Murder Dog: I’ve heard that you’ve been selling a lot of underground tapes, that you’ve gone gold and platinum just selling in the underground.
Juicy J: Underground tapes did sell really good. Paul’s, Lord Infamous’ underground tapes, Koopsta Knicca’s solo underground tapes, and Crunchy Black rapped on one of my underground tapes and Gangsta Boo rapped on Paul’s tapes. Koopsta Knicca and Lord Infamous rapped on DJ Paul’s tapes. They’re still sellin’.
Murder Dog: I know DJ Screw sells a huge amount of tapes on the underground without any label deal or distribution.
DJ Paul: We used to do shows off of underground tapes. People would call us up for shows, we’d get 15 hundred, 25 hundred a show off our underground tapes. We weren’t even on CD, on the radio, or doin’ no interviews. Just on Murder Dog. We sold a lotta tapes bootleg. A lot of people bootleg us. F*** the bootleggers. Fuck Don Phillips the bootlegger and Gangsta Pat, they’re bootleggers. We woulda done gone gold off them.
Murder Dog: Do you make a lot of money selling your underground tapes?
DJ Paul: We make as much as we can. Some other people is makin’ more money than we makin’ cause we don’t have the time to do that all day. They ain’t got nothin’ to do but sit in the house and dub with there twenty tape decks.
Murder Dog: How much do you sell those tapes for?
Juicy J: Underground tapes? We used to sell ‘em wholesale to the stores for 4 or 5 dollars a piece. One time I was in Mississippi where they couldn’t get the underground tapes. The people from Mississippi wouldn’t want to drive all the way to Memphis just to get a tape. I sold one for $20. One high bias underground tape. Put it in, turn it up, keep turnin’ it up high as you can turn it, distort it - $20.
Murder Dog: Who Produces these underground tapes?
Juicy J: Paul produced Lord Infamous and Koopsta’s tapes.
Murder Dog: What kind of quality do you get on these underground tapes? Are the recordings something you could release on CD sometime?
DJ Paul: It’s just home-made on a 4-track. Just put a beat and a sample and just rap over it and a hard little chorus. Put it on a cassette tape with a sticker. Sometimes we’re writing on it with an ink pen. They sell like hot cakes. $10.99
Murder Dog: Do you have all the original tapes?
Juicy J: I have all the originals of my underground tapes.
Murder Dog: If people want to buy some of your underground tapes how do they get them?
Juicy J: They can order them through our office line on the back of our CD’s: (901) 332-7641.
Murder Dog: Did some of your underground songs come on your albums?
DJ Paul: Mystic Stylez was really an underground album really. We just re-recorded the songs. Most of our albums had about 50% new and 50% old stuff. Most of the hits were underground hits. "Tear Da Club Up, "Where’s Da Bud", "Stomp" a lot of them underground hits.
Murder Dog: Do you still make the underground tapes?
DJ Paul: We still sell them, we don’t make ‘em no more. We’re on CD and video now. We don’t have time to make underground tapes. I’d rather put that time an effort toward a CD. We still sell underground tapes. Still keep lights on and the water, just with the underground tapes. All that money comes in handy. Money’s money.
Murder Dog: When did you come up with the Mystic Styles album on CD?
DJ Paul: The way we come up with that name, that was a line we used on an underground song, "Mystic Styles". People used to like that line, play it over and over again. We made the album after that, cause everybody in the group’s styles is different. Don’t nobody sound the same in the group. So many groups out here, if they were to go solo you wouldn’t know what the hell - everybody sounds like everybody.
Murder Dog: How would you say your style is different from Paul’s?
Juicy J: I don’t know. I guess I’m maybe a little louder than Paul. We talk about different stuff in our lyrics. If a song got one subject he could say something one way and I would say it a completely different way.
DJ Paul: We might be rappin’ about stories and situations, Juicy been through different situations than I’ve been through. He’d rap about his experiences and I’d rap about mine. We’d all come up with something different.
Murder Dog: How is Three 6 Mafia different from other Memphis Acts?
DJ Paul: Three 6 Mafia’s style is the original Memphis style, the wild get-buck, smack-a-nigga-over-the-head-with-a-chair style. We keep that Memphis original. You hear some other Memphis rappers talkin’ about pimpin’ and pullin’ hoes, but we got that wild part of Memphis, the rough part, the street.
Murder Dog: I’ve heard that you have a Heavy Metal influence, where does that come from?
DJ Paul: Yeah, that’s just in the shows, not in the music. Juicy J: It’s like slam dance but it ain’t slam dancing. It’s more like a black version. We don’t jump all over each other, we just run through each other.
Murder Dog: Gangsta walk is sort of like slam dancing?
Lord Infamous: You start off as a simple rotate-around-the-club quick as you can wild as you can. Then it gets where everybody wanna rush each other and it’s like bustin’ through crowd and throwin’ over. People pick up on that. It changes, it gets rougher. Every time you do it the dance picks up new stuff. It’s wild.
Murder Dog: The only people I hear talk about "get buck" is in Memphis.
Juicy J: Get buck is a word that started in Memphis a long time ago.
Murder Dog: What does it really mean?
Juicy J: It’s just like get buck - knock somebody down, smack a motha fuck, push somebody. Get buck, get wild.
Lord Infamous: If you don’t feel like gettin’ buck, if you don’t want no one to mess up your pretty little shoes or mess up your nice little outfit, don’t get on the dance floor, at least not while we on stage.
Murder Dog: When you perform in clubs is it all black people or do white people come out too?
Lord Infamous: Some white people come. We gotta lot of white fans. We realize that some white people don’t feel comfortable in the black clubs cause they feel there might be animosity. They don’t understand what goes on in the balck clubs. They think people is probably wild on them when it’s just like that anyway. When we do gigs we do gigs on the white side of town, on the black side of town. That way in the white clubs they can do anything and in the balck clubs they can do anything and they can feel comfortable doing it. But if the white people’d feel comfortable comin’ to the black clubs then it’d be all good. We don’t come to fight, we all come to get wild.
Murder Dog: Does Three 6 Mafia perform a lot over the south.
DJ Paul: We do plenty of shows. We just did a show a few days ago at the Nike pavilion, it was off the hook. We had ‘em wild in there, it was buck, big college crowd.
Lord Infamous: If we hit a city our vibe usually starts in a college or a university cause people in the colleges usually travel around. Most people in a college is not from that place where they attended school. Some one might be in Memphis and pick up a Three 6 Mafia tape then they might go to school somewhere else and it spreads there. People always pick up on your sound. People get together and hear all the different vibes goin’ on. We pick up at the colleges and then it spreads around town. College radio picks us up too. Even if we don’t get the commercial station in a town we get played by college radio and that starts the vibe, then the large radio stations hear about it and pick up on it.
Murder Dog: I know your CD sales have been really high with both Mystic Stylez and The End. Would you say you built your name more from touring and performing or from your underground tapes?
Juicy J: Through the underground tapes gettin’ to the colleges, through the people travelin’ and sayin’ "listen to this." One thing about Memphis people, when they go outta town they take their music with them. Memphis people will not listen to nobody else, but their shit from the city or the south.
Lord Infamous: In Memphis we support our own music. Other rappers got their thing and Memphis niggaz will listen to it and they dig Snoop and Pac and all kind of different rappers, but it don’t vibe with our type of sound. We can’t do the things we wanna do in the clubs just off that music. No disrespect to West or East. Like New York, we just got our own thing and we support or own thing.
Murder Dog: Is what you’re doing here in Memphis similar to West Coat Gangsta Rap?
Lord Infamous: East Coast Hip Hop, West Coast Gangsta. Memphis is like heavy street Rap, it’s like hardcore. West Coast got their gangsta, East Coast got their Hip Hop, we just got a mixture of hard core. We’re similar to West Coast.
Murder Dog: The beats are different too with the real fast high hat.
Lord Infamous: The beats are more hype type of beats. It’s like if you took "Planet Rock" and made it more hardcore. Y ou slow down the bass line but you speed up the drum beats, and you roll the high hats and you put some gangsta appeal to some of that original rap music. We add a gangsta appeal. Like New York, they do the cuts and back in the day they used to do the bass lines on the keyboards and they looped the drum beats, in Memphis we do the same thing, but it’s more sampling involved now.
Murder Dog: Do you sample a lot in your music?
Lord Infamous: We don’t really sample a lot anymore. W e like to play our music out. We might get a vibe from a break beat, an original record, but we go and twist it, we do it our way. We get creative with our music.
Murder Dog: I heard that the gangsta walk came from this one song called, "Trigga Man".
Juicy J: No, no. That is not true. It’s rumors. Some people say New Orleans started it with the little thing DJ Jimmy had goin’ on. It’s not true. If it wasn’t for Memphis, those guys record’s wouldn’t have did nothin’. Memphis was makin’ that kind of music. Memphis heard a record that kind of sounded like our sound and started takin’ that song and mixin’ it with our style of music. That’s the reason why in the clubs in Memphis when people would automatically dance to it, cause the DJ’s would take it and mix it with our style of beats. Everybody started talking about the song because Memphis was vibin’ with it. That’s what it takes to make a song pick up down here. We was already doin’ that type of music here. The song, "Trigga Man" started in 1985, a DJ n Memphis named, Spanish Fly brung it back. He used to play "Trigga Man" in the clubs in’87.
Lord Infamous: Guys like Spanish Fly, Eightball & MJG, us, Skinny Pimp and Gangsta Pat, we was doin’ that type of stuff before we ever heard of a "drag rap" or "Trigga Man".
Murder Dog: You were already goin’ the gangsta walk beats?
Juicy J: All them beats you hear in Timberland, all that Missy Elliot, all them scary music beats, that started here in the M-Town. Some people don’t know that, they think it started in the East Coast or whatever.
Lord Infamous: People samplin’ their own words. Take a lyric from your own song and sample yourself saying it over and over, people were samplin’ off other peoples voices - Memphis started self sampling.
Juicy J: Memphis never tried to sound like other rappers. Memphis is a town that takes pride in our own sound, they keep their Memphis ways, they don’t try to be East or West Coast. People in Memphis ain’t got no Polo or afros or how other people dress, they stick to how people in Memphis do it. Niggas in Memphis stay true to their hometown.
Murder Dog: Do you think Eightball & MJG have a Houston sound or a Memphis sound?
Lord Infamous: They have a Memphis feel with a Houston Sound. They’re Memphis in the soul, they took a Memphis thing and too it to Texas and they started something new with it. You hear Memphis in their music. Even their producer T-Mix is from Memphis. But he didn’t come with an original Memphis sound, he took his own ideas and just put ‘em down. He did his own thing. But either way, no matter how the beats sound, a Memphis rapper is gonna put a Memphis vibe to it. When you listen to Chicago style, they have that high hat like Memphis, but their style is very different. They roll it, but they don’t roll it as much. The drum beats in Chicago, they’re not Hip Hop and they’re not West Coast either. They got their own little thing. In Memphis it’s like that too. In Chicago they got the Chicago thing going, guys like Crucial Conflict, Do Or Die, and Twista.
Murder Dog: Naturally in music there’s going to be similarities that happen. It doesn’t mean one took the other’s style. Like Skinny Pimp sounds a lot like Bone.
Lord Infamous: Five or six years before anyone even knew of a Bone, Skinny, this guy name Skull and me, we would go to the clubs in Memphis. They had rap contests and people used to see who could rap the fastest and who could make their rap go the longest. We were doin’ it like a sport in Memphis, rollin’ the tongue. Skinny, Skull and me, were the first people I heard doin’ it. MJG was the originator of tongue twistin, he just don’t do it no more. Back when Skinny Pimp first came out, MJG was rollin’ his lines and Skinny was deep into it already. I was just listenin’ to underground tapes back then. I used to listen to MC Ren, Big Daddy Kane was the first person I heard rollin’ the tongue. When I heard him doin’ it, I liked it and started doin’ it.
Murder Dog: How did Three 6 Mafia come together?
Juicy J: We had a posse called Backyard. When that failed we cut down the members and started a new posse called Triple 6 Mafia. When the time came to do a nation wide album, we took the hardest members out of Triple 6 Mafia and made Three 6 Mafia, which cut it down to six. That’s when we started cutting down CD’s through Select-O-Hits.
Murder Dog: Who were the original members of Triple 6 Mafia?
Juicy J: DJ Paul, Lord Infamous, and me, the Juice Man.
DJ Paul: The first three were me, Lord Infamous, and Juicy J. Then we added Crunchy Black, Koopsta Knicca, and Gangsta Boo.
Murder Dog: What was your connection with Skinny Pimp? DJ Paul: We was producin’ Skinny Pimp back in the day. We produced his underground stuff and his first nation wide CD, King Of Da Playaz Ball. But we didn’t do his new tape. We made the beats on his earlier stuff.
Murder Dog: Who raps in Three 6 Mafia?
DJ Paul: All us rap, the while group. We make the beats and we rap too.
Murder Dog: How did Gangsta Boo come into the group?
DJ Paul: She went to school with me. She rapped at a talent show and I ran into her. I had little underground tapes that I was sellin’ in school. She did a little solo on my underground tape and every body liked it. That was about ’92, ’93.
Murder Dog: What year did the group really come together?
Juicy J: Triple 6 Mafia came together in 1994. Three 6 Mafia came together in ’95.
Murder Dog: A lot of people though Three 6 Mafia had to deal with devil worshiping because of your name, Triple Six.
Lord Infamous: That’s gotten blown way out of proportion. The world is an evil place. If you talk about the world it’s gonna sound like the devil. We talk about the evil that men do. And we’re only human so we done our share. Long as you’re sinning you’re a devil worshiper, cause the devil created evil, but we tryin’ to find the light.
Juicy J: Three 6 Mafia is not a devil worshiping group at all. We’re a rap group. Hustlers real hustlers, true to the game.
Murder Dog: People probably misunderstood what you’re about because of your name like 666.
Lord Infamous: We’re Three 6 Mafia, we’re hard and we’re gonna say what we feel. We’re gonna talk about what’s goin’ on and what’s in our minds. If we see evil stuff around we’re gonna talk about it.
Juicy J: I don’t know why anyone would want to worship the devil. If I’m gonna worship anybody it’s gonna be the one who’s given me my talent and the air I breathe. First thing you’re gonna see in our CD notes is we’re giving thanks to God.
Murder Dog: How would you describe your type of rap?
DJ Paul: I would call it reality of the streets. We’re news reporters. We simply see what goes on in the hood and let the people know in our music. Some of these kids don’t check out the news on TV, some don’t even have a TV. That’s the best way to get your message across - subliminal. Subliminal messages always work. You can write it down or draw it in a picture or put it in music, subliminal messages always work.
Murder Dog: Three-6 Mafia reminds me of punk rock. It's the same feeling I get from your music. You could probably play for a punk crowd and they'd probably love you.
Lord Infamous: we have played for a punk audience. We've done shows with rock bands and took over their show. Like back when rock first started with Chuck Berry and Little Richard, a lot of people wanted to stop rock music. Black people started Rock music and then white people came in and took it and became a major market. That's what Three 6 Mafia want to do with rap, we want the white, we want the black, we want you wild, we want you to love to come to shows, then some of these black groups can start doin' these big gigs like these rock groups do - world tours, packed up stadiums and arenas. We want to do it like that. We love our black crowd and any crowd that can feel us.
Murder Dog: In Memphis are the blacks and whites really separate?
Lord Infamous: Black and white, they don't too much mix. It's like every city. You're not gonna go to no Black club in LA and see a lotta white folks. People feel intimidated by it. Every town's the same, you're gonna have some white people that's comfortable around a black crowd and you're gonna have some black people that's comfortable around a white crowd, but most people gonna be more comfortable around somebody they can relate to. But the times that white people came to our shows they never had any problems. It's always gonna he somebody that'd gonna wanna start something or try to scare somebody, but their just trying to show off in front of their friends. Usually our shows go pretty smooth.
Murder Dog: Do you usually perform with other Rap acts?
Lord Infamous: We usually do our own shows. We'll do shows with Master P or there might be one other Rap act doin a show with us, somebody we're trying to pump up.
Juicy J: We did a show with Eightball & MJG and a show with Tela.
Lord Infamous: We did a show with Run DMC and The Brat and a show with Too Short. Once with Mack 1 0. We had one with Bone, but they didn't show up. We had done one with them in Memphis, but then we was supposed to do one in Atlanta and they didn't show.
Murder Dog: What kind of sound would you say Master P has? Is it a South sound or a West Coast sound?
Lord Infamous: Master P is smart. He a business man and he's very talented. It takes a talented man to be an enterpriser like he's doin' it. Master P is smart. He stayed in different regions in the country and he got his boys, his producers who vibe with the West Coast sound but do a South thing with it. And he appeals to the ghetto, he knows what people in the ghetto wanna hear cause he's from the ghetto.
Murder Dog: People always talk about Master P as a business man, but he's also a talented musician. If he wasn't such a talented artist all the smart business moves wouldn't get him where he is. People love his music.
Juicy J: We have a lotta respect for Master P. He kept it true to the streets.
Murder Dog: Now you've signed a major deal with Relativity, what direction do you want to take it?
Juicy J: We'll always keep it true to the streets cause that's where we started from. We ain't gone switch it over to R&B pop rock or none of that. The way we have Three 6 Mafia now is how we been for years, we ain't changin' up. We're gonna keep our buck wild style, true to the ghetto street style. We ain't crossin' over at all.
Lord Infamous: You don't have to change your shit at all, you just got to market it right. There's a lot of talent out there, it's so much good music, but nobody knows how to pick up producers, know what elements of the keyboard to use, know how to vibe with each of these markets. Master P does that. He knows what hooks to throw at people and what kind of beats to throw 'em. That's why he sells.
Murder Dog: How many of your first album on CD, Mystic Styles, did you sell?
Juicy J: About 150,000 so far. It's still selling.
Lord Infamous: All our shit is still selling. We're settin' up on the Internet too. All our underground stuff that you can get in the stores we're gonna sell it through the Internet, we're settin' up our own clothing, the videos and everything. It's gonna be on the Internet, it's gonna be large. It's all comin' out of Hypnotized Mindz.
Murder Dog: Did Three-6 Mafia have some problems with Bone?
Lord Infamous: We're not no group that wants to have problems. Don't disrespect us, we wont disrespect you. We ain't gonna bow down for nobody and we don't expect that from another rapper. We respect every black person out there that wants to make some money. Cause we wanna make some money too. It's enough to go around. Just because we makin' music and we talkin' bout wildness - that's street life. Every black person goes through it - I don't care if you're a gangsta rapper or if you from a nice house - if you got a dark complexion on you, man your gonna go through some problems. Ain't nobody trying to be the king of the killers. Three 6 Mafia, we're not into the gang thing. We not into comin' into your town, tryin' to take over. We wanna party with every city.
Juicy J: There's no Three 6 Mafia and Bone beef. Nothing, just rumors. That was in the past, we buried that, all that's in the past now. Hopefully Three 6 Mafia and Bone can come together and make some money. Everyone asks if we have a beef with them, even the record label.
Murder Dog: The End is what got you the deal with relativity?
Juicy J: The End Chapter I was sellin' like 5,000 units a week. Relativity called us up, Cliff Culteri and they flew us up there. Me and Paul negotiated the deal we the help of the lawyer.
Murder Dog: Cliff Culteri was the person from Relativity that was interested in you?
Juicy J: Yeah, he’s the one who called us up. He’s the Senior Vice President at Relativity.
Lord Infamous: Brian Calhoun in Atlanta helped us out too. He sent our CD to Relativity in New York cause he liked our Music, he told them he should give us a listen.
Juicy J: Brian hooked ‘em up with the music. He let ‘em know there’s a group in the South movin’ units, sellin’ 5,000 units a week, hittin’ Billboard.
Murder Dog: You’re workin’ on a new Three 6 Mafia album right now?
Juicy J: It’s slammin, got a cut on there with The Dayton Family. They came here to Memphis to this studio here. They stayed for about two or three weeks and we just kicked it real tight. They’re also on our other album, the Prophet Posse album that’s out on Prophet Entertainment. That’s a posse album with everybody that’s been on Prophet - all the old Prophet artists, to the new ones.
Murder Dog: How would you compare the last Three 6 Mafia album to the new one?
Juicy J: It’s more wild, more up tempo, more rough. The old album had some dope shit on it, but we put more dope shit on this one. It’s wilder that ever. The last one was street. This one is like layin’ in the street. The last one was like in the street in the air. This one is like layin’ directly in the street.
Lord Infamous: We took it to the gutter.
Juicy J: There you go, we took it to the gutter, that’s right.
Lord Infamous: We pickin’ up everybody’s pain. We lettin’ everybody know about street pain - strugglin,’ hustlin,’ tryin’ to make it.
Murder Dog: How many songs are this new album?
Juicy J: 22 or 23. It’s thick. One of the best albums ever made.
Lord Infamous: We couldn’t fit all the songs on there. We got songs fallin’ out the cabinets.
Juicy J: We make songs everyday, make ‘em better, fatter. We stay in the studio, stay busy. Made about 50 songs and put the best ones on there.
Murder Dog: Who all is on this album?
Juicy J: We got the Three 6 Mafia, Prophet Posse, Rockefellers - we got a group that’s fixin’ to break out, it’s gonna be through Relativity - The Kazi, then we got the Dayton Family on there.
Murder Dog: At a time when a lot of rap acts are trying to soften their sound, add some R&B flavor, thinkin’ they’re goin’ to sell, you are puttin’ out this hard street rap.
Juicy J: Nowadays it’s goin’ soft. On this album we’re lettin’ people know, kick some ass, shoot a mothafucka and you still alive.
Murder Dog: Were there a lot of labels trying to sign you?
Juicy J: We had a lot of labels, Jive, Atlantic, Universal.
Lord Infamous: But our money was flowin’ fine without anyone’s help. And with all the bad things we heard about record companies these days, we like money more than we like fame. But we didn’t wanna deprive the rest of the country of our vibe.
Juicy J: Relativity hooked us up. They gave us a real nice deal. 100% they’re behind us and helped us out. I wanna say thanks and how much I appreciate everything. What I like about Relativity is that they’re like a family. Like the Vice President gave me his home phone number, said he’d be available 24 hours a day. They just cool people down there.
Lord Infamous: We like Murder Dog Magazine too.
Juicy J: We love your magazine. It’s comin’ up. It reminds me of the ghetto of the street. Street. I love the street. I love it! Soul food and street people. That’s the only people I’m comfortable around. It’s like a survival test. If you can survive the street you can do anything. If I get it cool, if I don’t it’s cool. I ain’t had shit so I ain’t got shit to lose."
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