J Diggs
Interview by Black Dog Bone
Continued from Murder Dog Vol 13 #1
Where does that name come from, The Crestside?
It’s not no slang or nothing. When my mother was a kid she lived in the Crest. It’s called The Country Club Crest. When you hear us say "3 C’s down" we’re talkin about The Country Club Crest. That’s what it’s always been called. That is the official name. My grandmother’s been there for 60-something years and it was that when she was there. It was Floyd Terrace and they built the houses and became the Country Club. It was a nice area for Black people to live in.
When they first built the houses did a lot of people from different neighborhoods of Vallejo move there?
It was a lot of migrating. Vallejo’s been shuffling around many times. E-40 and them even done lived down there at one time. Mac Mall and E-40 are related. The Crest is home to many people. It’s almost like a spiritual name to me. To some people it’s everything; some people spit it out their mouth like it’s the devil. You’re gonna get your likes and your dislikes, but it’s where we from. When you say Thizz you’re talking about the Crest.
What I like about Thizz is you’re like a whole tribe with your own culture. You’ve got your own style of clothes, own music, own language.
Take the word "cutty". We’ve been using the word "cutty" since I was a kid. Now you hear people sayin cutty all over, callin each other cutty. Cutty is like saying brother in my neighborhood. My son, one of the first words he knew was cutty. As long as I’ve been talkin I’ve been calling the dudes in my neighborhood cutty. It’s not something new, it’s a way of life. Crest has a certain way of life. We live like that and it comes out in our music. That’s how we bring it to the world.
Is the Crest growing bigger?
It ain’t never gonna get any bigger. That’s it. It’s a wrap. Only thing they can do now is rebuild nice shit within the Crest. Actually Marine World’s been tryin to buy the Crest out for the last 15 years. The property value there is ridiculous now. The Crest is worth so much now we don’t even want to talk about it. And we’re within walkin distance of one of the top amusement parks in the country. Our kids will be at Marine World every fuckin day! Our neighborhood is a special place to be for us. We pull in the neighborhood. We park our Thizz van in the neighborhood, open the door and turn our music on. Ten minutes later we got a hundred kids in the streets Thizz dancing, getting hyphy. They don’t need nothing to get them high. They’re on Thizz music, that’s it.
Do the police bother you when you gather the people like that?
Once upon they really used to be on us, but now it’s to the point that the police in this city know that the Crest is a musically influenced neighborhood. They know the Mac Dre story, they see the people come looking for us. They know that we’re gonna do what we gonna do. The best thing for them is just to let us do our thing for 2-3 hours and don’t say nothing. If they come to try to turn us out they’re gonna get a mess. As long as we keep shit cool, we don’t have any problems. We done had some fatalities, we done had some bullshit happen. That’s street life. That shit happens in the streets and you gotta deal with it.
I heard something about that. What happened?
It was actually the anniversary for Mac Dre in the neighborhood on November 1. We had a block party with hundreds of people in the street and music all day. Incidentally some other shit happened, some gunfire. We had a tragedy there. Rest in peace, Mike Nice. We lost one of the little cutties. It was just some wild shooting in the air, something got out of hand. We don’t know what or why it happened. One of our young Crest soldiers took a bullet. KMEL hurried up and broadcast it. A lot of people jumped on the negativity that happened that night. They need to change that. A lot of good things were going on too. Don’t just feed off this negativity. They forget to talk about all the positive things happening with Thizz.
When a lot of people get together those things can happen. It’s not coming from Thizz.
A lot of people see something like that happen and they wanna hurry up and jump on the negative. We’ve had so many good events in the Crest that nobody spoke on. They wait for a tragedy. The eyes is always on the Crest. We do a lot of positive things too. People need to recognize that too.
Do you have block parties in the Crest often?
It’s a regular. Sometimes we might have rappers performing, but most of the time all we do pull the vans up. We got some music goin on. We got some people at the house who might have food plates and shit. Everybody’s out in the streets dancing. Ain’t too much car traffic. Nobody can get through with cars cause the streets is filled with people. Everybody’s just hangin out havin a good time, smokin drinkin, just kickin it. We have kids and everything. It be real hyphy, real stuntin. You gotta pick up our DVD’s. Our DVD’s are unbelievable. It shows our way of life.
Everybody’s trying to take on that Thizz lifestyle now.
If you all wanna copy us we don’t mind. All that means is we doin something right. That’s how the game goes.
Are the producers that you’re working with from the Crest too?
We’re getting beats from everywhere. We do have a lotta Crest producers. We got our Stevey D’s, we got dudes that slumps our sounds. But the music game right now is so competitive that you need to mess with a wide range of producers. Everybody’s not listenin for the same sound. We have Crest producers who come with the Crest sound, then we have different producers who give us something different. We’re messin with the Swamp Cats, and Gennessee’s. We got our producer Taz. He’s the one that did the majority of the Crest Creepaz album, the majority of my album. I got a producer that I signed outa Fresno named Waz from the Young Pillionaires. He’s hot. He got two slaps on my album. We got sounds comin from pretty much everywhere. I even got with Droop E, E-40’s son, he got a slap on my album.
What do you see in the future for Thizz?
Death Row, Bad Boy, No Limit, Rap-A-Lot, Ruthless. When you hear them names what do you think? Put Thizz right next to those names. That’s where we’re goin. To the top. There’s not stoppin us. We’re an independent that move like a major. Over the last 6 months we literally took street money and made this shit happen. With me and my group we feel like nothing gonna stop us. When we pull up to a record store right now we got 5 or 6 people runnin up for autographs. They’re grabbin my CD. We’re workin with a buzz. Everywhere we go the people are throwin up Ts. Seattle, they’re throwin up T’s. Colorado, they’re throwin up T’s. Everywhere we go. It’s the nation now. Right now we are to the world what the Hot Boys were to the world in ’97.
Everybody knew Thizz to be Mac Dre. And we all were wondering if you could carry on without him.
He gave us the recipe. What’s the use of bein around a Tupac all day if you’re not gonna learn what he can give you? What was the use of bein around Mac Dre if we’re not gonna take the juice and run with it? If we were to have just fell off then it woulda been a known fact that it was just Dre. Come on. We been around this dude all our lives. He taught us something, he showed us the map. It’s not over. He left this with us for a reason.
2005 was a big year for Thizz. I feel like you’ve just scratched the surface.
No foolin. Thizz Entertainment, we got a wide range. We hittin ‘em from all angles. You see young Fabby Davis (Mistah F.A.B.), Son of a Pimp. He’s killin ‘em. We got Bavgate in stores, Crest Creepaz, J. Diggs, Rydah J. Klyde, PSD, Dubee. Dubee still ain’t hit the streets yet. That’s the arsenal. We’re keepin the gun loaded. Every time we fire a shot we put another on in the clip.
You’ve been releasing the DVD’s regularly too with Treal TV and the Mistah FAB Freestyle DVD.
Right now the fans, more than just listen to the music, they wanna see how these artists act when they’re not on stage. They wanna see the artist in the studio, they wanna see him hangin behind the scenes, they wanna see how he lives. We took the DVD medium and used it to show them the Crest life. We took ‘em to parties, we took ‘em inside our studios, we took ‘em on the road with us. That was the first step with Treal TV. Then we took ‘em to the streets. We showed ‘em how we drive our cars. Exhibition Speed 23109, that was another DVD. That was the sideshow tape where we’re actin real dummy with it. Then we signed the guys from the Smokamentary. If you ain’t seen this shit, it’s something we gotta introduce you to. These are the smoke boys of the Bay. Every time you see their van you’re gonna see smoke comin outa every window. It’s a wrapped vehicle. Their DVD is hot. They go all around the country, fuck with the hottest artists. It’s live entertainment. We’re covering it all. If your favorite rapper is getting his ass knocked out, then we’re gonna show you your favorite rapper getting his ass knocked out. That’s what we do. We’re in the street and we take our cameras everywhere we go. We let the fans know that this is how we live.
What has happened is that the rappers are not put on mainstream TV, so now you’re getting out on the DVD’s. The more doors they close the more creative the artists become, the labels become.
More than that, rappers are showing that everything that’s happening in this country revolves around us. American culture is directly influenced by Rap artists. From the cars to the clothing to the slang. Even down to the athletes, all the athletes got their favorite rappers. We penetrate all levels of this. Now we’ve stepped into the movie game. Every time you check a new movie who do you see? Ice Cube, Ice T, Queen Latifah. We took this Rap shit and stepped into the movie game now.
From the beginning of slavery they’ve been trying to kill the African culture. They banned our drumming and our dancing, trying make us more White. But what happened instead is all of the White kids have turned Black.
No shit. Everybody’s taking after Black people now, from the gold teeth to the sagging pants. They tried to stop Black culture and it backfired on ‘em. They can’t stop us. That’s because nothing Black man do is ugly. It’s not what you do, it’s how you do it.
If you go to Japan or anywhere they’re doing Rap. In India they’ve got Bhangra music they’ve got Rap in there. In Arabic countries they’re doing Rap.
I can’t wait to go to those countries. You gotta take me Black Dog! I’m goin!
Interview by Black Dog Bone
Continued from Murder Dog Vol 13 #1
Where does that name come from, The Crestside?
It’s not no slang or nothing. When my mother was a kid she lived in the Crest. It’s called The Country Club Crest. When you hear us say "3 C’s down" we’re talkin about The Country Club Crest. That’s what it’s always been called. That is the official name. My grandmother’s been there for 60-something years and it was that when she was there. It was Floyd Terrace and they built the houses and became the Country Club. It was a nice area for Black people to live in.
When they first built the houses did a lot of people from different neighborhoods of Vallejo move there?
It was a lot of migrating. Vallejo’s been shuffling around many times. E-40 and them even done lived down there at one time. Mac Mall and E-40 are related. The Crest is home to many people. It’s almost like a spiritual name to me. To some people it’s everything; some people spit it out their mouth like it’s the devil. You’re gonna get your likes and your dislikes, but it’s where we from. When you say Thizz you’re talking about the Crest.
What I like about Thizz is you’re like a whole tribe with your own culture. You’ve got your own style of clothes, own music, own language.
Take the word "cutty". We’ve been using the word "cutty" since I was a kid. Now you hear people sayin cutty all over, callin each other cutty. Cutty is like saying brother in my neighborhood. My son, one of the first words he knew was cutty. As long as I’ve been talkin I’ve been calling the dudes in my neighborhood cutty. It’s not something new, it’s a way of life. Crest has a certain way of life. We live like that and it comes out in our music. That’s how we bring it to the world.
Is the Crest growing bigger?
It ain’t never gonna get any bigger. That’s it. It’s a wrap. Only thing they can do now is rebuild nice shit within the Crest. Actually Marine World’s been tryin to buy the Crest out for the last 15 years. The property value there is ridiculous now. The Crest is worth so much now we don’t even want to talk about it. And we’re within walkin distance of one of the top amusement parks in the country. Our kids will be at Marine World every fuckin day! Our neighborhood is a special place to be for us. We pull in the neighborhood. We park our Thizz van in the neighborhood, open the door and turn our music on. Ten minutes later we got a hundred kids in the streets Thizz dancing, getting hyphy. They don’t need nothing to get them high. They’re on Thizz music, that’s it.
Do the police bother you when you gather the people like that?
Once upon they really used to be on us, but now it’s to the point that the police in this city know that the Crest is a musically influenced neighborhood. They know the Mac Dre story, they see the people come looking for us. They know that we’re gonna do what we gonna do. The best thing for them is just to let us do our thing for 2-3 hours and don’t say nothing. If they come to try to turn us out they’re gonna get a mess. As long as we keep shit cool, we don’t have any problems. We done had some fatalities, we done had some bullshit happen. That’s street life. That shit happens in the streets and you gotta deal with it.
I heard something about that. What happened?
It was actually the anniversary for Mac Dre in the neighborhood on November 1. We had a block party with hundreds of people in the street and music all day. Incidentally some other shit happened, some gunfire. We had a tragedy there. Rest in peace, Mike Nice. We lost one of the little cutties. It was just some wild shooting in the air, something got out of hand. We don’t know what or why it happened. One of our young Crest soldiers took a bullet. KMEL hurried up and broadcast it. A lot of people jumped on the negativity that happened that night. They need to change that. A lot of good things were going on too. Don’t just feed off this negativity. They forget to talk about all the positive things happening with Thizz.
When a lot of people get together those things can happen. It’s not coming from Thizz.
A lot of people see something like that happen and they wanna hurry up and jump on the negative. We’ve had so many good events in the Crest that nobody spoke on. They wait for a tragedy. The eyes is always on the Crest. We do a lot of positive things too. People need to recognize that too.
Do you have block parties in the Crest often?
It’s a regular. Sometimes we might have rappers performing, but most of the time all we do pull the vans up. We got some music goin on. We got some people at the house who might have food plates and shit. Everybody’s out in the streets dancing. Ain’t too much car traffic. Nobody can get through with cars cause the streets is filled with people. Everybody’s just hangin out havin a good time, smokin drinkin, just kickin it. We have kids and everything. It be real hyphy, real stuntin. You gotta pick up our DVD’s. Our DVD’s are unbelievable. It shows our way of life.
Everybody’s trying to take on that Thizz lifestyle now.
If you all wanna copy us we don’t mind. All that means is we doin something right. That’s how the game goes.
Are the producers that you’re working with from the Crest too?
We’re getting beats from everywhere. We do have a lotta Crest producers. We got our Stevey D’s, we got dudes that slumps our sounds. But the music game right now is so competitive that you need to mess with a wide range of producers. Everybody’s not listenin for the same sound. We have Crest producers who come with the Crest sound, then we have different producers who give us something different. We’re messin with the Swamp Cats, and Gennessee’s. We got our producer Taz. He’s the one that did the majority of the Crest Creepaz album, the majority of my album. I got a producer that I signed outa Fresno named Waz from the Young Pillionaires. He’s hot. He got two slaps on my album. We got sounds comin from pretty much everywhere. I even got with Droop E, E-40’s son, he got a slap on my album.
What do you see in the future for Thizz?
Death Row, Bad Boy, No Limit, Rap-A-Lot, Ruthless. When you hear them names what do you think? Put Thizz right next to those names. That’s where we’re goin. To the top. There’s not stoppin us. We’re an independent that move like a major. Over the last 6 months we literally took street money and made this shit happen. With me and my group we feel like nothing gonna stop us. When we pull up to a record store right now we got 5 or 6 people runnin up for autographs. They’re grabbin my CD. We’re workin with a buzz. Everywhere we go the people are throwin up Ts. Seattle, they’re throwin up T’s. Colorado, they’re throwin up T’s. Everywhere we go. It’s the nation now. Right now we are to the world what the Hot Boys were to the world in ’97.
Everybody knew Thizz to be Mac Dre. And we all were wondering if you could carry on without him.
He gave us the recipe. What’s the use of bein around a Tupac all day if you’re not gonna learn what he can give you? What was the use of bein around Mac Dre if we’re not gonna take the juice and run with it? If we were to have just fell off then it woulda been a known fact that it was just Dre. Come on. We been around this dude all our lives. He taught us something, he showed us the map. It’s not over. He left this with us for a reason.
2005 was a big year for Thizz. I feel like you’ve just scratched the surface.
No foolin. Thizz Entertainment, we got a wide range. We hittin ‘em from all angles. You see young Fabby Davis (Mistah F.A.B.), Son of a Pimp. He’s killin ‘em. We got Bavgate in stores, Crest Creepaz, J. Diggs, Rydah J. Klyde, PSD, Dubee. Dubee still ain’t hit the streets yet. That’s the arsenal. We’re keepin the gun loaded. Every time we fire a shot we put another on in the clip.
You’ve been releasing the DVD’s regularly too with Treal TV and the Mistah FAB Freestyle DVD.
Right now the fans, more than just listen to the music, they wanna see how these artists act when they’re not on stage. They wanna see the artist in the studio, they wanna see him hangin behind the scenes, they wanna see how he lives. We took the DVD medium and used it to show them the Crest life. We took ‘em to parties, we took ‘em inside our studios, we took ‘em on the road with us. That was the first step with Treal TV. Then we took ‘em to the streets. We showed ‘em how we drive our cars. Exhibition Speed 23109, that was another DVD. That was the sideshow tape where we’re actin real dummy with it. Then we signed the guys from the Smokamentary. If you ain’t seen this shit, it’s something we gotta introduce you to. These are the smoke boys of the Bay. Every time you see their van you’re gonna see smoke comin outa every window. It’s a wrapped vehicle. Their DVD is hot. They go all around the country, fuck with the hottest artists. It’s live entertainment. We’re covering it all. If your favorite rapper is getting his ass knocked out, then we’re gonna show you your favorite rapper getting his ass knocked out. That’s what we do. We’re in the street and we take our cameras everywhere we go. We let the fans know that this is how we live.
What has happened is that the rappers are not put on mainstream TV, so now you’re getting out on the DVD’s. The more doors they close the more creative the artists become, the labels become.
More than that, rappers are showing that everything that’s happening in this country revolves around us. American culture is directly influenced by Rap artists. From the cars to the clothing to the slang. Even down to the athletes, all the athletes got their favorite rappers. We penetrate all levels of this. Now we’ve stepped into the movie game. Every time you check a new movie who do you see? Ice Cube, Ice T, Queen Latifah. We took this Rap shit and stepped into the movie game now.
From the beginning of slavery they’ve been trying to kill the African culture. They banned our drumming and our dancing, trying make us more White. But what happened instead is all of the White kids have turned Black.
No shit. Everybody’s taking after Black people now, from the gold teeth to the sagging pants. They tried to stop Black culture and it backfired on ‘em. They can’t stop us. That’s because nothing Black man do is ugly. It’s not what you do, it’s how you do it.
If you go to Japan or anywhere they’re doing Rap. In India they’ve got Bhangra music they’ve got Rap in there. In Arabic countries they’re doing Rap.
I can’t wait to go to those countries. You gotta take me Black Dog! I’m goin!
