Im Not sure when this interview took place exactly, but what happened to this album that shit would jam......
get back
get back
What’s good $hort? I heard rumors of this being your first time in Amsterdam?
First time in Amsterdam and first time in Europe! I don’t know why I’ve never been here, I’ve talked to promotors and bookers a lot for a European tour, but nobody ever made the offer. I’ve been told time and time again, there are a lot of different cities in Europe that are into my music, I just never had the chance to see it for myself. I’ve been all around man, I’ve performed all over the States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Japan, all over, but I’ve never been to Europe before. I’m definitely looking forward to this tour.
When we look at your history we know you moved from LA to Oakland when you were fourteen. Do you think you would be making different music if you would have stayed in L.A. since the whole city was infected by the G-Funk sound in the early 90’s?
That’s an interesting question. Truth is I don’t think I would even be making music if I didn’t move to Oakland. The summer I moved to Oakland there was just this chain of events that pushed me into a rapcarreer. I was listening to the early days of rap music, and I just felt like I could do that too. But the reason I said I wouldn’t be rapping at all, is because it was really the city of Oakland that influenced me to start rapping. Oakland gave me the stories to rap about. So it was really the early rap music and the city of Oakland that sparked it for me, I don’t think there could have been one without the other.
So what was Oakland like? Did it have any form of a rapscene in the early eighties?
Well, growing up in L.A. in the seventies was all about witnessing gangs and violence. I grew up in South Central, a pretty tough neighborhood. I’m not saying it was like in the movies, with drive-by shootings and crips and bloods and all that. The gangs were there, and you would see them, but it wasn’t like there would be a wild shootout every time. But when I moved away from L.A., that’s when it started getting worse. Crack cocaine hit the streets around that time, too. The drive-by’s DID happen this time. But Oakland on the other hand, is not about gangs. It didn’t have crips or bloods. Oakland had gangs, but to me, it was all more colorful and open. It had a lot of pimps, you would get respect based on how much of a hustler you were, not how much of a gangster you were. That’s the biggest difference between the two cities. Oakland was a player’s world. If you were good with the ladies, you would get respect. So I grew up watching gangs, and then I saw the other side of the coin in Oakland, where it was all about how fly you were and how slick you could talk. I immediately fell in love with that. That’s what made Too $hort.
Do you consider yourself an official pimp?
Hell yeah man. I only be pimpin’ man. What I learned about the ways and methods of pimping, you can apply that to a lot of things in this world, man. You could take a chess game, and apply it to life, but you can also take pimps and ho’s, and apply that to life. I took that, and put it in my music. As I really study how this life works with pimps, prostitutes, tricks, exchange of money, and all the rules and regulations of that world, I can all apply it to life and put it into my music. It’s a never ending subject that I can have fun with. The comedy side of it is that I figured out like 900 ways to say ‘suck my dick’, while never sounding the same. I have fun with this shit, man.
You started rapping when you were 14. Were you rapping about girls back then already?
Nah, not really. My first raps were more like party rhymes, because that was the main topic in those days. These were the early eighties. Back then I was listening to Kurtis Blow, Grandmaster Flash and all of them. Everything was about fun. That was the rap I was mimicking. But when Flash came out with “The Message,” I think groups like Run DMC were born from that. Rap took a new persona, like “let me share about what’s going on in the community.” That’s what made me start rapping about Oakland. Once I heard “The Message,” and I changed my style, I got better, you know? So that was what my rhymes were about back then, just getting inspiration out of hiphop and Oakland, you know?
Shortly after you started, you set up your own label. Why didn’t you just join a label?
When I got out of High School I did three albums with a label called 75 Girls. It was an independent label, we never signed any contracts. It was the label of a friend of my older brother. There was a good side and a bad side to that. We didn’t have any experience and I probably could have made a lot more money than I did, but the good side is that I experienced what it was like to run an independent label. So when that label passed, me and some friends started our own label in 1987, called Dangerous Music. So that’s where that decision came from. I had an early training in having my own label. With Dangerous Music, we never had the intention to be signed to a major like Jive, which did happen eventually. We knew how to sell records, and we did. We sold records in our area, and the money was looking nice. With Dangerous Music, we went from having nothing, to having hundreds of dollars. We were like “hey, this is cool!” But in the end, I’m glad we signed to the major label. It took my music all over the world. It’s a good thing.
Ever since, you’ve been dropping albums like it’s nothing. You’re one of the few old school artists that keep putting out new material every one or two years. Is this something you do for the fans, or do you just enjoy putting an album together?
Well, it was pretty easy how I got started with selling albums, because I had five years of selling tapes in the streets of Oakland. While I was doing that, I was constantly writing lyrics. So when I finally got into the studio, I had a nice sized box, full of rhymes that I had written. Not a small box, this was a big ass box. So when I got signed to Jive, I just started digging into that box. The first eight albums I did with Jive, man, a lot of stuff came from that box, haha. A lot of stuff was from back in the days, so I had to rewrite it a little bit, or give it a new twist. But I always had my rhymes ready. That’s why my work ethic for a new album was like two or three weeks. The album “Born to Mack;” we did that in seven days. A lot of other albums we did in two or three weeks, man, it was crazy. What helped speed up the process even more, was the fact that I had all the beats programmed and ready before I went into the studio. So I had the beats and the rhymes. When we went into the studio, we did like three or fours songs a day and we had fun doing it. It was just what I did, and what I still do. Talk shit, having fun, keep it on the pimpside, make the album cover look interesting, and so on. I was actually in such a rhythm when I was with Jive, that they would send me a check to make an album. Then, without a phone call or anything, I would send an album right back to them. I would send it all ready and mixed. I started working on the album before I even got the checks. Years later, Jive was like “he was fucking incredible!” And those motherfuckers would sell, even without media exposure. I never got a lot of media attention, I never even put a lot of singles out, and I never got on MTV, nothing of that. I didn’t know why back then and I still don’t know why right now. I don’t know why MTV won’t fuck with me!
Come to think of it, I think the only real exposure you’ve received in Europe, is your single “The Ghetto,” which appeared on a very popular videogame. That’s the first time I heard Too $hort on something other than a cd.
That’s right! That’s the only outlet right there! But therefore, I take pride in being a multiplatinum underground rapper. I get the shine here and there, depending on what kind of collaborations I do, but it was mostly just underground. But I think that might be one of the reasons of my longevity. I got over twenty years on my name as a rapper, professionally. And that is not from when I started rapping, but that’s how long I’ve been making major money. I started getting real money of this rap thing in 1987. Five years before that, I was selling my tapes all over the streets. I never had another job anywhere. Rap always put money in my pocket, I would always have like a hundred dollars on me, you know? I could sell some tapes, get some weed and beer and be cool, haha.
Source: http://www.houseofhiphop.nl/?action=VIEW_MORE&ID=177
We discussed your situation with Jive records, were you delivered albums ridiculously fast, sometimes in three weeks. Did that change when you moved to Atlanta in 1994?
The first eight albums I did with Jive; I had ‘em all ready. When I went down to Atlanta, it became a different process. I had to hire a producer and all that. It took more time. It was more professional, but nonetheless very fun. But in the early days, I had more fun. We had the Dangerous Crew back then. That was like my band, in-house musicians that played on every song. We had like a crew and a tiny little studio. We couldn’t even fit in the room at the same time. It was like; ‘yo, it’s your turn, you go in and play something’. We had like an allegiance, which was that we all came from the Funkadelic era. The agreement was simple: ‘if it ain’t funky, don’t do that shit’. You can go listen to all my music from that time, and you’ll notice that even the songs that have like a simple drum, it still has a bass line or a guitar. We always had the band playing on songs. I think that was my part of being original in hiphop. I never necessarily used samples or the SP1200. Rappers would come out with a DJ or dancers, but I didn’t want any of that. Whatever they did, I wouldn’t do.
Another change I noticed, after your relocation to Atlanta in ’94, is the artists you’ve worked with since. You’ve been working with a lot of southern artists, but only since 2000 and on. Why didn’t you start working with them straight away?
Well, you don’t really see it on my album covers or songs, but I started working with the local cats around ’97. So it still took me a few years to make that move. What was going on was, you had certain groups from different area’s that stuck together. You had the local guys, the Detroit guys, the New York guys, the L.A. and Oakland guys. There wasn’t a competition between the groups, but it wasn’t about collaborating with each other either. It just wasn’t like that in the early days of hiphop. But there was a lot of collaboration anyway; we were all in and around each others studio. I was with Jermaine Dupri when he was a little kid. I helped Lil’ Jon get his first steps in the rap game. So I was always a part of it, from as soon as I moved down there. I was at J.D.’s house and Lil’ Jon’s house, having parties and barbeques. So I was always part of that. And as soon as Atlanta blew up, that’s when you saw the collaborations of Too Short and Lil’ Jon, and other artists. And I’ll keep working with artists from everywhere to this day.
You have seventeen albums with your name on them. What’s your own top three?
My favorite two albums will always be Born to Mack and Life is Too Short. The first one, Born to Mack, is the first album that I made, when we first started our independent company on our own. We maybe sold like 16.000 copies of that and after that; Jive picked us up. Then Jive sold about another 150.000 copies. No singles, no adds, no promotion, nothing. It was dirty music, a different approach to explicit music. Nobody was that fucking raunchy, and it was funny at the same time. People told me what they thought when they heard the CD and they were all like ‘this motherfucker is crazy’. They could picture me ridin’ around in a Cadillac, pickin’ up hoes, haha. So yeah, that will always be my very favorite Too Short album. My next favorite is Life is Too Short. That was my first album on Jive, after Born to Mack. We were getting money; we had this national platform now. To this day, it’s the best selling album I’ve ever did. That’s the only one to go double platinum. Basically, whenever I listened to those two albums, I realize that before those albums, I had a nice car, or I had a nice place, whatever. But I wasn’t really ballin’, you know? I was on a budget, even though I had my own company. It was comfortable, but it got fucking splendid after I blew up, you know?
So what does the future hold for Short Dog? I’m hearing rumors of a possible collaboration with E-40?
Oh yeah, I was just talking to 40 about that a minute ago. We were in the studio about two or three weeks ago, and we were talking about this project called ‘The History Channel’. It’s pretty much confirmed, but the only reason it’s taking a while, is because me and E-40 are on the same label, we’re both on Jive. He’s always on my albums, I’m always on his. We’re the best of friends, also outside the music, we’re homies. So we’ve been wanting to do this collaboration for a while now, but Jive would always say: ‘Let 40 do one more album, and then we’ll do it.’ But I just think Jive is a little hesitant about their artists working together, for whatever reason. We have ten songs recorded, but because of the label we’ve never been able to get the project off the ground. We did those songs a few years ago. When we listen to ‘em now, I don’t know. There’s some good stuff in there, but it serves more as an inspiration to what we actually need to be doing right now. But like I said, we both work very quick, so we’re going to do it, and it’s probably not going to take us any longer than about two weeks, haha.
Do you have any other future plans?
Well, I’m getting all kinds of offers for a reality show. That seems to be the main thing right now. I’m still thinking about it, obviously I’m a little mature in my career; it has to be a wise decision. But yeah, they want me to do a show, so that’s probably the next thing up to bat. Everything I’m going to do now musicwise is going to be independent. We’re also really into the digital thing right now. I’m trying to switch my selling focus from the stores to the digital side. I know you can’t put anything out without a CD in the stores, but that’s a fuckin’ headache, man. Dealing with distributors and all that shit. With the digital thing, it’s just a matter of email it, click, check, ching ching, you know? Piece of cake!
Source: http://www.houseofhiphop.nl/?action=VIEW_MORE&ID=179
First time in Amsterdam and first time in Europe! I don’t know why I’ve never been here, I’ve talked to promotors and bookers a lot for a European tour, but nobody ever made the offer. I’ve been told time and time again, there are a lot of different cities in Europe that are into my music, I just never had the chance to see it for myself. I’ve been all around man, I’ve performed all over the States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Japan, all over, but I’ve never been to Europe before. I’m definitely looking forward to this tour.
When we look at your history we know you moved from LA to Oakland when you were fourteen. Do you think you would be making different music if you would have stayed in L.A. since the whole city was infected by the G-Funk sound in the early 90’s?
That’s an interesting question. Truth is I don’t think I would even be making music if I didn’t move to Oakland. The summer I moved to Oakland there was just this chain of events that pushed me into a rapcarreer. I was listening to the early days of rap music, and I just felt like I could do that too. But the reason I said I wouldn’t be rapping at all, is because it was really the city of Oakland that influenced me to start rapping. Oakland gave me the stories to rap about. So it was really the early rap music and the city of Oakland that sparked it for me, I don’t think there could have been one without the other.
So what was Oakland like? Did it have any form of a rapscene in the early eighties?
Well, growing up in L.A. in the seventies was all about witnessing gangs and violence. I grew up in South Central, a pretty tough neighborhood. I’m not saying it was like in the movies, with drive-by shootings and crips and bloods and all that. The gangs were there, and you would see them, but it wasn’t like there would be a wild shootout every time. But when I moved away from L.A., that’s when it started getting worse. Crack cocaine hit the streets around that time, too. The drive-by’s DID happen this time. But Oakland on the other hand, is not about gangs. It didn’t have crips or bloods. Oakland had gangs, but to me, it was all more colorful and open. It had a lot of pimps, you would get respect based on how much of a hustler you were, not how much of a gangster you were. That’s the biggest difference between the two cities. Oakland was a player’s world. If you were good with the ladies, you would get respect. So I grew up watching gangs, and then I saw the other side of the coin in Oakland, where it was all about how fly you were and how slick you could talk. I immediately fell in love with that. That’s what made Too $hort.
Do you consider yourself an official pimp?
Hell yeah man. I only be pimpin’ man. What I learned about the ways and methods of pimping, you can apply that to a lot of things in this world, man. You could take a chess game, and apply it to life, but you can also take pimps and ho’s, and apply that to life. I took that, and put it in my music. As I really study how this life works with pimps, prostitutes, tricks, exchange of money, and all the rules and regulations of that world, I can all apply it to life and put it into my music. It’s a never ending subject that I can have fun with. The comedy side of it is that I figured out like 900 ways to say ‘suck my dick’, while never sounding the same. I have fun with this shit, man.
You started rapping when you were 14. Were you rapping about girls back then already?
Nah, not really. My first raps were more like party rhymes, because that was the main topic in those days. These were the early eighties. Back then I was listening to Kurtis Blow, Grandmaster Flash and all of them. Everything was about fun. That was the rap I was mimicking. But when Flash came out with “The Message,” I think groups like Run DMC were born from that. Rap took a new persona, like “let me share about what’s going on in the community.” That’s what made me start rapping about Oakland. Once I heard “The Message,” and I changed my style, I got better, you know? So that was what my rhymes were about back then, just getting inspiration out of hiphop and Oakland, you know?
Shortly after you started, you set up your own label. Why didn’t you just join a label?
When I got out of High School I did three albums with a label called 75 Girls. It was an independent label, we never signed any contracts. It was the label of a friend of my older brother. There was a good side and a bad side to that. We didn’t have any experience and I probably could have made a lot more money than I did, but the good side is that I experienced what it was like to run an independent label. So when that label passed, me and some friends started our own label in 1987, called Dangerous Music. So that’s where that decision came from. I had an early training in having my own label. With Dangerous Music, we never had the intention to be signed to a major like Jive, which did happen eventually. We knew how to sell records, and we did. We sold records in our area, and the money was looking nice. With Dangerous Music, we went from having nothing, to having hundreds of dollars. We were like “hey, this is cool!” But in the end, I’m glad we signed to the major label. It took my music all over the world. It’s a good thing.
Ever since, you’ve been dropping albums like it’s nothing. You’re one of the few old school artists that keep putting out new material every one or two years. Is this something you do for the fans, or do you just enjoy putting an album together?
Well, it was pretty easy how I got started with selling albums, because I had five years of selling tapes in the streets of Oakland. While I was doing that, I was constantly writing lyrics. So when I finally got into the studio, I had a nice sized box, full of rhymes that I had written. Not a small box, this was a big ass box. So when I got signed to Jive, I just started digging into that box. The first eight albums I did with Jive, man, a lot of stuff came from that box, haha. A lot of stuff was from back in the days, so I had to rewrite it a little bit, or give it a new twist. But I always had my rhymes ready. That’s why my work ethic for a new album was like two or three weeks. The album “Born to Mack;” we did that in seven days. A lot of other albums we did in two or three weeks, man, it was crazy. What helped speed up the process even more, was the fact that I had all the beats programmed and ready before I went into the studio. So I had the beats and the rhymes. When we went into the studio, we did like three or fours songs a day and we had fun doing it. It was just what I did, and what I still do. Talk shit, having fun, keep it on the pimpside, make the album cover look interesting, and so on. I was actually in such a rhythm when I was with Jive, that they would send me a check to make an album. Then, without a phone call or anything, I would send an album right back to them. I would send it all ready and mixed. I started working on the album before I even got the checks. Years later, Jive was like “he was fucking incredible!” And those motherfuckers would sell, even without media exposure. I never got a lot of media attention, I never even put a lot of singles out, and I never got on MTV, nothing of that. I didn’t know why back then and I still don’t know why right now. I don’t know why MTV won’t fuck with me!
Come to think of it, I think the only real exposure you’ve received in Europe, is your single “The Ghetto,” which appeared on a very popular videogame. That’s the first time I heard Too $hort on something other than a cd.
That’s right! That’s the only outlet right there! But therefore, I take pride in being a multiplatinum underground rapper. I get the shine here and there, depending on what kind of collaborations I do, but it was mostly just underground. But I think that might be one of the reasons of my longevity. I got over twenty years on my name as a rapper, professionally. And that is not from when I started rapping, but that’s how long I’ve been making major money. I started getting real money of this rap thing in 1987. Five years before that, I was selling my tapes all over the streets. I never had another job anywhere. Rap always put money in my pocket, I would always have like a hundred dollars on me, you know? I could sell some tapes, get some weed and beer and be cool, haha.
Source: http://www.houseofhiphop.nl/?action=VIEW_MORE&ID=177
We discussed your situation with Jive records, were you delivered albums ridiculously fast, sometimes in three weeks. Did that change when you moved to Atlanta in 1994?
The first eight albums I did with Jive; I had ‘em all ready. When I went down to Atlanta, it became a different process. I had to hire a producer and all that. It took more time. It was more professional, but nonetheless very fun. But in the early days, I had more fun. We had the Dangerous Crew back then. That was like my band, in-house musicians that played on every song. We had like a crew and a tiny little studio. We couldn’t even fit in the room at the same time. It was like; ‘yo, it’s your turn, you go in and play something’. We had like an allegiance, which was that we all came from the Funkadelic era. The agreement was simple: ‘if it ain’t funky, don’t do that shit’. You can go listen to all my music from that time, and you’ll notice that even the songs that have like a simple drum, it still has a bass line or a guitar. We always had the band playing on songs. I think that was my part of being original in hiphop. I never necessarily used samples or the SP1200. Rappers would come out with a DJ or dancers, but I didn’t want any of that. Whatever they did, I wouldn’t do.
Another change I noticed, after your relocation to Atlanta in ’94, is the artists you’ve worked with since. You’ve been working with a lot of southern artists, but only since 2000 and on. Why didn’t you start working with them straight away?
Well, you don’t really see it on my album covers or songs, but I started working with the local cats around ’97. So it still took me a few years to make that move. What was going on was, you had certain groups from different area’s that stuck together. You had the local guys, the Detroit guys, the New York guys, the L.A. and Oakland guys. There wasn’t a competition between the groups, but it wasn’t about collaborating with each other either. It just wasn’t like that in the early days of hiphop. But there was a lot of collaboration anyway; we were all in and around each others studio. I was with Jermaine Dupri when he was a little kid. I helped Lil’ Jon get his first steps in the rap game. So I was always a part of it, from as soon as I moved down there. I was at J.D.’s house and Lil’ Jon’s house, having parties and barbeques. So I was always part of that. And as soon as Atlanta blew up, that’s when you saw the collaborations of Too Short and Lil’ Jon, and other artists. And I’ll keep working with artists from everywhere to this day.
You have seventeen albums with your name on them. What’s your own top three?
My favorite two albums will always be Born to Mack and Life is Too Short. The first one, Born to Mack, is the first album that I made, when we first started our independent company on our own. We maybe sold like 16.000 copies of that and after that; Jive picked us up. Then Jive sold about another 150.000 copies. No singles, no adds, no promotion, nothing. It was dirty music, a different approach to explicit music. Nobody was that fucking raunchy, and it was funny at the same time. People told me what they thought when they heard the CD and they were all like ‘this motherfucker is crazy’. They could picture me ridin’ around in a Cadillac, pickin’ up hoes, haha. So yeah, that will always be my very favorite Too Short album. My next favorite is Life is Too Short. That was my first album on Jive, after Born to Mack. We were getting money; we had this national platform now. To this day, it’s the best selling album I’ve ever did. That’s the only one to go double platinum. Basically, whenever I listened to those two albums, I realize that before those albums, I had a nice car, or I had a nice place, whatever. But I wasn’t really ballin’, you know? I was on a budget, even though I had my own company. It was comfortable, but it got fucking splendid after I blew up, you know?
So what does the future hold for Short Dog? I’m hearing rumors of a possible collaboration with E-40?
Oh yeah, I was just talking to 40 about that a minute ago. We were in the studio about two or three weeks ago, and we were talking about this project called ‘The History Channel’. It’s pretty much confirmed, but the only reason it’s taking a while, is because me and E-40 are on the same label, we’re both on Jive. He’s always on my albums, I’m always on his. We’re the best of friends, also outside the music, we’re homies. So we’ve been wanting to do this collaboration for a while now, but Jive would always say: ‘Let 40 do one more album, and then we’ll do it.’ But I just think Jive is a little hesitant about their artists working together, for whatever reason. We have ten songs recorded, but because of the label we’ve never been able to get the project off the ground. We did those songs a few years ago. When we listen to ‘em now, I don’t know. There’s some good stuff in there, but it serves more as an inspiration to what we actually need to be doing right now. But like I said, we both work very quick, so we’re going to do it, and it’s probably not going to take us any longer than about two weeks, haha.
Do you have any other future plans?
Well, I’m getting all kinds of offers for a reality show. That seems to be the main thing right now. I’m still thinking about it, obviously I’m a little mature in my career; it has to be a wise decision. But yeah, they want me to do a show, so that’s probably the next thing up to bat. Everything I’m going to do now musicwise is going to be independent. We’re also really into the digital thing right now. I’m trying to switch my selling focus from the stores to the digital side. I know you can’t put anything out without a CD in the stores, but that’s a fuckin’ headache, man. Dealing with distributors and all that shit. With the digital thing, it’s just a matter of email it, click, check, ching ching, you know? Piece of cake!
Source: http://www.houseofhiphop.nl/?action=VIEW_MORE&ID=179
