Ren Da Heat Monsta/Doja Clik
Interview by Deyu Ntebya
Continued from Murder Dog vol 16 #1
How did you get the idea to form Doja Clik?
The first album came out in 1994. Back in the day there wasn’t too many
Latin Hispanic rappers out here with the sound that I was coming with.
When I first was coming out I was getting a lot of flack for rapping
the way I did. It was like I sounded too Black or something, I didn’t
have the
typical sound that you would expect from a Hispanic rapper.
But I had grown up all my life in Northern California and listening to
that sound. I grew up on Too Short, NWA and E-40 so that’s the way that
I spit. When I first came out I wanted to put something out that would
shock everybody. We had an album that came out in between but it never
got released, it just got bootlegged all over the place. And I mean really
it went everywhere, to like Germany and Canada and I don’t even how it
reached some of these areas. When I came out with the second Doja
Clik album in ’97, I tried to flip it and do and Black & Brown kinda
of thing, like Gold Toes did. That album had my boy Mr. Peabody and another
rapper called Nasty Trey, I mixed the group up.
What really broke you through into the market?
When I came out with “Speed Kills” in ’97 and sold 40,000 units. Back
then if you sold like that you doing real good. I’ve been rapping for
a long time but I was a DJ first. I was a DJ and at that point I was
already rapping but wasn’t putting my shit out yet. I learned how to
produce being a DJ. The first album, I put it out for fun. It caught
a lot of attention, and I wasn’t expecting that. A lot of people started
coming at me, interested in working with me in joining in the heat, so
I made a group.
You said your rapping style is different from a lot of Latino Rappers
out there. Why do you think that is?
I feel that I paved the way for a lot of rappers in the Bay that are
Latin. There’s a lot of rappers rapping this way now. I grew up, like
a lot of Hispanic kids, in a neighborhood that was Black and Brown. So
our sound gets that Black sound, we sound a lot like Black rappers. I
grew up in Stockton, and I feel like growing up in my neighborhood influenced
everything that I am—the reason I’m a rapper, the way I was exposed to
that North Cali sound, the people I grew up with. All of that makes me
what I am today. As a kid I enjoyed listening to East Coast Rap too but
it didn’t relate with what I was seeing going on in my environment. People
like C-Bo, Too Short, E-40, they’d be rapping and I’d be feeling what
they said 100%. They are the ones they made me say, “I can do this.”
Where does the name ‘Mudville King’ come from?
Even E-40 had to ask me that one. Mudville is a name that Stockton used
to be called a long long time ago. This is from before it was a city.
When White people first started settling out here, Stockton’s in the
valley, so it was really muddy out here and the area was called Mudville
as a reference to that. I thought I’d bring that name back. Mudville
is grungy and underground so the name Mudville really fits. I’ve always
been underground, I’ve made my success selling units underground, independently.
So I used the underground name of Stockton. And the Stockton sound is
dirty, so Mudville it is.
Is there a lot of action in the Stockton music scene right now?
The music scene out here is just starting to kick in. The hard thing
for up and coming artists out here is the fact that there isn’t a market
for them. No one comes here. It’s harder for an artist to come from a
town like this especially because the Bay is right here, it’s just an
hour’s drive away. The Bay is a huge center for a whole lot of Rap artists,
and it’s had an established market for a long time. Sacramento made a
little noise for a while, but part of their strength came from being
hooked up with the Bay. It’s an amazing thing because the Bay really
does give a lot of support and love to up and coming artists. Even for
me, when I first started it was hard but right now I get a lot of support
from The Bay. More than I get here in Stockton because right now there’s
a lot of rappers in Stockton with no outlets, and the whole thing is
out here everybody wants to be the Man. There’s a lot of competition
going on. No one helps each other, they look at you more as an enemy,
someone who might be taking the small amount of market they have. When
I went out to the Bay, my boy Guce just got me and showed me around.
He took me to different peoples’ studios, he got artists like San Quinn
on my album, introduced me to Chili Powdah, he hooked me up with the
cat’s in Richmond. And E-40 he helped me out a lot too, he knew who I
was and got on my album. There’s a lot of love in the Bay.
The Bay has a very unified feeling right now. The whole music scene benefits
from this attitude. I wonder why artists in Stockton can’t unite.
A lot of people in North Cali out of the Bay feel like the Bay don’t
support. But nobody is reaching out and networking. How are they going
to help artists they don’t even know exist? And you have to have your
shit together no matter what. Support is support, but if you get some
love you’ve got to give some love. In Stockton people feel like the Bay
is trying to take over the market out here. Even in the Bay some people
have problems with Stockton cats getting Hyphy. The thing that everybody's
got to remember is that we are like cousins to the Bay. We are family
so of course there’s going to be mixing and styles rubbing off on each
other. But I think it would be great if we had our own sound that made
us unique. Then we wouldn’t be competing with artists in the Bay
but working alongside them. My mission is to create that unique Stockton
sound.
Would you say Stockton has a Hyphy sound right now?
When Mac Dre died, every city did that, every city around the area. It
was like an earthquake. Everybody caught the magnitude of it depending
on how far they were. The closer you were to the Bay the more Hyphy you
were. Back when the Bay had the Earthquake in ’91 we felt it. When Mac
Dre died, we felt it.
Do you feel like the Northern Cali sound is changing?
We need to change. That’s what I’m feeling like right now. The Hyphy
thing started off good, but people tried to cash in on it too quick,
they didn’t let it grow into a strong movement. Hyphy got commercialized
while it was still getting its roots in the ground. That made it into
fad instead of a movement. It’s time for a new phase, and I’m doing
whatever I can to make that happen.
