Exclusive interview with Playarae
1.First things first tell us where you are from?
I am from The Eight playa, betta known as The 408 San Jose, Ca. Heart of the Silicon Valley.
2.Dugout Records is starting too make alot of noise, what is the roster of Dugout Records?
Well, to be honest the roster for Dugout is quite small. Our lead off artist was Gangsta Reese of Full Clip with his solo project "Full Metal Jacket", Doggmatik who is workin on his project now entitled "It's About Time" & myself workin on my project as well titled "November Rain". So, there are 3 of us as we speak and that's more than enough...too many mouth's too feed and not enough money can kill ya.
3.Gangsta Reese just released his album "Full Metal Jacket", a little while ago can you tell us a little bit about the album?
Well, the album has 15 tracks total and 2 skits. It's Reese's first solo project ever and has got to be some of the realest shyt spoken from an underground "Reality Rapper". When I say "Reality Rapper", I use that in place of "Gangsta Rapper" because nowadays there are too many so-called Gangsta Rappers...& not enough Real G'z behind that mic speakin on Gangsta Stories. Reese is the last of a dying breed in that sense. It's too easy to perp nowadays and when you hear his project you'll know otherwise.
The album is filled with club tracks, gangsta tracks, life's struggle & pain tracks...all of that. Anything you need for any occassion is there. Reese laid a thurough album. Very solid for his first solo.
4.When did you realize that the music business is what you really wanted? And what makes Dugout Records different from your average label?
Well...I always had music in me. I grew up in a house with the damn radio blarin at all hours of the day, so I had no choice. I used to sing alot and mimic the words to shyt & developed a smooth little sound for myself but never really took steps to do anything with it at all till after about 4 years outa high school. I could always write so putting words together was no thang to me. I had a few really bad things happen to me after high school, the most tragic and life changing was the loss of my best friend Johnny Rodriguez in a gang shooting in 1995. Johnny was shot and killed in my car while sitting in the driver seat listening to the radio as I tried to pull him out thru the window in a hail of gun fire from 3 gunman. He died in my arms on November 10th, 1995.
Johnny was an aspiring underground rapper who went by the name of Loonatic from HWC (Hard Way Crew). I guess you can say when he passed something was instilled inside of me that night to finally get off my lazy ass and make some fucken moves & see what I could pull of in this industry. I was smart...always picked things up fast so I said fuck it. I felt it in my heart like never before so I went at it full force trying to start small first and put small pieces of the puzzle together one at a time. I went to Multi Media School to learn graphics & webdesign to lock that part in so it would be an inhouse thing. Then I hooked up with my folks Cool Ass Rob at a record release party in San Jose which pieced together the other brain I needed & that was someone who had already dropped a cd. Rob had, we went from there & from then on...it's been like clock work. We stumble a few times here and there but never miss a beat.
What makes this label different is our diversity. We wanna do it all and we can. Yea, I said we "can" and we haven't yet. The reason is because we have the drive and the guts to take chances most folks won't out of fear the public won't respond to it well or it won't sell etc. We feel we can push anything & the longer we are inthis game we are gonna prove it time and time again. Just like one of our next projects "Mic Check - Verbal Soul Searchin". it's a Spoken Word project. Folks don't think we can push it to folks yet we gettin hit from as far as Maine by folks who want a part of it. Prove me wrong...please somebody. We went from a dope Rap Compilation mixed with cats from all over the place to a Gangsta Reese Solo cd to a Spoken Word Project? Is that possible to do without falling off? Keep an eye on us...cause we gonna prove it is and that we can do it time and time again. The indy game is a game for chances, leave the scared shyt to the big labels....they the ones worried bout the public and what kind of taste you leave in the mouths of your listeners. We take chances all damn day thats the difference.
5.In 2001 you released Hustlin City2 City (correct me if the dates wrong) feat Mr.Kee,Dutch,Gangsta Reese with no distribution but made a impact with the streets still, majority of the albums need dist too do that how did you make it happen?
You are correct and it was released on August 14th of 2001 independently with no distribution. The way we setup this thing was like a stepping stool. This was gonna be the project we used to make a statement that we were here & also that we were droppin a quality sound. We hustled this thing differently than most 408 initial releases. WHat we noticed was that most were just aiming for San Jose streets and sales to start...we were told to own your home first then expand. Rob nor I was feelin that. We felt we had something other than that. We took our hustle all thru cali, the midwest, down south & in europe.
The goal was this; if we could get one or two in each area to buy or just listen to our produc, they would like it and pass it around. We had that much faith in it. Not too mention networking skills. Muthafuckaz don't like when you treat them as another dollar or a fan. They like real shyt & real people. If you come like you a star with a cd, what makes you different than the guy accross the street sellin his shyt? Nothing. You gotta know how to talk and make a cat feel like he doin you a favor...and not you doin him a favor. We sold cats on the cd before we were half way done with recording. We had folks puttin banners on their sites for Dugout Records & our cd just by becoming friends first. We hit message boards, setup a Dugout mass e-mailing list that folks could join. Threw parties for Dugout and folks to come join in and get to know us and the whole time had NO cd out. Believe it? Please do. It worked. Folks got to know the name & new our cd was comin.
We had so many believing in us because we knew how to sell ourselves. Most folks have big mouths and it gets them in trouble...ours worked to our benefit. No boundaries playa...none. We did not let ourselves fall victim to the myth's that NorCal cats could not sell to SoCal cats or that East Coast cats wasn't into our kind. We pushed it anyway we could, that way when it dropped...we hit all of the people who had our backs and felt part of this thing called Dugout we created. It worked like a champ. I bet yall think we sold like 3 or 5,000 copies huh? Not even close...we just got in the right hands and did a major thing & that was make it REAL EASY TO GET AHOLD OF US OR FIND US. If ya needed to find us, we had e-mail addy's, a guestbook, a website, a flyer, a hotline, a messageboard anything you name it we made it easy to access us & that helped alot. Amazing what hustle can do.
1.First things first tell us where you are from?
I am from The Eight playa, betta known as The 408 San Jose, Ca. Heart of the Silicon Valley.
2.Dugout Records is starting too make alot of noise, what is the roster of Dugout Records?
Well, to be honest the roster for Dugout is quite small. Our lead off artist was Gangsta Reese of Full Clip with his solo project "Full Metal Jacket", Doggmatik who is workin on his project now entitled "It's About Time" & myself workin on my project as well titled "November Rain". So, there are 3 of us as we speak and that's more than enough...too many mouth's too feed and not enough money can kill ya.
3.Gangsta Reese just released his album "Full Metal Jacket", a little while ago can you tell us a little bit about the album?
Well, the album has 15 tracks total and 2 skits. It's Reese's first solo project ever and has got to be some of the realest shyt spoken from an underground "Reality Rapper". When I say "Reality Rapper", I use that in place of "Gangsta Rapper" because nowadays there are too many so-called Gangsta Rappers...& not enough Real G'z behind that mic speakin on Gangsta Stories. Reese is the last of a dying breed in that sense. It's too easy to perp nowadays and when you hear his project you'll know otherwise.
The album is filled with club tracks, gangsta tracks, life's struggle & pain tracks...all of that. Anything you need for any occassion is there. Reese laid a thurough album. Very solid for his first solo.
4.When did you realize that the music business is what you really wanted? And what makes Dugout Records different from your average label?
Well...I always had music in me. I grew up in a house with the damn radio blarin at all hours of the day, so I had no choice. I used to sing alot and mimic the words to shyt & developed a smooth little sound for myself but never really took steps to do anything with it at all till after about 4 years outa high school. I could always write so putting words together was no thang to me. I had a few really bad things happen to me after high school, the most tragic and life changing was the loss of my best friend Johnny Rodriguez in a gang shooting in 1995. Johnny was shot and killed in my car while sitting in the driver seat listening to the radio as I tried to pull him out thru the window in a hail of gun fire from 3 gunman. He died in my arms on November 10th, 1995.
Johnny was an aspiring underground rapper who went by the name of Loonatic from HWC (Hard Way Crew). I guess you can say when he passed something was instilled inside of me that night to finally get off my lazy ass and make some fucken moves & see what I could pull of in this industry. I was smart...always picked things up fast so I said fuck it. I felt it in my heart like never before so I went at it full force trying to start small first and put small pieces of the puzzle together one at a time. I went to Multi Media School to learn graphics & webdesign to lock that part in so it would be an inhouse thing. Then I hooked up with my folks Cool Ass Rob at a record release party in San Jose which pieced together the other brain I needed & that was someone who had already dropped a cd. Rob had, we went from there & from then on...it's been like clock work. We stumble a few times here and there but never miss a beat.
What makes this label different is our diversity. We wanna do it all and we can. Yea, I said we "can" and we haven't yet. The reason is because we have the drive and the guts to take chances most folks won't out of fear the public won't respond to it well or it won't sell etc. We feel we can push anything & the longer we are inthis game we are gonna prove it time and time again. Just like one of our next projects "Mic Check - Verbal Soul Searchin". it's a Spoken Word project. Folks don't think we can push it to folks yet we gettin hit from as far as Maine by folks who want a part of it. Prove me wrong...please somebody. We went from a dope Rap Compilation mixed with cats from all over the place to a Gangsta Reese Solo cd to a Spoken Word Project? Is that possible to do without falling off? Keep an eye on us...cause we gonna prove it is and that we can do it time and time again. The indy game is a game for chances, leave the scared shyt to the big labels....they the ones worried bout the public and what kind of taste you leave in the mouths of your listeners. We take chances all damn day thats the difference.
5.In 2001 you released Hustlin City2 City (correct me if the dates wrong) feat Mr.Kee,Dutch,Gangsta Reese with no distribution but made a impact with the streets still, majority of the albums need dist too do that how did you make it happen?
You are correct and it was released on August 14th of 2001 independently with no distribution. The way we setup this thing was like a stepping stool. This was gonna be the project we used to make a statement that we were here & also that we were droppin a quality sound. We hustled this thing differently than most 408 initial releases. WHat we noticed was that most were just aiming for San Jose streets and sales to start...we were told to own your home first then expand. Rob nor I was feelin that. We felt we had something other than that. We took our hustle all thru cali, the midwest, down south & in europe.
The goal was this; if we could get one or two in each area to buy or just listen to our produc, they would like it and pass it around. We had that much faith in it. Not too mention networking skills. Muthafuckaz don't like when you treat them as another dollar or a fan. They like real shyt & real people. If you come like you a star with a cd, what makes you different than the guy accross the street sellin his shyt? Nothing. You gotta know how to talk and make a cat feel like he doin you a favor...and not you doin him a favor. We sold cats on the cd before we were half way done with recording. We had folks puttin banners on their sites for Dugout Records & our cd just by becoming friends first. We hit message boards, setup a Dugout mass e-mailing list that folks could join. Threw parties for Dugout and folks to come join in and get to know us and the whole time had NO cd out. Believe it? Please do. It worked. Folks got to know the name & new our cd was comin.
We had so many believing in us because we knew how to sell ourselves. Most folks have big mouths and it gets them in trouble...ours worked to our benefit. No boundaries playa...none. We did not let ourselves fall victim to the myth's that NorCal cats could not sell to SoCal cats or that East Coast cats wasn't into our kind. We pushed it anyway we could, that way when it dropped...we hit all of the people who had our backs and felt part of this thing called Dugout we created. It worked like a champ. I bet yall think we sold like 3 or 5,000 copies huh? Not even close...we just got in the right hands and did a major thing & that was make it REAL EASY TO GET AHOLD OF US OR FIND US. If ya needed to find us, we had e-mail addy's, a guestbook, a website, a flyer, a hotline, a messageboard anything you name it we made it easy to access us & that helped alot. Amazing what hustle can do.
