Al Tariq

[Philaflava]

Not sure if this was posted here yet, if so, please delete.

Tariq was always my favorite of the trio. I love me Beatnuts, but to me, when he left the shit wasn't the same. Stone Crazy was dope and they had their hits here and there but nothing came close to the what these 3 shared on Street Level. The synergy was nuts.

Peep this dope interview by Robbie @ UnKut

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The artist formerly known as Fashion aka Kool-Ass Fash took some time out to discuss the ups and downs of his career as both a soloist and as a member of The Beatnuts. This first part focuses on his early days, revealing that the Intoxicated Demons EP could have been completely different had fate not intervened, his thorny relationship with Juju, subliminal rhyme jabs between the Native Tongues and how recording the Street Level album was absolute hell.

Robbie: What made you want to rap?

Al’ Tariq: I wanted to rap at an early age, growing up in The Bronx. The first time I heard Spoonie Gee [starts reciting ‘Spoonin’ Rap’] I wanted to do it bad. I always sang and act and wrote plays and movies at a young age, but what made me think it could be real was I went to school with a young gentleman named James Todd Smith. We attended this school called Christopher Robbins Academy, we were both in ninth grade together. I had gone down to North Carolina to live for two years with my family and sister. I was down there in the fall, my brother came to see me, he was like, ‘Look at this record that Jay made.’ I couldn’t believe it. That was the moment. ‘He did it? I could do it!’ When I heard ‘I Need A Beat’ it was the fall of 1984. At them times, I was rhyming but I wasn’t out there rhyming with everybody. It was something I did on the low. Basketball and girls was all I thought about. I wanted to be an entertainer anyway, but rhyming was probably the fourth or fifth thing on that list. I had other pictures for what I thought I was gonna be at the end of the day.


So you decided to make a record as well?

Both of us are Capricorns and have that singular focus. That was the time for me. Seeing that he did it, this dude I went to school with, I used to rhyme with. I was in his grandmother’s house, in the basement, being around him. Being around the original Cut Creator, we were all in the school together. I was in ninth grade but I was dating a junior who was probably the hottest chick in the school. It was like a battle. I played on the basketball team so it was like, ‘Nah, Jay can’t be better than me.’ Not no hate or no jealousy, but ‘I know I’m that good too.’ That drives me still to this day.

What was the next step?

In North Carolina I was in a singing/rapping group for a year and a half. We went around winning a bunch of talent shows and all types of shit. That’s how I stayed with the music. Then when I came back to New York, I was sixteen and I was still rapping but I wanted to model, I wanted to act, I wanted to sing. But the universe has a way of pushing you towards what you’re meant to be doing. When I was about seventeen, eighteen I got hooked up with some people that were like, ‘You’re talented, you should do this music.’ This kid named De’Anthony, who knew people in the Flavor Unit, was loosely connected to them, he wanted to get my stuff and show it to ‘em, so I started working with him and going to the studio. He brought me to Big Beat Records and they were talking about giving up a little bit of money for the songs that I had done, but I went and told Juju and them. We were at some club and I was like, ‘Yo, Ju. These dudes wanna give me $50 – $60,000 to do an album.’ He was like, ‘That’s nothing. I can get you 250 [thousand dollars].’ Because he was around the whole Native Tongue thing. He knew Tip, he knew the Jungle Brothers, he knew De La and he knew Chris Lighty, and things were happening with them. ‘You don’t have to take that deal, I’ll get you a deal. Let’s start going to my house and doing some songs.’ So we start going to his crib, demo’ing songs. We did a bunch of song together, hanging together, partying every day at my cousins crib – girls and weed and beer and music – just breaking night. We would stay up all night and then sleep all day.

How had you met Juju and Les?

I went to school with Ju at the school called Newtown, he left and went to this other school, and that’s where he met Psycho Les. He and Les met at an alternative school for kids who had a poor attendance record or whatever it was. Both of them went to school with a guy who I used to call my family and we used to say we were cousins. His name was Ronnie Walters. He used to see them in school everyday, battling. They would bring their tapes of beats they made the night before and play them at school. At first they were adversaries, then they got to the point where they respected each other and they started to work together. So he told Ju, ‘Yo, you know my cousin? He’s an MC, he’s better than anybody around the neighborhood.’ So he brought Juju to the house where we stayed at, my aunt’s house, and they listened to me rhyme and we started hanging at the house everyday after that. This is like ‘89.

They told me that Chris Lighty had called them and wanted them to do music for this kid that he was about to put out – Chi-Ali. They started working with him, so they would come and tell me about what they were doing in the studio. One day they came and it was like a funny vibe, and Les finally says to me, ‘We gave Chi ‘In My Room.’ ‘In My Room’ was one of my favorite joints on my demo at that time. What I thought was they gave him the beat, so I was like, ‘Damn, I love that beat. You know what? Fuck it, we’ll find another beat for the song. Y’all use the song and that’s gonna help the whole situation.’ So Les says to me, ‘Nah, we didn’t just use the beat. Juju gave him your rhymes too.’ We were in the front of my cousin’s house, it was a sunny day and I turned around to Juju, I was like, ‘Yo, how are you gonna give him my song, man?’ He was like, ‘Yo, you didn’t copyright that shit!’ That was the beginning of a crazy relationship that we’ve had for years. I always look at that as the beginning.

How did you react?

I wanted to do something physical, but I have always been a thinker, especially when it comes to fighting and beefing and all that stuff. It’s gonna be the last resort for me. I’ve had times where I’ve lost control and done some things that I’ve regretted, but for the most part I think first. Les saw the look on my face, so Les said to me, ‘Don’t even worry about it. I’mma take you to meet the nigga Chris tomorrow.’ So the day after Les took me to meet Chris Lighty. He was like, ‘Yo Chris, this is the dude that wrote ‘In My Room’ and all that shit Ju been letting you hear.’ Chris was like, ‘Yo, I didn’t know those were your songs and that niggas didn’t have permission. Why don’t you come and write some joints for him, I’ll give you some money.’ I was like, ‘Yo, bet!’ That was my way in. It makes me proud, Les and Chris are the reason that I have my career right now. If Les hadn’t have brought me to Chris and been on some fuckwit shit and moving like Juju was doing, you may have never heard of me. Chris giving me the chance that he gave me? I owe everything to him.

So he gave you a writing credit?

I’m on the album for writing credits, my publishing I didn’t get though. I didn’t know no better at the time. I got maybe $7,500, which at that time was crazy to me. I was a nineteen year old kid, plus the fact that I was on the album on a big song with Dove from De La Soul, Phife, Dres, me and Chi-Ali. All of those dudes were huge.

What happened to Ju and Les shopping your demo at this stage?

This is a story I got from Chi-Ali’s dad, his name was Stan, and he was our manager at the time. He told us Relativity heard ‘Let The Horns Blow’ and they knew who everybody else was except me. They were like, ‘Who’s this dude rhyming?’ They were like, ‘That’s Fashion, he’s been been writing Chi’s songs and he’s the rapper that runs with The Beatnuts.’ So they were like, ‘Holy shit! So they’re not just a production team? They’ve got a rapper? Let’s get them too.’ That’s what got us our deal. Chris was gonna have The Beatnuts as his in-house production team, but Relativity were like, ‘These dudes can be a group themselves.’ The Intoxicated Demons EP started out as my solo album. It was supposed to be me rhyming and them producing it and them on a couple of songs with me. So if maybe there were gong to be ten songs on the album, just to give it a number? Six would be solo songs and four would be me with me and Ju and Les. When I went away to jail for eleven months, we hadn’t finished it. The Beatnuts kept making songs and they did joints without me. The label was like, ‘Before he even gets out, let’s put this stuff out.’ ‘Reign of the Tech’ was getting a good response and people liked it, so they put that shit out and it blew up and that started the whole ball rolling. It was on from there.

Were you glad they kept going or were you frustrated that you were missing out?

I wasn’t frustrated at all, back then I didn’t take the shit so seriously. I was such a happy-go-lucky person, I loved doing music, I loved girls – I really wasn’t focused on my career. I was just living in the moment at that time. So when I went away to jail, just the fact that they kept everything going and the fact that my crew had this big song and shit? It was good to me. Things started going sour when I came home, cos it turned into this whole Spanish thing and this whole Corona thing and all these people were hanging around now that weren’t around before. It used to just be the three of us and now it was all these dudes from Corona and it just turned into this other shit. People had their opinion about if I should be in the group or not, it was racial shit, it was just crazy after that, man.

Was V.I.C. one of the new guys on the scene?

V.I.C. came in while I was in jail, I never knew Vic like that. He was another producer from around. He was a little older than all of us, but I didn’t really know him. When I came home he was around and he was on one song, ‘World’s Famous,’ and I was like, ‘Wow. This is crazy!’ But it was all meant to be, when I look back at it now. But at that time? It was madness. I hated it. I hated the whole Spanish and black shit. They were like, ‘We made this song and you weren’t on it.’ But they knew I was looked at by the label as one of the main parts of the group, but as far as Ju? Ju never liked that. Ju always wanted to be the mouthpiece, to be the guy that did every interview. It was a real tough thing, this dude would put his foot in his mouth. One time we had a crazy beef with Warren G and them because Juju had said in some interview that he don’t think Warren G is hip-hop, with that ‘Regulators’ song he had. So Chris Lighty had to squash that whole beef so we could even go to Cali. He said the shit on BET, on Prince Dajour on Rap City, and it turned into this whole thing. Then it was beef when we went to Chicago, cos Juju said, ‘All that tiggedy tiggedy tongue twisting shit don’t impress me!’ So Tongue Twista thought he was coming at him and they wanted to jump us at a show. It was crazy.

I had done this song, before we even started doing the album, called ‘Nikki The Sensational.’ Les had did the beat for it. I really liked Tribe Called Quest, I was really a fan of theirs, so the song was my way of doing ‘Bonita Applebum.’ It didn’t sound like ‘Bonita,’ but if you were gonna say, ‘We’re gonna take these elements, we’re gonna do this type of beat, talk about a girl, make it a catchy hook.’ So I did my version of it. So Juju came to this club one night and he was telling me that he let Tip hear it and Tip was shitting on me, like, ‘Yo, the beat is good but that nigga y’all got rappin’ is wack.’ So he was egging me on to diss him! It was so many subliminal disses about people. We had went to De La Soul’s video for ‘Saturday’ and there was this whole feeling like they shitted on us, like they wasn’t acting cool with us. It was mad corny, man. Ju was always egging me on, cos one of the first things he told me when he first heard me rhyme, he was like, ‘You’re gonna murder everybody! When I tell you to get on somebody? You gonna get on ‘em!’ That was always the mode that we was in from day one. So I’m like, ‘Wow? These niggas are shittin’ on me? Fuck all of them! Busta – everybody!’ So when you hear ‘Third of the Trio,’ when I say, ‘I’m so smooth on the horns, I was the real b-b-butter, baby!’ That’s about Tip and them. Then they said shit about me on famous songs, like when Phife says, ‘Believe that if you wanna but I tell you this much/Riding on the train with no dough, sucks!’ [‘Buggin’ Out’] He’s talking about us. One night we were in front of Calliope Studios, we had just done a session and we were talking about how we had sharks in our stomachs cos we were hungry. Nobody had no money to get nothing to eat while we were working all these hours in the studio. I remember me and Les telling Phife that we were about to hop the train to get home cos we didn’t have no money and shit, so he put that in a rhyme. It was all subliminal shit. Like when Tip says that shit in ‘Scenario’: ‘I can give a damn about an ill subliminal/stay away from clowns so I ain’t no criminal.’ He’s talking about me.

Tip and them had an editing session for the ‘Check The Rime’ video, so we went to the shit. It was me, Les and Ju, Tip is in there with some chick, the dude’s editing the shit. So we’re sitting down by him and the girl and Juju says to me, ‘Yo, tell that nigga Tip all that shit you were saying about him now.’ So I’m like, ‘Wait a minute – this is the nigga that’s been telling me that Tip was saying ill shit about me, that I suck, so I’m saying shit on them in records, and now you’re saying it in front of him?’ Me and Les looked at each other like, ‘What the fuck? This nigga is crazy!’ I remember Tip’s face, man, and how he looked at me. I felt so bad, because I always wanted to be cool with the nigga and make a record with the nigga. I was star-struck actually sitting in the room with the dude. It’s one of the hottest crews out and I’m in here with them, looking at a video before anybody is seeing it. And this nigga just said that shit. The way Tip looked at me, and I didn’t even say nothing. We left about ten minutes after that, and I never talked to Tip again. I seen him one time face to face again. Me and Les were walking in Soho and he was in a car with Lyor Cohen, they stopped and we exchanged pleasantries for a second, we shook hands but it was a real fake handshake. It just sucked, man.

Do you think Juju was trying to start trouble that wasn’t there or was it legitimate?

I won’t even pretend to understand Juju. I’ve dealt with the dude for years, I thought we were like brothers. We used to break bread together, eat, smoke, girls – all types of stuff. We went through the tough shit together of having no money. I could never put my finger on it. I think it was some racial shit that a part of it – comments he’s made to me over the years – plus at our high school there used to be wars between the Hispanics and the black people, and he was definitely always on the side of the Hispanic dudes. I was in the middle, because my mother’s father’s Cuban, and I’ve always had an affinity with my Latin people, that’s my blood.

The Street Level album was amazing. How were things when you were all recording that?

It’s amazing to me that the album came out like that, cos there was so much bullshit going on all the fucking time the studio. It wasn’t comfortable for any of us, Les and Juju used to have at it over beats and saying little dumb subliminal shit on records. The best shit that we did to date is the shit that we did together as a whole, is that Street Level album. We kinda took air out of the sails for that album, because we didn’t like the first single, ‘Props Over Here.’ We just did ‘Reign Of The Tech, ‘No Equal,’ ‘Psycho Dwarf’ all of this crazy wild EP, we’ve got this crazy album and ‘Props’ is the only song of it’s kind on the album, B. Nothing else is super jazzy like that, we started making a whole different song to it. But the label was on this over-thinking shit that we needed a radio single. It was like, ‘Dog, listen. ‘Reign Of The Tech’ wouldn’t have been a radio single, it’s just that it caught people.’ We coulda came out with ‘Hit Me’ or ‘Get Funky’ but that made us come out with that song and it was contrived. If you hear the hook, ‘Yeah, you get props over here!’ We’re using the slang term of the day and all of that shit, it was wack. The day it was picked for us, we were on a conference call with Chris Lighty and he got Tip on the phone and he was like, ‘Yo, Tip said that the first single should be ‘Props Over Here. The album is crazy, ‘Props’ is gonna blow up for y’all.’ It was us in the room with Alan Glumbrad and all these people from Relativity/Sony, Peter Kang. We did the good video but we didn’t put the energy behind it, that wasn’t the joint we wanted. I was associating mad songs with the experience I went through to create them, so a lotta of them songs I didn’t like until years later. I didn’t know that people liked it though. We used to hate going to perform that shit.

Why was that album so difficult to make?

It was bad times. If you put on earphones you can hear the underlying story of that album, cos you hear so many little ad-libs and people saying, ‘Suck my dick!’ We were doing subliminal disses to each other on our own album! Even the rhymes! ‘Yeah, and you can keep it subliminal/I don’t play, some people say my style is type criminal’ on ‘Hellraiser’? Ju thinks Les is talking shit about him! It was nuts, B.

How much did your lack of enthusiasm for the first single damage the album?

That definitely damaged it. Our energy, our vibe. Les and I – cos Ju didn’t even go out on the road with us to tour – we went on the Best of the Underground tour with Organzied Konfusion, Artifacts and Common. It was just me, Les, Ric Man and Mista Sinista from the X-Ecutioners. That album should have went platinum. If our energy would have been with it, and we would have been working it and feeling good about it? I think it went gold over a period of time, but it should have been a smash hit at the time period. We should have stood fast and not agreed with ‘Props Over’ as the single, regardless of what Chris and Tip were saying. Puba kept telling me every time he saw me, ‘Yo, tell the label to make that shit a single! We got a hit with that shit!’

‘Are You Ready’?

Exactly! We had some many joints that could’ve been singles.

What were ‘Fluid’ and ‘40 Oz’ from?

That was during the album. There’s a bunch of songs that we did that no one ever heard. There was a few joints we were supposed to do shit with and it never happened. Then a couple of joints like ‘Fluid’ got released, but it was on some low stuff and only for Japan it was supposed to be to give the something different. I have no idea where all of those fuckin’ joints went. Even joints that we did when we were recording my album. Do you know that joint ‘DWYCK’? We did a joint to that beat, called ‘You Got It Going On’ and it was a crazy joint. But as we were recording it, ‘DWYCK’ came out and Ju and them were like, ‘Fuck!’ They didn’t want to do the song no more because these dudes had used the beat first.

Continuing my interview with Kool-Ass Fash, we discuss him leaving The Beatnuts, meeting Kanye West, forming Missin’ Linx, getting beat-jacked by Dr. Dre and his ill-fated experience signing with Dante Ross.

Robbie: At what stage did you decide to do a solo album?

Al’ Tariq: While we were out on tour doing The Beatnuts joint, we were doing a show close to home at a school, maybe in Long Island or some shit, being on stage and then somebody started heckling us. Talking shit, ‘Yo, you fuckin’ aargh!’ I finally look and it’s Juju. Then he comes and hops on stage and joins in on one of our songs and shit. I was so mad, and I could never understand why Les and Peter Kang didn’t get mad with this dude. I had a few serious run-ins with him.

We met Amanda Shears, who was down with Happy Waters and Ted Demme, that’s how I met my ex wife, that day we went to go meet them. Steve Stoute hooked up a meeting with us with Amanda Shears, Steve Stoute wasn’t even as big as he is, this is back in the day with Steve Stoute. We go, we met Amanda Shears and she was about to be our manager and I get a call from her one day and she’s like, ‘I’m having a problem with Juju, can you talk to him?’ She was saying, ‘I’ll get 20% of what y’all do. I’m about to bring y’all deals to do songs with people, to do beats for people.’ She was crazy connected. So Ju was like, ‘Alright, but if I talk to somebody and I get an agreement to do a song for them, you don’t get no money outta that.’ She was like, ‘You’re doing beats for $5,000, $7,500. $10,000 at the most. I’mma get you $40-$50,000 for beats to big people.’

He refused to share his money on the job. Instead of just giving the 20 on everything, he was like, ‘Fuck that. If I hook something up, why should you get any money?’ I’m like, ‘Yo Ju, she’s not just managing us as producers. She’s about the manage the group The Beatnuts. We’re gonna be on tour with Cypress Hill, Funkdoobiest, rock groups – everything, my nigga! Fuck that little bit of money you’re talking about!’ And like the dickhead he always liked to be…and nobody would say nothin’. Les wouldn’t beef with him, that was always my gripe with Les. ‘How do you see this dude ruining us, putting his foot in his mouth at every turn, fucking up shit, burning bridges with people, nobody wants to deal with him.

He doesn’t come out on tours! You think when we did those tours that everybody didn’t want to see all three of us? They didn’t want to just see me and Les. People, to this day, ask them about me. ‘Yo, what’s up with Fashion?’ So you know at that time they wanted to see all three of us. He was burning so much shit for us that I was like, ‘I can’t be in this group.’ I’m a soloist anyway, so I did like three or four songs. Relativity had a new president, dude didn’t know us from Adam and he said, ‘Because of what this last Beatnut album did, we’re not gonna do two Beatnut albums, and that’s all this Fashion album is gonna be if it’s only The Beatnuts producing.’ So they declined to do a deal with me. As soon as that happened I was out on the market and Correct was the first label that jumped on it. ‘We’re crazy fans, we’re building a young label, we’re gonna blow you up!’ They were based in California. Don Schneider, who’s father was an importer/exporter of computer parts – he was an Israeli dude, new money – back then he was worth maybe $50 or $100 million. Ian Hunt was a descendant of the Hunt family, which is one of the huge, old money families in America. He was a trust-fund kid and they had all of this money to do this label. They had an umbrella company, and then Correct came under it. They had the group Mannish, they had me, they had Gravity, they were trying to sign Kanye. They had done a single with Black Attack and were about to sign him too. As you can see, Les did most of my album anyway.

Had you become righteous around that time?

I already had been educated in Islam already, something just happened and I took my Shahada. I could have still called myself Fashion, but I wanted to make a break because I felt like the energy of The Beatnut thing, the album not reaching the heights that we felt it should have reached. We didn’t even know how well-received it was from the fans, we were so caught-up in, ‘We didn’t get five mics!’ The Source had given us three and a half mics, then they came back and made a correction in the next issue. They were like, ‘We really wanted to give The Beatnuts’ album four mics, it was a mistake.’ But the damage was already done. All the hype and the Yo! MTV Raps and the BET and magazine covers and all the other bullshit? It didn’t mean shit. Rap was becoming big business, so labels were already at that time, ‘What have you done for me lately?’ If the album wasn’t the biggest thing? They were moving on to the next thing. Common, Fat Joe, ‘If you guys didn’t sell 300,000 the first week then we’re off to this.’ It was wack.

Was the ‘Nikki’ song on God Connections the same song from the old demo days?

Nah, it wasn’t exactly the same thing, cos the first one that Tip heard didn’t have Miss Jones on it. The one with Miss Jones was done later on in the studio when we were doing the Street Level abum.

How did you connect with the Chicago guys like No I.D.?

Because of Common we already knew about No I.D., so he was already part of the family. Correct had Gravity, so I went to Chicago to do a track with him and Ye produced it. That was the first time I met him, and he was a fan of mine. I was looking at him like a talented young kid. It felt good, cos he know all my rhymes and was asking what made me put the King of New York shit in the hook for ‘Crime Pays,’ and ‘What made you put all them black exploitation films in your rhymes for ‘Foxxy Brown’?’ I’m like, ‘Yo, you’re the only nigga that peeped that, man.’ I’ve had people interview me and ask about that song and ain’t nobody understand why I did that.

‘Peace Akhi’ with Ju and Les was great too.

‘Peace Akhi’ was a joint, man! If Correct didn’t fold, because of some crazy shit that happened – some sexual harassment lawsuit – and I had the chance to do more videos that that album would have been way more successful. At the time too, I was going back and forth to court, facing twelve and a half to twenty five years in jail, so it was a crazy time, B.

Where had you met Problemz and Black Attack?

I met Probz and Black when I was still with The Beatnuts. Because of that dude Ronnie, he knew Sterling Kagel from Roosevelt Island. Sterling was messing with this crew called S.O.P. – Smoked Out Productions. They were starting to make some noise, but they had two stand-out rappers and the rest were mediocre, at least that’s what the fans felt. That was Black and Probz. Sterl asked me if I would do a song with them as their first release away from S.O.P. The song came out crazy and I was like, ‘Yo, I want y’all to be on my album!’ They were with it. It caused a little confusion with Sterl, but they weren’t signed to him.

Then you went on to form Missin’ Linx with them and recorded a single, which has an interesting story behind it.

Dre heard our song, and that’s how he even wanted to go get that beat. The dude’s who sold him that beat weren’t supposed to sell it to him because they had sold it to V.I.C., who’s the dude that produced ‘Missin’ In Action’ for us. He heard that shit on the Baka Boyz, ‘Who is that? What is that?’ Found out what it was, what the loop was – took it. Ours was an underground classic, his was a top ten hit. But it’s all good.

So you cleared things up with Vic after your initial reservations?

I was cool with Vic, Vic used to go through the same shit with Juju. The back-stabbing and the back-talking and all the dumb shit. He witnessed it, he knew what time it was. Plus he wasn’t really a racial dude, so he could see all the shit that was going on. He wasn’t gonna shit on Juju, cos that’s why he was in the spot he was in. Even though he had his other connections with Deric Angeletti and people, Vic’s fame is that he was down with The Beatnuts, somewhat.

Why did you only release a Missin’ Linx EP instead of a full album?

We were making a lotta noise with the ‘Missin’ In Action’ song, we had just got an offer from Fat Beats for a nice sum of money to do an album and to do an imprint [label]. Fat Beats is a small, boutique thing, it’s not a major, and they were like, ‘We’re gonna push y’all over here.’ At the same time, I had a boy by the name of Dagen Ryan who always fucked with Dante Ross, and he was down in the business, doing things with DV Alias Khrist and all those dudes. Dagen was making his bones, I known him since we were youngsters, running around in clubs in the 80’s. He was like, ‘Dante just got a deal with Loud – Stimulated – he wants y’all to be his next three man group. It’ll be in the same line as Brand Nubian, Leaders of the New School, and y’all. That’s how he’s gonna bill it.’ So I went with the emotional shit. It was a dummy move, I should’ve never did that. All he wanted to do was give us an EP. ‘Oh, it’s Dante Ross! We’re gonna be on Loud!’ I should have just did the right thing and been loyal to Fat Beats and took the almost $100,000 they wanted to give us to launch our own shit. It would have been a totally different outcome, because they were a force and they really wanted to push everything. I put that on me, making that decision.

Then we had a terrible relationship with Dante. Dante shitted on us, didn’t really give a fuck about that Stimulated shit. He was riding high on the hog because he had done the Santana album and he had the fuckin’ Whitey Ford album out. He was so huge that he never was at the office. He didn’t give a fuck about our shit, we never even did a video for our shit. Then me and him got into a beef because we needed to get money. We did the whole EP already, and you want to be extra critical and talk shit and cause dissention in the group? I’m like, ‘What type moves are you making, man?’ All of us were fucked up. I was like, ‘Yo Dante, we need to do something to get some bread. Can we do a record with Fat Beats while we waitin’ for this EP to drop? Black ain’t got no electricity in his house, Probz ain’t paid no rent, he’s about to get kicked-out. We need bread!’ He’s like, ‘No.’ He didn’t care, man. So me and him got into a crazy phone altercation, which I hate. Beefing over the phone of my pet peeves. I was so heated I wanted to do something to him, and the whole shit just fell apart man. He just shelved our shit, he never put out nothing. It never got no pub, it never got nothing. It was a waste of time.

You still went on to work with Juju and Les a few times again. How are things between you all now?

We havn’t done nothin’ since ‘07. Me, Les and Problemz did an album, Big City, on Nature Sounds. That was another one where we had a falling out. Les wanted Devin to pay him money over to go promote his own album. Devin had booked shows for us to do, Les wanted to do Beatnut shows over those so we never did one show together. We did a video and the video never got shown anywhere because Devin wouldn’t put no more money into it, because Les refused to promote it unless Devin gave him money upfront. The reason that album came about is me and Probz were doing an album together, our first single was gonna have Ol’ Dirty on the hook. Ol’ Dirty passed away, so we were a little set back. I get back up with Les, and Les is not in a good situation in life. He was going through a messy divorce with his wife and shit just wasn’t good for him. I brought him to Devin so that Devin could hear the album he put together. Dev wasn’t impressed with the album, but he suggested, ‘Why don’t y’all just be a group and do an album? I’ll put it out.’ It took us two years to do the shit, cos Probz and I were both gainfully employed. Then Les went and talked shit about me and Probz on AllHipHop.com or some shit, saying he only did the Big City album to help us out cos we wasn’t doing shit. Yo, that was some of the best shit you did in years and you’re talking about, ‘You needed to help us out?’ You were fucked up! Sleeping in your car and then living with this dude Chris, this singer from Chicago.

Before that, we had done a tour together where I found out at the last minute that them even doing the tour was contingent on having me as a part of it. It was a European tour with an American leg on it. ‘One of the main reasons that we got this tour is because the promoters in Europe said you had to be on it.’ No wonder these fuckin’ dudes just call me out the blue to do this shit. And then they were giving me peanuts! This is the last fuckin’ straw. Then they did the Take It Or Squeeze It album, we did two or three songs together. I remember Chris Lighty coming up to Chung King studios, talking about the first single and shit. They wanted ‘No Escapin’ This’ and I was like, ‘My nigga, ‘No Escapin’ This’ does not sound like ‘Off The Books’ or ‘Watch Out Now.’ The reason they’re big is because you can dance to them, you can play them in clubs. What y’all should put out is the Greg Nice joint.’ So Juju said, ‘Who made you Power of Attorney? How you get to run shit?’ So again I bit my tongue and let them go ahead.

Were you proud for them when they had those two hit singles?

I’m in the ‘No Escapin’ This’ video, on line in the club, so I was around those niggas. I remember people coming to me saying, ‘Yo, they’re talking about you in their song, ‘Do You Believe’.’ They were talking about me, saying slick shit, but I didn’t really care. I was like, ‘I’mma start this label.’ I wanted to have my own artists and I wanted to be sit back and be that dude on top. There’s other stuff I wanted to – movies, I wanted to do this singing album with a band – all types of other shit. Regardless of whatever you do, that’s just gonna make me go harder, cos I’m gonna feel like I’ve gotta be bigger than whatever you did. Envy? Yeah, you can say that. Never jealously, never hate, never mad. I’ve been on stage with them and performed them songs like it was mine, and I’m proud of it because that’s a part of my family tree in this music game. Their success? I revel in it. I know I’m a part of the history of this group, before them songs and after those songs. But there was something else meant for me.

Are you still living in New York?

I’m at Westchester, about 35 minutes outside of the city, which is beautiful for me. I’m close enough to the city that I can enjoy it, but I’m far enough away that I don’t have to deal with the concrete jungle.

What’s next for you as far as music?

I wanna do one album for me, I wanna have closure. I wanna end my career as a rapper my way, I want it to end the way I want it to end. I have thirteen kids, and part of the reason I came back to Westchester was to be a dad for my kids. It started being more and important to me. Then I went through this crazy situation up here in 2004 where I was involved in this crazy federal case. My first cousin, who’s like my brother, was murdered by these dudes that I knew from up here. They killed him in a crazy drug deal, it was all over the news. I was in a raid, it was 60-something people arrested. It was one of the biggest drug arrests in New York State history. Kidnapping, murder, all types of shit. When that shit happened in 04 and I lost my cousin, it made me really evaluate everything and take stock of what my life was and what the fuck had I been doing, how I wasn’t taking shit serious. I was just living. That made me feel like what was important was family and having a legacy with my kids and being something for them. Not just hopping all over the pace and living my life on my terms, I had to live it being responsible for other lives, and I never was living like that until that time. That changed everything for me.

Will there be another Al’ Tariq album?

Of course. I have a name for the album, it’s called B.I.G – Before I Go.

[Philaflava]

JuJu sounds like a real asshole tho.

[lewislloyd]

^^^ yea agreed juju was turrible and les talking bad about al after the big city project was uncalled for. I hope somehow someway al tariq puts this last project out. I always checked for the nuts cause of him and then linx and his solo shit. yea beatnuts were nice on the beats but as far as emceeing they were weak to me.

[fatboybrandon]

"you hear so many little ad-libs and people saying, ‘Suck my dick!’ We were doing subliminal disses to each other on our own album!"

lol that's some serious confusion within a relationship that I can somewhat relate to. Sometimes you just need to get the fuck out and try to avoid things getting ugly using your best observation but it can be hard if the people your hanging with are like family.

And aside from the personal beef smh at all the behind the scenes industry shit based around the paper chase! It's interesting to hear what they went through but brings a bitter taste to their classic music at the same time.

[Y@k Bollocks]

Great interview!

13 KIDS!?!?!

[Philaflava]

yeah there is absolutely no logical reason for that, especially when you have struggled most of your life. westchester ain't cheap either.

[Huldrich Bullsh!t]

Juju comes off as a real asshole but it's just one side of the story. 13 kids is really crazy