By Pizzo 

So, the title of the album is “Hell’s Winter”, can you explain that a little bit?

Basically, after Movies For The Blind, I just wanted to have another title like that – a kind of play on words. I had the title a few years before the album was made, when I was still on E.C. It’s kind of interesting to me now that I really didn’t have a meaning, I just kind of put it out there because I dug the title. But it’s kind of bugged that it ended up taking on a meaning of trying to make this record, trying to fix my life, which was the most important thing to me. I had to fix my life to be able to take my life a little more serious. And doing that was kind of like “yeah right, when pigs fly, when hell freezes over,” basically.

When you say “fix your life” – what does that mean?

Getting off all the hard drugs, getting off the bullshit material that I was putting out…. Getting over all of it man. Just changing everything, from living unhealthy and completely out of control.

Do you not like the old material you’ve put out now in relation to your new material?

I think my new material is a transition to where I am trying to go. I think the new material is new, it’s different for me. But it’s me just trying to do something different – and before I could even know what that was, there was a lot of shit that I just kind of wanted to be rid of. All of the material I put on Hell’s Winter, the grit of the album was basically what had me so hung up and angry, and fucked up in the head. I had continued to live my life that way, and the music suffered because I was kind of making the same three songs over and over again.

I don’t hate music that I made, I don’t have regrets for things that I did. But I’m not into it. It’s basically the same three songs over and over again. I think the same kind of thing is going on in mainstream rap. It was kind of like the same process, I was just unaware of it.

I remember you told me when you were making the album you told me “I’m not using the word bitch, I’m not objectifying women on this record.” What prompted that change?

I have a little girl, you know what I mean? It’s just stupid man. Get over it man, it just one of those things you get over. I’m not trying to make music for angry dudes that disrespect women. Nothing against anyone that does – live your life how you want to – but it’s not catering to specific groups of people anymore. It’s not a matter of “hey I want to music for girls”, it’s just a matter of making music for anyone that wants to listen to it, whether they have a penis or a vagina. I don’t care… and in doing so, again, I have a girl, she’s old enough to understand what the fuck I’m talking about. Again, it’s just “been there, done that”, and to me, it’s just not entertaining. “Bitch suckin’ my dick, dah, dah, dah.” I mean, how many fuckin’ rendezvous’ with a girl and my penis can I make songs about, you know? It’s novelty at best.

You decided to go a lot more personal on this album, revealing stuff about your family, your upbringing. How true to life are the stories on the album?

100 percent real, everything was real on the record. I’m not fabricating things for impact, everything is pretty much true to the bio. If you’ve read the bio, the record is no shock, and vise versa.

So this was like a therapeutic, “gotta get some shit off my chest….”

That’s the entire concept of the album: a fucked up kid, trying to fix his head. That’s why it’s like “when pigs fly, yeah right…”

So you made a move from E.C. to Def Jux. What prompted the move?

I hit a ceiling with E.C., period. That was it. I wasn’t making money. The amount of money I was making with them, I could have made myself. But then again, in doing it myself, how many more pieces would I have sold? I’d be kind of doing the same thing, just not splitting the money so many ways. But it was about expansion, it was about growth. It was what artists do. Me and El talked for a while, before it even went down. We talked for a year about doing it and what we would do, what the record would sound like. Yeah, it was definitely therapeutic, it changed me. When the record was finished I wasn’t the same person any more.

The other thing is, and I guess it’s all apart of the change, but your physical appearance has changed drastically. You’ve lost a lot of weight obviously – what kind of regiment did you have to go through to make this transformation?

I wasn’t cutting my hair for a long time, I wasn’t in the spotlight. It had been a while since I had cut my hair, and I had gotten tired of the stereotypical hip-hop uniform, it just wasn’t me anymore. How long am I gonna run with that? Dressing like a child and shit, wearing clothes that are like five times too big for me, and a lot of that reason was because I was overweight. You’ve overweight, and you wear baggy ass shit. Your guts hanging out, your wearing double X’s and shit, hunched over. I just got sick of that shit. I got sick of looking in the mirror and seeing myself looking like that. As far as regiment, I just stopped eating. I didn’t get anorexic, when I say “I stopped eating”, I mean I was eating all the time. I was eating like a pig, basically. You start dropping a couple of pounds, you start seeing results, and before you know it you’ve dropped 10 pounds. I dropped like 30-35 pounds over the past year and half or two years. Exercise, I was hitting the gym, walking all the time, stopped driving all the time, being more active.

It was more just for me. I knew this whole thing was a matter of changing everything about myself. My eating habits, exercising, the way that I look, the way that I feel about myself, the way I make music, my artistic approach. I never had an artistic approach. I never had a real approach to making music. (I guess) I had one, it was kind of winging it and making songs the spur of the moment. Everything had to be changed; my appearance was just part of it. You’d be surprised. Any dude out there that needs to lose weight, you start dropping some pounds and chicks start paying attention to you, and it’s motivation.

Yeah I did the same shit a while back. I started putting on weight and was like ‘fuck this shit’, so I started exercising, eating right. You start dressing different, getting attention from women, I can definitely relate to what you’re saying.

Now you could wear shit you couldn’t wear before. Not only that, when you lose weight, you don’t really want to buy expensive shit. I’m not going to spend $1000 on suit that’s not going to fit me when I lose weight. I gave a way like six garbage bags of clothes, all my 36 and 38 size jeans. Every fuckin’ XXL t-shirt I owned, everything. I looked in my closet and had to start all over again.

The whole look thing, it was just part of it. You start looking in the mirror, your stomach shrinks, and you get used to it. Although I’m not going to lie about it, cigarettes were a big part of it. I’d rather look good and have black lungs, than be a fat dude with clean lungs.

You collaborated with a lot of legends in indy rock or underground rock. How did these collaborations come about and why did you choose to work with these artists?

Well, I think again, going into this record, we were like, “what are we going to do? Do what everyone else does and get a bunch of rappers they don’t know?” You know, bigger names than them, in hopes that it will sell the record? We thought that that was wack, and if I am going to collab with musicians that I don’t know I’d rather collab with musicians that I listen to. I don’t really listen to that much mainstream rap, you know? A few things, the Mike Jones shit, I’ve been listening to. If we have a certain budget, we want to spend it wisely. The whole approach to the record was like a rock approach. An honest, sincere record in hopes that when people listen to it, that it does stir up some emotions. If I can’t make you feel something with the music, than why am I making it? If you listen to a record and walk away like ‘man, that dude’s got some punchlines’ or ‘aw man, that dude is evil, he’s sick, or he’s twisted’. It’s just like, empty. And I was guilty of that, making empty heartless music.

So when we sat down and started making the record, everyone who is on the record is a personal friend or a friend of a friend. We just tapped pretty much everything that we could. Darryl Palumbo is a friend of mine, James and Matt Sweeny are friends of El’s, Shadow was a friend of El’s. But the thing was, it was the music that got everyone involved. We’d have the contact, but dudes wanted to hear what they were getting involved with. Same thing with James and Matt, and Jello, as well. They heard the songs that they were getting on, they liked the music and they jumped on. With Jello, it was just an honor to have him say that he felt the song was dope, but then for him to want to be a part of it was even better.

So….Well, I guess I see this is kind of a really visual record. One of your main talents is painting these really vivid pictures of whatever these situations are that you talk about on the record. So do you have any plans of taking it further and doing a DVD, sort of like 50 Cent did with his Massacre DVD?

We’re actually in the process of working on a DVD. There’s a video for “Shoot Frank” which is done. I’m doing, with a close friend of mine, four or five videos. A video for “Too Heavy For Cherubs”, which will be a public service announcement against child abuse. Also a video for “Scenester” and a video for “Grand Old Party Crash”. This will be my directorial debut – I’m writing, co-writing, directing with a good friend of mine, Alex Pardee, who is a fuckin’ retarded artist, who did shitloads of comics, did art for The Used, toys, kid robot shit. He’s doing all the artwork on the DVD as well as the menus, and the featurettes. There will be a little segment in there with him doing the animation on the DVD as well. None of these videos are being made to be run or shopped to MTV.

“Too Heavy For Cherubs” for me was like me going back and getting my ass beat, getting abused and shit. You know, people ask me what the record is about. It’s about child abuse, spousal abuse, heroin addiction, struggling with drug addicition. These are all things that anyone can relate to, and there are people going through these same things, and if they can relate to it, it helps me. Making the record definitely changed me and altered the way I think about things.

It’s interesting that I finally decided to make a record with some substance, and then I’m popping up in magazines. It’s interesting; it makes me wonder why I didn’t do this type of thing years ago.

Well, I can tell you from my position that if you take the slow and steady route, you’re going to win the race. If you make honest music, rather than quick, bullshit, it’s going to work.

That’s what now I’m stuck with, I’ll never make music like that again, I’ll never make music like I did before again. I can’t do anything but be truthful and make honest music at this point. I don’t give a shit about being the best emcee, or the top 100. I don’t care about any of that shit, it’s nothing to me. It’s not even relevant to my life at all. I don’t want to be a part of any stereotype in rap music at all. And if that means people are looking at me like “oh, why is his hair like that?!!”, that’s their own closeted-homosexuality they have to work out, not mine.

Where I’m at right now in my life, I can say that it’s the first time I can say that I’ve been happy in my entire life, and I wouldn’t trade that for anything.