Critics and fans alike counted Consequence out after his Don't Quit Your Day Job failed to match the ranks of albums from G.O.O.D. Music brethren Common and Kanye West. However, those that doubted the Queens emcee probably didn't realize that his 10 years in the game have been on a gruesome grind to get heard, be appreciated and keep the "era of ill" alive.

Rather than abandon ship, Cons devoted himself to following the DIY marketing trends of a successful unsigned artist, and got it in. With at least four self-financed videos, magazine columns, and even a viral video of playing a toddler's game with Jay-Z on YouTube, we're talking about Don't Quit Your Day Job like it dropped last week.

With a new group with Statik Selektah and video director Rik Cordero coming together, Consequence is keeping it in-house in the 2008. As his You Win Some, You Lose Some is carefully crafted away, his debut album continues to move from the latter category to the former. In a discussion with HipHopDX, Consequence reveals how to stay relevant, with slow-cooked albums and fast-paced marketing and promotion. Relax and take notes.

HipHopDX: You’re still working on your album, hard, after a year of it being on the shelves. Tell me about that, and the connection you feel to Don’t Quit Your Day Job, and what you’ve done beyond what the label did…
Consequence: I can definitely say, and this is a real number, 75% of anything that you’ve ever seen or heard, promotional-wise regarding Day Job has been from my hands. [Laughs] Via going into my pocket, via getting into my car and driving to do a shoot; the record came out, and it had a slow start on a major scale. A lot of people didn’t really grasp the concept that I put the record out through Red. I almost really didn’t have a choice. Go the distribution route or play the waiting game, and I had been waiting 10 years already. That’s what people don’t really understand. I had been doing a metaphorical bid on the streets, and I had been waiting 10 years to drop a record. This all resonates from my situation with The Ummah.

With the Sony situation, there was a time where I was told that I didn’t have no temperature, and they didn’t know when the record was coming out. When I really got on, on an admin level, I figured out a situation to get the record to come out. The perception was that since it came out and had a slow start that it wasn’t good. Or it wasn’t classic. I really felt in my heart that it was. Even with being in G.O.O.D. Music, falling in the totem pole hurt me a bit ‘cause it was, “Oh, he must not be as good as Common and Kanye.” Nah, this record is terrific, but you’re not getting to see that, so I gotta figure this out. It just took a little bit of time.

DX: You mention coming out of your pocket. A lot of artists try to make money off of advances and cut their losses. These recent videos…
C: I could’ve cut my losses! [A writer for King Magazine] told me, “You could’ve just cut your losses and started working on something else.” I couldn’t cut my losses, on me! Don’t Quit Your Day Job is me! It is me packaged as a CD. It’s my life. The “Spaceship” verse is me. Don’t Quit Your Day Job is me from the deal with The Ummah to that little gray area to when me and Kanye linked up and started working together. That is probably the most passionate time in my life ‘cause I was down on my luck. The only thing I can sell is what I know. The most passionate thing I could tell you is, “Yo, I went from being a person who was essentially ‘bout to pop off to a person who had to go back to work, and now I’m back. Let me tell you about that, and how that feels. When you make your money, don’t forget your peoples [was “Don’t Forget ‘Em”].” I couldn’t quit on that. It’s the just the irony of me calling it Don’t Quit Your Day Job, and a year later, five videos later, and people are now are like, “Yo, this shit is dope! I’m gonna go buy four copies.”

DX: Without necessarily getting into numbers, has that happened?
C: It’s gradually spiking. The thing is, the internet, HipHopDX, Myspace… “Feel This Way” got 350,000 hits in a week. “The Good, The Bad & The Ugly,” 200,000. My playing Jay-Z [in Connect Four] is like all over the place! [Laughs] Utilizing the resources that you have [is the key]. I couldn’t even go into a show when the album came out. When I saw what people were saying when the album came out [on message boards], people were chalking it up as a failure. I told people a year ago, “The only thing I have to do is get my record out.” That was the hardest part. “After that, watch how I get it shakin’.”

DX: Let us not forget that Illmatic and Reasonable Doubt did not do great initial numbers, yet are revered as classics.
C: People from this era don’t come from that. They don’t know. Right now is the era of the haymaker. Just throwing that big punch, hoping it connects. If it connects, boom, you knocked ‘em out. But if it don’t, what happens then? You may not have the power-punch, but that don’t mean you can’t win the fight. You might have to switch styles. Promotion and boxing parallel so closely. They’re both sciences. You have to figure out what’s gonna work for you to get through the round. A haymaker might not always not do it. Continued on page 2 »