Murder Dog Archives


	Interview with Ghetto Mafia by Allen S. Gordon A lot of rumors out there about what was going on with Ghetto Mafia, set the record straight. It’s been two or three years since the last album, man. As everybody knows, Nino got locked up shortly after the last album and had to knock out two and a half, so we have just been chilling. . . maintaining Ghetto Mafia. Instead of putting out anything, we just been in the streets grinding until we got everything back to full strength like we had it from day one. So we have just been producing and dropping little guys from the Dec (Decatur, GA), producing for a few artists and doing collaborations. Some things we’ve been known for. What have you and the remaining members been doing to pass the time or keep finances flowing? Rap wise? Just working on different projects with different labels. As you know, Ghetto Mafia has pretty much just stuck to our camp, but now we’re branching out a little bit. We did a couple of projects over at Atlantic with Greg Street, a project over at Inter-scope with DJ Screw, Celly Cell, the Blazin soundtrack with Fat Joe, Cuban Link and Angie Martinez. Has this lag in time hurt Ghetto Mafia at all since, the Atlanta scene is really taking off outside of LaFace and So So Def? Really, that question right there. . . Since we do our thing, we’ve never been known to put out three or four albums a year. We’ve always come out with one or two projects during a year or longer. We not getting people bored with what we do. We take our time to give people another flavor from Atlanta. When they here Ghetto Mafia, they know that not anybody can do this. This go around people are going to appreciate Ghetto Mafia more because of the rise in Georgia’s popularity. It’s not just Outkast and Ghetto Mafia anymore. You’ve got the entire Oomp Camp, Ludacris, Pastor Troy and the list goes on. I remember being in the studio with Ice T and he was marveling at the style Ghetto Mafia kicked off on the last album. He thought it was the tightest thing he heard in a while, because it was simple, yet communicated what niggas take whole verses to say. Ice T said that? Damn. We got a new style. If everybody out there thought we came with something different and changed the rap game, we really about to change it again. We have a new style that nobody is doing. Nino: And they can’t bite it. It’s something real that we are about to come out with. Ganja, Nino, Wicked, Dope Boy, Shorty Shorty, man we back. We are all together. People thought we broke up because we been chilling for a minute, but that’s bullshit. We gon’ spit it on this new album and people are gonna hear it this time. It seems that you guys do rap music because you have the talent, but you’re not obsessed with it and sit in the studio every hour. Is it just fun or has it become business yet? Exactly! That’s the perception we have. A lot of people around here say that Ghetto Mafia could be the largest thing out if they would just apply themselves more. "It seems like they don’t take this rap thing serious. They have all this talent and they just sitting on it." That’s kinda true, because we don’t want to unleash until we get that full love that’s out there. We just haven’t really found it, and to settle for just being a shadow in this camp or that camp, or be secondary to anybody- we’d just rather put out music and CDs ourselves. We’ve always sold and we’ll keep that going until we find a large enough machine that can come to the table with a real offer. So it’s almost like a blues thing? Nino: Yeah, but when we come out we set trends. When we come out again, we’ll set more trends. The blues thing, that was just a phase that was needed at the time. We may come on Parliament, we may come out on rock-n-roll or pop–one thing about Ghetto Mafia is that we are unpredictable. If you are just expecting something blue-sy for this next album, you’re gonna be shocked. That’s cool, but I meant blues in terms of staying underground and making your own money until the major offer is right. Exactly. We have three labels expressing real interest in us, Interscope, Universal and Atlantic–strong about this album. This Ghetto Mafia album is going to have all the original members from the first album. Ganja, Shorty, Dope Boy, Wicked and Nino. This album is featuring everybody. Is hard incorporating the ideas of five or six cats into a group concept? It’s real hard because everybody is real talented. As you know, Nino is from the islands, Wicked is from the Dec, DB is from the Dec and has a Midwest flow–so everybody at a time wants to run a different way. We just sit down and figure out what works best the Ghetto Mafia way. Nino: That’s what makes Ghetto Mafia so unique and clever and make the styles come out the way they do. We got so many different heads at the table with different fire and ideas, we just come with the best. Wicked: We got guys in our group. . . Nino can chant and patio better than Wyclef. DB can twist and spit faster than Twista, Wicked can get as gangsta and dirty as Scarface- but we all put that aside for Ghetto Mafia flavor to shine. How do you guys determine which songs make the album with all the group members? We go through a process with a couple of different DJs such as Greg Street, Mean Green and other guys we deal with to see what people like the most. We like to take people from different walks of life and let them feel the music to get a response. Nino: We just want to let our fans know that through all the bullshit, Ghetto Mafia is stronger than ever. Everything is going according to plan and we are sorry that we haven’t dropped more albums or EP’s for our fans. It’s just business reason. We put out five albums for the fans and the love of rapping, but now it’s time for Ghetto Mafia to be set financially for life of these albums. Playtimes over, because people bite our stuff and put it out on major circuits or take credit for a style they didn’t develop. These are artists from ATL or across the country? Nino: Basically from Atlanta, or from the outskirts riding around with they walkman biting our shit man. For real. They bite our shit then get in a magazine and give props to Outkast. The last word, like Jerry Springer, if you think it’s over- you’re wrong. It’s just begun and we are finna hit em hard. We hold the title for everything. Ring Kings. We hold all the belts. How has the explosion of Crunk music helped the Atlanta scene for groups like yourself? Actually, that goes back to my point. Groups out of Atlanta have actually helped us out. That is something we may not have been giving our fans. We give ‘em straight gangsta riding- more of your Tupac type music, and the crunk stuff is part of Atlanta culture. We give folks a little bit of that, but this nationwide acceptance may have helped us more than anything because now people can really appreciate what we do. And it just shows that everybody can’t put a four minute movie in front of you. There’s nobody quite like Ghetto Mafia. Is the independent route so successful that you would never become part of the machine or industry? It’s like this, with this new album we may have problems with a machine. That’s one of the reasons we have never signed to the big companies. We are creative, we write everything ourselves, we have a studio to ourselves and we are pretty private. We are not real open to having a bunch of people up in our business like that. We are not as open as labels would like their artists to be. We just don’t run around the block as quick as they want us to or jump as fast as they want us to. That always has been a concern, as well as egos coming into play. What is your take on how the history of Atlanta’s hip hop music has taken off and how has it played into your progression? The first music was the bass or booty music, as some people call it. That was like the first music in Atlanta. Then Outkast came on the scene with more of the player/pimp type music. That changed the game. The only thing that was missing was the real street type music. That’s where Ghetto Mafia and another group was famous for putting the street music on the map. Eight to nine years ago, there was nobody doing street music or the Oukast’s type of music, now every group that comes out is doing street music or Ghetto Mafia type music. Six years ago, if you couldn’t tongue twist or didn’t have the vocabulary of an Outkast you couldn’t get a deal. So we kind of opened up the doors for the industry to become open to street oriented music. What about the crunk evolution? It was a process. Atlanta has always been crunk, but what brought the scene out was the new Orleans scene. Their street acts in particular–No Limit. The only major camps we had here, were So So Def and LaFace, and they weren’t representing the streets like the New Orleans camp were: No Limit, Cash Money, Big Boy. So when the Ghetto Mafia, Eastside Boys and Pastor Troy came out with that type of music it was just like a relief. People in Atlanta don’t really care about lyrics, it’s the way you feel, and the crunk music was like a rebuttal saying: "We’re here." Nino: Those guys out in New Orleans influenced the scene out here whether they know it or not. They made Atlanta more crunk than it is by having the major deals and their artists being heard more than the hometown artists for so long. We didn’t have any major deals for that type of music coming out of Atlanta, only Goodie Mob and Outkast. So this thing has been brewing for a while. Pastor Troy and them blew up on the jealousy and envy of Master P. He’ll tell you, anybody in Atlanta will tell you, because at that time Master P was on top in the eyes of the public. That’s what made Pastor Troy, Ghetto Mafia and other cats really put it down for this Atlanta thing. As long as you guys have been putting it down I can’t imagine how nobody wouldn’t offer you or other cats from GA a hefty contract? We’ve already sold a lot of albums, so I don’t see how anybody wouldn’t bend over backwards to get some type of deal done. That was Master P’s problem. His music wasn’t great, but he was supported by his city and he was a businessman. Then when he got hot and was selling albums he would fuck with some rappers from New Orleans, but wouldn’t fuck with other rappers out of major cities where he was selling- mainly Atlanta. That’s how that whole "We Ready" got started, because he was telling Atlanta we wasn’t ready and he wouldn’t sign any groups from here. He would still be here today if he had signed the Pastor Troys’ and Ghetto Mafias’. He would have locked in Atlanta especially since he was selling major units here, at the time he already had New Orleans on lock. If he would have signed some of these groups that were already making albums here he’d still be on top. How has Three 6 Mafia influenced the Crunk scene? Three 6 Mafia is very popular in Atlanta, especially Gangsta Boo. They just made Atlanta get more crunk too, but Gangsta Boo opened the door to get a lot of women rapping in Atlanta. Lil’ Kim, Foxy Brown and Left Eye had a lot to do with it too, but I think Gangsta Boo and Mia X had the most influence on Southern girls taking this rap thing seriously. What is the problem with what people see in Ghetto Mafia? I think it’s because of the content of our music or the perception what people think we represent. I think the name, Ghetto Mafia, gives people the idea that we are sooo hard. These people really don’t listen to our music is what I’ve found. They listen to us, but don’t listen to us. That’s the problem. So some people think we’re all about, "Fuck you, Godamnit I’ll kill you!" But really Ghetto Mafia is a political group. A lot of artist put out the gangsta stuff or pimp thang, but we address the entire streets- the dope, the mayor, the crooked police, fake brothers. Basically everything that takes place in these streets and affects the people who live here. We don’t degrade women in our music. We don’t have songs about bitches and hoes. We mention a few things about women regarding these streets, but we don’t concentrate entire verses or songs and choruses degrading women. Nino: People look at as like a hard, fly-by night group and think they can offer us anything because we won’t be here tomorrow. But they don’t really know our music. To tell the truth, you really don’t cuss much on your albums. Thank you, man. That’s right. It’s funny that you would say that because people tell us all the time, "All y’all do is cuss and act so hard." I just tell people, evidently you don’t know Ghetto Mafia’s music. That perception of us is what scares people. For example, we could do a song like Ludacris. If we did the exact same song, "Throw Them Bows," we wouldn’t get played on the radio because of the tone of our voice. With the same lyrics and same track, we wouldn’t get played because of our name. Cat’s usually like to reach to the side and grab the hottest underground group and put them down with the camp to keep the name in all corners of this music. That’s what guys do in New York and in L.A. . In Atlanta, guys dick ride too much. Even if a guy doesn’t like Outkast’s music, Jermaine’s music or this guy’s music- that is who they will ride with just trying to be associated. I can understand that, but at the same time, when all this rapping is over and we are just sitting on the porch together, all us Georgia boys, can you live with yourself? For example, I never followed Mack 10 and Ice Cube after NWA broke up. When Dre and Snoop hit, I kinda fell off Ice Cube’s bandwagon until Mack 10 brought MC Eiht up. It was that long, and it wasn’t the music, or Mack 10 getting with T-Boz- it was strictly because he had reached out to MC Eiht. That’s what folk should be doing showing respect. Somebody need to do Spice 1 like that now. Somebody need to put Spice back out there like he supposed to be. Show some respect for his history and talent. It ain’t like that here in Atlanta.
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