I interviewed Rap-A-Lot head honcho J. Prince at NPR, making for what is probably the first time the esteemed public radio institution has run the words cutting a woman’s breasts and f—-ing the dead body. Hopefully it won’t be the last.
Hit the jump for a quick outtake about regional demand and the origins of Scarface’s name.
I lived in DC for a while and it seemed like that was one of the markets that you guys catered to directly.
I’m actually sitting in DC right now. I have some real good friends in DC because unlike New York and Philadelphia and a lot of those other east coast places, DC and the South is almost the same. I can relate to these DC brothers unlike any other east coast brothers. I don’t know if it’s in the food, the water, the grits. I don’t know what it is but they’re a whole different breed. Right now DC is our number one seller.
DC outsells Houston even?
Yeah. It’s been that way for a few years, DC started outperforming Houston.
What are some other cities that you’ve really been able to connect with over the years?
The midwest. The midwest has definitely always been a strong market of ours. Chicago was the first market to embrace Rap-A-Lot. Chicago showed us love before our home, before Houston embraced us. Chicago was the first, along with Cleveland, Detroit, all throughout the midwest we were always loved. And then you can even go to New Orleans. New Orleans was the city to name Scarface. When we started off we had another name for Scarface, we called him DJ Akshun and when we got to New Orleans to perform everybody was asking “Where’s Scarface?” [in reference to his song “Scarface”] so I renamed him immediately. Even Oakland. Oakland embraced us on the west coast before LA and all of those. There are some real homies I have from Oakland. Matter of fact we performed in Oakland with my first set of Ghetto Boys. So it was always a lot of love in Oakland. But it was love in so many places that I’d hate to leave any of them out.
