It's June 17, 2024, 05:00:19 AM
Truth hurts also dropped on aftermath but for some reason got dropped
Found this interview with Last EmperorSpeaking of what hip-hop is about, you were signed to Aftermath at one point, and I feel at that time, right after Dre did his goodbye-to-gangsta-rap track „Been There Done That,“ hip-hop could go in two directions, either to something new and more univer One thing I can say about Dr Dre and his creative talent is that he acknowledges lyricism. Clearly there’s a difference between someone like myself and let’s say, MC Ren, in terms of our content, and the same goes for Ice Cube, but Dre prides himself in being aware of lyrics. Back in the day he worked with D.O.C. from Texas and brought him to L.A. and constructed an album around his work that was already good. So I think Dre’s initial idea when he signed me to Aftermath was that even though I’m different from what he’s used to working with, I still have been lyrical in common with the D.OC.’s and Ice Cubes. He’s saying „Let me build with him, and see which direction we can go in.“ That was his initial disire, but when I came to Aftermath there was a lot of label drama going on. He had put out an Aftermath compilation that didn’t sell what the people at Interscope felt Dr Dre should sell, so they said to him, that the next Aftermath should really sell astronomical figures. We sat down and came up with some real good ideas and concepts for my album, so his heart may have been with me doing my album in the direction that I was going with it, but at the end of the day, we were all employees of Interscope and had to do what they felt. Me and Dre actually had conversations about getting away from the gangsta-type-lyrics, but I think he had to answer to who his bosses were. When you were at Aftermath did you get beats from Dre personally or from outside producers? Well when I first got there, the first couple of months, I had the opportunity to work fairly close with Dre, but then I began to notice that he put me in the company of producers that worked under him. Pretty much what that said was that we should work on it together and Dr Dre’d return later in the process and finish it up. Slowly but surely I began to feel neglected, and the passion he had for the prtoject in the beginning wasn’t there. I began to talk to other artists like Eve and RBX, and they expressed the same sentiment, that they couldn’t go in the studio with Dre either. Knowing that, after a year I left Aftermath, but stayed on Interscope for another six months. But the thing there is Interscope relies on subsidiary labels to put out rap and being directly signed to Interscope I had to deal with these A & R’s that knew nothing about hip-hop. At that point you must have had a vast body of work, songs that you recorded during the period, what happened to that? What me and Dre put together was only like a handful of songs, but what happened while I was there was that I said I wanted to work with Prince Paul and the Beatminerz, and the A & R said „Who are these guys, they haven’t sold any records the last couple of years.“ And I mean Prince Paul is a legend and Beatminerz did great music with Black Moon and Smif N Wessun, so I found out it wasn’t about finding music that complimented my style but about moving units. But I still went and worked with those producers regardless of what they said, and came out with some great music, that appeared via the internet and bootlegging and such. I think I can say that a strong body of work did come out of that situation.
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