From crafting certified hip-hop classics for M.O.P, AZ, Cam’ron, Cormega, and others to having his own song get some shine on the hottest TV show Breaking Bad, D/R Period has been dropping the hammer on cats for over 20 years. With a resume as long as Scottie Pippen’s arms, D/R’s placed himself in the upper-upper echelon of producers, in the land of the Primo’s, Pete Rock’s, and Diamond D’s. But don’t tell him that ‘cause really, he doesn’t care. Between managing and mentoring upcoming acts on his Rockboy label, banging out over 15 beats a day, and making sure his beats are the best part of reality TV, D/R doesn’t have an extra second in the day to contemplate his place in the game.
In this exclusive interview, D/R stays up later than usual to not only reminisce on some of his most classic projects and songs, like Smoothe the Hustler’s Once Upon a Time in America to getting Billy Danze of M.O.P behind the mic, but to also talk about his current projects and why his takeover of the game is not complete yet. Don’t miss this candid conversation with one of most respected producers to ever bang out on an MP.
It’s definitely an honor to catch up with you. What have you been working on lately?
I’ve been developing the label Rockboyz as a company. That’s one. I’ve also signed a couple of acts and we’ve been working on getting their music right. We’ve also been working on the publishing side. I’ve been doing a lot of TV placements and a lot of stuff in reality world and stuff on regular TV, stuff at radio, movie trailers, commercials, and all those type different things. I was on Breaking Bad and I’d been working on that project for a year and a half now, doing that. And I’m doing a couple of different things for Love and Hip-Hop and a couple of different places.
The publishing side is what I’ve been concentrating on. Now I got the new D/R Period brand as far as me recreating and reinventing myself as a producer slash artist slash entertainer. I don’t think people got the chance to see that side of me yet. What people got to see was the music side and what I can do creatively and what I can do with artists, how I can make hit records and how I can collaborate with different artists and turn things into multiple levels.
I actually have three main projects. The first project is me being on the Rockboyz as the company and as D/R Period the producer. The second project is as D/R Period the artist. That’s kind of interesting to me because I always knew how to write and rap for years. The songs I’m doing, I see when a lot of artists are coming with and I have my own ideas and concepts. Who’s better to do it than that. And I also got my gospel project that I got going on. Those are three kind of primary projects that I’m focusing on now.
What made you want to sign artists and look at it from a label perspective?
If people know the history of D/R, then they know that I was a production company, always. I came in the game and got my recognition as a producer. I came in the game as an artist but it wasn’t moving like the producer side. It was a hole that needed to be filled so I developed artists and made music with them, and then I became a production company, which was Nexx Level Entertainment. That’s when I stated working with M.O.P and Foxy Brown and all of those different acts then. And then I decided to develop my own project because those projects were affiliated projects. And then I started working with Smoothe the Hustler and I think working with artists and taking them to labels and getting them deals. It was working very good.
My business sense, I didn’t even understand that I was an independent company. I started noticing that I could develop these artists and take them to any record label of my choice. What bothered me for awhile was that anytime I got a new artist, I had to go back to the label and show them why that artist was worthy of a deal and then they would tell me if he was good or not good or whatever the case was, but it just seemed like anytime I came with something new, I had to keep explaining myself. So I thought, why not just develop stuff and put it out? I do all the radio and marking and promotions anyway, the only difference is that I never had the record label title. So now, I decided to say that I might as well stay in that ballpark because that was where I was stronger, working with artists and making new things and putting new things out, taking chances, because some of the companies took chances and some of them didn’t. Some of them felt like they wanted to take risks and some of them didn’t because it wasn’t always successful for them. I didn’t want to be in any of that kind of Fear Factor when it came down to what I do.
So for me to be making platinum and gold records, you shouldn’t have to fear me. You should be more or less taking chances, because what I was told in the game, is once you’re making gold and platinum records, you’re sort of a made man. I felt I was a made man, but what happened wasn’t more my doing but that the company wasn’t ready for some of the concepts I wanted to do. It just made me go harder and make me want to sign artists. I went to Sony Red and got a distribution deal and I can put them out on a worldwide distribution level and do the marketing and promotion myself. I’m already seasoned in that part of the business. I felt like I needed to hear more of the kind of music that I wasn’t hearing.
