Meebo

Tuesday 30 April 2013

Crooked I Recalls Dr Dre trying to sign him In '90s

Crooked I reveals that back in 1999, just hours after he announced he was rolling with Death Row Records, Aftermath Entertainment asked to meet with him to discuss business.

Between 1996 and 2000, there was a longstanding feud between the label Dr. Dre co-founded in the early 1990s, and the label he left to launch five years later. Between artists on Death Row Records including Tupac, J. Flexx and Tha Realest taking verbal swipes at Dr. Dre, the Compton, California superstar's former business partner, Marion "Suge" Knight went as far as publicly releasing Dre's residential address on the Too Gangsta For TV documentary, and snatching his anticipated-album's title, Chronic 2000. Quite plausibly, bad blood existed for years between Death Row Records and Aftermath Entertainment.

In a new interview with VladTV, Crooked I reveals that Dr. Dre also attempted to counter with his former label. Recalling the 1999 contract Crooked I signed with Death Row, by way of Daz Dillinger and Big C-Style's short-lived Dogg Pound Records subsidiary, the Long Beach, California emcee revealed, "[Daz Dillinger and Big C-Style] were like, 'Yo, you wanna go fuck with Suge [Knight]?" Crooked I had recently left a deal with Virgin/Noo Trybe Records after several years on the major imprint. "There was nobody there from the old Death Row," Crooked added. "Suge was incarcerated and Daz was like the last man standing over there...everybody was gone." Hours later, Crooked says that he went to a Los Angeles radio station, and during an appearance, announced that he would be joining the notorious label, famed for its releases by Dre, Snoop Doggy Dogg and Tupac.

"As soon as I said that], I was signing with Death Row], somebody from Aftermath [Entertainment] called my homie Big C-Style, and said, 'Come over here. Let's talk.' So we went over there and saw [Dr.] Dre. It was my first time really, really, being around Dre—not just a 'Hey, what's up. How you doin'?,' but being inside the studio. We were at Record One, where he records at. [The] D.O.C.'s walkin' around." Crooked adds that Xzibit and King T were also prominent artists affiliated with Aftermath at that time, when Dr. Dre was reportedly wrapping 2001.

"Dre was like, 'I wanna fuck with you, on some level,'" Crooked recalls. "It was a time thing. He was finishing up some albums, and he wanted me to kick back and just wait." The Slaughterhouse emcee adds, "I was actually on the King T [Thy Kingdom Come] album. They put me on the King T album, which was never released."

After leaving his Aftermath meeting, Crooked I went to meet with then-incarcerated Death Row Records CEO Suge Knight in northern California. "I went to go see Suge, so I could weigh out my options. And Suge just offered me a gigantic check."

In turn, Crooked I would sign with Death Row, where he would remain as an artist nearly seven years. While appearing on remixes and soundtracks, the label never released a Crooked I album while he was signed to the label. In 2006, Crooked released a documentary, Life After Death Row. Under new ownership, the label would release recordings from his label tenure in 2010, as Hood Star.

Today, Crooked I's group Slaughterhouse, is signed to Shady/Interscope Records, which shares a lot of business staff with Dr. Dre's Aftermath Entertainment.

The full interview is below:

 
Source - http://www.hiphopdx.com/index/news/id.23742/title.crooked-i-recalls-dr-dre-aftermath-entertainment-trying-to-sign-him-in-90s/

Thursday 25 April 2013

Ice Cube Provides Update On N.W.A. Movie, Current Relationship With Dr Dre


Ice Cube gives a glimpse at what will be covered in the N.W.A. documentary, while dismissing imitators.
As he prepares to release his tenth solo full-length, Everythang's Corrupt, Ice Cube spoke about his music, film and endorsement career with The L.A. Weekly.

During the interview, Cube was pressed about his relationship with N.W.A. band-mate, Dr. Dre. Throughout the last 27 years, the pair have maintained a curious history. Once in "the world's most dangerous group" together, they were quick to diss each other in 1990 and 1991, during Cube's departure from the group and Ruthless Records. The Boyz N' The Hood star famously made a cameo in Dr. Dre's own solo breakout The Chronic, in the "Let Me Ride" video. In the decade that followed, the pair would collaborate on "Natural Born Killaz," an early glimpse at the later-shelved Helter Skelter collaborative album. At the turn of the millennium, the two reunited once again, with MC Ren and Snoop Dogg (n/k/a Snoop Lion), in a two-song attempted re-vamp of N.W.A.

During the 2000s, again, Cube and Dre have had periods of promoting an association, before bouts apart.
Pressed about his current correspondence with his Compton, California friend Dr. Dre, Cube replied, "[We talk] every now and then. We're trying to put this N.W.A. movie together. This is the real one."

As for which film Cube was dismissing, it remains to be specified. There are two documentaries in production regarding the life of Eazy-E and his Ruthless Records label, where both Dre and Cube were once artists. One film is allegedly going to produced by Eazy's daughter. Cube did stress that his F. Gary Gray-directed biopic in pre-production is the only authentic account of the group. "That other [N.W.A.-related film] that you heard about was bullshit. This is the official one. We're taking it to the nooks and crannies, I think deeper than any other article or documentary on the group. These are the intimate conversations that helped forge N.W.A. To me I think its interesting to anybody who loves that era and I don't know any other movie where you can mix Gangster Rap, the FBI, L.A. riots, HIV, and fucking feuding with each other. This movie has everything from Darryl Gates and the battering ram."

The full, three-page interview with Ice Cube is available at The L.A. Weekly.

source -  http://www.hiphopdx.com/index/news/id.23696/title.ice-cube-provides-update-on-n-w-a-movie-current-relationship-with-dr-dre