DX: You have launched your own site MrPorter.com which allows general fans to buy beats that you have worked on over the years. What inspired you to do that?
MP: I was looking at all the music that I had. I was out in L.A. and when I came back from L.A., Dre looks for certain things and certain ideas and I think what happened was I would get frustrated. You know I would make all of this music but we didn’t use it all; so it got to a point where I was getting a lot of e mails and fan mail from people and they were looking to work with me and it was hard to go in the studio with a guy who is just starting when you have a career to uphold yourself. Sometimes I do that if someone hits me with some shit, but a lot of these guys need work and this was a way for me to spread that love to these people without having to say, "Come back after you got five more songs." Now I have made this site where I have put a lot of the music up there. You know this is stuff that I have sitting on hard drives, not quite sure how many I have. [Laughs] There was just a lot of music sitting there and I thought it was a waste. Some of these kids don’t know how to negotiate prices for beats so I set it up where they can go to the site and if they like a beat, they can take it off and put it on their own album. They negotiate their price and in doing so they have to learn about producer agreements and about licensing. It just turned into a great tool to work with artists around the world. I really wanted to do it for those artists in the UK and in Australia and places like that. They love us over there and I don’t want to have to wait for a tour to have to do something with people over there. I hate that as I love being over there. It just made so much sense for me to do this and that s why I got into it. I felt like all this stuff would go to waste and it is really great stuff, you know the stuff labels will be afraid of. The lack of communication and the fact that I am a person that likes to do things for everybody that made sense to me. I wanted to help all these people but I knew I had to figure out a way to do this without having to be in a million places at once and it just made sense.

DX: Do you think that artists coming up nowadays do need that big name producer behind them to get attention nowadays?
MP: Not at all, but it’s like this. When we did the first D12 album, I felt like I was doing great but then I would rap over my own beats and then Eminem would come with a beat that I could rap over. But when we got to Dre’s studio, and we started working on his stuff, it was staggering. You know get a beat here or there from a different producer and it's nice when you are in the hood saying, "I got a beat from Mr. Porter," I never had that chance when I was coming up.

DX: A lot of producers like the whole working in a studio experience with an artist. Do you think tat putting your beats out there or any other producer putting their music out there in this way takes that aspect away from recording and creativity?
MP: No because Swizz Beatz [click to read] doesn’t get to work in the studio with everyone he has worked with, [DJ Premier] doesn’t get the chance to work with everyone who wants to work with him, and nor do I. The people that are going to go to this site are those people that don't have $15,000 in their budget. So it is different; to some if they have a thousand bucks it’s like $100,000 but if they get something they are looking for, it will make their album or project different. If you are talking about major artists, yes it does take away but for these kids, this is something that they have to look forward to. You know they could get a deal off this. A guy got a ring tone deal after taking a beat from the site. You know it was some drums and a wacky kind of sound and he called me up and told me that a ring tone company gave him $50,000 or something.

DX: Producers are about paying it forward.
MP: Me and J.R. Rotem, I told him the ropes of certain things and he ended up with an artist, Sean Kingston [click to read]. I have yet to work with Sean Kingston, but I know I can call Sean Kingston and have him write a hook. There are different connections that you make through helping people. I am not bitter about a person’s success or happy about their failure, I feel like I was one of those people. Like at this years One Stop Shop, everyone on that stage, like Preemo and Swizz, I am not at that level yet. I know I have a long way to go but everyone in the audience is just like me. I dropped out of school, I lost my scholarship for playing ball and everyone is the same. You know we all have opportunities and by helping the next person you are really helping yourself. Continued on page 4 »