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First of all, please introduce yourself for those who might never heard of you, who you are, where you come from and what ur reppin’.
Pudgee Tha Phat Bastard From the Bronx, born in harlem - moved to the bronx shortly thereafter but I definitely rep the whole New York

A few weeks ago, a well-known digging related website reviewed your 12” “think big”, which features notorious big as well as lord tariq. As far as I remember, this had to be recorded short after “party and bullshit” came out, so Biggie wasn’t that big - how did you get in contact with him and finally get him on that track?
I knew Biggie for quite some time becasue we were both up and coming lyricists on the grind. A friend of mine, 9Hawk - who used to road manage Big Daddy Kane - put me on to him. We used to speak all the time and I had been Tupac's friend since he danced for Digital Underground so the song was bound to happen – I called him and I told him I wanted him on the song. He said he would come to the studio and I still paid him cause I had a deal. The only song he had out at the time was party and bullshit.

So you had contact to Biggie and Pac...how did you see their contact? were they cool down or how did you see these rumors about the east/west conflict?
There are many truths that have not been revealed and T don't want to be the person who does that, but I will say that I knew Pac before I knew biggie - through my homeboy Stretch from the group Live Squad (he was murdered)… lets say I chose my side; Pac was my brother, Biggie and I were rappers that were cool - Lil Cease and i are still cool.

OK, I understand. Another dude I wanna talk about is Minnesota, who produced “think big”.
In my opinion he’s one of the most underrated producers out there (some heads may recognize due to his productions on the hard to find “ghetto chronicle daily” ep by the Money Boss Players on section 8 records). Did you know or even honor some of Minnesota’s work before or why did you take his beat?
Minnesota and I were signed to the same production company. I had recorded several of his tracks en route to accomlishing a finished album project. He came to the table with the track which was originally for his group.....he said if I wanted it I could have it in exchange for Lord Tariq being on the song.
He is the reason Tariq is on the song… we still communicate - we actually just went to pick up a check together for Christina Aguilera sampling the song on her latest album.

[Biggie’s “I grand you three wishes ‘cause I be the gini” has been sampled on Christina Aguilera’s “Thank You: Dedication to fans”, which was produced by Dj Premier. His answer is followed by a few minutes of small talk about premo, records and his royalties for CA sampling his song, which he just comments as “nice”.]

What kinda job you’re doing? Can you live from doing music?
I live off of royalties, I own properties and I have been writing for other people…

[Examples for his ghostwriter-work are: a song called “say aah” with Pudgee and Shawnna from DTP on in the first Fast and Furious movie 5 songs for Left Eye on her Supernova album Left eye's verse on the TLC song"Over Me" produced by Rodney Jerkins “untouchables” for Left Eye and 2 pac]

Apart from numerous bootlegs (I know about 4), the original version of “think big” is just available on a testpress. Why didn’t you release this version instead of the following which features Sadat x?
‘cause we could not clear the sample. Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis even tried, but the Hathaway family said we were cursing crazy.

Do ya remember how many copies of the testpress were pressed?
About 1200 copies were made.

The last time we talked I remember you telling me that you don’t even own a copy yourself. Aren’t you interested in it or is it just the sad fact that these are hard to hunt down?
Honestly I just was happy being an emcee - I never cared about the lil things, I was happy people were feeling me as an emcee.

What kinda music do you listen to yourself?
Kill me but I love a lot of the south. I like Remy Ma, Trina, Lil Wayne…the new kid Mims is cool.
T.I puts in work, 50 I like for his song making talent, and truth be told - no one can replace ll cool j!

to be honest, the rest of our conversation was too chaotic to write down. After some small talk he told me that he’s acutally working on his new LP called “Break Their Bank”. Acting like it’s nothin special he also told me that he’s down with Premo, Finesse, Buckwild and Large Pro... I asked him several times why the fuck he didn’t colaborate with him – but he couldn’t give a good answer on that one...his own fault…

Pudgee ft. Biggie & Lord Tariq "Think Big"

Christina Aguilera "Thank You"

Labels: articles for hhv.de, Maze talks to...

"hazaradous", "diabolique", "cenubites" with kool keith...godfather don brought numerous classics to our crates - and disappeared out of the blue.
there were a lotta rumours about what he was into - but i won't let you rack your brain anymore - don's focussing on his old love, the jazz, again and build up a group named "the open mind".
The crew of diggerswithgratitude.com, the favourite digital place to dwell for every diggin-head, publish a collection of six unreleased godfather don
joints, which don recorded for the strech and bobbito show back in the days, with their second special-vinyl-project.
this ain't no weak bootlegging project, it's straight legit and the whole project was realised with don's personal cooperation.
there're only 150 handnumbered copies released - the first batch of 45 was signed by don himself. half of the profit went back to don, who could afford studiosessions for his jazzgroup with it, the other half will be used to afford upcoming dwg special projects.6 tracks are presented on this instant-collectors-item, which really deserve to be presented to the -even limited- mass. The titeltrack, "slave of new york" is my favurite cut on there, but every other track (the architect, do i come of, 7 degrees of elevation, inverted as well as colors of death) do
have the quality of being a potential 12".holding this 12" in my hands creates sum kinda paradox feelings:
on one hand it's nice to own a record of such an collectable and musical value, which was released in 2007 - cause most of the releases nowadays can only dream about a sound like this - on the other hand it's sad to know that only a few people will be able to own this record and that there're surely a few more heavyweight tracks like these in don's archive which will probably stay unheared forever.
all copies were sold witihin less than 2 weeks and, looking back to dwg's first vinylrelease, which was phill most chill's "be intelligent" ep, not
even ebay will help most of you getting it. but, as we all know, hope never dies - so keep your eyes open and your fingers crossed!
Godfather Don
"Slave Of New York" EP (DWG002)

A1 Slave Of New York
A2 The Architect
A3 Do I Come Off
B1 7 Degrees Of Elevation
B2 Inverted
B3 Colors Of Death

INFOSHEET

Labels: articles for hhv.de, Reviews

Labels: News