DJ Whoo Kid Tells All, G-Unit War Stories & The Making Of ''50 Cent Is The Future'' (Very Long Read)

[BK The Great]

DJ Whoo Kid Tells All: G-Unit War Stories and The Making of '50 Cent Is The Future'


June 1, 2002 marked the dawning of a new era in NYC rap. Fifteen years ago G-Unit released the mixtape 50 Cent Is The Future, produced by DJ Whoo Kid. Following the April 24, 2000 shooting that derailed the release of what should have been 50’s major label debut, Power of the Dollar, Curtis Jackson regrouped and started planning his hostile takeover of the rap game. His first mixtape release, Guess Who’s Back, came on the two-year anniversary of the near-fatal shooting. That tape comprised a mixture of tracks from the abortive Columbia Records project—including the crack game classic “Corner Bodega,” the Ja Rule dis track “Life’s on the Line,” as well as “Ghetto Qu’ran,” widely considered the reason that 50 caught nine bullets in the first place—as well as a selection of new songs recorded in Canada because 50 was allegedly “blackballed” from working in most NYC recording studios. Just over a month later, 50 and G-Unit would roll out the landmark project 50 Cent Is the Future, cementing their bond with Yves Mondesir aka DJ Whoo Kid, one of the most prolific and notorious mixtape DJs in the history of hip hop. He recently stopped by MASS APPEAL HQ for a very rare, free-flowing 90-minute conversasion. We already broke you off a small preview of his capers with Muammar Gadaffi and Donald Trump. Crazy at that was, it was only maybe 2 percent of the uncut raw war stories Whoo Kid shared in this exclusive interview. So read on to find out how a self-described “butt-naked kid from Haiti” made himself the scourge of record execs and the streets’ supplier of fresh sounds while hanging with rap stars and international playboys.



It’s been 15 years since you and 50 dropped that tape. Paint the picture for us. How did that project come together?
That’s the first collab with me. That tape was me actually getting hired as the DJ. ShaMoney XL was his manager at that time. I was already putting mixtapes out, hiding from artists, leaking songs with Envy and DJ Clue so…

Wait, why were you hiding from artists?
Because me, Clue, and Envy, we were leaking like unfinished songs from Jay Z, Nas, B.I.G.—who was alive at the time, whoever else that we ransacked from studios and magazine companies. I don’t wanna shout them out but… because the labels used to send them the albums to rate them. Give them 5 stars or whatever, so…

Or 5 mics let’s say…
Well, we know where we got that from now. [Laughs] But the thing is those guys weren’t getting paid as much. They were interns, they got bullshyt money, but a guy like me or Envy or whatever—Envy kind of like did all the dirty work for Clue ’cause he was already established with Jay Z. He was the guy that went out and got the songs… and another guy named Splash. I used to pay these guys like 500 bucks for all—cause the labels, we kind of like changed the game when they would ink the songs with their drops. They would send these guys one-verse-songs, like it would be the whole album with only one verse so they could rate the song. But one verse is all we need. A verse and a hook—that’s the song. So we didn’t give a fukk if we didn’t have the whole song. Give the guy 500 bucks and they’ll give us every album. Nas, Outkast, Biggie and we would leave and go home and pick the best songs and leak ’em in the streets.

Isn’t that how “Benjamins” first came out?
“Benjamins” was—well, a lot of the Biggie and Tupac, or whoever: Jay Z, Nas. We would have… The label things were from the magazines, but the unfinished stuff was from the studios. Once again, these guys weren’t getting paid. The studio workers, the engineers. I’d go in there give em’ 300 bucks, 500 bucks—that’s more money than they’d make the whole week dealing with these loser, established artists. So they would give me like the DATs. I would have like 3-4 hour DATs of them working, talking, unfinished stuff, them starting a project.

That’s how I did the Biggie “Realest nikkas” with 50. Cause I had a DAT from Trackmasters, which had all kinds of songs on there. But you know, when you’re a DJ and you’re just bored at home and you’re waiting for your tapes to sell, you was going through shyt. So I could hear Puff arguing with Biggie going crazy, cursing. Stuff I can’t talk about because if I talk about it Puff might kill me. For some reason one day I went further down, more toward the end of the DAT, cause you know those DATs are like two hours. So I don’t know why I went towards the end, and it was like a [Biggie] record that Trackmasters produced called “Realest nikkas.”

Then I called like four-five people to make sure… cause I stole whatever I had to steal from that DAT a while ago, so I probably thought there was nothing left. Then I heard this verse and I hear Biggie spazzin’ out and I’m like, “I never heard this verse before.” So I called like five people. I even called, like, Andre Harrell, Russell Simmons. Cause I knew a lot of industry heads. They were like, “Nah, I never heard this.” You know, Chris Lighty—God bless the dead—I called him and he was managing 50 at the time, but he didn’t know what I was doing. I just called him and told him the verse. Everybody was like, “I never heard the verse.” So I got with Red Spyda, did the beat real quick—boom boom boom. I call 50 and I was like, let’s do this. We already leaked “P.I.M.P. Remix,” we had “Wanksta,” we had “In Da Club.” We had all them freestyle songs, whatever he did over.

So I just threw a Biggie and 50 song on Hot97—that’s when I was working at Hot97. So imagine like Funkmaster Flex leaving, then I go on. Puff was in his office chillin’… all of a sudden, I timed it right where before I get off air, I know I’m about to leave. So I did my regular show, then at the end I played the Biggie and everybody in their car is crashin’. Angie Martinez is like “What the fukk is that?” DJ Enuff, whoever was like a radio personality, stopped their car on the highway and was like… [!!!]

The funniest thing is to think that Puff was in the office. I had already done a mixtape with Puff, and he did mad drops for me. So to make matters worse I put a Puff drop on the intro. In the mixtape he’s like “Yeah, DJ Whoo Kid, Bad Boy Shadyville collaboration.” So I put that in the intro and that’s not even him being in the studio, that’s from a mixtape. So I solidified it by putting Puff. [Laughs]

You know 50 don’t give a fukk; he did the song. It was perfect cause he went at Ja Rule in the song—again. Can you imagine Puff in the office, and he never heard this Biggie verse? So he’s flipping tables trying to figure out who did it. I’m hurrying up to play it, once I played it I’m out.

There’s a secret elevator in Hot97 where all the p*ssy DJs go down, so they don’t get beat up for leaking shyt. I was always on that elevator.
So I escaped immediately the back way. By that time Puff figured it out and was on his way to Hot and I’m already long gone. After that my show was pre-recorded. Usually when I leak a big record I pre-record the next three weeks. So you can’t find me for weeks anyway. So here I am on the road with 50 killing shows and Puff is looking for me for weeks like, “fukk is this nikka at? I’ll kill this nikka!” So he never heard… Yo, can you imagine Puff Daddy who was like—he is B.I.G.—and he never heard that Biggie verse? But I have it and I’m putting it out, and it’s everywhere.

I knew it was really bad when I went to Africa to do a festival for Nelson Mandela, like a charity event. So I played “Realest nikkas” in Africa, and then the whole fukkin’ place… that’s when I knew that this leaking records shyt is some serious shyt. When you’re in South Africa and you have Nelson Mandela here… I had all kinds of leaders with me, and when I played that song… Like, this is our first time in Africa and they’re going crazy. There was no internet back then. There was no social media. I guess the hype and the rumors were so crazy that 15,000 African men—cause there’s no women at these concerts—there’s, like, slippers flying everywhere.

That’s another reason people call me Whoo Kid, because they never knew who the kid was that was leaking all the songs. In reality, I got the name from my mother taking shyt and my father like, “Whooey!” So that’s how I got my name. It was just coincidence that I was stealing songs, so I don’t know—maybe it was just fate.

Everything is just fate. I used to see 50 beating up drug dealers across the street from my house, he was the fat kid beating them up, getting money back. I’m over here, Haitian kid, watering my lawn. So if you imagine like ten years later I’m with this guy doing 50 Cent Is The Future like, you don’t see shyt like that. On my block Tupac used to walk by when he was in Digital Undergound. Nas, Biggie, they used to get songs from Tall Stretch. But a lot of major drug dealers was on my block too. A lot of them are dead now, but 50 Cent used to come up there and beat everybody up on his little baby ninja. He was like 300 pounds on a little-ass baby ninja. Pull over, beat everybody up…

I’m just looking at this guy beating people up, never thinking that ten years later that I’m gonna be with this guy in front of like, 30,000 people. It’s just mind-boggling how this hip hop shyt is not planned. That’s why he created Gods Plan, he created like 50 Cent Is The Future, he created all these titles. Cause’ those mixtapes go with, like, what we experienced with this random, fate shyt. You can’t just be like “Yo, this is what we’re gonna do, this is what we’re gonna see” you know, dealing with like terrorists. We performed for Qadaffi, we hung out with like, come on, Nelson Mandela! I would never thing doing a mixtape that I’d be hanging out with Nelson Mandela.

That’s such a bugged-out image. G-Unit with Mandela in Africa is bizarre to me
It was the illest shyt ever. That’s when I knew this shyt is serious man. When I got back I was like “Yo…!” But let’s get back to how I started me doing 50 Cent Is The Future.

I took you off topic, but that’s alright.
I had to tell you that story. That shyt is outta control. I’ll tell you the end result of Puff, how he finally found me, later on.

So 50 Cent Is The Future was the first time I got hired to work with 50, to DJ for 50 and start the mixtapes. For that first tape I actually handed my drops to Sha Money, cause he was putting it all on Pro Tools—whatever was the earliest version of Pro Tools. He did it, so I actually didn’t mix that. When I first came to meet 50 he had just finished healing from his shooting.

You say 50 was fat when you first met him?
That was way before. We used to call him BooBoo… He was like 300-something pounds.

So how did he get so diesel?
When they shot his ass and he was on a liquid diet and he lost it. You know they shot his mouth.

Yeah, can’t eat.
Sha Money was like “You gotta go meet him,” but I’m like “Damn, I gotta go see him? He got shot in his face… Like, his mouth.” I thought I was gonna see, like… I don’t know, Frankenstein or some shyt. I’m thinking he’s gonna be like spitting blood at me. So I’m like, “I don’t wanna meet him. Just say I’m his DJ.” But Sha insisted. “Nah, you gotta go see him!” so when I go see him, all I saw was like a dimple and I was like… “Yo! I thought he was gonna look really bad.” I guess they did a good job. He was like, “I’m ready to get back at it. Get ready!” But at that time we weren’t even on Eminem’s shyt. Everyone was just sweating the freestyles.

So 50 was like “Yo, I need a fukkin’ DJ. I don’t care who it is, but we ain’t doing no interviews, we ain’t doing no trials and auditions. It has to be like a blood relative. We’re getting every gun possible, every Uzi, bulletproof vests, and we’re gonna go on this hood tour, like 300-city hood tour. Every dirty club, shoot em up, bang bang. But I need a DJ. I just got shot the fukk up, I’m back now. Who should I hire?” And Sha Money XL was like “Well, Whoo Kid is my cousin.” So that’s when he just called me out of nowhere.

 

[BK The Great]

So Sha Money called your phone?
I was at home with my then-wife at that time. I was known, but I wasn’t super famous. He was like, “Yo, you need to go meet 50. You’re gonna be the DJ.” And I was like “What?” I knew 50 from when he was Boo Boo back in the day, beating up drug dealers. He did Power of A Dollar. He had, like, mad songs out back then. He wasn’t super popular. But Sha was like, “He needs a DJ, and I need you to meet him so he could approve you. But I think you’re gonna be the DJ anyway ’cause you’re my blood relative.”

So when I get there I go to the basement and the first time I meet 50 cent, Lloyd Banks, and Tony Yayo the first time… When I walked in on them he’s telling them they’re gonna be rappers. Like this is me walking in and he’s like, “Yo Banks, you’re gonna be this rapper, Yayo, you’re gonna be rapping. There’s no more selling drugs.”

So I walk in on that conversation and then once I walked in on that conversation I see, like Banks lookin’ mad tough, Yayo looked like he wanted to rob me. He was like “Yo, I wanna rob this nikka,” cause I had on a lot of jewelry. If you see outside of Sha Money’s house, everybody was there, like Chris Lighty, everybody… But you’d see Benzes, I had a Lambo at that time, Ferraris.

Any homeboy had a luxury car, but G-Unit had a dirty-ass, fukked-up van with bullet holes. It was 50’s car with Yayo and Banks in it. They didn’t even get the Eminem money yet.
A van with bullet holes in it…?!
The most shyttiest van you could think of and these guys drive this shyt to the Poconos. Poconos to studio, then back to Poconos with guns, vests, everything. I don’t know who was tryna kill them, I don’t know. I was there just to get hired to DJ. Not even hired to DJ, I was forced, like literally they were like, “You’re the DJ.”

Basically because you’re Sha’s cousin?
Me and and him is related. So I really didn’t get hired, I was told I was gonna be the DJ. So when I get there I had to go through some questions with 50. He just finished dealing with the shooting and everything so he was like “I’m gonna ask you some questions before we even go further. You met Banks, Yayo, whatever. Don’t worry about them.” I was, like, nervous because I thought I was gonna get beat up by them. When you go downstairs there’s like guns everywhere, there’s vests on the table. I was like “Yo, am I like in a drug deal or some shyt? I just came here to get a job.”

50 asked me some key questions. He was like, “Yo, if two guys are coming at me or a crew of guys, and they got guns and they’re heading my way, What would you do if me and you was together?” And I was like “shyt, I’m outta here!”
I sad, “I’m not fukkin hangin around. fukk you.” And he was like “What? Oh a-ight. You’re hired. I don’t even need to ask you any more.” So I was like “What?” and he was like “Yeah, you’re hired. You’re the DJ.”

Why do you think he wanted to hear that answer?
All these years I never really asked him why he approved me so quickly, but I think knowing him, he wanted to know what kind of people were around him. So if he knows that I’m outta here, he knows how to maneuver or how to react with who’s around him. He has one guy who’s gonna do whatever, shoot everybody. I’m gonna be the guy that’s outta here. So he gotta figure out what he’s gonna do. He needs to know who’s around him. Plus I’m more of a realist. I’m not gonna be like, “Yo, I’m gonna jump in front of them and shoot at them, cover you. I’m gangster!” He liked the fact that I was very realistic with those scenarios.

So once I got hired 50 was like, “I need you to call your wife and tell her that you’re not gonna be home for like, two years.”
Two years!?
Two years straight. “We have 300 shows booked. Every hood club, we did like the whole United States. Every hood party.” Connecticut shoot-em-up—I’ve seen everything. I’m so desensitized with violence in parties. If there’s a shootout I don’t even move. I just be like… it’s like the matrix. I could tell who’s running. You gotta understand when you do a G-Unit show, like back in those days before we did concerts and got signed to Eminem and all that crap, I’ve seen it all: shoot-outs, blood, some dead idiot in the back and we still have to do the show. Cause’ if we don’t do the show more people were gonna die. I mean…

Wait, how do people get killed in the back? Was there a money dispute before the show?
Well, before we got to the show, I think it was North Carolina, it was a sold out. 6,000 venue. It was like, beyond hood. Every drug dealer on the planet, every gangster was in there. But I think somebody fought before we got there and they killed the guy in the back. The body is still there, police came. But the promoter is begging the police, like, if they shut this down it’s gonna be worse. ‘Cause I guess the hype for 50 Cent is so bad that they were like, “Yo you shut this down, more people are gonna die.” So they were like, “Let this guy perform, and we’re gonna do the investigation while he goes on.” So literally while we’re performing they’re doing an investigation behind the stage.

That’s why when you see the movie Get Rich Or Die Trying it sounds outrageous that he killed someone and is still performing, but we really went through that during tour. I mean, the story is a little extra-fabricated, you know like killing the villain or whatever, but somebody did die in the back and we still had to do the show. Cause’ if we didn’t do the show it would’ve been more people dead and people wanting their money back. Some people paid like thousands of dollars to be near him, you know, like the tables with bottles. We don’t have to go into that detail but it was some mad money being distributed. Cause’ if we were to stop that we would’ve got fukked up. So we did the show and got the fukk out of there.

So that basically was the beginning of me getting hired for 50 Cent Is The Future, and not to mention the beginning of a new style of even doing mixtapes. Cause’ back then I told you, Me, Envy, Clue, we were stealing songs. So it was hard to steal like 10 artists’ songs and have 10 hits. Most of our mixtapes were like 15 stolen records and like 4 hits, ’cause a lot of it is throwaway songs, unfinished shyt. You know, it’s just amazing that we even sold that much music. But the fact that they were exclusive and nobody got ’em, that’s why we sold them.

But dealing with 50, dealing with him started this new thing where it was just me and one artist. So I concentrated on 50 Cent’s fan base. He redid all the hit singles that was out there on 50 Cent Is The Future.

So where did you lay the vocals and all that? Where was the tape actually recorded?
In ShaMoney XL’s basement—it was all done right there. Knocked out real quick. I think they did it in like a day or two. Then I went home to do my drops cause’ I wasn’t allowed to mix the first one. So the first one [Guess Who’s Back] if you really hear it, there’s like no gunshots or stuff like that. So once I was hired to do the second tape and start doing all of them, I went home and I tried to understand who he is. Once I assessed who he is and his rap style I went and got the movie Heat because I had the replay machine from Juvenile.

Juvenile taught me how to use the replay machine to do shows with, but the guns on there were kinda cheesy. So what I did was I went and got the movie Heat. There was a million gun sounds on there that sound realistic, so I stole all the gun sounds, picked the best ones, and I remixed them into mixtape guns. So instead of me using the cheesy generic shyt, that’s why there were so many guns in all the G-Unit mixtapes. It was like [gun sound effects]. He was a gangster rapper, so for me to be on stage when we first got our set, we had a $400,000 set. I was like, 50’s a gangster rapper, I’m not gonna be like [cheesy sound effect]. Gun shots need to go off, fukking aggressive shyt. Like, I had to bring the scenario, like a movie. We used to go to Get Rich Or Die Trying concerts and it was like being in a movie because I brought the sounds. Then I combined all the show stuff with the mixtapes, so the whole movement is just some movie I created. So it could combine with the way you see 50 Cent. I wanted to protect his image by making the tapes gangsta too.

And he was dealing with the industry in a gangsta way too.
I was having beef with like LL Cool J, cause’ these guys had singles on the radio. When 50 Cent did them over people wanted to hear 50’s version more than the original… They would still get paid, but they would lose their notoriety and you know, the popularity of the record cause’ 50 did it better than them. So we changed the game by doing people’s records over and different hooks too. Then we went a little further, got artists involved. Me, I was like, our popularity was so crazy I used all those resources to reach out to major artists like Snoop Dogg. Snoop Dogg didn’t understand what a mixtape was. So I sent him “P.I.M.P.” cause 50 Cent did “P.I.M.P.” Snoop was on that pimp shyt, so I sent it to him so I could have that connection with him.

Then I flew to Cali to finally meet Snoop to knock out the record, but then I’m telling Snoop we should do a mixtape like 50. He’s like “Whaddup Cuz? fukk that free shyt, cuz.” You know cause’ he’s coming from Dr. Dre, he sold like 10 million records, and he’s like “fukk is this free shyt cuz?” And I’m like “Yo, while you’re in the studio for 8 months bullshytting, keep trickling shyt t your fans so they could be happy. Like a freestyle, some free shyt, then keep them at bay till your shyt come out.” That’s the formula 50 had. He never wanted to disappear for months at a time like Jay Z or Nas and all these guys. These guys will be in the studio for like 2-3 years then come out with a classic album. He didn’t wanna be that guy. There was no internet at that time, it was straight hype.

Was that 50’s idea?
It was kind of like his idea cause’ he treated the mixtape as if it was drugs. He’s the drug dealer, he converted that whole system to the mixtape, and I was the distributor. He gave me the product and I had to go distribute it, literally every 8 weeks. We did G-Unit, I think the G-Unit Radio mixtapes went to 25. The first 5 was the classics. 50 Cent Is The Future actually got him his deal with Eminem cause Paul Rosenberg got the mixtape, gave it to Eminem, Eminem fell in love with it, begged Dr Dre to sign him. I don’t know if this is real or not but Dr Dre was a little sketchy about dealing with 50 cause’ he just came from the shooting.

 

[BK The Great]

Dr Dre came from hell with Suge Knight and he was like “I’m in a nice, safe place right now. I don’t need to be dealing with another guy who just went through all the shootings. Now I have to deal with him?”

So Eminem was like “I’ll put him on my label and he’ll be my responsibility.” That’s why the whole Shady/Interscope thing got set up and put together because Eminem really took a big risk on 50. And you know Chris Lighty who was about to get black-balled in the industry, cause’ you know the Irv Gottis and all these guys. They were like, “You dealing with 50, then we’re not gonna fukk with you!” Cause you know Chris Lighty was managing so many artists that were like on the enemy side of whatever 50 Cent was doing. So he actually took a big risk.

You’re goin’ too fast now. Gotti had Murder Inc, Ja Rule obviously…
And Chris Lighty was like the monopoly of management back then.

He had Busta, Missy, he had Puffy.
Yeah, basically everybody. He had Puff, he had Pharrell, NORE, he had like almost everybody, you know. He had so much that he did albums, Violator albums. Cause he managed like, almost everybody.

So Gotti was trying to blackball him?
Cause’ he found out he was about to start managing 50.

How could he blackball someone that powerful?
I mean, he was like “You’re not gonna have my artist.” So he kept Ja Rule from him, he kept the whole Murder Inc, you know… He tried to swipe him with his connects too. Cause I guess Gotti had Jay Z or whoever. So he’s just going around the industry saying “Yo, don’t fukk with this guy ’cause this is our enemy.” So that’s why 50 was really heartless and no holds barred with the industry because he knew that it was really… He just finished getting shot the fukk up. Now he’s like, up against the world. Like, the industry is trying to stop him from coming out.

That’s why he was so heartless when it comes to freestyles, going at you. People be like “Why is he so heartless? Why is he always like…he’ll kick the guy while he’s down.” That’s how it was in the beginning. That’s why I never questioned him when he was going at an artist, killing them. I’ll just be like “Damn, I gotta put this shyt out? I’m the one that’s gonna get fukkin’ caught out there.” That’s why I hid for years. Like I used to drop the shyt and get the fukk out.

But it was easy back then because I didn’t have to put no other music out cause’ once I deaded all that stealing shyt, I had to hide. So to end it off, before we even did our European run, Snoop Dogg had issues with Suge. He called me and…this is why I think fate is crazy cause’ in like matters of weeks, “P.I.M.P.” was killin’ it. I knew it was serious when I saw that we’re actually shooting a music video. I knew it was a reality when I was on set in L.A., Hype Williams, Lil X, and we’re shooting P.I.M.P. remix and Snoop is in the video. I’m talking to Snoop, I’m like “Yo, we’re really doing a music video from a freestyle you did on our mixtape” and he’s like “Yo, this is some crazy shyt.”

So that’s when I introduced Snoop to the mixtape market and I’m over here doing crazy Snoop mixtapes. I must’ve done like 50 mixtapes with Snoop after that. Cause’ he just got addicted to it. Like he saw how his fans react, and the engagement. There was no Instagram, there was no Twitter back then. It was all from hype.





So he got issues with Suge Knight and this fukkin’ guy wants to call me and send me a Tupac verse. So this time “Realest Killas” was created. This was literally a couple weeks after so that was on I think the 5th edition and shyt. This time Chris Lighty is aware of why I’m calling him for verses. “So I got this Tupac…”

“Yo what?! Yo don’t fukk with me Whoo Kid! Yo, let me make some phone calls.” So for some reason I guess he didn’t pay attention to the fukkin’ memo in the office. fukkin’ Tupac moms, I think somehow, Biggie’s moms called Tupac’s moms and was like, “There’s this DJ Whoo Kid guy, he did a song with my son, but rumor has it he has a Tupac verse now.” I think I was bragging maybe and told somebody in the industry and it got to her. So I got the first cease and desist ever sent to Violator for some record that I’m supposedly supposed to do with Tupac.

This was supposed to be like a secret, like this wasn’t supposed to be out. In this song 50 Cent was killing Ja Rule in it like “You think you Tupac? Well this Tupac!” Then I had… first of all it went from “Realest nikkas” to “Realest Killas!” Now on this song, Tupac is on some outer space shyt. You do a song with Tupac, the whole world is hearing it. I already had so many records with this fukkin guy. I put 50 with Sean Paul… We already had too many songs.

I had a Lambo going to Canal Streer picking up money, that’s how crazy it was. Then I started DVDs. I was filming everybody. It got really bad. I had so much shyt, you don’t wanna know what the fukk I was doing. I got sued, but that was way down the line. But just finishing the situation with the Tupac thing, you know, I was like “fukk.” Lighty called me and was like, “Yo this cease and desist, do not do this fukkin’ record” and I’m in the studio with Stretch Armstrong and Red Spyda and Stretch is like “Damn, how the fukk he know that?” I was like “I don’t know”. So what I did was like, “You know what, I know what to do.” So I call 50. I know 50 like the back of my fukkin’ hand. And I’m like, “Yo, Chris Lighty called me and was like we can’t do this song. He’s saying ‘fukk that, it ain’t coming out.’” I added an extra “fukk that!” [Laughs] And 50’s like “What?!” You know him, he has to be the boss. He’s like “Nah, fukk that. I’m the man, I’m the boss. Do that shyt, mix it now!”

And I’m like “What? Alright man.” So I hang up on him. Once I got the approval from him… Cause’ I knew if I called him and was like “Yeah Tupac’s mom called and we have a cease and desist” it probably would’ve been a different answer. But I am the king of manipulating people so I called and I said mad shyt like “Chris Lighty’s the man. You better listen to him.” And he’s like “What? I’m the ma! fukk outta here. Whoo Kid mix that shyt. Put it out now.”

So I’m like “You heard it from the guys mouth!” So me and Stretch Armstrong are mixing it, why the fukk is Ruff Ryders doing a session next door in Stretch Armstrong’s studio? And then Chris Lighty comes to meet the whole Ruff Ryder camp, like DMX, fukkin Swizz Beats, Dame Grease the producer. So he went to go meet all of them and he just happened to stop by. He’s hearing people laughing and we’re mixing the shyt. Yo, he opens the door into the session like, “Whoo Kid, what are you doing?! I told you! That’s it man!”

Yo, we looked like two kids man. Stretch Armstrong was already old at that time. He looks like grandpa right now, but he was already old. We’re hiding under the monitor like fukking losers. That’s why I’m saying fate is crazy. Like why the fukk is Chris Lighty there? The day we’re mixing this Tupac shyt, Chris Lighty comes to see Ruff Ryders and walks into our shyt and curses me the fukk out. “What the fukk! I just told you not to do it!”

So here I go again. We mixed it still. Lighty leaves so I call 50 again like, “Yo, I don’t know what the fukk happened. Chris Lighty just came in here.” And 50’s like, “I don’t give a fukk, get it out!”

“Alright boss!” [Laughs] Yo, I went on Hot97—it was over. That shyt was like… We got cease and desist. That’s why 50 did like 3 or 4 songs for Tupac’s album, to try and calm that shyt down. It was mad G-Unit and Tupac songs that he did for Pac’s mother and I guess for that… So to make it worse, that verse that this guy gave me, Suge Knight wakes up now like “Motherfukker!” And this is another guy you don’t wanna steal a verse from. Cause’ he basically owned Tupac. Suge Knight is Tupac. Imma give you the double death: both Puff and Suge Knight.

So they’re both mad at you?
They’re both mad. Puff didn’t find me yet, he’s still tryna find my ass. He can’t catch me, I’m in and out, I’m the king of hiding. But Suge Knight… I had a fukking show. The song is out and everybody’s going crazy. This guy paid me like 5 Gs to DJ some party in L.A., but he’s bigging up the party like crazy. “Whoo Kid’s gonna be there!” so I’m like “Damn,” because I didn’t even think about it—like Suge or any of them. So when I get to the club, I’m chillin and shyt, setting up. Then all of a sudden the promoter I’m kind of cool with, he runs back. I’m about to play the first record.

I’m about to start the party with “In Da Club,” then the promoter runs back like, “Suge Knight is outside right now with 30 Mexicans. what is going on here?”

And he was like, “I called the police already. Police is on the way. We need to get you out of here.” First of all I got paid 5 Gs to play one song. I’m getting the fukk out of dodge! So once I play“In Da Club” like 70% of the club turns around and looks at me and stares. My crew is in the VIP with mad Mexican girls and shyt.

So these chicks is like bad as hell, but my friends is ugly as hell. So I think they set us up to have bad bytches hold my homeboys at bay. They were Latina, and they were bad as fukk—but my friends were ugly as fukk. They couldn’t even get a dirty, dead bytch. So why are they all over them? But I didn’t give a fukk, I got paid, I’m DJing and shyt. I was like, “Yo, Suge Knight is outside” and my boys like “What?” and pushes one of the Spanish chicks off of him.

I think they set us up with the chicks to be there. I think he even organized where the club booked me so I could be there. So I’m getting the fukk outta there through the back and Mike Lighty was there, Chris Lighty’s brother. He was like our road manager at that time. I give him a little piece of whatever party I got, just make sure I’m safe. So I told Mike Lighty, “Yo Suge Knight is in front of the club, we need to get out the back of the club.” So I get out the back of the club, the van pulls up and I don’t know what’s going on in L.A., it looked like it was like a movie set. There was nobody in the streets. It was like dead. All you see is lights and darkness and no one in the streets. So I’m running to the car and shyt and I’m telling my boy the driver, “Yo Suge Knight is here” and he’s like, “What? Get the gun!”

So everybody is tryna grab this old, dusty, gun. shyt looked like it’s never been used. They’re like trying to hold it, dropping it and shyt. Once I get in the van they’re running around the corner, like mad Mexican guys. I think it was some 38th street—one of them sets that protects Suge or whatever. So they’re running around to chase me to hold me, and I jump in the car. Once I jump in the car, my friend’s like, “I can see knives” or some stupid shyt. They’re getting closer and closer, once they get close to me the police came right at the same time and pulled over and somehow we just sped off.

 

[BK The Great]

All you see is the police come in and their lights surrounded them. Suge Knight left and then like an hour later, I don’t know how Suge Knight got Sha Money’s number. He is having a bubble bath or some dumb shyt and his phone goes off and Suge is on there, “I wanna talk to 50 Cent. I got your number. I think 50 gave it to me.” Sha’s like “What the fukk did they give this nikka my number for?”

So I guess they put them together. I don’t know what they talked about but I think he felt because I was DJing the club, 50 was gonna be there too. So he was gonna knock out everything all at once and figure out why I got this stupid song. Cause’ 50’s on the song. So I escape out of there and my dumb ass comes to New York. We’re supposed to do Saturday Night Live, and I’m like “fukk, we gotta do Saturday Night Live? We have to go rehearse. We have to be there.” You can’t just do Saturday Night Live and get the fukk out, so I’m doing rehearsal and shyt. I’m with Quest;ove and this shyt’s funny as fukk. This is Questlove before he went to The Tonight Show.

So we’re doing this shyt, chillin’, and now I finally rehearsed like a couple of the songs. So I’m trying to get to the dressing room. Then I see like a head. I see Puff looking for me, cause’ he knew I was there rehearsing. Cause’ if 50 Cent is there rehearsing, I have to be there. So his office, you know Daddy’s House ain’t far from SNL, so he’s up there. So I see him but he don’t see me. I don’t know if you understand SNL the way they got routes to the dressing rooms and shyt. I start running to the dressing room like fukking trying to get there quick. As long as I get to where 50’s at, I’m safe. Puff ain’t gonna touch me. But he fukking somehow interconnected with me at the cross in the hallway and put me in a headlock.

“Yo! I want you to tell me right now. We’re going to 50 right now!” so 50’s over here eating some veggie burger or some dumb shyt. The door opens and you see me in a headlock with Puff coming in. “Yo I need your DJ, I need Whoo Kid to tell me right now where he got that fukkin song from.” And I was like “Yo Fif, come on man! No snitchin’ man. That’s code of the streets. I can’t be tellin’ where I got my sources from and shyt.” And 50’s laughing, 50’s dying like, “Come on Whoo Kid, man.” Cause’ it’s not like he was choking me to death— it was like a joking headlock, but it could lead to a tighter squeeze. So Puff just had me like “I want you to tell me right now, cause’ I never heard this Biggie verse, I’m going crazy right now.”

So 50’s like “Come on man, just tell him where you got it from” and I’m like “I can’t do that man.” Puff’s like “Yo! Tell me right now!” So finally I was like ,“Trackmasters!” He’s like “What! Trackmasters?! I’m gonna kill those guys!”

I don’t know what happened after that. That was it. But all those mixtapes created these fukked-up scenarios but when it got crazy was when we signed with Eminem. 50 Cent Is The Future got me my job, got us our deal, got us touring. It went from hood shows to stadiums literally overnight, cause we had to open up for Eminem. Then the Eminem fans and the Eminem market just saw us killing it, and everyone loved the 50 Cent Get Rich or Die Trying story anyway. So it was overkill. it was too much going on. It was overwhelming. That was only like 2% of what that tape did.

You are just blowing my mind. I’m still stuck at him saying “You’re gonna be away for 2 years.” Did you have any second thoughts about taking that gig?
Well it looked like I had no choice. First of all, I wanted to get out of hiding from people cause’ I had like NORE looking for me, I got kidnapped by Big Pun.

Kidnapped?!
Like in the van with Pun, Uzis and everything. I’ve been through a lot of shyt.

How do you get out of that?
He let my ass go, that’s how I got out of that. Big Pun was a gangsta, and that’s from leaking songs. I’ve spoken about it. His son came to me, I recently saw Fat Joe and was like “I haven’t seen you since the kidnapping.” Cause’ I used to be cool with Fat Joe. We met like one time after the kidnapping and we were gonna start working together. But when I teamed up with 50 with the mixtapes and he starts dissing Fat Joe, that deaded whatever relationship. I always thought Joe was a cool motherfukker, and Pun too. But I was not a DJ that was known, I was doing whatever to sell tapes.

It was like an adrenaline rush. You gotta understand. It’s like doing drugs or coke every week. You get these songs and you find out, “Yo, I got this Nas shyt and it’s not out.” And you leave where you’re at. I left Queens, I’d go to the city and wait outside for hours for this guy to bring me the DAT. I’d get the DAT, go home. It’s like an adrenaline rush to hear something nobody on the planet heard yet. Not even Nas heard his mixed version or maybe he just don’t even care about it and threw it away. And when you put it out and it’s selling, you’re picking up money from it. It’s like a weird adrenaline rush and a combination of danger involved with it.

If people ain’t looking for you or trying to beat you up, then you’re not really doing shyt. That’s what I used to tell Envy.
Me and Envy was like, there was other DJ’s that got caught, they got beat up—mad DJ’s I know. I don’t wanna embarrass them, they’re not really poppin’ right now. They got beat up, they got knocked out, shyt like that. I remember someone leaked something and Treach went to the show and knocked the DJ out. The DJ’s unconscious. But those stories make it worth dealing with because I’m like “Yo, if I’m not causing trouble…” Because there was no internet, you can’t tweet like, “fukk you nikka, I got your song. You can’t find me.” There was none of that shyt. So it would go back to like, if I leaked like a Raekwon… First of all, when we got Wu-Tang songs, they were the most feared group, period. So we’d be holding the CD like, “I got a Raekwon and Nas song. Should we do it?” We’d have like meetings. “I don’t know!” [Laughter]

And you still did it. Did you ever not put something out cause’ it was just too hot?
Hell yeah. There was mad shyt. First of all, there was so much shyt we had that if we put it out they would know where I got it from and then that person… Cause’ I had like key people at every label and I didn’t wan them getting fired. Cause I needed my song situation. To the point where I would make up like… When the internet game started coming in and then songs was getting leaked online, me and a lot of DJs… I remember one time I shot a video with The LOX and you know, Styles P is like the guy who stabs you for like, no reason. Like you get him mad, he’s gonna stab you—you’re outta here. He’s gonna cut the fukk outta you. So me and Dan the Man are shooting a video with The LOX. I don’t know how I got the whole LOX to shoot the video for this tape and it took me forever to get in that crew. That crew is like impossible to get in at that time, but I don’t know how I infiltrated that crew. But why that week I leaked a Styles P single from his album that’s dropping? So I heard he was out so I was like “Damn. I gotta hurry up and do this music video before he figures it out.”

We’re almost done, I think Sheek Louch was the last scene. He had a shotgun. He was like aiming it or whatever. So I’m like dancing with it, like “Hurry the fukk up with this scene!” So Dan the Man shooting like all this shyt, and I’m like, “Yo Dan let’s get the fukk outta here before these guys figure it out.”

So Jadakiss came, knocked out his shyt. Then all of a sudden, finally we cut—we’re packing up out real quick to get out. “Whoo Kid you the man!” So they’re in Yonkers in some run-down building. We were jumping over things, missing steps to get downstairs and shyt like that. Then all I hear is, “Whoo Kid!” And that’s Styles P screaming. I don’t know what happened but I jumped in the car with Dan. I had the bullshyt Honda Accord with the lights that go up and shyt. I looked like a total loser. I was like, “We’re outta here!” and we never even put the video out! We shot this crazy video…but I swear to God if I was there, I would’ve got beat up.

You gotta understand, if you’re not leaking these songs, that’s why there’s only like 6 of us, Drama and all these guys came in later cause’ they copied my formula of me flying down south, meeting…cause’ you know New York was the shyt, everything was revolving around New York. 50 Cent, Jay Z, Nas, Mobb Deep. fukk everybody else. But for me to move and sell out of state and down south, I had to go down south to meet the Trick Daddy’s, the TI’s, Lil Wayne, he was like 14. That’s how I met Young Buck, got him signed with us.

 

[BK The Great]

You got Young Buck signed?
Well, I DJed for Juvenile for a couple weeks when he had “Back That Azz Up,” so he was with Juvenile. But when I went back down there I linked him up with another person. So when Juvenile came to meet up with 50, that’s how Buck got on the fourth mixtape where he did the south shyt. Cause’ 50 needed a South element. I mean, we were loved down South, but we didn’t have a South artist. So, I don’t know, rumor has it he stole Young Buck from Juvenile, whatever. But Juvenile and Buck got their own issues.

Like I said, I was a distributor. 50 Cent was a drug kingpin and I was the distributor.
So for me to like give good product, people still had the product but they still had animosity. You know “fukk New York. They think they’re the shyt.” But by me balancing out the hate, I was the neutralizer. First of all, 50 did the song but me getting T.I. on the tape it kind of said, “You know what? 50’s cool. He has down south artists.” So it kind of like smooths down the hate. But at the same time I meet all these future guys that are running it now. Lil Wayne was like 14, he came to the club I said “Yeah I’ll do your tape.” He came to the club with like 100 little kids! This is like a fukking jazz festival in New Orleans. Then the guy was like “Yo, I’ll book you to do a party” and there’s like 100 kids outside. There’s adults here with suits! I’m like “That’s Lil Wayne, let him in man!”

I didn’t think about it, I was DJing, and he comes in with 100 kids. But he was like 14 when I was dealing with him. I made it a factor that I had to go down South and link up with these guys and show respect. From Lupe, to this guy. Then I did tapes with almost all of them, or songs with them, or videos. Some kind of interaction where it helps our benefit too. So now I got the South and everybody cool. I did that for the west. Believe it or not, ran this shyt almost like 15 years straight. It don’t matter who was new that came out, it always came back to Snoop Dogg.

I believe it.
I guess it took the new kids like the Kendricks. Cause’ if it wasn’t for internet and social media, Snoop Dogg will always be looked at as West Coast. Snoop Dogg, Dre, and Tupac—well that’s in my eyes. There’s a lot of classic dudes, I’m not disrespecting them, but it was to a point where everything goes back to Snoop Dogg. So I have to fukking figure out some shyt where Dr. Dre was like, “Come to my studio. I know you doing all the tapes, you know how to sell shyt. You’re good at choosing songs, you fukkin’ thief. So get ya ass over here. I’m gonna let you hear three artists and you tell me who’s hot and I’ll work with them.” So these artists didn’t even know who I was there for. I sat in the session and I’m just hearing them. I was like “eh.” Throwing up and shyt. I couldn’t even sell these nikkas for three dollars. So I told him all three artists was wack. He had a girl and two dudes. He was like “Man…” And I was like, “Hell no” and he was like, “Hell yeah!” So he had these ill filtered water systems. So I’m drinking the water, enjoying Dr. Dre’s studio and shyt, and he leaves mad cause’ I’m a realist. His boy, his partner, I forget his name, the guy that ran the label with him, they both mad. “Whoo Kid told me these guys suck!” Meanwhile I’m in there chillin’, about to go back to my hotel. Before I’m about to leave I look to my left and there’s a guy in the studio going H.A.M. rapping.

Like he’s been rapping for an hour. I go in there and I’m like, “Who are you man? What’s going on here? You sound kinda like you from the east coast of something.” And he said “Yeah, I’m The Game.” I was like, “You don’t sound like west coast” you know west coast is more like classic gang-bang lyrics and you know, we never connected with that. We just liked the lifestyle of the movies, killing eachother. But you know, a lot of songs didn’t crossover into the east coast.

The sound was very specific to the L.A…
Yeah like, not one-hit-wonders but one-hit joints would infiltrate us. There’s never been somebody that’s like “Alright, this motherfukkers west coast, but we like him”. So when I met The Game he was like “Yeah I’m Dre’s artist too but I’m on the wall, I’m just collecting dust”. So you know, they don’t know what to do with me. I’m like “Damn, you sound fukking like you just killed somebody” he had mad tattoos. He had Eazy-E, he had fukkin’ everybody on that shyt. I think I saw like Marco Polo, this nikka had every fukkin’ historical motherfukker on there.

I was like “Yo. Let me start fukkin’ with you. Since you’re technically Dr. Dre’s artist, 50 Cent is not gonna mind me adding you at the end of our tapes.” So he came in roughly during G-Unit radio. When I started doing G-Unit radio, G-Unit was more open because I was dealing with so many artists like Mobb Deep, this guy. That’s why we had such a big crew, M.O.P., everybody was on that shyt.

So as long as you did a song with the crew, like with Banks, Yayo, or with 50, you could get on there. But the fact that he was technically Dr. Dre’s artist I made him as a secret bonus record at the end of the CD. So 50 never questioned it because I told 50, “That’s Dr. Dre’s artist and Dr. Dre asked me to do a favor for him.” meanwhile Dr. Dre never asked me to do a favor. I just wanted like a west coast artist to fukkin sell. So by putting him on there he was more famous on the east coast, nobody knew who the fukk The Game was on the west coast. But he got so popular from G-Unit radio I think 5 to 15 or some shyt like that. Then I did a whole G-Unit radio just of him. It was just The Game only. I had him mixed with everybody, you know, Mobb Deep, this guy.

He was getting notoriety cause’ he started that 300 bars rapping nonstop, no hook for like an hour and shyt. Killing. So people heard him as the west coast that people knew. He’s very aggressive, lyrics were violent, it went with the west coast persona and it went well with us. We were like the violent, gangsta, group of that time. So it went well, he was kind of on the low, bonus track. It came to a point where I told 50, I was like “Yeah, you should sign The Game” and 50’s like “Oh whatever” because 50’s too busy on top of the world killing it, 10 million albums sold in Europe, then Dubai. He wasn’t tryna hear shyt right now, he was just getting paid. So I go in there from time to time with The Game thing, meanwhile The Game is getting circulated in the bootleg system in America while we’re like doing our thing. So my dumbass, while we’re on tour, I was on a Canadian tour with 50, I leak like, I didn’t even get to leak it yet, I somehow infiltrated the label at Interscope and got an Eminem song. Meanwhile…

You just don’t do that!
You don’t do that, but I’m not stupid. I’m not gonna leak it without it coming out. I knew the date when the albums gonna drop so I’ll get it like a week before and I’ll get my Eminem look. But by the time the label figures it out, it’s out. But this time Green Lantern was Eminem’s DJ at that time. He’s another DJ that we all came from the same mixtape system. So Green Lantern was the king of having Eminem shyt first. So I got in trouble for putting my list out. I never put my list out I don’t know why I put my list out, cause’ I wanted to start getting orders to sell. So they see Eminem number 1 on the list, they aint hear the song yet, but they gonna get it because it’s an Eminem song and they gotta have it a week before the album drops. So I got in trouble literally because I had a list, I didn’t even leak it yet. Now the title of the song was the title of the song but the worst part of it was that Eminem joint that he had out with D12. I cut D12 out cause’ I just wanted the Eminem part.

 

[BK The Great]

Like fukk these guys?
I wasn’t really like “fukk these guys” but I just wanted like Eminem, Jay Z, Nas. I would create… It was to a point where I would lie and recycle songs. I’d be like “Nas, the rebirth” but it’d be like…If I ain’t got no songs I’ll go through old shyt and just rename the songs or chop the hooks out and trick people. So it’s no different than what I was doing with this Eminem shyt. I just wanted people to think I had exclusive Eminem shyt. But I thought that by the time that came out, I’m already on tour with 50, it would’ve been out, I wouldn’t have gotten in trouble. Now Paul finds out…holy shyt. I almost got fukking…cause this is why The Game thing is connected to the whole shyt. Cause’ once Paul finds out, Jimmy Iovine comes into play now.

So wait. You got headlocked by Puff, you got Mexicans and Sug, you got Chris Lighty The Violater, but you’re telling me Jimmy Iovine and Paul Rosenberg had you more shook than these guys?
Not they’re having meetings about me at Interscope. Now this starts like “Wedontlikemixtapes.com” a whole new website like started at Interscope. It came where it was cool, 50 Cent’s popular, but now it’s creating fukked up shyt where I got a little more creative with distributing tapes where I just went to the labels. What I did now, I went to all the labels and I found out the distribution offices and went in there. I was like “Uh, so can I get the distribution list in here? I’ll give you like 300 bucks, just give me the distribution list. Where all the albums go” so every label I went to they gave me like blocks of like every mom and pops store, every store that they sent the albums to. So what I did is, I painstakingly, with like one Mexican homeboy and I had two other homeboys… All those gansgta guys used to be with me doing my tapes but now they do their own shyt. Call every goddam store. We would call every store until we figured out who would take the tapes and who wouldn’t. Then I’d make another list and they’d order like 10-20, sometimes they sellout and keep reordering, or sometimes they buy masters. A thing called masters where they pay like 3g for the master tape and they dub it and sell it.

This was on CD’s or tapes?
The CD thing came later.

These are cassettes you’re talking about.
These are cassettes. To top it off, my dumbass was stealing DJ Clue’s machines cause’ those machines were like 3 grand a piece. So where Clue would drop his 30-40 thousand tapes, he never knew that I had his machine.

What do you mean? You took his actual equipment?
I was with Envy and them. Envy was like “I’m dubbing my shyt, I’m using Clue’s machine” Envy had a machine too. I couldn’t afford…I didn’t wanna waste $3,000 to buy a machine. So I’d be like “Yo Envy” I’ll give his boy like 500 bucks. “Bring me the machine”. So now I’m with my Mexicans and my homeboys using Clues machine, fukking up his heads. He’d be like “Why my head’s cost like 1,500 to fix? I just had one run”. For years he never knew. You’re actually the first person I’ve ever told, I’ve never told anyone this. So he actually dubbed every G-Unit mixtape from like the 2nd God’s Plan all the way to like G-Unit radio.

I was with Envy and them. Envy was like “I’m dubbing my shyt, I’m using Clue’s machine” Envy had a machine too. I couldn’t afford…I didn’t wanna waste $3,000 to buy a machine. So I’d be like “Yo Envy” I’ll give his boy like 500 bucks. “Bring me the machine”. So now I’m with my Mexicans and my homeboys using Clues machine, fukking up his heads. He’d be like “Why my head’s cost like 1,500 to fix? I just had one run”. For years he never knew. You’re actually the first person I’ve ever told, I’ve never told anyone this. So he actually dubbed every G-Unit mixtape from like the 2nd God’s Plan all the way to like G-Unit radio.

This is when tapes were tapes.
I had to dub like 5,000-10,000 tapes. Then they had the gray ones which were masters then you’d have to like dub them in a tape deck. We had the 3 tape decks, then you put the master on like 2 cause it had to be real time. That shyt is like (sound effect). That’s the low quality but if someone’s gonna pay 2 grand for your master, you’d have to do it in a tape deck.

How many did you move with 50 Cent Is The Future? Do you have any concept?
I don’t know. Because then I got bootlegs like crazy.

Which is what you did. It came out as a cassette right?
Maybe like, I don’t know, 20-something thousand maybe? 30 thousand?

Okay. That was the big project?
Yeah but that’s the physical. We sold maybe, I don’t know, 800 masters?

God knows what happens with that.
Then like I said, you know, it’s kind of like being Pablo Escobar. Like I said I’m the distributor. Instead of me, I created like bootlegs…anywhere that they sold drugs, like a corner, I would go to the bodega and be like “I’m gonna leave like 20 tapes here”. Cause’ the whole drug culture is connected with 50 Cent. They love his music. So I’m like “If these guys are coming here to buy drugs, buying weed, getting their nickel bags and shyt, there’s a tape on the window right there. Hey and you get a tape too. I’ll get a bag of chips, a turkey sandwich, and a G-Unit tape.”

So what I would do is like I’d get 100 bodegas everywhere, cause’ I had A stores, B stores, and C stores. C stores was bodegas. Cause’ you know you have to have homeboy go in there with you, go in there, Indian guys and all these weirdos, you know, weird languages and shyt. But this was all under the radar this is like before RAA and all that shyt came in. We created the laws from what we did. The movies kind of like, the bootlegging of movies fukked us up, like it deaded everything. But for like 6-8 years it was like the golden years. There was no laws, nobody knew how…there was no cease and desist. There was no copyright infringement. Like we created these laws cause’ we were just leaking shyt and selling it and collecting cash.

You were winning.
But it got worse. I met like African bootleggers. I met with like six African bootleggers instead of me going to lie hundreds of them I met the main ones. They had 50 Africans each. I’d be like “Yo, here’s my master. I’m not gonna sell it to all y’all dikkheads, I’m gonna give each of yall the master and y’all take care of your African guys”. Then I had them. Then all of a sudden Irish bootleggers came in.

First the Africans and then the Irish!
The Chinese, overseas, then the overseas market now…when I got that list I took care of it. We kind of like abused the list so bad that we were like “Yo, you think we could sell to Tower Records?” So what we did was we printed like a fake invoice like the label do and we sent it to the Tower Records reps and shyt. They were like “This is a new album?” and we’re like “Yeah. 50 Cent man.” “What? 50 got a new album? Yeah we’ll take it. Like 1000 of them”. So once we got it in Tower and we got it in other chain stores, but then the reason why Jimmy Iovine woke the fukk up was because we weren’t really like effecting here, it was overseas, where overseas is more ignorant. They think this is a new album. They don’t understand mixtapes or tape market. So when we do 50 Cent Is The Future they think its’ an album. They’ll put in Get Rich Or Die Trying, and then they’ll put it in the front with Get Rich Or Die Trying. So if 50 had Massacre or some other shyt, the mixtape would sell more because it’s like shyt that 50 never cleared or whatever. So now it’s to a point where people are going there buying, they put barcodes on the mixtapes. So the labels like “What is this?” but it took them like years to figure it out.

There’s no publishing.
The way they figured it out was when the sales went down where you know, it’s like 80% one year, this year it’s like 30%. They’re like “Why is it 30%? There’s no other competition out there”. But then the reps send like the front like, what albums are there, and they’re like “What the hell is this album? Who is this guy?” so that’s where Jimmy Iovine came into play. “Who is Whoo Kid?” and I already leaked the Eminem song so that put me on the radar with that, but that made him do more research on who I am.

 

[BK The Great]

So he called your phone or what?

Yeah he tried to call me forever, I never picked up. I was like “See ya” and hanging up like crazy. So I’m on the tour with 50 and I think Paul’s like “You gotta fire Whoo Kid now, he just leaked the Eminem song!” and 50’s like “What? Dumbass nikka, I’ll fukkin kill you man! Why’d you do that? That’s my boss a$$hole” so I’m like looking crazy, I was like to this day I can’t believe that the loyalty was so cool with 50 cause’ he could’ve just got rid of me and got another DJ but I really…the loyalty to this day. I’m just bugged out that he kept me there. But I got banned from going to Detroit.

Like I couldn’t go perform at the arena show with Eminem because I leaked the song. So meanwhile, years later, Game gets signed finally. So The Game gets signed, now he’s G-Unit records. So me nad 50 are in L.A., we’re supposed to go to Hugh Hefner’s fukkin’ party, Playboy shyt. STD pool or whatever. We were supposed to go there and hangout but we got there too early they didn’t even open the floodgates yet, so 50 said “Lets go across the street. My boy live over there” but this idiot don’t tell me Jimmy Iovine lives across the street from the Playboy shyt. So Jimmy Iovine is looking for me for like a year, right?

So we walk in there and 50’s like “Whaddup man, I’m here. I got Whoo Kid” and all you hear is “Whoo Kid?” And I’m like “Yo, who’s house are we at?” and he’s like “This Jimmy Iovine’s” “Why didn’t you tell me we were at Jimmy Iovine’s house! Like are you fukking kidding me?” “What? He’s here? In my house? I’ve been trying to get this fukking guy forever” he had like a robe, he looked like Hugh Hefner. He came down in the robe like buttnaked or whatever. So he goes upstairs to change, he got these skinny ass jeans on, white men jeans. You know, millionaire white men jeans. Weird, it was mad tacky, whatever. So he’s like “Let me take you somewhere, let me show you somebody in the back” so he takes me to some guy in the back and it’s like this Texas looking motherfukker. He had a cowboy hat on, but I think he’s like the secret investor behind Interscope or whatever. He’s like an oil guy but he invests money… Ao the guy is talking like “You’re the guy we been looking for? We’ve been tryna find you for a long time!”

I was like “What is going on right now?”

“You’re the Whoo Kid fella, we’ve been tryna find you.” And I was like “What are you talking about?” and Jimmy Iovine is like “Go get my son right now.” So Jimmy Iovine’s son comes down and films me from top to bottom. “Yo, when I die I want you to keep watching this guy. I want full…take it ID, his information” he said the only reason they calmed down is because I got The Game signed. He said I still owe him another artist or whatever, but The Game kind of like…The Game went platinum, I think like 2-3 times platinum? So me finding The Game and them signing him kind of like calmed down that one barely leaked Eminem…I didn’t even leak it! It was just on the list.

It’s just one record!
Just one record! I didn’t really really leak it, it’s that I got it from the label. You know, Paul got FBI, if you leak a song, you’re gonna get caught. So those days I used to make believe shyt “Yeah we found it online” we used to create fake websites to put the song there. So if the artist catches, we’d be like “Nah. I found that on (inaudible).com but it’s a fake website me, Envy, Clue, we all made up. So if we get cornered we’d be like “Nah, we got it from this website” so we got away with mad murder at that time. There’s so many side stories of escape and almost getting killed.

You love this shyt though.
But it’s like if you don’t get in trouble, you’re not really doing nothing. These DJ’s, they got it easy now. All these Escoe’s and all that. Yeah you’re with a hot artist but you never went through the trials and tribulations we went through to get our…like we’re forever in the DNA. Right now you’re popping, you got Future, you’re fukkin’ Drake’s DJ, this guy, whatever. But we did the groundwork to create the Drakes, the Futures and all that. Cause’ if we didn’t do that, Lil Wayne, Future, these guys wouldn’t be doing mixtapes.

They’ll probably still be doing the traditional: do the album, put it out. That mixtape shyt changed the game. It’s to a point where, they took it to a point where it went from freestyles to like redoing songs, then now it’s no more freestyles. You have to have a full record. Like Gucci Mane puts songs out like him and Drake, him and Jay-Z, he just leaks shyt.

Well that’s the other thing I wanted to say. This mixtape wave that you and 50 did after that you had, who else really blew up off it? Dipset did it…
Dipset. Like countless, everybody did a mixtape!

The whole Drama wave.
Drama was very smart cause’ Drama followed my formula of like, he actually moved to the south. He’s from Philly. So I ain’t moving down there, but he moved down there cause’, well I don’t know if he really did it for that, but if I were Drama, I’d be like “If Whoo Kid, Clue, all these guys are killing it here, who the fukk am I? Why would somebody stop and talk to me. I’m gonna go to the south, there’s a thousand motherfukkers” and he took a risk and went down there and it just happened. The south was next to take over this shyt, they still are taking it over now. So he got in then with all those artists that’s popping right now. He did it differently where, you know, I always salute Drama when I see him and he got raided, he took it too far with the warehouses and all that.

He went to jail for that shyt.
Yeah him and Cannon. When we saw that we shut down. Me and 50 were like “See ya!” yo we had a meeting with RAA and they’re telling us we can’t put tapes out. Like me and 50… “Y’all can’t do no tapes no more.”

 

[Waterproof]

Great Read

 

[Carr]

this is dope.

 

[Chip Skylark]

Damn this was great

 

[Jimmy Two-Times™]

Dope.

 

[PaperEnterprise]

Whoi Kid is hilarious

So it would go back to like, if I leaked like a Raekwon… First of all, when we got Wu-Tang songs, they were the most feared group, period. So we’d be holding the CD like, “I got a Raekwon and Nas song. Should we do it?” We’d have like meetings. “I don’t know!” [Laughter]

 

[fukkyalifestyle]

I interviewed whoo kid before, he said rappers take it in the ass for deals.

 

[igottabaldhead]

Saved for later. Cant wait to read this

 

[bucks3115]

I read when i get home