DJ Jazzy Jeff
Back in these days at the height of the Jazzy Jeff and Fresh Prince era you guys had a lot of dough what’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve done with your money just for no reason?
Took cats on a shopping spree. We had a lot of money and we weren’t selfish. We were from the hood and it was simple shit. If I can take five of my boys into a Foot Locker and say get whatever you want at the end of the day it will come up to be about one or two grand its kinda like shit I got five hundred thousand dollars in the bank. All you’re doing is making your boys happy and what you start to realize is that you have a lot of people who are just around you for that purpose. Its crazy being 19 years old and you got a million dollars, but who did I know that was 19 years old that had a million dollars to ask what to do with it. I couldn’t ask my mom because she never had a million dollar so she is just giving you the best educated guess. So you fuck up a lot of money and then on top of that black pride will mess you up bad. If I bring you in the studio and I know you don’t know a lot about studio shit and I’m like I’m running everything through my master link, then I’m gonna make it go analog through this board, then I’m gonna compress it and run it through a distressor you’re looking at me like I don’t know what the fuck he just said. But if you nod your head to me the first thing I’m thinking is that nigga don’t know what I’m talking about and he just nodding his head so I know I got him. That’s exactly what they did to us. They sat us in front of a lawyer and were like we are gonna try and get you into a such and such and then hopefully your royalty rates will be around 4% and then we can split the publishing down the middle and me and Will are like ok and he’s like I got em. Then he is like I got an accountant friend that I want you to meet and he puts you onto his boy. You the young black boy making a lot of money because if I got you then let me put you onto my accountant friend that’s gonna help you manage your money that you not gonna give a fuck about. If you have too much pride to say I don’t understand what you’re talking about when it comes down to your contract then you gonna have too much pride to say I don’t understand when it comes down to your taxes. That’s how a lot of young brothers especially in the entertainment industry get gagged. They are afraid to say I don’t understand, but the older that I got that shit became my favorite phrase. Call me stupid or whatever but Will and I probably lost millions of dollars just because we didn’t say I don’t understand. It was crazy to finally break away and get with a new accountant and all of a sudden I start getting all these residual checks and I’m hyped like I got $25,000 for such and such like it’s the first time that I got this not realizing I’ve been getting these shits for eight years I just never seen them.
Damn people will try and get you any way they can out here.
Yea man and I’ve just never been one of them dudes like you gotta pay your dues. A cat saying you gotta pay your dues is someone who wants you to go to the same situation they went through because their mad. I don’t want my son to pay his dues, if I can tell him something that’s going to protect his life then I’m going to tell him right off the bat. I don’t want him to go out there and get his ass whipped just as a lesson. If I can stop the lesson then I want to stop it. But dudes is always like ahh man you gotta pay your dues. You notice only black people say that.
Haha that’s true.
We got a whole bunch of shit that we say and do just to keep ourselves down.
Speaking of that all of the males in my family that reside in Philly are Masons and that came to mind when you said paying dues. Its supposed to be a support system for black people to move up but instead you got people dipping in taking money or people like my cousin who works real hard for the lodge yet they just keep saying you gotta pay your dues or you gonna get kicked out.
I’ve always been an individual dude and that’s not to say organizations aren’t good but what I realized is fifty percent of men and women get divorced and if its hard for two people to be on the same page how are twenty people going to be. I’ve always been one of those people where I respect others opinions. The morals that I have are different than my girls so I cant tell her that hers are wrong. Hers are right for her and mines are right for me. What I think happens is that you get so many people that try to instill their will onto everybody. The way I do shit is right for me and I never believe that there is a such thing as right and wrong globally. Its right and wrong individually. What’s right for you ain’t right for me. But you get people that really fight that’s why you cant have a discussion on religion or politics because everybody has their own shit. What’s crazy is that a lot of our choices in religion have to do with our parents choices in religion. If I grew up as a skinhead I might hate black people, but my mom who brought me into this world told me it was wrong. And it took me a minute to realize my mom was wrong on a lot of shit. I just had to get old enough and evaluate how my mom did things and figure out if its right for me. So I’ve always been one of them cats who is like let me figure out where my shit is. I make mistakes, I made a ton of business mistakes, but they were my mistakes.
