Then folks in Dallas should definitely holler as I will be there Wednesday and Thursday at least, shooting photos at the Big Tuck and Chamillionaire video shoots. Very excited for this. Below you will find my interview with Chamillionaire that ran in the new issue of Murder Dog Magazine. For some reason they credited me as "Ublurat Porog." Not sure why as my name is "Matt Sonzala" and always has been. Maybe Black Dog Bone has finally initiated me into his secret society, or maybe he just wants me to pull every hair out of my big head. I don't know. But you can read it below. I did the interview a while before the record came out, and let me say it here, I kind of think that Chamillionaire released the best record out of Houston this year. He came with concepts and lyrics that set him apart from the rest of the pack and I got love for him for that right htere. It was sorely needed.
That being said, Bun B also put out the best record to come out of Houston/Port Arthur last year.
But first up a MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT. The HoustonSoReal Party Bus is hitting the road again. This time we're headed to Austin with K-Rino, Young Bleed and Money Waters for a show at the Backroom January 27th. Brought to you in association with my man J. Dean out there. The Backroom been doing big things and I hope to see everybody in Central Texas out there!
Flyer by Tosin at Sinful Designs.
Trying to get same show popping anywhere in Texas that wants it. Holler at me about booking this package today. Matt at damagecontrolradio dot org.
Also, if you don't already know, I shoot promo photos for a lot of artists and have dirt cheap rates. I shoot digital with a Nikon D70 very hi res. You can make posters, press kits, album covers, whatever, with the finished product. Holler at me if you need photos. Dallas peeps? Holler, I'ma be there next week.
And before we get into the Cham interview, CHOPS hit me off with a few exclusive UGK remixes in celebration of the release of the man, Pimp C. So here they are. You heard most of these on Damage Control already.
get throwed
one day
belts to match
Chamillionaire - Murder Dog Interview 2005
by Matt Sonzala, not affiliated wiht Ublurat Porog
Would you agree that a lot of the music coming from the new breed of rappers in Houston that are making it pretty much talks about the same things over and over?
Um, yeah what comes out in the mainstream yeah. I do agree with that. Even though under it there are some jewels and people will talk about some other stuff. But the people that are talking about some other stuff, that’s not the stuff that’s making it to the mainstream right now. Most of the stuff is that same old car culture, Texas stuff is the stuff that’s in the mainstream right now.
Will you do anything to change that with your album? You’ve always seemed to take a different path than a lot of these rappers. You’ve always stood out as yourself.
Yeah I didn’t even do that with my album and I’m glad too. Sometimes you just start thinking about it like “Damn man, everybody is feeling this Texas stuff.” But with timing, everything happens for a reason and I just always had it in my mind that I’m going to do something different. And I’m glad I did, because if I would have done mine the same with the timing, compare to when all the other Texas stuff came out, mine would have just seemed old. So I’m glad I didn’t because now when it comes out, even if I say anything, there’s creativity and other ideas on my album. The song with Scarface… I even have a song where Natalie sings the hook, it just sounds like some alternative stuff but it’s dope. She’s singing the hook. It was actually a sample there originally but we had to take it out because we couldn’t get it cleared. So it’s just me telling a story. It’s different man, people are gonna hear it and say it’s dope. It’s a lyrical album because I hate that when people think we just all talk about our cars and all talk about our gold teeth. I’m not doing that on my album. A lot of times people judge an album by the single but I’m letting you know it’s something different.
Well there’s a time and place for everything, but right now this time and place has been over done.
I definitely feel like that. I didn’t want to do any chopped and screwed hook. It’s cool because that represents the Texas culture but I didn’t want to come in and make a big impact and still be doing the same thing. I remember, I always rewind back to when me and Paul first came out. Everybody was on a freestyle Texas type of sound. But when Get Ya Mind Correct came out it was completely different. I ain’t gonna lie, there was a lot of backlash at first, people was like “What is this?” But after the time passed now people are saying that was one of the best albums out of Texas.
Well that album took the whole Houston sound a little bit further and it opened up a lot of people who weren’t listening to Texas music.
Yeah I definitely want to open up peoples eyes to a different sound from Texas. You know how when you look at the TV and everybody thinks that in the south everybody rides horses. For a while people was thinking that. Then you come down here and you see that it’s different. I feel like I’m gonna be that different side of Texas where people will say “O.k. everybody doesn’t just rap about their cars. There’s some lyrical content.” There’s creativity. There’s ideas out there, you just gotta take some risks.
Tell me about the song with Scarface. What are you guys talking about on there?
It’s crazy because I was listening to the song the other day thinking about the whole Katrina thing and the song is called “Here Comes the Rain.” Billy Cook actually sings the hook on that and it’s basically talking about how in life when everything is going wrong, everything, no matter how much money you got, it could just seem like you know everything goes wrong and something else happens and you just want to give up. So it’s basically like “Keep your head up.” And the whole moral of that song is lie “After the rain comes the sunshine.” The sunshine always comes after the rain. I was just thinking about the whole Katrina thing and it was just kind of eerie. I recorded it a long time before. It’s like, you might walk out of your house and be in a good mood and see your tires gone flat. Or your bills are due on the first and it’s the third and you don’t got no money. It’s that type of stuff. Just going through the average person and what they might go through. If you think about it, all the times something like that happened to you, you made it through every single one of them. You’re still here to live today. I’m more of the narrator of the song and Face is more of the example.
Did you come up listening to Face? You’re young and I think a lot of the folks in your generation came up listening to Screwed Up Click and all those folks, and a lot of those folks came up listening to Face. Who’d you listen to?
Yeah some of Face’s old songs come on, like the other ay I was watching Street Flava and one of Face’s old songs came on and my boys were in there singing every single word to it. He’s a little older than me, he knows all that stuff. With me, I knew a lot of the newer stuff but I would go back, and what I always knew about Face and about UGK and them, the reason why I liked them and respected them so much is because they never changed their stuff. They just did them. Face was doing the gangsta stuff back then when you wasn’t hearing all these people bragging about being gangstas. It wasn’t the cool thing to do at the time. It was just what they was. It was more of a raw element. It wasn’t all this complete radio play and all these singles and stuff it was just them and they was getting respect doing it. And to this day they never switched up. The music they make is timeless. You can go back and listen to it and it still sounds relevant. That’s what intrigues me about Face, Bun and Pimp.
Well yeah, all them were trendsetters. And with Face, you gotta remember that even Biggie and Pac totally cited Face as a major influence on themselves. He set a lot of trends. I kind of see a similar trend in Houston right now as when the Geto Boys first broke. You know, this isn’t the first time this has happened for Houston. In the early days of Rap-A-Lot eyes were really down here for a minute. Then in the mid-90’s with the SUC as well. Right now Houston is so hot though, are you seeing a lot f Houston influences in songs coming from other places?
Aw man definitely man, definitely. I’m seeing it everywhere. I’ll be on the east coast or whatever and they ask me about syrup. As soon as you say Houston they say “Aw man, what’s up? Where’s that syrup at?” They might not even know what it is. Yeah, you’re seeing a lot of that influence everywhere. That’s the cycle things go through. When you’re hot everybody wants to know about it. Think about all the transitions the game wenth through. When it went to Louisiana everybody was talking about “Whoadie!” And Cash Money were wearing Reeboks. And people was just intrigued with that whole lifestyle. The same thing is going on with Houston. People just intrigued with the whole lifestyle and what’s going on and they want to know about this Chopped and Screwed stuff and curiosity is drawing them to that. I see it spreading a lot of places. I’ll be out of town in a whole nother market and I’ll hear a song that just sounds like some Texas stuff. Or I’ll hear people collaborating with a Texas artist when I never would have thought they would have collaborated with a Texas artist.
You said UGK and Scarface but who were some of your other influences growing up musically?
I listened to a little bit of everything. I never really had a favorite rapper. I listened to Bone, Thugs and Harmony, I listened to Jay-Z, I listened to Pac, Biggie, I listened to a little bit of everything. In my household, music wasn’t big. My parents didn’t listen to much music. They didn’t like us listening to rap so that’s why as a rebellious kid, you would bein there trying to listen to a little bit of everything and you just loving music. I remember, music used to be like a breath of fresh air. I remember the first time I heard the Bone thing, and that’s not even one of my favorite songs or anything, but when I heard the “Thuggish, Ruggish, Bone” thing, it was raw, it was street and it was a different sound. They were rapping fast. It was just new. The same thing with anything from UGK to Cash Money. I remember when Nelly first came out. People can say whatever they want about Nelly, but when he first came out it was different. Nobody was doing that at that time. All the people that have been successful have been a breath of fresh air.
So are your parents supportive of your music now? Are they happy to see what you’re doing?
Um, I don’t really talk to my dad like that, but my mom, yeah she’s supportive. She lives right u the street from me. Yeah she’s supportive. She’ll tell me that people at her work will tell her that they know that she’s my mother and they’ll be trying to get autographs. She’s seeing it now but she probably couldn’t see it before. You know all they probably saw was the violence and all the smokin’ and the groupies and all that. That’s probably why they went against it you know? But I got my own mind. I get up in there, start making some money and feeding my family off of it and it’s cool you know what I’m saying?
One thing I liked about Get Your Mind Correct was that there was really no cussing from you and Paul an you weren’t talking about drugs. You had some street stuff but you had a different perspective on all that. On your solo album has that format changed? Can we expect a whole new Chamillionaire? Are you sippin’ syrup on the album or something?
Naw, naw ain’t none of that. It’s the same old Cham. I even see interviews to this day and I’ll see little curse words in there and I’ll think about how they be changing my words. It’s something simple, I don’t care, but people know that I don’t even get down like that. It’s just me. It’s not like I’m just some perfect saint or anything, but it’s crazy to me to look at my whole career and my whole underground following and to look at the fans I got fro little white kids in the suburbs to the streets and the hoods. Why are the associating with me? I never really sold drugs. I don’t have that same drug dealer story. I never said I was sippin’ syrup and I feel like I’m just sticking to the same script. You’re not gonna hear me killing everybody, but I think the streets are still going to mess with it. There’s still that street element. You’re not gonna hear me switch up and hear me cursing every song. I been doing that and people don’t even realize it, they don’t even pay attention to it. People to this day still be kind of surprised when they go back and listen to it and realize this nigga really didn’t say nothing but the word nigga. So with this album, truth is you have to make an album that walks that line between street and commercial. Some people make an album that’s too street and the mainstream don’t mess with it. And some people make an album too commercial so the streets don’t mess with it. I try to kind of walk that line and give everybody something.
I think a lot of times rappers get mired in the thought that they have to follow some sort of formula. Like what’s going on right now is what they have to do. Even with Cash Money in New Orleans, a lot of people came out trying to do their thing. And with what’s happening now in Houston, it’s the same thing. Does that worry you at all?
Yeah it’s different situations but with me you gotta kind of keep a mental note. I could trust my own instinct. It’s a lot bigger risk when you’re on a major. If you trust your own instinct an you want to keep your album completely street, you better hope it works. Then you gotta look at the label you’re on. Is the label you’re on gonna understand the records you’re gonna bring to them. Are you gonna be able to convince them to spend a million dollars on a record if they don’t even understand it? And sometimes there’s a politics side of this game that you have to think about. Like if I was on another label could I have brought this other type of Texas record and then run with it? Yeah, but then who’s to say it would have worked. People not really paying attention to the whole politics of this thing. They might see something and think that it instantly worked.
Your deal with Universal is a label deal for your Chamillitary imprint. Who else do you have on the table?
Right now it’s my brother Rasaq man. People always ask me what I’m going to do next. Right now, all I have is ideas man. This music thing changes so much and you have to be honest with yourself. Like I know when my buzz is as big as it is. I’m very honest with myself. I don’t run around here saying I’m gonna sell 10,000,000 records. I’m very honest with myself and I have to be realistic about the buzz. Every artist needs a core fanbase. I don’t care who it is. You gotta start out in the streets because those are the fans that go out and get your album that first week. Some people just try and spend all this money. Think about the new cats you heard just come out of nowhere and they got this big song and then they sell nothing because they have no core fanbase. And that’s how I feel. It starts with the mixtapes man. I got a couple people I got my eyes on, but it’s my brother I gotta focus on. And I look at O.G. Ron C., that’s my DJ, I look at him as an artist too. Me and him have some projects we’re gonna come out with and he does my screwing and chopping and I look at that as an art form too.
How did you build your fanbase like you did? You and Paul started when you were like 16 or 17 right?
We started a long time ago. We was real young, but we was doing the promotions thing. Passing out flyers and stuff. Just getting the connects. Building relationships, then we started getting on the Swishahouse mixtapes. At the time that was the biggest form of promotion we had on the north side of Houston. It was like, if you got on a Swishahouse mixtape people started knowing about you in the hood. That’s what happened man. We started getting on there and spitting and people started asking about me and Paul. And we’re going everywhere. People were starting to recognize us, just off of mixtape freestyles. It started spreading. We started just getting off the couch and it just taking it into our own hands and going out there pushing it hard. I remember the times selling tapes and just passing tapes out to people and moving CD’s. There’s a lot of ground work that went into this. People don’t see that. A lot of times it looks like you’re a new artist that just came out but people don’t see the years of traveling selling CD’s out the trunk.
Well traveling and selling hand to hand had to be a big part of spreading the Houston sound because really, nobody comes to Houston.
And that’s a lot of peoples downfalls when they didn’t make it. It’s that. You gotta get out. The average person will think “Well I don’t know no one out there, what will I do when I get out there?” You just have to follow the wind. Be a tumbleweed in the wind. Get out there and whatever happens happens. Then when you get out there you gotta try and make something happen. Some people just let stuff fall in their lap and other people go and get it. That’s what we was doing. We was going to other markets trying to find their retail stores so we could get the CD’s out there so we could pump ‘em up and we were finding out the clubs and we were just doing so much. And I guess just coming from that promotions background we kind of had that stuff instilled in us.
So you and Paul started out real young doing promotions for other record labels?
Well things like Kappa Beach. It wasn’t directly through the labels, a lot of times it was through middle men. And we would get a little $100 here, $200 there promoting parties. Going to clubs, putting flyers on cars. We was working for the Texas Beach Party. Kappa Beach Party, Cash Money, just promoting all kinds of stuff. At first it was more Paul than me. Then I started getting into it. For me, I didn’t really like doing it because it wasn’t a financial thing. You couldn’t get money from it, you just got connects. But it’s a lot of work. Every night you’re going out to the clubs and passing out flyers and dealing with the police harassing you for pennies. The was crazy. It got so oversaturated that you would come out of the club and there’d be ten flyers on your car. It got to be more of a nuisance and the club owners would get mad. I remember a time when we had to go back in the parking lot and pick up every flyer we put on a car. That was just the price you paid to promote yourself. To be going through that for only $100, it was like “Why am I doing this?” I went through so many jobs where I was like “Man, why am I doing this?” I need to get something. So that’s when I decided to just start flipping stuff around and making it work for me.
Well it wasn’t long after Swishahouse that you guys started doing your own CDs.
Yeah, for a while we was over there at Swishahouse doing it and I pay my respects to them for putting me in the game. We were just getting more popular and getting fame and just like I said on Get Your Mind Correct, “I’d rather be rich than broke and famous.” That’s how I felt I was. I was starting to get famous but I was broke. So we broke off and did our own thing. Started Color Changing Click and started doing our own CDs. Paul was learning how to DJ, we’d try our best to make it happen and we started putting them out. We started making a little but of money but the little bit of money that we had was better than the nothing that we weren’t making. So we started realizing after we started making like thousands we said “Oh shoot, I wonder what they were making over there.”
Well you can relate that to the American Way period though. You just have to go out and do your own thing. The employee doesn’t get shit. You gotta make yourself the employer.
Yeah it’s designed that way and people will tell you you need to do it their way, but I decided that I wasn’t gonna do it that way. I’m gonna do it for myself. I don’t want no salary cap man. There’s too much money out here. I seen too many people have it and too many people not have it to just be sitting here and not know what to do with it.
Well signing with Universal, couldn’t that be something that will take money out of your pocket as well?
Yeah it can. It’s a gamble but there’s a lot of money that you can get in advance. Then the money that you worked so hard all that time independently you can get that all at once. If you play your cards right. You just gotta look at the game. You gotta learn it. You gotta see about these publishing deals. A lot of rappers just sign a deal and get a publishing deal. So they get a deal from the label and they get a publishing deal check on top of their money. So if that’s what you want to do, but I didn’t want to give up my publishing. That’s like my 401k. Someday later on I might be able to make a big deal and get a couple million for that. So there’s all types of stuff. You just got to be real smart about it. There’s so many different ways, from soundtracks to all types of other opportunities when you get on a major that stuff is right at your hands. I don’t sit around at home and wait for the majors to call me. I come in the building and find out who can help me. There’s so much stuff in this building that you can find out and so many connects and so many movie opportunities that you just gotta want it for yourself. When you start seeing that it’s good to be on a major. I just left the international department. We were in there for an hour talking about international stuff. Most people don’t even care about that. There’s a lot of money to be made over there.
Well a lot of these Houston rappers in particular sleep on the fact that you can tour. From the Geto Boys on down, there haven’t been a lot of tours with Houston rappers on them.
Yeah man, I’m real big on that. We got so many people calling and booking. We want to do some bigger stuff like that. But like I said you have to learn. You get in here and you learn how to make the money you can make that money and you gotta stay on the road. Even me, I been on the road for the past couple months. But that’s just the promo part and after the promo part we get to the paid part. Then after the paid part we get to doing some other touring stuff. We connect with other artists and just beak bread with them and make it bigger. There’s a lot of people coming out from David Banner to Bun B, who’s to say we can’t all get money together too.
You don’t see things like the Fresh Fest too much anymore but you could do a Fresh Fest with all Houston artists.
It needs to happen. If everybody put their heads together do you know how much money we could make o our own? But everybody doesn’t have that business mind and it’s hard communicating that to everybody.
So your album is called The Sound of Revenge. Why is that?
People think that it’s just beef because for a while they been painting this picture in the media as I been bubbling up from the underground as a bad guy. Like Cham’s the bad guy. So the name of the title is I’m gonna flip the whole script. Now I got out and I get so much love. People are starting to see that I am humble, this dudes cool and the tables are turning. The Sound of Revenge title basically means success. Success is the best revenge you can have with anybody who says your way is not gonna work. Like that’s my whole life story. When I left Swishahouse everyone was saying “Oh man it’s not gonna work.” But it did. When we was dropping Get Your Mind Correct, we knew we had a big underground following but nobody was listening. So we dropped the album and it started selling like crazy. Next thing you know everybody had their mid correct about who Chamillionaire and Paul is. People always tell you it’s not gonna work. “Oh don’t drop no three disc mixtape, are you crazy?” And then what happens? It sells like crazy. Over and over and over again. I just trust my gut and go against the grain. With Sound of Revenge, success is the best revenge. You don’t even have to say nothing.
One thing about you and Paul back then is you guys had a certain chemistry that you don’t see in a lot of groups. Will we ever see a Paul Wall and Chamillionaire collaboration again? Is that even a possibility?
Uhhh, I don’t know. I can’t see it but I can’t say it’s not possible. I don’t think that chemistry is there anymore. People always say “Aw y’all need to get back together.” Who’s to say that me and Pal getting together would be a good album right now. You gotta understand, we hung out everyday. Everyday. So if we haven’t hung out in like years now, who’s to say that we are the same people? We don’t even know each other anymore so how can you make a perfect marriage musically? It was meant to be, it was what it was but it was in the past. I don’t even look at it like that now.
Well there were rumors not long ago that you guys had contacted each other, has that ever really happened?
I mean yeah, after that little email went out that said me and him had squashed our beef that I didn’t know anything about, I just didn’t do no media or say anything about it cuz I didn’t know nothing about it. But after that he reached out to me like “What up, what’s going on?” I told him I didn’t send that email out, but like I said, everybody else made it all about a beef. Everybody’s more intrigued about it than we are. I’m not even really trippin’. I’m really minding my own business and everybody else is asking me about it. It’s really everybody elses curiosity that’s putting the beef title on it. I just said we’re not cool. When I came out on my CD telling everybody we wasn’t cool I was just being honest so people would stop asking me. How can you sit there and pretend everyday when people always asking “Where’s Paul at?” Eventually you got to tell them. As soon as I did that everybody just went crazy. But it is what it is and we just left it at that. And good luck with his career, good luck with my career and that’s how we left it.
Who else do you have on your album features?
I got Killer Mike, Bun B, Pastor Troy, Lil Wayne, Krayzie Bone, Scarface, David Banner. On the Screwed Up Remix of “Turn it Up” I got Lil O, ESG and Hawk.
You’ve got some big producers on your album too right?
I worked with Scott Storch, Cool and Dre, the Riffs out of LA, the Beat Bullies, I been knowing them since before I got a deal. When they sent me beats, they matched. A lot of people would send me some tracks and they would be real dope, but they wouldn’t fit me. That’s one thing I liked about Scott Storch. When I went in there I said “Let me hear some beats.” And he didn’t have no beats for me to hear. He listened to my mixtapes and like overnight and he said “Man you got some of the dopest melodies I have ever heard, but for you I think you should just simplify it a little bit more.” And everything he said made sense. He told me a lot about a big politics side of the game. And what he said was right. I mess with Play-N-Skillz and Happy Perez from Texas. I messed with Mannie Fresh and that’s the track with Lil Wayne and Rasaq. It’s a good album but I didn’t spend ten billion dollars like everybody thinks. I played it smart. The album got a regular version, an OG Ron C screwed and chopped disc and a DVD. And there’s a bonus disc that has the songs that I did on the video game and another song I did with Happy Perez and the “Turn it Up” remix.
www.chamillionaire.com
Before I forget, here's the last two Damage Controls. I don't remember if I posted up last weeks show yet so here it tis...
Download Damage Control January 5, 2006 HERE
Download Damage Control January 12, 2006 HERE
Texas Predictions for 2006?
G.R.i.T. Boys
Rob G.
V-Zilla
Young Samm
Bavu Blakes
Money Waters
Big Tuck
Steve Austin
Pikhasso
MOJOE
And with that, here's a lil gift to get your weekend started.
G.R.i.T. Boys featuring Lil Keke - I'ma Come Down
They pretty much telling it like it needs to be told. We debuted it this week on Damage Control and got a wonderful response. Get it on your radio shows, mixtapes, and MP3 players pronto.
And oh yeah, South By Southwest is shaping up nicely this year. Working on announcing some confirmations soon. I suggest you bite the bullet and buy a badge.
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