell up and be receptive to all these people who wanted to help me. It was the first time I ever got to see life crystal clear, there some issues that I’ve never had to deal with that other people have to deal with.

AllHipHop.com: Since you?re being so open, tell me something about Chino XL that would surprise anyone to know about you.

Chino XL: I sleep in character pajamas. Not when I’m trying to be sexy, but the reason I do that is because I am so serious and that whole Chino XL thing is so intense that I need to completely take that s**t off, and you can’t be but so tough in Sponge Bob pajamas. Plus, my baby loves it. See that’s the difference in being a grown man now and being secure in who I am cause I woulda never let that s**t go before, but I don’t give a s**t ?cause if a n***a break into my house, he’ll just get his ass whipped by a n***a wearing Sponge Bob Square Pants pajamas.

AllHipHop.com: You seem to carry yourself like a superstar ? as someone on a Black Eyed Peas or Kanye West level. That said, why do you think a lot of people out there might not be so familiar with Chino XL?

Chino XL: I guess essentially, I never really changed how I do things since the very beginning. I never tried to meet commercial listeners halfway, I?ve always done things the rawest way humanly possible.

AllHipHop.com: So you think that limits you? You can?t be who you are and still be mainstream or commercial?

Chino XL: I mean, you can be. I just refuse to really let that side out. I think I thought it either happens or it doesn?t, it?s not really a strategy if people find you, they find you, you don?t really go after them.

Allhiphop.com- Since you?re pretty much a West Coast MC, a lot of people may not know that you were a member of the Zulu Nation.

Chino XL: Yeah, my uncle Barry Worrell from Parliament/Funkadelic and George Clinton and Bambaataa were real cool, and George brought me around the Nation for the first time when I was about ten years old. So I started going to the meetings and all that. I was on a table of five in Jersey, so that was I used to carry crates for Bambaataa and the whole s**t. It used to f**k people up they?d be like, ?Wow, Ice-T is picking Chino up from school.? [laughing]

AllHipHop.com: Tell me about you and Ice?s relationship.

Chino XL: Ice was probably my first mentor, because he was the first person to say, ?Maybe you should think of doing things like this,? or ?the way you do this is hot dog, don?t let anybody change the way you do that.? I?ve done music with him I did the movie, Crime Partners with him. Ice is a smart dude.

AllHipHop.com: Speaking of good smart dudes, Rick Rubin was responsible for your first deal with American, what happened with that?

Chino XL: You know, I don?t have nothing bad to say about Rick. I mean he got me off the streets when I was 15. I was in a group, Art of Origin, and he said he signed me because my energy reminded him of LL when he was young. he?s a genius when it comes to song structure, but I?m gonna see him soon, I?m working on some rock projects so I?m gonna see him soon.

AllHipHop.com: When I personally first met you you were on Warner Brothers. Talk about some of the things that were going on over there behind the scenes?

Chino XL: When Rick went to Columbia with American, believe it or not, one of the deal breakers with him leaving the label was they wanted me and Johnny Cash – especially since I had a pretty good hit with that song ?Creep?, so I decided to stay. I was signed to the Pop department though, but they really didn?t know what they wanted to do, and I didn?t know what I wanted to do either, so that didn?t really work. I had been in the Warner system at that point for eight years, with only one album release and a couple of twelve-inches.

AllHipHop.com: I don?t know if this is murky waters for you but it?s been said that you can be temperamental and were hard to work with back then, is that true?

Chino XL: Well I was younger, you have to understand. I was a young guy that stayed drunk and stayed high. I had money for the first time, I was getting a little f**kin? crazy. I?m an Aries and I?m a perfectionist, who wants things the way I want them. And people weren?t trying to hear an artist who wasn?t gold or platinum, who knew it all before you even have a proven hit and my problem was where my arrogance came from.

AllHipHop.com: Were you ever resentful of Eminem as a result of all the early comparisons and where he is now in his career?

Chino XL: Absolutely not, first of all, what he did with a lot of the style that we share is something that I would?ve never done with it. I would never have made it funny. I never was willing to laugh at myself. So what he did with the bag of tools that we share is, he built a completely different house.

For all the street bluster

that marked the Supreme Team’s reign in southeast Queens—the souped-up

Mercedes armed with gun turrets and an oil slick, the matching jackets emblazoned

with the crew’s logo, the packaging locations crowded with dozens of baggers

who were forced to work in the nude so as not to walk off with any drugs—Kenneth

“Supreme” McGriff left the streets with barely a whimper in 1987.

Mike McGuinness of Queens

Narcotics simply rolled up on ’Preme at the corner of Foch Boulevard and

Gabreaux Street in South Jamaica and arrested him. ’Preme didn’t

put up much of a fight in court either: He admitted to being the “organizer,

supervisor, and manager” of the Supreme Team, and in 1989 he was given

a relatively light twelve-year sentence on a continuing criminal enterprise

charge.

’Preme’s only

moment in the spotlight since his conviction came when he showed up at the 1993

trial of nephew Gerald “Prince” Miller on narcotics, murder, and

racketeering charges sporting black wraparound sunglasses and flanked by a pair

of imposing bodyguards.

So when ’Preme returned

home to southeast Queens in 1995 after serving eight years of a twelve-year

sentence, he set out to connect to those who did not directly experience his

heyday and therefore mythologized him as a kind of omnipotent hustler—the

wannabe Gs of hip-hop.

Thanks to wild stories about

the crack era passed down from older siblings as well as an adolescence spent

consuming tabloid headlines about the Supreme Team and the Nichols organization,

young rappers and hip-hop executives like the Lorenzo brothers were enthralled

by ’Preme. The ascendance of ex-street guys like Suge Knight and Shakur’s

partnering with real hustlers like Rosemond and Agnant also played a big part

in the lionization of the likes of ’Preme.

The reality of ’Preme’s

post–Supreme Team life was much more mundane than his hip-hop fans imagined;

he passed his time in prison by immersing himself in the books of Donald Goines,

the exhustler from Detroit who managed to crank out sixteen books with titles

like Daddy Cool, Street Players, and Inner City Hoodlum before he was murdered

in 1974.

’Preme’s favorite

works from the Goines canon were Black Gangster, which told the story of a young

hustler named Prince who rose from the streets of Detroit in the early seventies

to become a crime kingpin, and Crime Partners, about a pair of stick-up kids

named Billy and Jackie who turn to a savvy hustler named Kenyatta to elevate

their status on the streets.

’Preme dreamed of

turning Goines’s novels—which were so popular in the federal prison

system that illiterate inmates were buying the books and learning to read as

they went along—into big-screen gangster epics like The Godfather. Since

hip-hop in the post-Chronic era mimicked the ghetto realist qualities of Goines’s

novels, ’Preme believed that there could be a substantial mainstream audience

for a Goines movie, especially if platinum-selling rappers could be convinced

to contribute to the soundtracks.

’Preme was stuck in

a halfway house in Queens dreaming about making it in Hollywood, but he was

not disheartened by his fall from grace: There were hustles to be had, and perhaps

this time they might even be legitimate. While ’Preme dreamed of bringing

the Detroit of Donald Goines’s imagination to the big screen, Irv Lorenzo

was trying to capture crack-era southeast Queens.

Though he was in his teens

during his neighborhood’s hustling heyday and was therefore far too young

to have known ’Preme or Fat Cat, Irv and the acts he managed were deeply

nostalgic for the era. On Cash Money Click’s “Get Tha Fortune,”

Ja Rule boasted that he was “representin’ Hollis Ave. and 205th,”

while Irv insisted on featuring southeast Queens’ eighties hustling landmarks

in Mic Geronimo’s videos. “For Mic Geronimo’s ‘S###’s

Real,’ we rode through the 40 Projects, Baisley, and Hollis Avenue,”

Irv explains. “We were representin’ all of Jamaica.”

Irv devised a similar video

treatment for Cash Money Click’s single “Get Tha Fortune,”

except this time he decided to focus the action on a single section of southeast

Queens: ’Preme’s old territory on Guy Brewer Boulevard.

During the shooting of “Get

Tha Fortune,” Irv was shocked when a friend on the set of the video told

him that none other than ’Preme himself was standing outside a nearby

bodega.

“’Preme comes

out on the block and then BJ, who is a good friend of ours, says, ‘’Preme

is here, he wants to meet you,’ ” remembers Chris Lorenzo. Irv,

a backstreet boy who longed for the street cred of a hustler like ’Preme

(or even his own brother), readily agreed to an introduction with the South

Jamaica hustling icon.

His initial impression of

’Preme, however, was not quite what he’d imagined. “My first

response to seeing ’Preme was shock,” Irv explains. “This

was the notorious ’Preme? This guy was like five-foot-two, this little

guy, this little green-eyed m###########. So my first response was, ‘Wow,

this is the guy that everybody’s talkin’ about?’ ”

Though their mutual friend

BJ made the introduction, the more street-savvy Chris Lorenzo was surprised

that his brother had agreed to meet with ’Preme in the first place. To

southeast Queens natives the Lorenzos’ Hollis home is considered Northside

while ’Preme’s South Jamaica territory is the rival Southside.

Though these areas are so

close geographically that they’re almost indistinguishable, each has its

own specific hustling history (Northside is known for freelancers, Southside

for organized crews) and street guys from opposite sides of the neighborhood

would often test each others’ mettle.

When Chris Lorenzo was an

adolescent, he would take a bus home from school that stopped at a Jamaica terminal;

as soon as he stepped off the bus he would be set upon by angry Southside hustlers.

Chris was ambushed so often that he wore a backpack to school so he could have

his hands free to fight them.

Coming from this background,

Irv’s embrace of ’Preme on the set of “Get Tha Fortune”

was a street faux pas akin to a Blood cozying up to a Crip. “I get a call

from my brother and he’s like, ‘Yo, I just met Supreme,’ ”

Chris remembers, “and I’m like, ‘Supreme Supreme?’ And

he says, ‘Yeah, Supreme.’ And I’m like, ‘N####, you

good? You OK?’ Hollis and Southside don’t get along. I’m about

ready to go and see if we got a fight. But he was like, ‘No, it’s

all good, we finishing the video.’ ”

Irv had made a major miscalculation

by befriending ’Preme on Guy Brewer Boulevard that day, though he clearly

didn’t see it that way at the time. To Irv, it was the rare opportunity

to meet a southeast Queens street legend. To ’Preme, the encounter offered

something much more concrete: a sympathetic (and well-connected) ear for his

movie pitches.

“He seen me shooting

the video, and he said, ‘Hey, I got this movie idea,’ ” Irv

remembers. “He had a dream about doing movies. He wanted to do something

with Donald Goines because when he was locked up Goines was his favorite novelist.

He felt that Goines movies was gonna be big with the urban world.”

Irv wanted to help ’Preme

out but he admitted that he could be of little help as he was just beginning

to make headway into the music business. Irv says that he told ’Preme

that he didn’t shoot music videos but that he had a close friend—well-known

music video director Hype Williams—whom he would happy to introduce him

to.

The chance meeting with

Irv was a small, yet important step in the former Supreme Team CEO’s quest

to bring Goines to the big screen; he’d made his first real connection

in the music business and, with hip-hop straining for street cred, more like

Irv were sure to follow.