Fresno's Diego Redd talks defjam & kanye west

[cobra]

Dawn of the Redd


Fresno's Diego Redd wants to be rap's next big thing on his own, without the hassle of a big label.

By Mike Osegueda
The Fresno Bee

(Updated Monday, January 24, 2005, 6:50 AM)

 
People tell rapper Diego Redd all the time that if he wants to make it, he needs to get out of Fresno. Thing is, he's tried that. Now he has plans to bring the rap world to him.
Kurt Hegre / The Fresno Bee
 

 
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Diego Redd - Kool
Diego Redd - The Show
Diego Redd - The Story

 
 

Diego Redd arrived home after a couple of days in Los Angeles last week and checked his voicemail.


The Fresno rapper asked people to call and leave messages that he'd play throughout the mixtape he's releasing next month.

Going through the messages, he heard a familiar voice.

"Yo whattup! This is Kon the Louis Vitton Don. I'm chillin' with my dog, Diego, one of the hottest out the West Coast, all over the United States. Yo, you killed that Boost Mobile beat, too. Ayo, when you get to Chicago, holla at me, dog. Peace!"

It was Kanye West, the rapper/producer who took the hip-hop world -- and the Grammys -- by storm in 2004.

And he called to give Diego Redd a shout out.

Now that's what's up.

"We're going to Chicago next Wednesday," an excited Diego joked.


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If you're wondering how the multiplatinum West even knows about an unsigned artist from Fresno, let alone is calling to give him a shout out, let's just say this: West has a good ear for talent. That, and Diego Redd, 24, is anything but just an unsigned emcee from Fresno. He's paid his dues.

He's the emcee whom people in Fresno are talking about -- even before he got the Kanye West seal of approval. Now that he has that, he could be the emcee whom people on the West Coast are talking about.

The Kanye-Diego story goes like this: West was commissioned by wireless company Boost Mobile to record a song/commercial. He recruited Ludacris and The Game to appear on the song.

Bobby Naugle, co-owner of hip-hop shop FTK in Visalia and West's merchandise man, told West that Diego would be good on the song. Naugle shot the song back to Fresno, where Diego recorded his verse at DJ Hecktik's Velvet Room studio.

"He was one of the main people locally that I was hoping could do something big," Naugle says.

"Specifically since the West Coast was kind of lacking lately."

When the song was finished, West liked what he heard.

"I thought he killed it," West says. "Good enough, in fact, that I wanted to keep his verse on the song for my mixtape. I think he's one of the rawest cats out the West."

Diego shrugs off the praise, not because it doesn't matter to him. West is one of his favorites, because he's built a defense wall.

He's learned a rule: Record company people are shady. His philosophy now is to look out for himself and his company and not get caught in the politics of music -- again.

"I've had a lot of people tell me good things," Diego says, sounding a bit scorned.

He was young, eager and a bit naive when he signed to hip-hop giant Def Jam Records and got caught in the shuffle at the much-maligned label and left.

He's worked with some of the biggest names in the industry, even wrote songs for some of them, yet he hasn't received an inkling of the praise that some of them have.

Now he's back home in Fresno, decidedly independent, with 300 songs in the vault ready for his second try at making it big in the rap world -- this time on his own path.

"A lot of people try to tell you the only way you're ever gonna make it is if you get out of Fresno," Diego says. "We're trying to do the opposite. We're trying to make it from Fresno."



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Diego Redd grew up as Greg Day in a housing project on the west side of Fresno. If not there, he was living with his mother at the YWCA-YMCA or out of a room at the Vagabond Hotel.

He counts that he's seen his father a total of five times in his life.

His older brother, his hero, seven years his senior, the one Diego began rapping to imitate, went to jail the day he turned 18.

"My life was crazy growing up," he says. "I had a lot of friends die. I had friends commit suicide. I had friends that were killed gangbanging. I had a lot of friends go to jail. But I appreciate all of it, because it made me a better person."

He heeded the word of some of the gangbangers who told him: "You can do this, but I don't recommend you do it. I hope you go to school."

He did. And he discovered his talent was writing. Once in elementary school, he wrote his life story through the eyes of a fictional character named Diego, standing for Do I Ever Get Over, and eventually adopted that as is rap moniker. (The Redd, he took from Malcolm X's nickname, Detroit Red.)

He went on to take journalism classes at Fresno City College. But it was rap that he loved.

From the days of listening to his older brother recite LL Cool J raps to his freshman year at Edison High School where he hopped into freestyle circles with Fresno's other big rap name Planet Asia, a senior at the time, rap was his passion.

Diego had put out a few independent songs by the time a Los Angeles artist contacted him to do a song in 1999. He headed to L.A. to record for a small indie label, but the other artist never showed. Diego recorded his part of the song and the next morning, before he left for Fresno, the label owner stopped him and said: "Do you want to stay in L.A.? What kind of job do you have? I'll pay you double."

"I didn't go back to Fresno to get clothes or my shoes," Diego says. "I just called my mom and said, 'I'm moving to L.A.' "

When that label went under, Diego was left living in a two-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles with a group of friends, with no furniture and no electricity. He'd shower every day at the apartment's gym.

"Just to stay in L.A.," he says. "I didn't want to go back to Fresno as a failure."



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It started with a "Hey, do you remember me?"

At Starbucks, Diego ran into Aaron Anderson, an acquaintance from two years earlier when he first moved to Los Angeles. Anderson was a connected man. He worked on Ice Cube's "Death Certificate" album, worked at Elektra Records and managed such artists as Warren G.

Luckily for Diego, Anderson did remember him. And he put him to work. Anderson became his manager, putting Diego's songs in the hands of people such as Dr. Dre, who wanted to buy a couple of songs, and DJ Pooh, who eventually gave them to Def Jam, whose president at the time, Kevin Liles, wanted to sign Diego right away.

Even before meeting him in person.

It definitely beat sleeping in a recording studio, which Diego was doing at the time.

" 'We had to have you; you're the first artist I've ever heard of being signed without ever meeting,' " Diego recalls Liles telling him when they met for the first time at The Beverly Hills Hotel. "That's like history to me. That came out of his mouth. Kevin Liles' mouth."

Young and eager, Diego went to work at Def Jam in 2001 at 21, writing and recording almost nonstop. He was working with such producers as No I.D., Clark Kent and Supa Dave West and hitting the studio with Xzibit and Nate Dogg.

What separated Diego from the average West Coast emcee was that he wasn't bogged down in gangsterisms. He mixed street life with

intelligence in a way that appeals to the people in the streets and the clubs as well as the backpack-wearing hip-hop purists.

"Diego had an interesting style, something different from a lot of cats that I was hearing," says Mark Breezy, who was Diego's A&R (Artists and Repertory) man at Def Jam. "He wasn't just rapping about materialistic things or being flamboyant; he actually had a story to tell."

Def Jam wasn't the place to be at that time. It was turbulent. Most of the behind-the-scenes folks, Liles and Mark Breezy included, have since left. And Diego was getting a taste of Music Politics 101. A&Rs, who are the go-betweens for labels and artists, noticed how prolific a writer he was and started trying to give Diego's songs to other artists.

He can't give more details because of what he says are pending lawsuits against Def Jam.

"When I was over there, I watched superstars, some of my favorite rappers, do eight records in a whole year," Diego says.

"It's like, 'Damn -- you only did eight songs this year.' It's crazy, I was doing at least a song a day. That's how it happens; they find artists who have a lot of material, especially if it's hot and they'll try to take it. I had offers like this: Give me this song, and we'll let you put another one of your songs on this soundtrack."

"The head guys were getting ready to leave the label," says Breezy, who now runs independent label Baller Records. "Which kinda left everything hanging in the mix. They were more concerned about the heavy hitters on the label. It left everything in a sticky situation where we couldn't really follow through and let the production come to fruition like we wanted it to."

Out of fear of getting shelved, Diego lobbied to get released from his contract and succeeded.

The lesson he learned: Bigger isn't always better.

"I don't want to change anything because that was the best experience ever in my life," Diego says. "I'm not bitter about nothing. I'm glad I learned everything. Now I don't have to deal with it no more."



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To hear Diego speak these days is to hear someone who is a student of the game, who has learned too much about the foul side of record labels.

"There's a lot of people in the entertainment industry who don't even listen to records," he says.

"They just look at SoundScan and if Nelly's hot, they're gonna find six people from where Nelly's from. That's how they do it. That's why I want to blow so bad. Because I know at least I got four other emcees out from Fresno."

It's a blessing and a curse that he's gone through all of this by age 24. A curse because it's frustrating sitting on a wealth of material. A blessing because now he knows better.

"I'm trying to be more of a businessman," Diego says. "I'm still in love with the game, still doing raw lyricism, still spitting. But this time I'm watching my butt for sure."

He has started his own company, Rebel Entertainment, set to release his own music and that of his crew, the Underworld Rebellion. He released his debut album, "Living Proof," with artists such as WC and Yukmouth making cameos. It featured mostly songs written in his pre-Def Jam days. The CD is available at Tower Records, J & C House of Records and FTK.

His mixtape will include some of the songs he wrote during his Def Jam stint and newer material he's been doing with DJ Hecktik since he's been back in Fresno.

"We're just really trying to establish a Central California powerhouse of producers, execs, artists and singers," Diego says. "We've learned that -- guess what -- the population out here is the same as the population in other cities and people out here do buy records, they just don't buy records from people out here. We're just trying to find ways to sell records to people where we are.

"Nelly sold thousands of records where he was from first, then got a deal. Now he sells records to everybody else's girlfriend and cousin and brother. Right now we're just an independent company trying to conquer our market."

And Kanye West?

Diego's set to record some tracks soon with GLC, the next artist out of Kanye's camp.

A good move, but Diego's still got his defense wall up. He's not letting himself get too excited.

"I'd love to be over there, but if not," he says, with a pause for emphasize, "Rebel Music."

[soopadoopaflykid]

this dude is dope and I luv the fact he wants fresno to move on up cuz fresno is like my second home since I go there so often

[youngmessnucca]

who else besides killa tay & planet asia puts it down in fresno?

[cobra]

fresno got alot of niggaz mashing.
diegoRedd & his group tha undaworld rebellion
skeam, ntrigue, saint, money bo$$, a+,
also supreme from yard massive