Much of Trizz’s music revolves around darkness: What it feels like to identify a disconnect between the light that you see and the darkness that you feel, what it feels like to be trapped by it, and what it means to have to reconcile it as a fact of your existence. The crime that dots San Bernardino county is not the type that we typically associate with inner-city Los Angeles—it’s sudden and violent, viciously divergent from the white picket fences and upper-middle-class incomes that populate the area. The darkness of the Inland Empire is the knowledge that it doesn’t matter where you are, that darkness can find you anywhere.
Seven years ago, when Trizz graduated from Etiwanda High and started mailing demos to Strange Music while letting projects fly online during the peak of the DatPiff era, that darkness manifested itself through his music, through Casey Anthony audio clips interspersed throughout snarled threats of violence. “Horrorcore” is always too easy of a label: Trizz never felt like he had the crazy eyes, the maniacal, jump-out-your-chair-shaking-your-head-in-the-music-video persona that felt essential to all of that early-2000s Strange Music output, the unhinged spirit that Hopsin spent a whole career trying to get a grasp of. That fundamentally felt at least partially performative: We were meant to understand that the art arose from its extremity. Trizz always felt more dead-eyed, part-documentarian and part-complicit accessory. There was real personal darkness there.
But he’s older now, and these days (the definitive pivot feels like last December’s Ashes N Dust, although he’s been dropping crumbs for months before that), an unmistakable West Coast sensibility has also shouldered its way into the picture—you can almost hear George Clinton through Trizz’s psyche. It’s less Brotha Lynch Hung (a defining early collaborator and co-sign) and more G Perico, and in a way, it’s given the thesis of Trizz’s music more emotional weight to swing around.
Suburbia haunts, and the disturbingly quiet sprawl of the IE doesn’t inhabit a different world from the Los Angeles we know on wax; when Trizz talks about people disappearing into the night, we’re not talking rural Wisconsin or sleepy towns in the Midwest. The legacies of the two adjacent areas are intertwined, and if you made the mistake of forgetting that’s the case, the nimble piano riffs and G-funk synths waste no time subliminally associating you right back into his world. February’s 90′ Goin West feels like the obvious, if casually executed, extension of that attitude, a quick five-song trawl through seminal LA gangsta rap backdrops in the most obvious nod to his musical heritage in his career thus far.
Accordingly, most of the verses scattered across Ashes N Dust feel assertive but walled-off; Trizz snarls and growls but his vocal register rarely sneaks up above “moderately loud.” This feels right. The subtext to all of this is that Trizz is himself a Compton transplant, an LA kid who was moved to the outskirts and forced to confront the dead-eyed suburbs and whatever lied behind them. He’s a product of the internal turmoil that boiled over and attracted Strange Music at the outset of his career, but also of the complicated dark legacy of the Inland Empire. He’s at the intersection of two musical and ideological approaches, and you can hear it, too. On “Sleep in a Trap,” a retrospective of his own personal hell, his delivery slips into a rhythm that is almost trance-like: Trizz could’ve been suffocated, but he’s still going. —Sun-Ui Yum
I know a big part of your identity is that you’re born and raised on the West Coast, specifically the Inland Empire. I was just curious if you could tell me more about where you grew up since it’s such a big part of your music.
Trizz: Well, I grew up in Los Angeles County and San Bernardino County specifically. Compton, Norwalk, Long Beach, and Fontana. I’m from all of those cities, that’s where all of my life took place. I spent the majority of my childhood living in Long Beach, like North Long Beach, and living in Norwalk. And Compton was so close to North Long Beach, and that’s where my grandma stayed, right down the street on the east side, so we was always over there.
Then, when it was time to go to like middle school and high school and stuff, my mom didn’t want me to get involved with gangs and shit, so I ended up moving to the IE, and then when I got out here I moved to Fontana. I went to Etiwanda High, that ghetto ass school—that school is one of, if anybody knows about Etiwanda, it’s like one of the most ghetto schools in the IE.
But yeah, I moved out here to try and get, quote-unquote, “a better situation” for myself and my family and my mom, she started real estate and all that, she started doing her thing and started making real dough. My mom’s a hustler, that’s where I got my hustle from, so like, my mom ain’t never been like, struggling…I mean, we struggled before, but she always made sure we ate and shit. But yeah, that’s where I come from, LA and the IE.
What was your childhood like, when you were around Compton?
Trizz: My childhood was pretty good, like, I went through the normal shit that any kid or teenager would go through. I went through the girls, I went through the fights…that was one thing. I had an attitude problem, that was my thing, I was always getting into shit, fights, trouble at school, and disregarding teachers and shit like that. My mom, she always had this rebellious attitude instilled in us. I’d tell her, the teacher wouldn’t let me go to the bathroom one time, and she was like, what? I was like, ‘Yeah, mom, I raised my hand and asked her if I could go to the bathroom and she said I had to wait until after class.’ I told my mom that shit, she was like, ‘Hell nah, if you ever gotta go to the bathroom and the teacher say no, you better get your ass up and go to the bathroom.’
I ain’t gon’ lie, I never got bullied, but I had problems, like…older kids, bigger kids trying to talk they shit, trying to throw their weight around, and I never was one to back down and run from nobody, but of course, as a kid, you know, of course you get a little scared or intimidated and that’s what makes you into a man. My mom would send me to school with knives and shit, you know what I’m saying, and she was like, ‘If you ever gotta do something like this, if you ever gotta use this, I’m gonna get in trouble, you’re gonna get in trouble. So my mom always kept it real with me, like, she just did not want nobody taking advantage of me when I was a young boy.
So even if you’re getting in trouble at school and stuff like that, I can’t imagine it was causing a ton of tension with your parents or anything?
Trizz: Yeah, man, getting in trouble was an every-other-day type thing for me. And that, that became a problem because my mom didn’t appreciate that shit. She was like, ‘I don’t want you being defiant at school, I told you to not let nobody take advantage of you but that doesn’t mean go around starting shit. I wasn’t starting shit, I was more so just on some…when she would tell me that shit, I just took it to another level. [:aughs] It would be shit like, uh, a motherfucker would look at me wrong. Even if I felt like he would whup my ass, I would address the situation, you know what I’m saying [laughs]? That’s just how I was. And I had to learn that shit ain’t smart, I could get myself killed out here as an adult trying to act like that, so as I got older, all my foolish ways and ignorant ways and shit went out the window.
So you said around middle school, high school-ish, you moved to the IE?
Trizz: Yeah, I got out here in, like…it actually begins to get worse for me. Because high school was a lot more aggressive than elementary and shit, and the same thing with middle school. You got attitudes, you got rumors…it’s just like a whole bunch of bullshit going to high school and shit. So I bumped into all of that, I bumped into niggas trying to jump me, all kinds of shit. I got jumped in LA. So like, coming to IE, I didn’t expect any of that shit. ‘Cause in LA, you hear about the IE, you don’t get the stories that you see when you live here.
It goes down in the IE, nigga, like, people don’t know. If niggas don’t know, Fontana, San Bernardino, Rialto, all that shit. They don’t fuck around. So I didn’t know all of that at the time. I just thought, you know, I’m moving to the suburbs, the grass gonna be greener. Hell nah [laughs]. But, it did put me in better situations, though. Don’t get me wrong, my mom moved us to like a five-bedroom house, and we had a nice ass crib. My mom bought her crib, she had a fly whip, like, my mom started doing it. Like I said, that’s where I got my hustle from. Yeah, my dad too, my dad is the same way. He’s a little more laid back, he’s a little more chill than my mom, but same shit, they both hustlers, that’s where I get it from.
I know it’s something you talk about a good amount in your music, just how haunting suburbia can be, how it isn’t exactly what it seems. I know you just talked about it a bit, but I’m curious how you came to that realization in real time.
Trizz: Yeah, the suburbs…what it is, bro, it’s like…everything goes undocumented, the majority of it. When the lights are off, things happen, when the lights come back on, no one’s seen anything. Just last year, 2016, or, a year-and-a-half ago, my cousin got killed. In Fontana, right around the corner from my house, in a gated community, white-washed neighborhood, not crime-ridden at all. But certain things happen because it’s still those individuals in the community that don’t give a fuck.
So basically, to make a long story short, there was a little get-together at his auntie’s house, and some guys were over there that weren’t really that trustworthy, but it’s a party so like, people show up, and they was scoping out the house they was in ’cause it’s a nice house—like I said, it’s a gated community—and they came back and tried to rob them. And in the midst of the robbery, it went wrong, and they ended up killing my cousin.
Stuff like that, you know what I mean, no one talked about that, no one gave a fuck. So like, that’s what I mean when I say suburbia and shit. I document it, I talk about that, because I’ve been in the hood, I’ve been all through the hood, I done had my first fights in the hood, my family’s from the hood, so I don’t want to talk about all that all the time. I don’t have to, because that shit’s old, niggas done told that story. You know what I’m saying? Niggas ain’t told the suburbia story.
I guess, if you’re somebody who’s rich or upper-middle-class white and you live in the suburbs, you also have a vested interest in making sure that people don’t think that anything’s going on.
Trizz: Exactly! It’s like, people think that people that live in the suburbs don’t have problems, or they have these, y’all don’t go through this, y’all don’t deal with this, that, and the third. Like, we deal with way more worse stuff than that shit. Niggas end up missing over here, can’t find ‘em, and you end up finding them in the back of a car, dead, and shit like that. It be more horrific crimes, rather than somebody walking up on you and popping you and leaving. You know what I’m saying?
I remember I was living in Corona at the time, and my brother was working at this McDonald’s. They were closing up or whatever, and uh, and just as they were—actually, no, they weren’t about to close up, it was a 24-hour joint. About 2, 3 o’clock in the morning and my brother was getting off of work. And as he was getting off of work, they discovered a body in the car! A body had been sitting in the back of the parking lot. If anybody know that McDonald’s parking lot, it’s the Chevron, the Taco Bell, the Little Caesars, everything right there across the street from a movie theater. And there was a body sitting in the car for three whole days and no one knew about it. No one fucking knew about it, because it’s the suburbs, and it’s not as active.
Are you happy you moved there?
Trizz: Oh, yeah, I’m happy with…I don’t regret any of my situations. I don’t think I’d live here for the rest of my life because this is where I put it down, you know what I mean, this is where…I know a lot of people, a lot of people know my face, so no, this is not a place I’d fucking move and raise my family, hell nah. It’s not a shot at my town, I’m saying that because…it’s like this. Shit, fucking, The Game ain’t going back to Compton and living there, that just don’t make no sense. Boosie ain’t going back to Baton Rouge and living there, that shit don’t make no sense.
I heard you say in a different interview that your father was a CD collector and that’s what initially got you into music. What type of music did you grow up around?
Trizz: Yeah, yeah, see, that was the thing, when I was coming up, man, around between one and six years old, my dad, he had this den in the house in Long Beach we had, and that was just his room where he just slapped music all day. And he would, I would be in the room in my diaper and shit, young, but I comprehended the fuck out of what was going on, I knew music patterns, I understood what I was hearing, and that’s where all the music came from. He was putting on that jazz, that G-funk shit, he was putting on George Clinton, Parliament, Ohio Players, all that funk shit that they was bumping in the ‘70s and shit. So like, that’s where I got my West Coast bounce from. And when that fucking Bow Down dropped by Westside Connection in ’96, I was floored.
That was the first rap album I had fallen in love with and heard at four years old. At four years old, bro, I was singing “Bow Down” back to back, and my dad would always, he loved that fucking song “Gangstas Make the World Go Round,” so he was playing that shit all the time. And that’s where, I think that’s where the birth of me loving music came from.
Just being around that when you were younger?
Trizz: Hell yeah, and I was, I knew, my mom said I knew the Naughty by Nature “Hip Hop Hooray” song word-for-word. She said I knew this Blackstreet song, I can’t remember what the name of it is, it’s a song by Blackstreet I used to sing, word-for-word. I was also so musically-inclined, they already knew.
I read you graduated high school in 2011, and you’ve been putting out mixtapes basically since then. The music’s definitely matured a ton. A really common thing people used to say about your music was that it was “horrorcore,” and since then it’s definitely changed a lot. How do you feel your music’s changed?
Trizz: I wouldn’t say that my music changed all the way but I definitely cleaned it up a bit. I definitely still talk shit, my mouth is still foul, but for example, if you listen to Written in Smoke and then listen to Ashes N Dust, it still has that dark feel, but Written in Smoke, shit, I open up the album dumping my girl body parts in the lake, you know what I’m saying?
On Ashes N Dust my girl is nagging me, talking to me about some girl who signed the wall in the studio. It’s just different now. Back then, I probably would’ve been talking a whole bunch of, cutting shit up, and getting…and I still talk about shit like that, gutting motherfuckers and some Eminem, Brotha Lynch shit, because that’s where I come from. But like I said, my mom sent me to school with knives and shit. That shit was in me, horrorcore and all of that, I’m not just talking that shit, I was really carrying a knife around, I was really threatening to stab motherfuckers and kids, I was on that shit, that wasn’t like something I was doing out of shock value. It became dope because I was like, shit, I can turn that shit into music, and I’m not that person no more so now it’s just an art form. You know what I mean?
It’s a reflection of—
Trizz: I really had to…and then, two, man, horrorcore, it scares the mainstream media away, and ultimately I want to go mainstream, you know what I mean, but I still been independent. But now, if I change my shit up, you probably catch my shit on 2dopeboyz, fucking you guys, you know what I mean, fucking, uh, Complex, XXL, I have more options now. The Source, Vibe Magazine, all these guys have covered me before, now that I’ve, you know…and then my boy Chuuwee, when I met him, I had met him post-horrorcore shit that I was doing.
We did the AmeriKKa’S Most Blunted series and that really set my career off. I was touring with him, and we were packing out shows, we did our first ever sold out show in Mississippi. And we ain’t never been to Mississippi, and all of a sudden, this college tosses us three grand to do a show, and we go out there, we do it, that bitch is sold out. So yeah, it’s changed a little bit because I wanted, for lack of a better word, more money and more fame.
Yeah, I was going to say, when you were talking about your different projects, that’s super accurate. The music’s still dark, it’s just that the darkness is channeled in different ways and it’s definitely matured a lot.
Trizz: Yeah, yeah, the darkness. People get me confused when I talk about the darkness and shit like that. I be having to tell motherfuckers when I talk about the darkness, I’m saying, like…you can’t have light without dark. You can’t have dark without light. You must embrace the darkness so that you don’t, so that you become the light and the dark. And on top of that, when you face darkness, it’s easier to face it, you know what I’m saying? It’s easier to face it when you have experienced it.
When you’re in tune with it.
Trizz: So that’s what my album is all about. I’m so caught up in the darkness—I’ve been caught so much in the darkness that I turned into light, you know what I mean, that I’ve embraced it so much that I am the light, you know what I mean?
Yeah, absolutely.
Trizz: That’s basically what it is. I make my own light. I make my own light out of the darkness, and everybody’s experienced the darkness. I’ve experienced the darkness, you’ve experienced the darkness, we’ve all been hurt, we’ve all been angry, we’ve all been emotionally destroyed before. Everybody has. If you are in your twenties, you have been emotionally hurt. And if you haven’t, then you’re a robot, you know what I mean?
When I talk about the darkness, man, I love the dark. I go in the bathroom in the dark. I swear, bro, whenever I take a shower or something like that, whenever I go inside of a bathroom, the lights are off. Whenever I go into my room, my light is a dim light. So when you first cut it on, it doesn’t brighten all the way up. It gives you this little, little, little, very little light, just so that you can move around and you don’t bump into shit. And gradually, in about forty-five to sixty seconds, it turns all the way on. My brightness is turned all the way down. My favorite color is black, I’m always wearing black. Everything around me is black, I’ve just learned to embrace the darkness so much that I am the light. And I don’t mean to get that deep, but that’s what it is to me.
I think, especially around that time—2012 and 2013—I was in high school. I was listening to Odd Future and stuff like that, and it was tough for me to listen to that and separate artistic expression from shock value and all of that.
Trizz: Right. And it’s like, so many people embrace the darkness that don’t even know they do. Like, uh, a lot of rock stars do it, you know what I mean? And that’s one of my favorite genres. Aside from rap and hip-hop, I listen to a lot of rock-and-roll, like, not metal, but hardcore, just before metal. I listen to System of a Down and shit. And it’s because, when I hear Serj’s voice, bro, his vocal cords are just so fucking amazing, dude. I want to work with Serj so bad, their lead singer? He’s fucking amazing, so yeah, bro, I definitely feel where you’re coming from with the whole Odd Future shit. My girl is a huge Odd Future fan, I think they’re awesome.
I think you got asked about Kurt Cobain or something, and you were talking about the negative energy in the music industry and wanting to stay independent, and I was kind of curious about whether what you were just talking about connects to that feeling of being motivated by the obstacles in your life.
Trizz: Yeah, man, and I’m glad you brought up Kurt, because he’s a real inspiration. I have “Nirvana” tatted on my arm, bro, it has so much influence on my music. Whenever I go to Seattle and shit, I go and sit in front of Kurt’s house because it faces the water, and he has a bench there and I may just chill there, vibe, we have conversations and shit and chill. You really feel the energy when you get there, you know what I mean? Referring back to what you were saying, whenever I sit down and I write music, I always have to listen to something first. I may go listen to, uh, Nipsey, because I like what he talks about and he comes from the streets and the struggle but he, again, he takes his negatives and turns them into positives.
That’s a great description of Nipsey.
Trizz: I may listen to Kurt, I may listen to Nip, I may listen to Pac, I may listen to Graveyard—it’s this band out in Australia—I may listen to 50. And then I go write some shit, and I can write it so fast, because I’ve locked myself into their shit so much that it inspired me to obviously perform—it’s not, you know, new material, in my own way, I’m creative too, so I can take inspirations from pieces that I’m inspired by and create art from it. That shit is amazing.
The one really specific collaborator I wanted to ask you about is Brotha Lynch Hung and Strange Music and all that. I’m sure you get asked about this all the time, but I was curious how you see him as an inspiration or how he’s influenced your own career—because there definitely is some similarity, especially early on with your music.
Trizz: Well Lynch discovered me in 2012 with this song I did called “666,” because in high school, bro, I sent a demo tape to Tech N9ne and Strange Music. I kept sending them shit, bro. I was going to Walmart and I was printing out these high-definition ass pictures and shit. This was around the time when demos were like, acceptable. If you send a demo now you look crazy. But I was sending demos to Strange Music in a large manila envelope, bro. And then Tech, he DM’ed me on Twitter in 2010. I’ll never forget it, I was eighteen and I had just got out of school, and he DMed me. He said, ‘You’re dope, I’m gonna check it out,’ and that’s all he said. And I was like, ‘Oh, that means they must’ve got my shit!’ So then, he never hit me back. Two years go by, he never hit me back.
So then, one day, Brotha Lynch DMs me on Twitter saying, shit, some Tech shit. But this time, he says, are you down to do shows? And I was like, ‘Fuck yeah, I’m down to do shows!’ And mind you, I’m at home, I’m a kid fresh out of high school looking to try to get a job, all types of shit. I called my mom, and I was like, ‘Mom, Brotha Lynch talking ‘bout he want to take me on tour.’ And she was like, ‘If that’s legit, you’re grown, do what you want to do, just be safe.’ And I went on tour with Tech N9ne and Brotha Lynch, bro. And that was it. And the rest is history. I jumped on.
But before I went on the tour, a lot of shit happened. It was really like some bootcamp shit. Because he was like, ‘Come out to Arizona tomorrow.’ When I say bootcamp, he wasn’t aggressive with me, he was just like, come out to Arizona tomorrow. And he called me the day before. So I had to scrape up some money, jump on the Greyhound bus, and I went to fucking Arizona. And I got out there, my phone was damn near dead, and I seen some white guy in a van which was his manager—shout out to my boy Don Rob—and he picked me up, and then he took me to where Lynch was having dinner and shit. We sat up and ate, and he was telling me he wanted me to be down with him. And a month after that I went to go get “Madesicc” tatted on my arm and shit. He started putting money in my pocket and taking me on tour, and I ain’t never turn back. I didn’t have to go look for a job or nothing after that.
What was that like, to tour with them?
Trizz: Shit, it was an experience, because that was my first tour. It was kind of like, God gave me all this—I’m a firm believer in God and stuff—I feel like God threw me with the wolves, at first. Because I was like, ‘Damn, I deserve this this fast? Obviously I do!’ You know what I mean? Thank you God, but this was my first tour. Usually a rapper’s first tour is janky and fucked up.
Yeah, you do the tiny little…
Trizz: My first tour was with Tech N9ne. On a bus. Brotha Lynch Hung. Rittz. CES Cru. Kutt Calhoun. The first twenty-five shows sold out. I’m jumping out on the crowd, stage-diving and shit. I’m going on as Lynch’s hypeman. But I, uh, I’m on the album, so I got to do my thing at the end on his song, so I really had to showcase that verse, because it was like, sixty shows. I had to do that verse, I had to kill that verse, nail it, really good, sixty times. Because I knew I was going to be in front of a lot of people and I only had, after his background vocals that I’m covering and shit, which I did a really good job at, I’m about to showcase my shit. I’m about to showcase sixteen bars, I’m about to kill this sixteen bars. I ain’t got no set on this tour but I got sixteen bars, and I know that I’m about to kill this shit.
And from there, man, everybody from Strange is just, fucking with me, giving me mad respect. Rittz jumped on my Written in Smoke album, Brotha Lynch gives me verses whenever I ask, Tech N9ne, on a couple of shows, Tech N9ne fucking let me wear his chain, bro. I’ll never forget that. We were about to go to Machine Gun Kelly’s party, and right before we was about to go, I told Tech, it’s about to look weird when I walk into this party with no Strange chain, and I was joking around. And Tech was like, really? And I was like, yeah, but nah, I’m just joking. And Tech was like, come with me. And we went back on the bus, we went back to his room, he went into his jewelry box and he gave me his Strange chain, and I wore that shit for like two weeks.
Is there a reason you never took that farther and signed to the label?
Trizz: Yeah, it’s crazy, I’m signed to Below System and Tommy Boy, but that’s just distribution deals. I just never wanted a major deal, that just ain’t my thing, I don’t give a fuck about that. I can feed myself. I know that if I sell a thousand CDs, the ten-thousand dollars is mine. Fuck all that. I don’t need to cut nobody into my money. And if that means I gotta work harder and I gotta struggle for it a little bit and I gotta eat off the dollar menu, then fuck it. But I know damn well I’m not giving up my creative works. Fuck that.
When you were going through the process and making Ashes N Dust and 90’ Goin West, I’m curious if anything’s changed about your approach or if…
Trizz: My approach with Ashes N Dust and 90’ Goin West were completely different. 90’ Goin West, I literally just woke up in the morning and I seen niggas talking shit about the West Coast and I was like, they gotta be fucked up, and I recorded five songs and put it out. I wasn’t thinking that through at all. Niggas talking shit about the West, they got me bent, and I’m about to record some dope shit and they’re gonna hear me. I recorded it all that day, I mixed and mastered it myself, I didn’t give a fuck how it sounded. I just put it out.
That’s strong.
Trizz: It probably sounds a little off, if somebody really engineered it, but I didn’t really care. It’s my shit. But Ashes N Dust was a completely different approach. I was on tour writing on that album and shit, and I scrapped a lot of verses and shit, and I was going through a lot with the homies and shit. That was different. I was voicing a lot of my real shit on there. The approach on there was more emotional. You know what I mean? I really had to sit down and really dissect those verses and I had to take some shit out because I didn’t want to offend motherfuckers, and it was just a lot of shit I had to do.
Do you think there’s a song in particular that feels important to you, anything that stands out?
Trizz: Yeah, “Sleep in a Trap.” “Sleep in a Trap” is important as fuck to me because for one, it’s the most popular song on the album. Two, that song is about being mentally stuck. Everybody has been asleep in a trap. It’s about not being able to escape mental hell. For example, if you’re going through anything troubling in your life, and that shit’s just, everywhere you go, it’s just on your mind. You can’t escape it, you know what I mean? That’s why when I say “the trap,” I’m talking about mental hell, not the ghetto. So when I be like, man, I’m in the trap—nigga, I’m fucking, I’m going through it.
Along with “Hocus Pocus,” that’s my shit, because that’s about riding and what I used to do in high school. In high school I used to rob and steal shit a lot—not rob people at gunpoint, but you know, I used to do shit. I used to break into cars, I used to break into houses, I used to do all that shit. That song “Hocus Pocus,” to me, is doing down-low dirty shit. Basically, if me and you go out and we go fucking break into a car or steal it, take some shit up out of there, that’s hocus pocus to me. It’s negative energy.
What’s it like having made music for several years and having gone through a lot during that time—keeping up that work ethic?
Trizz: It’s about the longevity. I never gave a fuck about a radio record. I never wanted to do no radio hits, I’ve always been organic with my shit. For example, I’m mobbing with my homies right now and like, I put ‘em on my shit, you know what I mean? And I get on they shit. They may not have done, they may not have toured or done shit that I have done, but fuck that, niggas is my friends and shit. I don’t give a fuck about getting on songs with major motherfuckers and shit, because I represent my real niggas and shit, and I care about putting my niggas on.
If you stay true to that shit and you stay organic, you gon’ stay relevant. You always gon’ be relevant if you stay true to yourself, and you can always put out your own shit. If I put out some shit right now, and a bunch of people, the whole Internet be like, ‘Oh, it’s wack. Oh, cool, it’s wack—it’s fine.’ That don’t hurt me. If I’m a major artist, you know what I mean, I have a lot of—not a major artist, I take that back, if I’m a controlled artist. Under a label, where somebody’s telling me what the fuck to do…
You’ve got like an A&R team…
Trizz: …and I’m trying to stay relevant, and I’m trying to put out these number one hits, then it’s a different story. It’s like, oh, man, this got to be good. When I record, bro, I don’t give a fuck. If this shit is wack, I’ll find out some-way, some-how, but I’m not about to be sitting up in my studio like, I gotta get this record out because people gotta like it. Man, fuck all that. That’s how I stay relevant.
