For all of you who 'claim you know hip hop' and have had to ask me 'Who is this HexMurda nigga ya'll speak of?"...Here you go...Courtesy of my girl out in Cali..Empress E.. Naw...I'm not taking her WHOLE SHIT. You gotta go there and read it. Deal with it. Shit is interesting as hell though... Here's a piece..
Music Nerdery: You said tapes. Then you took the time to make sure you pointed out you used Maxell tapes. Fuck you, you are amazing.
Anyways, tangent. Tell me about how you found your way into the music industry. I know you went through the struggle for a little bit, but once that cleared up you somehow managed to gather some of the illest talent Michigan has to offer and created a unified movement in Detroit Hip Hop that just might bring the entire city and state back; real talk. You are involved in anything that is awesome, Hip Hop and Detroit. It’s why I always admired you. So how did you do it? Get into the management game, the business, alladat.
hex: I saw dudes in Detroit getting into this rap shit heavy. Niggas like Esham, DMW, EzB and DJ Los, AWOL, Kaos and Mystro, Merciless Amir, Awesome Dre, Jack Frost, Smiley, K-Stone, Poppa J Smoove, Rap Mafia, etc. I wanted in. I cofounded a collection of about 7 emcees called the Almighty Dreadnaughtz, then began my street bullshit. Needless to say, I went on a State paid vacation for a few years, and when I came home the niggas I had left had been doing their thing at open mics all over the city. Ebony Showcase, Wired Frog, The Hip Hop Shop. They had also multiplied. I don’t have an exact number, but there was a lot of those niggas.
Competition between crews was fierce. There was 31 Flavors, D12, Royce’s (@royceda59) crew Wall Street, and a bunch of other niggas. I felt like the Dreadnaughtz needed was some guidance. My nigga Eksa Q used to always say I was built for the management shit but I didn’t really wanna be a manager. I started working with AD in a non-official capacity. Got a few local gigs and got some exposure through local rags and Murder Dog and shit. It wasn’t long before we figured out that there were too many niggas in the crew to make any money. Plus life got in the way. I hung out at St. Andrew’s Hall and ended up as a de-facto stage manager for Hip Hop gigs. I also started working with King Gordy (@kinggordy) and the group he was in ‘FatKillahz’. This would be trial by fire. Gordy signed with Web Entertainment which put us in the same studio with and in close proximity to Eminem (@eminem) and D12. I listened to every word said in that studio. From Joel Martin (The Bass Brothers manager) to the secretary. I also inked Guilty Simpson from the Dreadnaughtz to a management contract.
Gordy & FK fired me in ’04 while we were on the D-12 tour. I wanted to micro-manage their every fucking move. No bueno. You gotta let grown men be grown. Lesson learned. Slum Village’s manager Tim Maynor hired me the next day as SV’s road manager. I went all over the world with those niggas. I also first heard Black Milk’s (@black_milk) music because of them. I’ll never forget that shit. Black was a roadie with Slum and we were in Austin, Texas at Stubbs BBQ the concert venue. J. Dilla’s cousin Que D (@Qdiesel), who was also a roadie for SV, gave me BR Gunna’s (Black, Young RJ & FatRay) (@youngrjdetroit @fatraymotorboy) Dirty District LP to play as walk in music. After hearing it I told Black when he was ready to do something with his music to holla at me. I stayed working with Slum, including A&R’ing their self-titled LP and continued on the road with them. I had also learned a lot from my nigga Proof and I applied a lot of that knowledge to both my business and everyday life.At some point Black called me. So I had Black Milk and Guilty Simpson. Elzhi (@elzhi) came later. Then both HouseShoes (@houseshoes) & my man Dove (@riodata) kept telling me to listen this nigga called Danny Brown (@xdannyxbrownx). He was with the squad too. Before my stroke my immediate crew consisted of Black Milk, Guilty Simpson, Elzhi & Danny Brown. I dunno about bringing the city back because my niggas been here, along with more street oriented artists like TrickTrick (@TrickTrickGS) KDeezy (@therealkdeezy) ToneTone (@tonetoneinherre) & StretchMoney (@stretch_money) to name a few. So niggas been here. You just gotta know where to look.
