Interview with Too $hort
By David Friedman
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Your latest album, "What’s My Favorite Word?" is your 11th studio release, not counting greatest hits albums and compilations. What’s the significance of the new album to you?

It represents, to me, the best work I’ve done in probably the last five years. And I’m just really eager to get this album out because it’s just another milestone in my legacy as far as my achievements and stuff. To say this is the 14th album (overall) is saying a lot. I plan on doing 15 and 16 and just keeping going.

What makes you say that your newest album is one of the best ones you’ve done in five years?

Well, just the fact that there’s more of a balance. The last couple albums were kind of on the explicit side. I kind of toned it down a little bit on this one and did it in the fashion of some of the older albums where you’d find extremely explicit songs, but then you’d find
songs that were free of curse words and stuff. I just toned it down a little bit. The music is still the same flavor and whatnot. I’m trying to hold up the Bay Area sound and the way we do things out in the Bay and basically make it so the rest of the world can enjoy it too.

So your goal was to make "What’s My Favorite World?" a more universally acceptable album?

Not necessarily in the sound. I’m just growing, man, as an artist. You say, ‘The guy did so much. How can he continue to grow?’ But there’s still room. I still find ways to challenge myself and set new goals for what I want to do. Basically, I challenge myself to continue this career for as long as possible.

In terms of being a veteran and sustaining a successful career for many years, I see you as being to the West Coast what LL Cool J has been on the East Coast. What keeps you motivated and why do you still enjoy the same career you’ve had since you were 14?

It’s probably just the fact that I get so much feedback from my fans saying, ‘Don’t stop. Keep giving us more albums, more songs.’ And people keep calling, saying they want to work with you and they want to do this and that. So basically, it’s by popular demand. I just keep going. I’m still signed to a major contract. I still get a lot of money every time
I make an album. That’s the way it is.

Insane Clown Posse and Kid Rock had record deals with Jive in the ’90s and they have said the deals went really badly. But then you have rappers like you and E-40 who seem happy with your deals with Jive. What do you make of that?

Well, at first I had a pretty shitty contract. But then I renegotiated a couple times and I got it to where I want to be. You’re never really satisfied with your label, no matter what label you’re on. You could be on an independent label, you could be on the biggest label in the world, and you always have differences with the company you work for. I just stay focused on making records and handling my business as far as continuously being able to have a roof and food to eat and all the things that are necessary in life. I’m not 100 percent satisfied with Jive Records at all times, but I’ve never been to the point where I’m like ‘I hate Jive.’ It’s not even like a love-hate relationship. It’s more like a long-term marriage. We’re just wedged together.

What are some of the benefits you’ve enjoyed from working with Jive? What has made you stay with the label all these years? And what are some of the drawbacks?

I think the main advantage has probably always been the main disadvantage. You’re not dealing with a corporation. You’re dealing with a company that’s owned by one person. And there’s not a lot of say so going on around here. The decision-makers have always been few and you can actually get them on the phone and talk to them. If there’s some kind of issue, like a real issue of money or something that you need to take place with some type of urgency, you can get at that person. You can get them to write you a check tomorrow if it was a situation where that was supposed to happen. On the other side, being that there are so few people who call shots around Jive Records, that could work to your disadvantage. You might need some opinions of people who you feel think on the same lines as you. And, at that time, you might feel that the people who call shots at Jive don’t share those opinions with you, so why should they make those decisions. You don’t really have a board of directors to go to or a chain of command. You just have these few people who say it is or it isn’t. That’s just how it is. So it works for you and works against you.

Your album title, "What’s My Favorite Word?" is of course referring to the word "Biiiiiitch!!!" Why is that your favorite word?

That is something that I incorporated into my live performances many years ago. It would be my way of saying goodbye to the crowd, just my farewell, the last thing I say. I’d say, ‘Before I go, tell me, what’s Too $hort’s favorite word?’ And everybody knows the answer. So I had been saving that title for years and years. When I finally did the Too $hort greatest hits, Too $hort anthology, Too $hort boxed set, I was gonna name it ‘What’s My Favorite Word?’ But I decided since this is the last studio album that I’m doing with Jive Records, I said I’d name this album that. The word, personally in my life, me, myself – no, it’s not my favorite word. But when I’m in character and I’m doing my Too $hort thing, ‘Biiiiiitch!!!’ is my favorite word. I use it throughout the show, I use it throughout the albums, I use it to be mean to women, I use it to be nice to women.

How can you use the word "Biiiiiitch!!!" to be nice to women?

Well, I think it’s the way you look at them, it’s the tone of voice you use and the way you use it in the sentence. It could be a compliment at times. An example is ‘You are a boss bitch.’ She’s running things, so boss bitch. She oughtta be able to say, ‘Damn right, I am’ instead of saying ‘Who you callin a bitch?’ I can say, ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but you are the baddest bitch I’ve ever seen in my life.’ And she could take it the wrong way if she wants to, but a lot of times they don’t.

At different points in your career, have people taken you the wrong way or your music the wrong way?

The biggest misconception about me is that I’m Too $hort 24 hours a day and that I would even want to be that way. I have that debate with people from time to time. Like, ‘Well, if you’re not that way, why would you rap about it?’ I mean, it’s profitable. That’s why. It’s been a hell of a business being Too $hort. It’s over a hundred million dollar entity. There must be something OK about it. It’s not something that I feel ashamed about. But, at the same time, it is a character that I made up and I do not portray it when I’m not working.

Could you describe Too $hort the character versus Todd Shaw the person?

I mean, the best way that I could put it is that me, Todd, I made up Too $hort. So if that’s my alter-ego, if that’s a part of me – whatever you want to call it – I just made it up. So nothing that’s Too $hort really represents me as a person and I don’t really put Todd Shaw in my Too $hort because I keep them separate. Personality-wise, I don’t act like Too $hort. That’s not how I act. I don’t call women out their name and disrespect them. I just don’t do that.

How do you feel about women?

I think that there are quite a few stank bitches out there, but I think there are some very respectable women in the world. I think there are some beautiful ladies. And I think that if you’re one or the other, things could change. You could be a woman and then, sooner or later, find yourself being a stank hoe if you don’t carry yourself right. And I’ll treat you accordingly. I like to tell women that say, ‘Why do you talk about women so bad?’ I say, ‘Well, I don’t. I just talk about bitches and hoes.’ And then they go, ‘Oh. OK.’ I’ve never said one bad thing about a woman. But I’ll talk bad about a bitch. That’s what I
write.

If Too $hort was a separate person and I could arrange for Too $hort to meet Todd Shaw, do you think the two of you would get along?

I think that if I acted like Too $hort, I don’t think I would get the results that I say Too $hort gets on the record. You’re not gonna say, ‘Hey, bitch, suck my dick’ and then actually get some head. It’s just a little over-exaggerated in terms of the approach and the results. It’s entertainment, it’s Hollywood, it’s show business.

But do you think that you’d be friends with Too $hort?

I think that $hort Dog would cause me to get the wrong women. I wouldn’t want the women that he would get. And then the women that I would want to get, he would come up and say stupid shit like ‘What’s up bitch?’ And they’d walk away. So I’d probably hang with $hort Dog in a different light. I wouldn’t hang with him when I was trying to get some women. I would probably hang with him when I just wanted to swap stories about ‘what have you done with women’ and smoke some weed, kickin’ it and laugh and shit. I wouldn’t take him to the club and turn him loose on some dear friends of mine, females that I know really good. ’Cause I’ve got homeboys that are really obnoxious like Too $hort, that really like grab your ass as soon as they meet you and ask you if you want to have sex right away.

What’s the first single from your new album?

The first single is called ‘Quit Hatin,’ produced by Lil’ Jon, featuring Lil’ Jon & the Eastside Boyz, Twista and my homeboy V. White from the Delinquents out in Oakland. Basically, it’s a party song, Lil’ Jon flavor. It’s got a down South feel, but then it doesn’t really take away from what I’ve been and what I am – the Too $hort sound. It’s not wrong. It’s OK. The song fits.

Even the more explicit sex songs on "What’s My Favorite Word?" have a really laid-back feel to them. The whole album is relaxing. Were you shooting for that?

Yeah. All the instrumentation is live and we really took our time and mixed it to where it sounds really clear and it’s gonna sound really good in your CD player. And you’re right. The first single, ‘Quit Hatin,’ is the hype. It’s a hype song. But the rest of the album is pretty laid back. That was my choice. I wanted the album to feel mature. I wanted it to feel like it’s not some young, teenage, 21-year-old, noisy rap album. And I’m not trying to be something that I’m not. Too $hort, I’m a smooth player. It’s the kind of music a pimp would want to listen to when he’s on his way to drop his hoes off.

I think you touch on this on the song "The Old Fashioned Way," but do you feel like rap has become better or worse over the years?

I just think everybody wants to be rich and famous and popular for the wrong reasons. I think that even just a little light – if you just got to stand in the spotlight at a showcase displaying your skills for some label execs and some bigwigs in the house and the spotlight touches you a little bit and you started rapping – you start to feel important. Our favorite rappers, our legendary rappers, I don’t think any of them ever did it to be famous or to be rich. I think they just did it because they were good at it and they really liked doing it. Most of the people I know got into the game and made records and earned their names for little or no money. And then you get paid later on after paying a lot of dues. So you earn it, you deserve it. Cats nowadays, they’re in it from day one and they want the bill, they want a car, they want to forget about the hood and go live with the rich folks from day one. I was on my fourth, fifth album before I bought a house with a swimming pool, before I bought a Mercedes.

Your first two albums, 1985’s "Don’t Stop Rappin" and 1986’s "Players," came out on the Seventy-Five Girls label. After you left the label, they released a third album. What was going on there?

In 1987, I went independent. I went out on my own, away from Seventy-Five Girls, and we put out ‘Freaky Tales’ as a single and ‘Born to Mack’ as an album. Somewhere in there, Seventy-Five Girls found these old lost tapes. ‘Players’ and ‘Don’t Stop Rappin’ were albums that I made in a studio. ‘Raw, Uncut and X-Rated’ was an album I made in a
backroom using deejay equipment and just using other people’s instrumentals.

Do you think that the fact that you had released those early albums contributed to your longevity?

Yeah. I got to cheat. And what I mean by cheating is it was like the minor leagues. It was like college or somethin’. I had the opportunity to professionally go in the studio and make song after song after song and basically practice getting my skills together before I was thrown onto a national audience, a national platform. I was already sharp. I knew the studio, I knew how to make tracks, I knew the whole shit. I knew how I wanted my delivery to be. So if I had to display myself up against Run-D.M.C. and early LL Cool J and Whodini when I was doing my local independent records on Seventy-Five Girls in 1985, ’86... I was just as popular as them in the Bay, in Northern California. But I think
they were major league and I think I was minor league. And I went to the majors when I made ‘Freaky Tales’ and I was ready to be a heavy hitter. So I got to be in the farm camp for a little while to get my shit together. And when the time came, I was truly professional. I don’t think many artists had that training. And before I ever got in a studio, I did a lot of rappin’ from 1981 through ’85. We did a lot of tapes, we did a lot of performances, a lot of shit.

That’s going back to when you used to sell cassettes out of your trunk, right?

Before we were even old enough to have cars, we sold them out of paper bags when you caught the bus. They were 30 minutes. I used to do the pause mix, which I could push pause on the cassette and when I let up off of it, I’d pull the record back. You never knew I started it over. A song would be like 30 minutes long, a 30-minute rap with no hook.

Being that you go back to the early ’80s, who were your influences when you got into rap?

Musically, Parliament/Funkadelic, Ohio Players, Cameo. Lyrically, Spoonie Gee, Melle Mel, Kurtis Blow.

I’ve interviewed some rappers who have been signed to a major label without having ever released a single song before getting signed. Or sometimes a rapper will come out with an album and be featured in the magazines, and then you never hear from them again. What do you make of that?

Well, first of all, I admire and I look up to and I feed off of all the artists who have been in this through the ’80s, through the ’90s, new millennium. Dr. Dre, Scarface, LL, Erick Sermon – all the artists who, from the day they came out to the present day, they get gold after platinum after gold after platinum. Jay-Z, Nas, Snoop Dogg, Ludacris, Trick Daddy, on down the line, every time they put something out they get a plaque and hang it on the wall. Anybody that falls into that category, those are the people that I admire. I’ve seen, time and time again, the hottest rapper of the year, the hottest song of the year. Every magazine cover, every article ... every time you turn on the TV, they’re being interviewed on BET and MTV and all this stuff. And then you never hear from them again. I’ve seen that time and time again. You read every magazine and they’re doing the year in review in hip-hop. They don’t mention me, but they mention Mr. One-Hit Wonder like he’s the greatest thing that ever happened to hip-hop. Rap has a short attention span, so the fact that I’ve been repeatedly overlooked kind of all came around full circle when I said, ‘I’m retiring after 10 albums.’ That was six years ago and LL’s like a milestone right now saying ‘I’ve got 10 albums.’ LL started before me and he’s probably just been at a slower pace, but I was announcing I was at 10 albums six years ago and people were going, ‘Whoa. How the fuck did he get 10 albums?’ But I did it. And I’m just saying that now I just feel like that whole longevity thing is on lockdown. New artists don’t really have access to it because the competition is so high. You’ve gotta slip in a Ludacris, Eminem, Jay-Z or somebody if you want to take a stronghold on this rap industry. You’ve gotta slip in really hard. And it’s nothing to get a hit record. I mean, you get a hit record, that’s not gonna ensure you a Mercedes, houses, endless women. It’s not gonna guarantee you anything. But you string a bunch of hits in a row and you start seeing the financial benefits. I’m really not impressed by one-hit wonders. I’m really not
impressed by people that have one- or two-album careers. They may be a real cool person and I might now them and hang out with them, but you don’t impress me when you can’t hang in the rap game. I’m glad that there’s only a few that are doing it. And the females that are hanging plaques on their wall, Lil’ Kim, Foxy, Trina and Eve, I respect that. I like all hip-hop and whatnot, but I think it’s unjust that some of us have the big head and we didn’t deserve it.

You mentioned that "What’s My Favorite Word?" will be your last studio album on Jive Records since your latest contract with the label is running out. What are your future plans?

I pretty much figure the feeling is mutual. I don’t think they want to offer me another contract. And I don’t really think I want to sign again. I don’t want it to end in court. I want it to end like ‘the end.’ This is the Too $hort, Jive story. The end. Twelve albums, here they are. I’m going straight independent after this, straight up, back to where I came from. It’s been my ace in the hole since I started this shit. I told myself there will never be another label for me, other than Jive. When I’m not doing Jive anymore, I’m doing independent.

Since you’re capable of selling at least 500,000 albums every time out and you’ve gone platinum seven times, why wouldn’t you want to sign on with a major label that can get your product to the masses?

The only way I would sign with a major label is if they attach a motion picture movie deal with it that’s worth multi-millions. I don’t want anything from a label except guarantees that they’re gonna do for me what I would do for myself. I just can’t see signing to any label to make albums only. It makes no sense because there’s nothing you can do for me. If you’re one of the companies that are also owned by a company that owns a movie studio, then you can give me a movie deal. You can give me a two-part deal. You’ve gotta give me something other than saying ‘We’ll put out Too $hort album.’ I don’t need a deal for that.

Do you feel like there will be a lot more Too $hort albums coming out in the future?

I’m guaranteeing you there will be a greatest hits to follow this album that I’m doing now. And I’ll guarantee you that there will be at least two more after that before I feel like, ‘What’s next?’ I’m stringing it along like that. I’m thinking when I start off and do the independent thing again, I really need to do two back-to-back. So if they sell a couple hundred thousand each, that’ll be a couple million dollars each.

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones are in their late 50s and they’re still touring. Rap, of course, hasn’t been around for nearly as long as rock music has. But do you think that it will get to the point where, in 20 years, we’ll have 45- to 60-year old rappers who are still making music and touring?

I don’t think we can stop it because who’s to say that the Temptations would be doing tours 30 years later? So I’m feeling like the older rappers get, the older rap fans get. It’s easy math.

What do you like to do when you’re not recording new music or touring?

Well, we mostly just talk shit and shoot pool and hang out. That’s what I like to do. But my daily routine is to wake up in the morning and handle business, you know? I make a hundred phone calls and make sure business is handled, and then I kick it. When I say business, I mean, what do I do on a daily basis that makes people write me checks and make me be able to take them to the bank and deposit them into my account? That’s business.

Your new album also has guest appearances from George Clinton, B-Legit, E-40, Ant Banks, D’Wayne Wiggins, Bun B., Big Gipp, Devin the Dude, Petey Pablo and Roger Trautman Jr. Is there anything else you’d like to say to the Too $hort fans out there who have been following your career over the years?

I’m just saying that, don’t sleep on this Too $hort album. I know that the bootleg situation and the burning CDs and swapping them on the computer and the Internet is out of control. The record companies are having a real difficult time figuring out how they’re gonna battle this situation. It’s costing everybody a lot of sales and a lot of money, but, at the same time, I’ve seen a lot of sales and a lot of money. So if you’re one of those people that are not going in the record store to purchase the product anymore, I just want to say I still appreciate you for reaching out for that bootleg and enjoying a Too $hort album. Don’t think I’m mad at you, even though it’s really like foul. It’s really wrong. But it’s a nice gesture that you’re still gonna spend $5 on my album to get the little unauthorized copy and like it. I just want to tell the people that because I think there were a lot of bootleg sales on the last couple of albums. And really, it’s affected the official
numbers. But it hasn’t affected the number of fans I have. So I just want to let them know that I appreciate the bootleg purchasers too.

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