Jacka Interview
By Black Dog Bone
From Murder Dog Vol. 12 #1
The music the Mob Figaz do is very different from what is going on in the Bay. Does that come from living in Pittsburg?
Where we be at it’s the same as anywhere. It’s crazy. It’s areas in any city where you can go and live and chill out. It’s like in Oakland: if you go to Piedmont and live you probably wouldn’t experience any trouble, but once you go to East Oakland or to the West, then you run into trouble. It’s like that in Pittsburg. You go up there and live in the hills you’re good, but once you come down into the inner city it’s different. It’s crazy.
You grew up in the inner city?
Hell yeah. I grew up in Oakland and Richmond before I moved to Pittsburg. My mom wanted to go to Pittsburg, cause she thought it was gonna be a little better. But when she got out there she found it was just as crazy. Same thing. I learned a lot more shit in Pittsburg than I did in Oakland or Richmond. I first started hustlin and shit in Oakland. I was in the 6th grade when I first touched some dope and started hustling and shit. That show me something. But I got deeper into it when I got to Pittsburg. I learned a lot more. It’s the perfect town to do something like that in. I got into it real heavy. That shit don’t last forever though. What everybody tells you is real.
In Rap music everybody always tries to be hard. A lot of rappers are scared to show all sides. With what you do it’s different. You show from every angle.
When somebody do something, like I was in a little conflict with someone and I said, “If you got a problem, why don’t you fight?” He didn’t want to fight. But people pull out a gun in a second. They’d rather risk their life getting in some gunplay than to physically fight with someone.
People will start to shoot over the slightest thing, and they think that’s tough. That’s not tough, that’s stupid. To show your emotions, to tell someone you love them, that takes strength, not killing someone with a gun. To me, Rap has become one sided and it’s not real.
To be real you gotta show all the sides—love and hate. If you’re making music that people can’t grow on, then it don’t make no sense to make it. It’s cool if you’re making party music for the clubs, people gotta go out and have a good time sometimes. But if you’re makin serious shit, it’s gotta make it deep. Otherwise it ain’t never gonna touch nobody. It’s just gonna fizz out and be forgotten. Sometimes if I gotta make myself seem like a fool, then I’m gonna do that, because it is, I am a fool. I gotta say it, what it is. I’m not afraid to be myself.
You have a new album coming out soon?
I have a mixtape out now. My new album’s coming out March 15.
What are we going to get with this new album?
It’s what you really would call a real album. It’s like anything a Tupac or a Scarface or a Jay-Z might do. It’s that kind of an album. You got to come tight. Any square can come on with a punch line and say some lil’ square shit. I say shit square’s can’t say. You can talk about the drug game and shit, but we talk about the drug life. The life that you don’t know. We talk about everything we’ve experienced, like with details. I learned how to do that back when everything was meaningful. When Pac was around and everything before that, the Noreaga’s and the East Coast cats in ‘95-’96 when you had to be really tight to be heard. Now you up with a clever punch line and you the rawest rapper. But that punch line don’t mean shit. That’s wack. Anybody can come up with that. You gotta say shit that will touch people. That’s the music that we all grew on. You gonna grow on that and learn stuff off of it. It ain’t just no clever tricks and schemes to keep their interest.
A lot of Rap is coming from the mind, not from the heart. You’ve got to come from every level to be real. The way it’s going right now Rap music is going to eat itself out. It’s so one-dimensional.
It already is. Everybody’s already fed up with the bullshit. Anybody who come halfway decent, everybody’s grabbing and asking for more of that. It’s not many people in the mainstream that’s doing that. They haven’t had enough real experience or read enough books or had the knowledge or been with their people enough to understand what it is that we’re looking for as a consumer. Now they got Gangsta Rap, club Rap, this kinda Rap, that kinda Rap, when it all should be one. It’s all music. Whatever the TV tell us, people think they have to do. People follow that and they don’t think no more. They don’t use their brain and try to be creative no more. They just follow whatever’s hot and try to do one of those kinda songs.
They do one song for the radio, one East Coast song, one South song…they’re just following trends.
It ain’t nothing into it. You gotta remember where you come from. If you’re starting to do that, you gotta remember when you first started making music. When you first started making music it’s not for nobody but you. You trying to see what it is, what you like about yourself, and then people start tellin you it’s tight. You gotta go back to that place. Don’t come out actin like you the man, with your gold chains and your platinum chains and “whoo whoo whoo”. Don’t nobody give a shit about that if your music is wack. All that’s meaningless. I come out with nothing. All these dude come out with all their cars, wrapped vehicles, but it ain’t nothing. Ain’t nobody growing on it. I got kids comin up to me in high school still, I realize I gotta keep comin with it cause the kids love that shit.
When you listen to music, what do you look for? Is it the beat, the lyrics? What moves you?
It’s a lotta shit that moves me and all types of music. When a dude that rap come out….I like the song that Snoop and Nelly got together. It’s tight, it’s on Snoop’s new album. At the same time, I like Project Pat. I like a lotta new dudes that you probably ain’t heard yet. I like Cash from the Hood Fellas. They say the kinda shit that’s just like some Reggae shit—it’s not that sound, but they get the same feeling. They’re not sayin what they’re supposed to say to seem like they’re a certain way; they’re just sayin whatever and it all makes sense cause it’s just real. That’s the kinda music I like.
In this system everything is controlled, and music is one place we can be free. You can go crazy, say whatever, do whatever you feel. But people are not doing that.
They’re not. It’s like another job for them. One reason it’s probably not wild as it used to be, people get over on a lotta artists and the only thing they do is put a bad name on the music business. It’s like everybody got their defense up. They don’t want to give it their all. But you should give it your all no matter what, because once the people hear it all that bullshit don’t matter. They gonna love you. I wouldn’t hold back on that. I just do what I wanna do, and that’s it. I’m not gonna do nothing for the radio, I’m not doin nothing to sound like I’m bitin my boys from Down South or bitin my boys from the Midwest or East Coast. I’m not doin nothing like that. I’m just doin what’s in me and that’s it. That’s what I suggest everybody do. Stop doin all that fake shit. Let’s just do everything we wanna do and come up with some new music and new sounds. Shake up the world! And keep comin with ‘em, let’s keep doin it so this music stays beautiful and powerful. It won’t be weak, it’ll always be strong if we do that.
You gotta make music that pleases you, that you want to hear. That’s the music that other people will really feel.
Exactly. That’s what it is, cause that’s how I started. When I started out, before I even knew that I would have any influence on anybody. I used to come home and pop the tape in and listen to it all night. Like amazed with it! “Whoa, this is me.” I do the same thing to this day, but I don’t brag on it or force it on nobody. I just let people take it and view it however they wanna view it. If you don’t like it, you don’t like it, I’m not trippin. But if you love, it I love you. And I’m gonna keep doin it. More people gonna like it than not like it, I know that.
The melodies you use, the whole loose atmosphere in your music, reminds me of 70’s Psychedelic music. You, Husalah and Roblo have a certain chemistry.
It does have a chemistry because we was raised in it together. We all shared the same the love for this music. And we all wanted to be different and stand out from everybody else. At the same time, all the artists that was comin out, we learned from. We used to listen to everything. Not only Rap though, we listened to all kinda shit, because we was tryin to come up with a sound that wasn’t bein used. We’d just kick back and think about our lives, what do we actually do every day? Not just the basic things, but who are we? We got a soul, we gotta find who we really are. That brought out the spiritual side of us. And started lettin people know how we saw things, our view on the world. Now, not only are we talking about what goes on in the streets, we talkin about how we view the world. There’s a lotta people that feel the same was as us, but they don’t know how to express it. When they here our music, they can feel it.
Your music has a lot of feeling and emotion. It’s not mind music, it’s more heart music. Most artists are one-sided, you show both sides.
We show all sides. It’s other things going on. Everything we put in our music, it’s definitely something real that we had dealt with. When people hear the music they hear that story, but they also hear the other thing, what’s going on inside. It’s shedding light on them at the same time. I’m teaching people the same way that I was taught. My faith is with Islam. With Islam you can be a savage, you in Islam you’ve got to be tough, you can’t be no puff. That’s one thing. When you writing songs it’s your job to teach what you know. I feel like the best way I can reach people is through my music. If I could do interviews all the time I could talk about it, but my music is how I connect with most people. I gotta tell ‘em about Islam and about what’s going on in America, the government. Everything ain’t what the naked eye sees. Like the war overseas, what that’s all about—it ain’t about what they tell you it’s about. And people wanna know. That’s why a lotta people, they fuck with yo’ boy. They like that shit.
“What It Do”, the song you have on the Murder Dog “Best of the Best” compilation is a classic, and Husalah’s song too. Would you say your sound it the Pittsburg flavor or is it just Mob Figaz?
It’s Mob Figaz, really. The rappers out there got their own sound though. It’s a place that never gets recognized for music. We were like the first people from outa there to put it down, really the only people. It’s just us, cause we all from different placed anyway. We all just ended up in Pittsburg. We all from the Bay, but we all come from different backgrounds. But it’s damn near similar cause we all been through the same struggles. When we was hanging together as teenagers we was doing a lotta the same shit, seein a lotta maney things, seen crazy shit forever. We got that respect for each other. I know what Feddy’s seen, I know what he’s been through, I know it with Hussalah. And then Rydah and AP, all them, they really been through it. It ain’t not fly by night thing for us. We love this music. It’s mostly emotion. Emotion is a big part of why we make this music.
Roblo said that you listen to a lot of Dancehall music. It doesn’t show in your music.
On my first solo album and on the first Mob Figaz album we had POD (Product of the Environment) featured, that was song number two. And on my solo album I did a Reggae cut, a whole Reggae song. It’s nice, I got a lotta compliments for that song. Dancehall, it’s always been hot to us, we’ve always liked it. It’s getting a lotta pub right now, it’s getting cool, but it ain’t as tight now as it was when we was first listenin to it. It used to be real raw. It’s not like that no more. Like Sean Paul’s early shit, all the songs that were on the mix CD’s, that shit was hard. Now it’s another sound. It’s a big difference from ’95 to 2005. Back then it used to be hella hard. They was hard. Now they all tryin to do the dance and do all the bullshit. That’s how Hip Hop is goin, same direction. The real Reggae artists and Dancehall artists that’s not on the mainstream, they make the best music.
Artists like Junior Kelly, Capleton, Sizzla, Anthony B…
I just bought Capleton’s new album. It’s hella tight. Me and Huss listen to that back to back, all day long. Sizzla, Norris Man, we love that shit.
I heard you had done songs with Norris Man. How did you connect with Norris Man?
The Reggae scene is pretty big in the Bay Area, like in Berkeley, Oakland, Frisco area. So they come out here to do shows and shit. We got a cousin that a Rastafari. He’s in the Dancehall scene real heavy, so he hooked us up with him. He’s the one that put Product of the Environment’s first album out.
Who is Product of the Environment?
These dudes are from Kingston, Jamaica and they’re real serious dudes. They respect what we’re doin too. We learned a lot from them. They older than us, but they can do the same exact shit that we do. They hard.
You listen to Ward 21, Vybez Kartel and different kinds of Dancehall?
Everything! Ward 21, the whole Scare Dem Crew, Bounty Killer, Bushman, Turbulence, everybody.
To me Dancehall is one of most experimental music of this time.
It’s crazy! A lotta people can’t get into it, they really don’t know how to get into it. But if you go to the East Coast and Florida, it’s real big. It’s way bigger than out here.
How did you develop your style?
We had a lotta practice in the studio when we was kids. Just takin chances and see how different things sound. When we was in junior high and high school everybody else was into sports. My boys was into sports too, but at the same time we was into music also. Rob was making the beats. He was around 11 years old and he used to make some beats—we used to write from ‘em. It was him and Hussalah first, then me and Feddy came into the picture. We just started goin to his house and makin songs. We was just practicing, tryin out new things, but at the same time we was makin tapes and somehow the streets kept getting a hold of the tapes and they was lovin it!
The music was just getting out locally?
Yeah, in the streets, at the schools, people just playin it in their cars when they were rolling and shit. They started getting a hold of the music and liking it. So we started taking it a little more serious and buying studio equipment and getting set up so we could one day put an album out. We was just getting ready to do it. I was fresh outa high school and they was still in it—Roblo, Feddy, Hussalah and Rydah was still in school—then Bo found us. C-Bo had came to Pittsburg.
How old were you when you first met C-Bo?
Huss was in 10th grade, Feddy was in the 12th, I was 18 and AP-9 was 20. We met 151 first, then we met Bo in Pittsburg in a record store off of Railroad. Some dudes from Frisco had came down and opened up a record store in Pittsburg and a lotta rappers used to come through. Bo was just startin his new label, West Coast Mafia, he didn’t even have one artist under the label yet. He was fresh outa jail that day, he came and picked us up the same day and took us to the studio. We started makin songs. That’s how we met him, he just liked the music. Just like everybody, he was into the sound. Like, “I hear what everybody else is foolin with, but I hear how these boys is puttin it down and I’d definitely like to fuck with ‘em.”
