The undisputed king of the rapid-fire flow, Twista, spoke with HipHopDX recently and revealed his current career plans now that he has left his label home of over 10 years, Atlantic Records.
“I just recently severed my deal with them,” he explained to DX. “I did it the low-key way. I coulda went the raunchy way, but I just basically waited it out and kept in contact with the people at Atlantic so that we can part ways on a positive note, and that’s basically how we did it. So right now Twista’s a free agent. And it feels good too.”
While premature talk of Twista’s free agency from Atlantic Records surfaced after the gold success of his debut for the label, 1997’s Adrenaline Rush, the Chicago emcee insists after four solo albums with Atlantic he is indeed now free to pursue other offers.
“I’m talking to a couple of people,” he noted. “I don’t really wanna say no names yet, ‘cause I don’t wanna mess nothing up. But definitely it’s gon’ be just as big of a shock as it was when you heard [about] me dealing with Roc-A-Fella and [Bad Boy].”
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Diddy and Damon Dash both made attempts to procure Twista’s services for their respective labels during the half-dozen years following the release of Adrenaline Rush and prior to its 2004 follow-up, the platinum-selling Kamikaze, but neither deal came to fruition as Twista settled previous issues he had with Atlantic and continued recording for the label.
Tensions however resurfaced between Twista and Atlantic beginning in 2005 when label A&R’s removed tracks from his gold-selling The Day After, replacing rawer street records with more commercially accessible fare.
Problems continued between the two parties into Twista’s most recent release, last year’s Adrenaline Rush 2007. After forgoing Twista’s choice of releasing the Lil Wayne-assisted “Whip Game Proper” in favor of the Neptunes produced, Pharrell featured, “Give It Up,” as the album’s first single, the label failed to push the radio-friendly record to the success level of previous Twista singles (“Girl Tonite,” “Slow Jamz,” “Overnight Celebrity”) and Adrenaline Rush 2007 subsequently became the lowest selling solo album of Twista’s tenure with Atlantic.
“The company was changing,” explained Twista of the origins of his discontent with the label. “The same people that was working at the company that helped blow up Kamikaze were fired. All of the people that I had grew to get comfortable doing business with, they all were fired and a bunch of new young cats was coming in. And I just kinda fell into a bracket that I wasn’t comfortable with. So, it was just time to move on.”
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Twista’s most recent move has been to launch his own label, Get Money Gang [click to read], and while he negotiates for a new solo deal spend his time working on developing the careers of Skooda Chose, Mello Tha Guddaman, and his longtime partners-in-rhyme Liffy Stokes and Mayz, collectively known as The Speedknot Mobstaz.
Next Tuesday (May 27th) Twista Presents The Speedknot Mobstaz Mobstability II: Nation Bizness will become GMG’s first offical release (via Koch Records).
“It’s the young hustla in the hood trying to come up mentality,” said Twista of the album’s direction. “Gangsta rap, that’s too broad of a title these days. We talking about hustling and coming up. We spittin’ rhymes for the young brothers in the hood that’s trying to get a little something. So it’s street-orientated. People get [this brand of Hip Hop] mixed up with the culture [and] don’t realize that culturally when it comes to Hip Hop we say hard shit! So we on there going hard!”
Legal wrangling with the group’s original label, the now defunct Big Beat Records (which was distributed by Atlantic), led to the beginnings of a decade-long delay in following up 1998’s gold-selling Mobstability, but Speedknot survived on the streets, and alongside their fellow Legit Ballin’ crewmates sold over 150,000 copies combined of three label compilations (released in 1999, 2001 and 2002).
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While incredibly successful for an independent, Twista’s original label foray has since been abandoned by its co-founder.
“[Legit Ballin’] was my company [originally],” Twista clarified before adding, “I got one of my street homies that was down with me that I wanted to help get out the streets, got him to jump down on the label with me. He tried to bust a Suge Knight on me, so I let him have the label, went off and did my own thing and watched him flop. That’s a situation of me trying to help somebody who started feeling like it was him more than it was me, and I had to show ‘em.”
Twista’s attention is now turned to his new company and new projects, which in addition to the new Speedknot Mobstaz album tentatively include a Get Money Gang compilation due later this summer, and maybe most notably a collaboration with a fellow Midwest lightning-tongued legend.
“Right now me and Krayzie Bone are communicating a lot,” Twista revealed. “We supposed to be doing a whole project together. So we getting that worked [out] right now.”
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According to Twista, the planned project could expand to include additional artists. “Tech [N9ne] is definitely one of my homies,” he noted. “We been talking to E-40 on that level too. So we might all just jump down and do something as far as that whole style. But I’ma save that for next year. [For now] I’ma spend the rest of this whole year just pushing the Mobstaz.”
Twista Presents The Speedknot Mobstaz Mobstability II: Nation Bizness will be released via Get Money Gang/Koch Records on May 27th. The video for the first single from the album, “Money To Blow,” can be seen below:
