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Do you feel like a pioneer
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Like we talk about pioneers, like it's hip hop 50, pioneers in hip hop
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But I think there's different types of pioneers, right? Not just the people that started hip hop, but then there's people that, like, I use
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all hip hop as an example, like in the digital space, you know, we started, we kind of jumped
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it off. But in this trap music sub-genre of hip hop, you started that
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Do you feel like a pioneer? I mean, I feel like it's a bit pretentious and self-gratuitous to just start tossing
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around titles, you know what I'm saying? I feel like, bro, I feel like I was in the right place at the right time with the right
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idea that was executed and presented properly to the people. And it was agreed upon and replicated
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And there was so much success in the initial execution, and so much success in the spinoffs
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that they all collectively became so impactful and important that they spoke for people who
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did not have a voice or a platform to speak for themselves
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I mean, just think about it, man, like when trap music first came out. Okay, so the way trap music was made, the concept came from when my first album was
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dropped, I'm Serious, in 2001. I went into creating it, that was my first time really being in a studio, having a budget
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to work on projects, you know, and I made a deal with myself that if I ever got a chance
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to really, really do what I love for a living, if I ever got a chance to really make it and
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be a performer, a rapper, that I would completely walk away from the trap, you know what I mean
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I wouldn't balance it, I wouldn't mix, you know? I didn't want to tarnish or taint the blessing, you know what I mean
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So when I'm working on my first album, my sole intention was to make sure that people
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who publicize hip-hop and people in other regions knew that we could rock with the best
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of, you know, and I had many different beats, and it was almost like a kid in a candy store
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So I was in there like, hey, let's see what kind of song we can make today
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You know, I got all kinds of stuff, like all kinds of, I think there was a Calypso kind
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of track that, I don't know what made me, it was dope
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I think it's called Hands Up on my first album, but it's like, in the grand scheme of things
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like, okay, how does this all cohesively blend together? So it's like, okay, you got a lot of dope executions of creative songs and whatnot
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but it didn't really, it didn't reach the right people at the right time as a body of work
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But I took the data from that. I knew that, for one, everybody who heard it liked it
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You just wanted enough people getting a chance to hear it. So me, Jason, G, Clay, Hannah, and the rest of the grounds, we just made it our business
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to move around on our own instead of complaining about what wasn't being done, and instead
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of, you know, asking someone to do it for us, we just started moving around, and hand
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to hand, and putting it in the people's hands. Basically, I'll tell you what my motto was, or should I say my slogan
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Buy this CD from me. I'm going to sit here with you while you listen to it, and if you don't like it, I'm going
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to give you your money back. So we'll buy some gas and roll up, blow
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And by the time we were maybe two blunts in, they were like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, you hard
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I never had to refund anyone's money, you know what I'm saying
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And we did that in Macon, Augusta, Savannah, Columbia, South Carolina, Birmingham, Montgomery
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Memphis, Knoxville, Tallahassee, Florida, you know what I mean
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All the way up to Virginia, all the way over to Mississippi, all the way down, Jacksonville
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Orlando, Miami, you know what I'm saying? And it just started, it began to spread, and spread, and spread
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And so the data that I took, that we took, we knew that the songs that people were responding
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to that had the greatest reaction was Still Ain't Forgave Myself, Dope Boys in the Trap
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and Panic Pumper No. 1. So I said, okay, well, if that's what they gravitate toward, I can just do a whole album
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of this and call it trap music, you know what I mean
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Because all of this is music about the trap, whether it's the lessons learned from the
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experiences and how the tragedies and the pitfalls of this lifestyle can affect a person
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over time, or just the celebratory, anthemic display of when everything's going well and
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you're up. Right. From Dope Boys in the Trap to Panic Pumper No. 1, it's kind of like, okay, yeah, I did
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it, I got it. And now I want somebody to share it with, or I want somebody to spin it on, you know
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what I mean? So all of that, it kind of blends itself or lends itself to the concept of everything
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about the life and lifestyle of a drug dealer. And that was the thought, that was the thought process behind it
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So I feel like, for lack of better terms, Scarface has adopted this illustrious allure
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this image, this aura of the mind and conscious of a hitman
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You dig what I'm saying? Not just how we're talking about killing people, like, I never seen a man cry until I seen
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a man die. That was like, okay, you're talking about something that may be heinous, but you're
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giving so much perspective and philosophy and understanding behind the psyche and what's
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on the other side of it. Not just the person who's conducting the hit, the person on the other end, how that reception
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affects everybody. You see what I'm saying? So I feel like the same thing is necessary for drug dealers
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Just getting into breaking down the conscious, the psyche, what are the intermost thoughts
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of not just, okay, yeah, I'm doing this, but why I'm doing it, how I'm doing it, how this
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affects me, how this affects the people around me, what I learn from it, what I get from
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it, what I have to sacrifice for it. I felt like it wasn't as intimately detailed as it needed to be at the time
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And I think that was the sole intention going into producing and writing for trap music
