Scarface Breaks Down His 25 Most Essential Songs

[CEITEDMOFO]

Geto Boys "Mind of a Lunatic" (1989)

Scarface: “We recorded that record at Jay Prince’s ranch. Jay has a ranch where there’s nothing except a house and a studio. And it was in the middle of no-fukking-where. So that record right there just came about of off some sick psychotic ass shyt. We were just in the woods recording an album in the house and ‘Mind of a Lunatic’ just came about.

“Ready Red was doing the beat and it sampled the Spiderman cartoon, ‘He’s a paranoiac who’s a menace to our society.’ Ready Red was the shyt. He would find dope samples. He did a lot of movie watching and he was really dedicated to his craft. I really hated to lose him. He molded that Rap-a-Lot sound for sure along with me, N.O. Joe, and John Bido.

“Jukebox—one of the original members of the Geto Boys wrote that verse—wrote BIll’s verse. Bill ended up using that verse because ‘Box had got locked up. If you listened to it, it says, ‘p*ssy plays superman your ass will get boxed up.’ Box wrote a lot of that shyt.


Let’s be very clear: Bushwick Bill didn’t write anything. He didn’t write. We all wrote for him. We would lay the verse down and he would rap it.


“Let’s be very clear: Bill didn’t write anything. Either Will wrote that shyt, Big Mike wrote that shyt, Gangsta NIP wrote that shyt, or I wrote that shyt. Bill didn’t write. We all wrote for him. We would lay the verse down and he would rap it. Willie D wrote a lot on the first Geto Boys album, like ‘Do it Like a G.O’ and ‘No Sellout.’

“I went to Rap-a-lot in 1987, I was playing some songs and they were like, ‘This is not what we’re looking for.’ A few months later, Steve Fournier—thank god for Steve Fournier—he had the record and he played it for Jay Prince. Jay liked what he heard because Jay was on that gangster shyt. Jay was looking for me from that day on. When he found me, he had me rap against his brother. I rapped against his brother and beat him out to get into Geto Boys. From that day on, it was history. That’s how shyt came about.

“Jay never turned away from us. We was in the ghetto, on the corner selling rocks and trying to get tennis shoe money. Jay came and got us off the streets. He told us, ‘If your gonna do [rap], you can’t do that.’ When we let it go back in ’87, we were doing pretty damn good but he wanted me to be a rapper because I was more skilled than anybody he ever ran across.

“Matter fact, I was more skilled than the motherfukkers in New York and Los Angeles where the music was coming from. I easily could have been out there doing that shyt with them. I was that skilled at that age. You can look at it yourself. The shyt I was doing back then when I was a kid, think of how skilled I was. You think I could have done a song with N.W.A.? For sure! You think I could have done a song with Public Enemy? Hell yeah! Now, Rakim might have been a little out of my league [Laughs.], but everyone else I could have been on a track with and done well.”

Geto Boys "Do It Like a G.O." (1989)

Scarface: “I didn’t make that record originally. Willie D made that record with the original Geto Boy’s. If you listen to Willie D’s first album Controversy, that song is on Controversy with different rappers on it. The first Geto Boy’s record I wasn’t a part of. I wasn’t on Makin' Trouble at all. Now, when I got into the crew I came in on On That Other Level.

“After that album was successful, Rick Rubin came in to give us the deal. The big guy comes in to give us small indies the deal, and he put our album out through Def American which was the reprint of that album. Unfortunately, the deal with Rick Rubin didn’t work out like it was supposed to work out.

“I didn’t know the business side of it, they kept us in the dark about all of the business with all the different distributors. We knew nothing about that. All we knew was that we were doing shows and that was that. We didn’t give a fukk or know shyt about the business part of it. Did we miss a lot of motherfukking money? Yeah, sure. But it ain’t Jay’s fault. Jay did what a businessman is supposed to do. It’s business.


Jay Prince is a real gangster. He ain’t hiding behind a desk talking. He is the true living definition of what a gangster is. If you wanna see the truth and what gangster really is, that’s what Jay Prince is.


“J Prince had a lot of input on shyt. As far as him actually getting down and busting a rhyme, no, but he was very instrumental in the writing. He wrote his part on ‘Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangster’ and he wrote Bushwhick’s part too.

“Jay Prince was instrumental in everything that came out of Rap-a-Lot, especially anything that had to do with the Geto Boys or Scarface. We were Jay Prince’s babies. There’s a lot of people that signed to Rap-a-Lot and Jay put it out or whatever, but when it came to me going into the studio or the Geto Boys, Jay would be there every day. He was the brain behind all that. A lot of that controversial shyt that we talked about, Jay inspired that.

“Don’t for one second get it fukked up, Jay Prince is a real gangster. He ain’t no TV motherfukker or a motherfukker that’s hiding behind a desk talking that shyt. He is the true living definition of what a gangster is. If you’re looking at the shyt you see on fukking TV, nah, that motherfukker is a real true gangster. If you wanna see the truth and what gangster really is, that’s what my nikka is.

“That's why the feds was watching us all. Back in 1999 or maybe 2000, the feds came to see me. One of my really close friends sold dope to a confidential informant. So they were trying to get him to roll over on me to try to get me to roll over on Jay. But that plot failed. They always had a hard-on for [Jay Prince] because he did his shyt legitimately. In the United States, it's against the law for a young black man to be doing anything constructive to uplift his community, even today."

 

[CEITEDMOFO]

Geto Boys "Mind Playin' Tricks on Me" (1991)

Scarface: “I had no idea back in 1990 that it was gonna be a big record. That record was written when I was 19-years-old, I was a kid then. Those Geto Boys records were recorded when I was a teenager.

“Long story short, I was doing a solo album. I had originally done the it as a solo song but then the owner of Rap-a-Lot heard it. They sent the song out to Priority and the people at Priority were doing fukking flips over the record.


I was really going through some deep stuff when I was a kid. I was going through manic depression. I just wanted to die. I spent a lot of time in hospitals for depression. I was really one of those kids that was f**ked up.


“After everybody fell in love with the record, Willie D wrote a verse to it and put his verse on it and Bill took the last verse that I did. That’s why it’s four verses. The three verses was really me by myself, the verse that you heard Bill on was my original verse. I originally wrote and rapped Bill’s verse. I wrote every verse except for Will’s verse. And I produced the beat too.

“I was really going through some deep shyt when I was a kid. I was going through manic depression. I just wanted to die. I spent a lot of time in hospitals for depression. I was really one of those kids that was fukked up. It had nothing to do with the way I was brought up, but I didn’t value life back then as much as I value it right now. I thought about death, I thought about crazy shyt.

“I spent a lot of time in this hospital in the adolescent unit for troubled kids. I was fukking terrible. I beat up teachers, students, mommas, daddys. I was a fighting motherfukker when I was a little kid. The doctors gave me shyt like Mellaril and Lithium. They didn’t give me shyt like they give these kids now a days. They give them all kinds of dope nowadays.


Growing up I did all the cool drugs like hallucinogens, I did a lot of rush, and I smoked a lot of weed. We sniffed a lot of paint, sniffed a lot of glue, and did a lot of acid. Oh and mushrooms.


“Growing up I did all the cool drugs like hallucinogens, I did a lot of rush, and I smoked a lot of weed. Rush a little jar with a red top, you can get it at the head shops, and it says ‘Rush’. It ain’t no popper, it's a puff. We sniffed a lot of paint, sniffed a lot of glue, and did a lot of acid. I didn’t start fukking with acid until I was probably about 17. Oh and mushrooms.

“My uncles were drug heads, so I was getting high when I was 8-years-old—I'm not even exaggerating. My uncles would blow me charges while my other uncle would squeeze my chest, like they put me in a death grip from behind where I couldn’t breathe and you would black out. You would call it an Indian Charge.

“When I wrote ‘Mind Playing Tricks on Me’ I'm pretty sure I was high. I know I was high on alcohol and maybe like a fukking drop of something crazy. I mean I did a lot of fukking dope, man. I mean like, ‘Holy fukk!’ I got real high and maybe that put a lot of the darkness that came out in my records back then. I'm so blessed to still be in my right state of mind as an adult.”

Scarface "Mr. Scarface" (1991)

Scarface:“In the beginning, everybody thought that Ready Red was Scarface. They would be like, ‘Oh whatsup Akshun, where’s Scarface at?’ They thought that me and Scarface were two different people. When that song came out is when the identity changed. Everybody knew who Scarface was and nobody knew who Akshun was. They would still say, ‘Which one of y’all is Scarface?’ and I would have to say, ‘That’s me man.’ So I just followed suit with the public because that’s what the public wanted.


They started saying, ‘That's straight out of the Scarface movie, I can’t believe y’all did that.’ But we hadn’t seen Scarface yet. I didn’t see the movie until ’88. five years after it came out.


“The shyt that we were doing made me write that fukking song. The motherfukkers were calling me Scarface. They started saying, ‘That shyt is straight out of the Scarface movie, I can’t believe y’all did that shyt.’ But we hadn’t seen Scarface yet. I didn’t see the movie until ’88. five years after it came out.

“‘Nobody knows my name they only know my face.’ That’s the truth. That record right there summed up my whole life. ‘You try to school me you get served with no regard.’ People respect my shyt because it's so authentic, it's so Houston. After all these fukking years, I even had a record with Gucci Mane called ‘Scarface.’ People called me Scarface cause I gave them a reason too.

“In the late ‘80s, we was on some real ignorant shyt. ’88, it was on. We were doing some crazy ass shyt, like some Scarface shyt. We were selling rocks man. That’s about as much information as I can give you.”

 

[CEITEDMOFO]

Scarface "Diary of a Madman" (1991)

Scarface:“Now that’s a good record. When I was about 20 years old, I had a fight with my girlfriend and I was really hurt about what had transpired. I did some things that hurt her that I shouldn’t have done and it never happened again in life but I felt so bad about it until I just went off in that fukking shell and hid. And that’s where that song came from. That was one of the deepest songs that I've ever written. It’s a guy that’s caught up with nothing to say to nobody but this book that he is confiding in.


I tried [to commit suicide] at least four times. I got close enough where they wanted to put me in a hospital. The first time I tried I was about 13 or 14.


“I tried to kill myself so many times in life that I say it on that record. ‘I want to die but it ain’t for me/I tried to talk to my dad but my old man ignores me/He says I'm delirious/Plus I drink so he won’t take me serious/But little does he know I'm really losing it/I got a head with ain’t no screws in it.’ You know I got some bad motherfukkers man! That’s what I was going through at that time.

“I tried [to commit suicide] at least four times. I got close enough where they wanted to put me in a hospital. The first time I tried I was about 13 or 14. I never understood the beauty of life until now. I never understood the beauty of life until I’d seen life take shape. Life takes shape and it’s mind blowing.”

 

[CEITEDMOFO]

Scarface "A Minute to Pray and a Second to Die" (1991)

Scarface: "That title was brought to me by John Bido. The idea of the song was to write a movie, to tell a story. That song gave me my title as one of the greatest storytellers ever because [one of my first story telling songs]. That was one of my best fukking stories.


I credit all my writing ability to my English teachers.


“I credit all my writing ability to my English teachers. I would say that my fourth grade teacher, a lady named Ms. Smith taught me a lot. And there’s a lady named Ms. Canshaw, a lady named Ms. Rob, and an old mean white lady named Ms. Beach.

“They all gave me a lot of game on how to write lyrics, stories, and journalism type pieces. Every time I approach a song. I always try to write an intro, the body, the climax, and then the ending. That’s the way I was taught to write and that’s the approach I try to take when I write my music.”

 

[CEITEDMOFO]

continue here Scarface "I'm Dead" (1991) — Scarface Breaks Down His 25 Most Essential Songs | Complex

 

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