Bonecrusher

By Kerenkol Ole Musa

What part of Atlanta are you from?

Adamsville SWATS.

What was it like growing up in Adamsville?

Family…family and heartache. It was good and bad. What was good was the whole community was together. It was the whole family thang. It was like a tribal thing. I mean the whole tribe thing was strong. All the neighbors knew each other. That was the good thing about it. Me and my homeboys played tackle in the streets a stuff like that.

What was the bad thing about it?

A lotta my niggas didn’t make it. A lotta of my homeboys got killed. It was just the whole element of the street change the neighborhood, before that everything way so innocent.

How did seeing your neighborhood go through such a traumatic transition affect your outlook on life?

It made me be a different person, it made me become more humble it made me become a nicer person toward people. It made me understand the harsh realities of life and understand that there’s always a good and bad to every situation. It made me understand that I can’t make everything perfect. And a lotta times I can’t make everything the way that I want it to. Being from Adamsville just help me understand that about life ya know. It helped me understand that everybody that say that they’re your friend ain’t ya friend and everybody that say they your enemy ain’t ya enemy. You just grow up grounded. It keeps you holistically together.

What kind of music did you grow up listening to?

Everything man. My mom is really the reason why I am in this music thing. She probably don’t even know it. She just listen to music. She sang in the choir and she listen to some of everything: Michael Jackson, Luther Vandross when he was fat…just everything. Everything from the 70s when I was in her stomach and everything after I got out of her stomach I was listening to. I’ve been around music all my life.

Tell me about hip hop, when did you first come in contact with hip hop?

1984, I remember it vividly. The first joint that I heard wasn’t even a hip hop joint. I think it was a Gladys Knight song. She had a song and she was singing it and she had some cats break-dancing in the streets in her video. And I was like man what the hell are they doing? The shit was dope. And then I heard Run DMC and I was like Goddamn, what the fuck is this? The Fresh Fest came to Atlanta and I went to see it. And the first time I saw their stage show I was blown away because their stage show was just phenomenal the way they commanded the stage and how they were able to make people do whatever…to be able to command the crowd, to command thousands like that made me feel like that was what I wanted to do. The music was just running through my soul and was just hitting so hard. At the time I really didn’t know how to get into it, but I just surrounded myself with hip hop. I started break-dancing at first. Then I started playing like I could rap. I started playing freestyle. I found out that I could freestyle better than some of my friends who were actually rappers. But I would always deny the fact that I could rap. I would say naw I’m not a rapper. I would say I can’t rap or come up with good hooks….that’s not me. I can’t rap. I’m a dancer…naw I can’t rap man, I’m a DJ. My homeboy DJ—I used to go over to his house and we’d DJ together and he was like man you should rap dog! I’m telling you should rap and I said man I don’t know how, so eventually I decided I might as well go on and try it.

Initially you started out breaking and DJing?

Breakin’ and DJing. My step dad at the time had some DJ equipment and I just started doing it. I just always surrounded myself with the essence of the music and didn’t know why I was pushing myself to do it at the time. God just works in mysterious ways. He just kept putting me in touch with the music and eventually it is what it is today.

Tell us a little bit about the early Atlanta hip hop scene?

The first rapper to ever do a record on the radio that I know of was Raheem. Remember "Eliminator?" Then was Shi-D and the J-Team and Smurf, DJ Lynn and Edward J…those were the first, the first, first hip hop niggas to hit the scene in Atlanta. After that it just started blossoming. I’m talking about 84, 85, 86.

You first came to my attention with the Lyrical Giants. Did you start out as a solo artist or rapping with the lyrical Giants?

I started with myself first then me and my boy Baby B we started a group called the Lyrical Giants. At the time we had another nigga in the group named Direct. Then Direct left the group and then we ended up hooking up with Bazaar. I’ve been knowing Bazaar for years, he stay up the street from me. I ended up hooking with him and he joined the group and we did the group thang.

And we really ended up pioneering the live element in Atlanta hip hop. We hooked up with a band called The Chronicle. We did that for years. We started in 94. We did a demo and started doing shows around town. That’s how we ended up with our first deal with Eric Sermon. We signed with Def Squad/EMI but that shit didn’t fly because EMI went belly up. That was in 95, 96…somewhere up in there.

What happened from there?

From there we just kept grinding. Doing shows and doing shows, waiting on Def Squad to do their thing, but it ended up not happening because when EMI went belly up they had lost their little deal so Eric let us go…he lets us out the contract. He was all apologetic about it and shit and it was all good. Then we just was grinding. I was just out there doing hooks for everybody. I did hooks for Jim Crow, Youngbloods, the Dungeon Family, Outkast, Too $hort –just keeping my name out there strong and powerful until the next deal comes through. Then we hooked up with a company called Black Market Entertainment and they got us a deal with Tommy Boy and we did that one single called "Fuck Nigga." It got a little buzz in the South. A lotta people liked it. But Tommy Boy was fucking up. It was a bunch of bullshit. Everybody knows what happened with that label. After we got off that label I was kinda like drifting, going back and forth, doing shit for everybody. I did shit for people in Mississippi, did shit for people down in Alabama, Tennessee. It really didn’t matter where I was just trying to grind and get my name out there. One day I just sat on my porch and decided that I wanted to do it. I said in six months I’m gonna be the hottest thing on the streets and six months later, I am the hottest thing on the streets.

Your current single "Never Scared" is sweeping the country, how did it come about?

Me and Avery, the producer, just got in the studio and did the song. We weren’t really paying attention to the song. I just said what would a nigga on the street say and what would these kids wanna hear that I think that they could grab a hold to and I can mix some sort of positive message out of it. And I came up with the hook to "Never Scared." When people first hear the song they don’t hear all of the other shit all they hear is "I ain’t never scared." And people take that with them, little kids take that to school with them. So when a bully run up on them or when that test come up on them, they say they ain’t never scared.

There are two versions to "Never Scared". The first one I heard was done by Reese & Bigalow with you on the hook, Killer Mike and Reese & Big. Then months later I hear your version with you Killer Mike and TI. How did that happened?

I originally did the song with….we had a mix for Mississippi with Reese & Bigalow. And both songs wound up on the radio and my version just took off like wildfire. And Reese & Bigalow and I came to an agreement and it’s all good between us right now. In fact we’re working on Reese & Bigalow’s next single right now. It’s called "Bonafide Pros." We’re trying to get it hot right now. It’s gonna be real big, real big.

What’s the situation with the Lyrical Giants now?

The Giants are still together. We’re doing an album right now on them. They’re gonna probably be on my label. It’s just a blessing to be able to do that for them.

I’ve heard about five different manifestation of your album before the current one of them had a little bit of rock elements to it. How would you describe your style right now?

I describe myself as phenomenal. My style is phenomenal. There are several spectrums to what I do and I do all of those spectrums 100 per cent. And I think that it’s the most glorious thing to touch mankind. People when they hear me, they really don’t know how to take me. My style is kinda crunk, but I’m singing the hooks. Everything I do I try to make it a song. It’s all about the music with me. I don’t give a fuck if I’m talking about killing a muthafucka. If I’m singing the melody in such a way that’s gonna touch your soul, you gonna feel what I’m rapping about. In order to reach the people with the message then I’m gonna do what I gotta do. Just like "Never Scared" ….you can’t go to a kid and say just be a good person and just do good things. They’ll be like man why don’t you just get the fuck away from me, ain’t nothing good ever happened to me in life. That’s how they see things. So you got to introduce them to something that they know in order fro them to embrace you. That’s my style. I wanna give them something that they know to get them into my world in order to introduce them to something that will mold them into something good. If you listen to my album Attention, it goes from one spectrum to another spectrum –from the hardcore dirt that they wanna hear to the middle part where I’m kinda switching it up on them to the to the end where I’m teaching. It’s like being a great teacher. A great teacher understands the difference between being a teacher and being a great teacher. I’m not trying to go out here and preach to these kids. I’m not trying to do none of that. I’m just trying to let these kids know that there’s another options in life for you to take.