New Damizza Interview: Speaks On Power 106 and Everything Else

[Eddie G.]

http://chronicvacation.com/2009/06/damizza-takes-a-chronic-vacation-exclusive-interview/

Hip-hop is all about keeping it real, and that’s exactly we’re doing here on Chronic Vacation today.  Over the past several months, rumors have run rampant about Damizza and his forthcoming autobiography “Guilty By Association.”  Is it a tell-all?  Is Mariah Carey gonna sue him?  Are the executives at Power 106 pissed off?  What’s Dr. Dre’s involvement?  We decided to cut out the middleman for this one and bring the truth straight to you guys.  This isn’t an interview.  It’s a conversation between two hip-hop fans, presented for other true hip-hop fans who want some answers.  Enjoy.

BOOK IN STORES & ONLINE SEPTEMBER 11TH, 2009



Eddie G: Damizza’s on a Chronic Vacation!  What’s up?

Damizza: Let me just start this off by saying thank you Eddie.  The things that you have done for hip-hop, and the West Coast, by starting Chronic Vacation have just been amazing.  The things that you bring to the forefront of what’s crackin’ in hip-hop are dope.  Watching your growth has been an enlightening journey for me to say the least.  For what you do for everybody out here, we all owe you an appreciation.  Thank you.

Eddie G: Wow.  Thank you for everything too!

Damizza: (Laughs)

Eddie G: So let’s start off by talking about what’s going on with Baby Ree Records.

Damizza: I’m having fun making music again. I just wrapped up my first acting job in a movie directed by Frank Howsend called “Remembering Nigel.” I feel like I’ve hit a new plateau, so I’m making some moves in the rock world now as well.  We’re signing a new artist named Elijah Allan-Blitz, who just shot his first video for a song called “Don’t Let Me Die in Hollywood.”  The video has cameos from rock icon Eric Burdon of The Animals and War, Ron Jeremy, and Academy Award nominee Sally Kirkland.

I hope to do more work with Ca$his from Shady/Aftermath as well.  His lyrics are so vivid, and he’s one of the realest dudes you’ll ever meet.  It’s always a pleasure working with him and Rikanatti.  Young De’s album is in the planning stages!  He came up the other day to strategize.  He’s also working on a group album with Xzibit and B-Real, tentatively titled The Serial Killers, and Los is starting to put beats together for that.  Bishop Lamont & I went into the studio a couple weeks ago and started back at it. Becca Solodon, a young singer-songwriter from Santa Barbara I work with closely, is back in the studio too.  There’s a lot of stuff coming!  Also, I’m finally finished with my autobiography “Guilty By Association.”  Ever since we announced the book, it seemed to cause quite a stir…

Eddie G: Yeah, let’s talk a little bit about the book.  We just got off the phone doing an interview with Proof Of Life radio and now I think people are starting to understand what the book’s going to be about.  But a lot of people still seem to have it twisted…

Damizza: Well first, before we start, I want to welcome Proof Of Life to the Chronic Vacation family.  They are really doing it for the right reasons, and that’s what Chronic Vacation will always be about.  We’re dealing in the reality of hip-hop.  Chronic Vacation was set up to escape the editorials and sideline hating.  We want to be a venue and an outlet in support of artists and fans alike that really do it for the love of music.

But, back to the topic, the book is dope.  It’s about a fan of hip-hop – me - who fell in love with bringing people together through music and using it as a platform to do some good. A lot of people don’t gravitate to positivity.  They want the drama.  Drama is what sells records these days.  But at the end of the day, it’s not supposed to be like that.  I’ll admit, I lost my focus with that for a minute too.  But, I’ve got my head on straight now.  And I want to say thanks to you, Eddie, and J Marshall Craig, for helping me find the voice for this book.  You guys were a big part of making this come together.  It’s an amazing book, and I’m not saying that because it’s mine.  It’s the people that play a part in my story: Eminem, Dr. Dre, 2Pac, Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey, Al Gore, Jay-Z, Nate Dogg – and we all pray for Nate Dogg to get better.  The fans have never had a chance to hear some of the stuff that goes on behind the scenes, and all of the things that that made all of these guys stars.  You’ll hear about Eminem before he became a star.  You’ll hear about The Notorious B.I.G.’s mindset the morning before he died as he was sitting in my office, telling me how good it felt to be out on the West Coast.

I got disgruntled with the book at first.  In the press, the hip-hop sites took out all of the stuff about working with Korn and Mariah, and said it was a tell-all on Dr. Dre.  Then all the Mariah sites said it was a tell-all on her.  That’s not what I’m about.  I want to tell you the stories of how your favorite records came together, as one fan to another.  It got away from that, and it really affected me.  It’s a really weird feeling when you walk into a supermarket with your Grandma and you see a National Enquirer or a Star Magazine saying that you’re writing a tell-all on Mariah.  Let me ask you a question, Eddie.  How did it feel seeing your name in the National Enquirer?

Eddie G: It was cool to see that we were getting press for the book, but some of the stuff was just off base, like when they said they interviewed Nate Dogg and he said you were blacklisted from the music industry.  But we knew that Nate Dogg was in the hospital and couldn’t even talk at that time…

Damizza: That was even more hurtful because these aren’t just people that I make music with.  Nate is my friend.  He’s in the hospital from a stroke, and they just made up some BS like that.

Eddie G: Everyone’s been asking about the Butch Cassidy album coming out on Baby Ree.  What’s been going on with that?

Damizza: Butch made a great album. The problem is, with what’s going on in music, it’s so hard to get records out in this marketplace.

Eddie G: Maybe the public’s just frustrated.  If you were back in radio now, what would you change?  Power 106 is ranked #13 in the LA market now, but it was #1 until you left…

Damizza: I’d start by giving new artists new shots. The problem with radio right now is that no one’s breaking any new music.  It’s all about who’s got the most promotion and who’s got the most money behind them.  When I was at Power 106, it didn’t matter how much money you had or what label you were on.  The only thing that mattered was the music.  That’s it.  If I played it in my office, and everyone ran in and said, “What’s that,” even if I hated it, I’d still give it a shot.  But when the economy gets bad, it eliminates the research and development, and you lose your ears to the street.  That’s where the mistake is made the most.  Everyone’s sitting up there on their throne, not listening to their ears.

I would start it back at square one.  I would say, “Let’s bring in some new artists, promote synergy with some of the seasoned artists, and start rebranding the music.”  Yeah, Power 106 is #13 right now.  When the ratings come out on Wednesday, they could slip even further, which means it’s time to gut the fish and start over.  To see that, after putting almost 10 years of my life into Power, it’s the saddest thing I could ever watch.

The solution is simpler than you might think, but the current programming team doesn’t want to listen.  I don’t mean that they have to listen to me.  Take me out of the equation.  All they have to do is hop out of the office for lunch, go to their core zip codes, and ask their listeners what they listen to and why. Power 106 is operating from a place of inexperience in the current methods of brand marketing.  Nobody in programming at Power 106 has ever programmed hip-hop radio in a war time like this before.  On top of all that, they’re all removed from the lifestyle, and they’re not embracing the cash cow known as the internet.

There’s an old saying in radio.  “Someone’s number one.  If it’s not you, it’s operator error.”  They’ve told me that I’ve been out of radio too long and I don’t know what I’m talking about.  I’ve offered to help them.  It was #1 when I left, and #13 six months later.  It got back to #6, but when [the radio station] AMP came on, it dropped back down to 13.

Radio is not brain surgery.  It’s actually very simple: You emulate the lifestyle of the listener.  If you just listen to the people in the hallways and add a little research to it, you can’t go wrong.  I’ve never been at a radio station that wasn’t #1.  But it wasn’t just because of me.  It was because we had a great team!  That’s what Power 106 was. It was a family. It wasn’t because I was the music director, the Senior Director of Programming, or because I was featured in The Source magazine as one of the most powerful people in hip-hop.  It was because our team was the Lakers of radio, and we all played our position.  I was just the face on it.  I’ll admit, I’m brazen and extremely blunt.  I tell you how I really feel, and I don’t candy coat anything.  People take that as being arrogant or insensitive.  They just want to be the ones who can say, “I did it all by myself” someday. Ronald Reagan once said, “Anything is possible, as long as you don’t care who gets the credit.”

I was never your regular 9-5 programmer and people in upper management don’t like that.  I will never forget one of my first meetings with Val Makie, Power’s General Manager, when she said she “couldn’t equate” me or my job to a number, or put a finger on exactly what I did.  That’s purely the reason why I haven’t gone back to Power.  They’re too arrogant to put the BS aside and just win.  It would be so easy to make Power 106 #1 again, because it can pull off what no other station in LA can.  They can be a rap station, and if they do that, no one will be able to follow them.

Eddie G: Plus, it could be a local rap station…

Damizza: Exactly.  The kiss of death was when Jimmy Steal, the Program Director, said, “We want to be more national.”  I asked him, “Why would you want to be more national and make changes when you’re #1, and uh, we live in LA?”

Eddie G: Just for fun, which artists do you think would work straight out of the gate on LA radio now if you were back in it?

Damizza: The biggest one is Bishop Lamont.  Bishop should be the biggest core artist on Power 106 right now. Not just that, but there’s three or four records on the Eminem album that they haven’t hit yet.  No one’s thinking to play album cuts anymore.  They’re just putting the current record company singles into rotation. Record companies don’t care about ratings – they’re just trying to sell records. You can play stuff that’s on mixtapes too. A hit is a hit, indie or major.

There’s so many dope artists right here in Power’s backyard that they’re missing out on.  Nipsey Hussle, Young De, Roccett, Jay Rock, and Adrian Crush on the R&B side. The problem is that the current programming staff can’t hear hits. So they follow the leader, which is now KIIS-FM.  The key is to do something that the other stations can’t.  And right now, the biggest hole in the market is what made Power 106 the most successful. But the people in these programming positions aren’t thinking that.  It’s sad, but I give Power 60-90 days tops.

Eddie G: Until it’s done?

Damizza: They’ll be in the mid-to-low 2’s in the next ratings.

Eddie G: And then you think it’ll be gone?

Damizza: Numbers don’t lie. People do. They can’t obtain a strong hold on revenue without market share. They had to postpone Powerhouse, because KIIS got all their acts.  The point is to have acts that KIIS can’t play!

Eddie G: Like DJ Quik, Ice Cube…

Damizza: Or the next Ice Cube.  Or the next DJ Quik.  That’s the other fundamental problem.  Without the opportunity for the OGs to shine, how can they put the next generation on if they don’t even have an outlet?

Eddie G: DJ Quik & Kurupt just put an album out…

Damizza: I was just about to say that.  And there ain’t nothing from “Blaqkout” on Power 106 like that.  Look at DJ Skee.  He was at Power 106 for a little while until he got his buzz up, and then he saw nothing was happening and went over to KIIS.  I haven’t talked to him about it, but I’d bet that’s what happened.  When I talked to [the executives at Power,] I told them to make Skee the new music director immediately.  Their response was, “Oh, you don’t know what you’re talking about.” You can say whatever you want about me.  But I know what I’m talking about when it comes to Power 106.

Eddie G: And then there’s Felli Fel, who makes South-oriented records…

Damizza: The truth is the truth and it speaks for itself.

Eddie G: I don’t think anyone can argue with that…

Damizza: I’ve tried to offer my help, and it fell on deaf ears. They’re down to a shoestring staff now. Some of the talent isn’t even being paid anymore.  It’s sad.

Eddie G: Now let’s talk about the cease and desist notice Mariah Carey sent you about the “Guilty By Association” book…

Damizza: That’s just lawyers running scared.  I would never cheapen her or myself and air someone out like that.  I know in some of this interview, it sounds very blunt.  I’m not trying to say anything about anyone personally.  The truth isn’t always popular, but, it’s always the truth, and when it comes to Mariah, I don’t have anything bad to say about her.  I don’t say anything about her personal business, the “Glitter” album, her health, or anything like that.  In the book, I’m telling stories about our trip to the Super Bowl when we met Al Gore, or when we recorded “Crybaby.”  Me, Snoop Dogg, Battlecat, and Kurupt were under Snoop’s mixing board with flashlights trying to get the microphone to work.  It’s stuff like that.  It’s not negative.  I’m not trying to write a tell-all about people’s business.  But that just goes to show you that when you’ve got someone in the background who has been so involved with all these projects and lives, people get a guilty conscious and are going to say, “Wait a minute, he knows too much, and what if he says this about me?”  That’s not what I’m about.  The book is about positivity, and it’s about a music fan that was lucky enough to work with somebody as beautiful and smart as Mariah Carey.

The thing that does bother me is that she knows me.  We were best friends for a long time and she knows what I’m about.  So if there was a problem, she just should have picked up the phone and said, “Dame, what is this all about?”  I would have sent her the chapter and let her read it.  I’ve always been a big advocate for her, so why would I do something like that to destroy a career I helped bring back?  I mean, let’s go back in time.  When she left Sony with “Glitter” and all those other projects, I took a big step to help out somebody who wasn’t doing so well, and I took on the Sony system at the same time.  She did a lot for me, and in fact, the chapter is more about how smart and generous she is.  She could program a radio station if she wanted to.  She’s an amazing writer.  It’s really about how smart and savvy of a woman she is and how she doesn’t get credit for it.  There’s been people that have tried to use her as a platform to get famous.  I’ve never done that.  She asked me to be in every single one of her videos, she asked me to be on MTV Cribs with her, and I always turned that stuff down.  I didn’t charge her money for producing “I Still Believe.”  She offered me money for that and I said, “No.  I just appreciate you giving me a shot!”  That’s what the chapter’s about. Every Mariah fan will read it 10 times if they want to know how cool she really is. And you may get some surprises too.

What I’m trying to stress is, I didn’t write the book from a vendetta-based point-of-view.  That would make me just like the haters I despise.  I’m just going to tell you the truth on what happened and let you think what you want about it.  I’m gonna tell you the good things that happened working on “Trauma” with DJ Quik.  I’ll tell you about how cool Quik was to teach me all the things he did about the art of production. And I’m gonna break down the deal I brokered that gave him his own label and more money than he’s ever made in his career.

The truth is, I needed to take some time off and digest it all.  The book was my therapy. From the time I was 12, I worked.  I retired at 30 because I was just burnt out.  I became an alcoholic, and I went to rehab.  It got to be too much. And I realized that nobody around me cared.  All they wanted to know was how much I could make them and how big I could make them.  You wake up one morning and you realize that no one really cares about you, and everything around you is fake.  It’s a pretty heavy thing to face.  People would ask me questions about Power, or questions about Mariah, and I wouldn’t give them what they wanted.  They wanted some negative words, and I just wouldn’t do that.  But now, I just think it’s funny that something I did almost 10 years ago, like introducing Mariah to Eminem, is still at the forefront of the news.  That was a mistake, and I’m sorry! (Laughs)

But you can read in-depth about all of this stuff in the book.  I hope that people don’t take this interview as me being bitter and talking trash.  It’s just reality.

Eddie G: And the fans deserve to know the truth…

Damizza: They do.  And like I said before, that’s the other problem.  You can probably count on two hands the number of real music fans left in the music industry now.  So there’s no passion going on.  We took job chances, life chances, and penitentiary chances bringing your favorite artists to the airwaves.  That’s what the book is about. I can only tell you what’s going on from my professional or personal standpoint as someone that played hard and retired from the game as a winner. And that’s just what I’m gonna do.

People forgot what made them successful.  It was having fun!  If you’re not having fun, then why are you doing it?  I didn’t want to be one of those people on the Titanic, aka Power 106, as it was going down just because I thought it was unsinkable.  Anything is sinkable.  And if you say it can’t sink, sooner or later somebody’s gonna make it their mission to bring it down.

“Guilty By Association,” by Damizza, J. Marshall Craig, and Eddie G, will be available at Amazon.com and a bookstore near you on September 11th, 2009.

[Brown Guy]

Damizza is a fast talking hustler.

[CHUCK KNOXXX]

everything he said about power 106 is true tho'. i dont know one person who still listens to that bullshit...

[Dre-Day]

bump.

thanks for the interview Eddie: i might order the book

[Psychotik]

nice interview. it was a good read. dont really listen to radio much anymore and if i do, its not power its the beat/kday.
and Damizza and Mariah were BFs? lol.