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Royce da 5'9 What's going on Royce? Royce da 5'9: Hey man, how are you feeling? Good, good. So you have The Bar Exam Vol. 2 mixtape coming in December, what can you tell us about that? Royce da 5'9: It's going to be similar to the first one. We are actually going to just change the host on it. I don't know exactly which DJ I'm going to use. It will be the same way in terms of sound but there will be a few more original songs on there actually. It will be like a preview. I'm going to throw a couple stories in there and a couple concepts just to give people an idea of what the album is going to be like. Just trying to think outside the box in terms of a mixtape, you know what I'm saying? What is the makeup of the mixtape, is it a combination of freestyles, exclusive tracks and what not? Royce da 5'9: Yeah it's mostly freestyles on other people's beats, then there's some original tracks showing you some of the stuff I been working on. Like the last one was hosted by DJ Premier and it was put together by Statik Selektah. Basically just some original songs and obviously some fresh new freestyles. You also have two albums dropping, Street Hop and The Revival. First off, why'd you choose to name it The Revival? Royce da 5'9: In my opinion I feel like it's reviving Hip Hop and it's what Hip Hop needs right now. I mean right now I'm not going to say it's dead but there is a huge void in the marketplace. Instead of talking about the condition of it I'd rather be proactive. It's kind of like I got Hip Hop on the operating table and I'm trying to just revive it and keep it going. You said you want to release The Revival on a major label, what's the status on that? Royce da 5'9: Right now we are just taking meetings. It's obviously the fourth quarter and you know how the fourth quarter is. I actually wanted to release all three projects next year but now I'm going to try to get out the Bar Exam in December. Use the whole 08 to just stay visible, stay leaking freestyles to the internet, do mixtape stuff and hopefully get both albums out whether on Independent or Major. Who did you work with on that album? Royce da 5'9: So far I got DJ Premier, Nottz, my man Carlos Broady, some shit from Michael Myers, Havok, Bink Dog, 9th Wonder, my man Ski, some others. As far as other artist, I haven't gotten into it with other artist. It's a real Nas type Illmatic album but it's me. It's really concept driven, a lot of stories. It's just crazy man. You do a lot of work with Nottz, do you think he's the best fit for your style? Royce da 5'9: I think right now and where I am mentally he fits the best with what I'm doing. That's why I have so much more production from him than any other producer because in my personal opinion I think he's the best beat maker right now. You also mentioned wanting to work with Babygrande Records on a future project, will they most likely release Street Hop? Royce da 5'9: yeah, I mean nine times out of ten it's possibility. It's also not a possibility it won't happen I mean with that it's just putting the paperwork together and them being ready to actually have that type of project getting together and seeing eye to eye. I don't see where there should be a problem so I'm pretty sure it will happen with them. It says that you're willing to drop 16 bars for $1000, so producers and MC's that are interested should hit your management up about that? Royce da 5'9: I'm only going to do that for a limited time. To be honest it's becoming a little bit overwhelming. Like last week I just really started moving tracks. There's a few that I have to do or haven't done and it's really starting to take up a lot of my time. I was going to try to do as many more as I can but that's just going to be a limited time thing. I didn't know it was going to get that crazy. I think I got like 50 or 60 so far and I've only been doing it like a month. How often are you in the studio recording new music? And how much do you have stacked up waiting to hit the streets? Royce da 5'9:  I'm in there just about everyday. Actually I was in there yesterday and it was like a big load off my shoulders. I'm going back in today at six, I'm usually there from about six to six in the morning. I'm there everyday. I must have over a hundred songs easy. Me and Notzz have about forty fifty records alone and that's like us not having to be in the same room, it's just him sending me shit all the time. I got shit I feel could be a big single, I got some of the craziest concepts that have ever been thought of. Rappers aren't really going with concepts these days and the climate of Hip Hop is different. I'm just trying to take it back to that. It sounds like you're really hungry right now, what do you attribute that to? Royce da 5'9: I'm starving, I'm starving mentally. I graduated from like hungry to straight up starving. I guess just the status of Hip Hop and the way things are and me actually feeling I have a little bit of power. I can put a little bit of input and spark the mind of the one whose going to change everything and it will all come back to me. Because right now I'm noticing the digression in everybody and I just manage to stay hungry. Even though I don't have problems getting money, it's not about finances its about being more visible, getting that major label push, being able to handle that type of situation, being in the light again because I've been making money behind the scenes for a few years but that's not really what I set out to do when I first picked the pad up. I really want to change music, I want to change the way people come to the table. They feel like they don't have to try hard but put words together. You know a lot of people come to the table and joke with it. That's not what it was based off of. Everything comes full circle. I want to be there and be prepared when it all comes back to that, back when you're seeing an artist. There was talk a while back that you'd have an album produced by DJ Premier, or at least executive produced by him. Is that project still a go? Royce da 5'9: DJ Premier is executively producing everything I'm doing. Everything. He's on board with everything I do. He did most of the promotion with me. We probably have a total of six records on The Revival. So far we got like eight to ten records already. I'll probably use the best three or four on Revival and I'll probably put the rest on Street Hop. He's executively producing both projects. He's actually gone for the whole month of November so when he gets back in the country I have a whole new batch to pick from, and you know that's always fun. You recently took part in a live battle with Mistah F.A.B. Want to bring us up to speed with what's happening with that? Royce da 5'9: That really just came from after, after the battle everything was cool. Then he got in some interviews and took some time to talk about my personal life that wasn't true. Now I spoke with F.A.B. on the phone the other night and he told me that someone had actually called him on his phone and told him and he put it on his mother. My problem with that was that he repeated it. So it was a lack of communication and when I said the line on the Blue Magic Freestyle it wasn't to diss him it was to kind of get his attention and let him know I heard what he was saying. I didn't think he was going to take it as disrespect and write a whole record, so when he wrote a whole record, me being the MC that I am I had to respond. It was kind of like a situation where I had to respond to his record and he had to rap on record because he thought I was dissing him because I lost the battle. It was like a big misunderstanding and when he said a few things in his new record that weren't quite Hip Hop to me, me being a Detroit dude I didn't take it like that, I took it as he was trying to take it somewhere else. I felt it was a point where it could have gone to something else, So I got on the phone with the street people he was talking about in his record and it just so happens that they felt it could just be squashed and not have to go there. We got on the phone and we talked like men and shit I don't have anything but good things to say about my man because he was a cool dude when I talked to him. So it's a wrap, no more words. Tell us about your label M.I.C. Records. Is that your personal label? Royce da  5'9: Yeah that's my label. I've had it for about three or four years now but I only put one project out. I put out a mixtape and a project actually. I put Independents Day out independently and I put out the M.I.C. mixtape through my company.  It's just something I got up and running and it's just something I can't really get it completely off the ground till I get myself off the ground. Like once I get back on a major and I move the kind of units I think I should be moving based of the kind of records I'm recording these days, then I can actually get a distribution situation through a company rather than getting it straight distributed the way I was doing. This was costing me so much money to promote my own project. So once I can get that major marketing on my label I can really do something with it. As of right now its a work in progress like everything else.   Will you be releasing music from any other artists? Royce da 5'9: Definitely, definitely. I don't want to commit to another artist when I know I can't one hundred percent commit myself to him. I know how it is to be shown to a label and be number one priority one minute and the next minute not based off of what else is going on the owner or whatever. I don't want to take another artist on that emotional roller coaster right now because I know I can't one hundred percent commit to him. When I actually start signing people it's going to be like they are signing to a family, and I'll treat them how I treat my little brother Vishi, you know what I'm saying? If I like them that much then I'm investing my whole life in them. That's basically how I want to run my company. Speaking of your brother Kid Vishis, what's he up to? Royce da 5'9: Vishis is good man. He got a show tonight actually. He's performing here at a club called the ZooBar in Detroit. I'm going to try to get there. Like I said I'm going to the studio at six and I normally don't get out till about six but I may leave the studio for a minute, pop in on him see how he's doing and then pop back out. He's doing his thing man, he's doing shows, working on a mixtape, been doing a lot of freestyle shit, he's just rhyming. He just is waiting on the word. Anything else you'd like to add? Royce da 5'9: Just be on the look out for the Bar Exam 2, hopefully coming out this December. Shout out to everyone that's supporting the music, shout out to the whole bay area, shout out to everybody in the West Coast, my man Malone, my man Chuck, my man Messy Marv. Also, shout out to Mistah F.A.B., shout out to everybody on the East Coast, shout out ot Buddens. I talked to Buddens the other day too so shout out to Buddens. Just be on the look out for all the projects I got coming out and that's it. Drew & Andy