HHDX: Was that your advice or Cube’s?
Duke: That was mine. Cube recorded the record and sent it to us.

HHDX: Gotcha. You guys have drawn comparisons between yourselves and NWA, and seem to be really taking that seriously as you had Eazy on the last album, and now you’ve got Cube on this one. In what ways do you believe you’re similar to them, and in what ways are you different?
Duke: When that first came out…we never said that. The media gave us that. You know, we roll with it because, really, it was an honor to us. But you know, if you listen to our records, we don’t even make…our music sounds completely different from their music, as far as the type of records we actually make. Like, it’s street, but we talk more about other stuff. We talk about our work, they talked about their gangbangin’ stuff. We don’t gangbang down here like that. We got to the money. But we went right back to that gutter, gangsta music that they were doing. People hadn’t heard that in a long time – nobody did that in a long time. Like I said, the game is so watered down that some gangsta music come around, the public get scared again, they ain’t know what to do with it.

Zoe: Well yeah, they’re a group of guys from the hood. They had hard lyrics, real lyrics. NWA, they from the west coast and of course they were in the game. We from Atlanta, which is the south and we more hood – we get straight to the money. Here we are, 20 years later. There’s gonna be a difference in what we do.

HHDX: There’s been a lot of discussion in the past year about major labels vs. independent, especially due to the success of such artists as Jim Jones. Your situation is a bit unique, as you have Block Entertainment and Bad Boy backing you. What benefits and drawbacks do you see from both sides?
Duke: As far as the independent go, the advantage is that you call more shots. That’s how we need it to be. A lot of time you have agents come in, and you’ll start bumpin’ heads with them, like a power struggle. They wanna pick your records but they can’t pick your records. They ain’t hear your environment or they don’t live where you live, to know what record to pick – ‘cause they don’t know what the people want. You can’t pick a Boyz N Da Hood record ‘cause ya’ll ain’t here. Ya’ll ain’t in the clubs to see what people like.

HHDX: How involved was Diddy in the project?
Duke: He wasn’t. He get it at the end, when we done. He’ll pick the record. That’s how he get involved – he pick the single. It was the wrong one, too. Continued on page 4 »