Bay Area legend and one/half of “I Got 5 On It” duo Luniz, Yukmouth came through the DXHQ to talk about everything from the recently released part one of his JJ Based on a Ville Story and Dragonfly collaboration with Dime Vapes to his own label Smoke-A-Lot.
During the conversation, he spoke on his relationship with Rap-A-Lot records and its founder and CEO J Prince. During his time on the label, he dropped several renown classics including Thugged Out: The Albulation and Godzilla. Yukmouth even gave an interesting story on how much the storied Houston music executive cared about his career.
“He so solid, I got arrested on a Friday for $150,000 and I didn’t get booked in until Saturday,” he said. “That man had me out by Sunday. What? Boom, out. I spent one day because I was in the middle of the Godzilla Tour. We on tour, go to jail and I get remanded. I go to one of my court dates and they remanded me, them racists muthafuckas where I was at. They just remanded me for being late knowing I had to fly in and all that shit. Since I bailed out so much, the judge was like $150,000. I’m like what? J Prince posted that shit the next day. You done heard the stories of Tupac getting locked up and Interscope not bailing his ass out. You seen Bobby Shmurda getting locked up. A million dollar bail is just $100,000 up front. 10 percent with a house. You ain’t paying no meal ticket. So the record label couldn’t put up $100,000 for their top artist? A record label couldn’t put up $100,000 for ‘Pac? Suge had to put up $100,000 with a house. He didn’t have to put up a million dollars. Same thing. If you care about your artist and your record label and this is the person bringing in your money? What money are you going to make with him being locked up? All the money that you gave for this advance and all the other albums you’ve put the money into stops now? Naw, fuck that. Bail him out and have him back on the road on Monday. That’s mob shit.”
Yukmouth also said that J Prince was one reason why he was so protected during his various beefs with everyone from Master P to G-Unit.
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“It was the realest record deal I ever had,” he said. “Record labels get scared of you. I was beefing with everybody. Beefing with Master P, G-Unit, Game and everybody. J didn’t back up. He said these niggas better keep it wrapped or else. He told P that straight out the gate. I was on the plane with Mystikal and all them other niggas. All they could do was mean mug me. They knew better. J ain’t to be fucked with period. P knew better. No disrespect, but P knew better. I’m just saying. That man had some real power. Shout out to J Prince man. The mutha fucking boss don of The South.”
In regards to his own label, Smoke-A-Lot, he says his time on Rap-A-Lot gave him a grand lesson in running his own independent outlet.
“Well basically, the best thing that J Prince taught me was how to grind,” Yukmouth said. “The independent grind out there, I saw the infrastructure. How they press CDs and just do their thing when it came to making these albums and getting them out. I seen how they did it. They turned the album in, mixed and mastered it, take it to the press, which is going to take about a week, you get the product back, get your shipping list, stores like moms and pops, ship them out and get consignment. I learned all of that just by hanging out because I was one of the first artists besides Scarface to get a label deal there.”
