And as a precursor, one thing we did talk about on the Lost & Found interview is the Billy D song "Bad To the Bone." Billy D was one of the earliest MCs Blaster worked with, and on that song, he disses Raheem: "break out the shotgun 'cause I'ma destroy the Vigilante, 'cause I'm makin' it. Raheem keeps on fakin' it. 'Cause you a duck, that's why you be hatin' it. Rap title - Billy D's takin' it!" He also disses OG Style on that one. Again, we get into the whole story in the liner notes, but it's interesting they dropped a record dissing Raheem because Def Jam went on to produce his big diss track.
Well, you know what happened to me with Raheem? Raheem had "Venom" on the first album, and the thing that I discovered with Venom was that it was a character name. It wasn't really the actual DJ, who I became good friends with. That was never his name. Venom was a name Raheem came up with for just a guy named Sam. I don't remember what his DJ name was; we always called him Venom. But as we became friends, he told me, "you know, that's not really my name. That's a character name."
I'd heard Venom was Ready Red?
See, for Raheem's image, he felt that his DJ's name should be Venom no matter who that person may have been. Because it's me on all the songs on the second album, at least the songs that I produced. But he still says "Venom, my conductor," and it's me scratching while he's saying it.
Like Spinderella!
Yes, that's exactly what they did. Like, "this is a very cool name, so whoever assumes that position gets that name."
And I wanted to ask you about Royal Flush's second album. Were you considered like an official member, replacing Sergio Magnifico, or was that more like just some guest production work?
On Royal Flush, I think they just parted ways with Sergio way before they did the second album, so I don't think I ever even met him. I didn't look at it so much as replacing him because I think he had been gone, but technically, I guess that was the case.
What was the line-up at that point? Because in the Rap-A-Lot days, it was basically the two guys and Serg, but the back cover of 976-Dope shows like twenty people.
Well, that's the posse. You know Hip-Hop, there's always the posse. I think even the owner of the record label is in that photo. There were just other people affiliated with Rap-A-Lot in the picture. The official group was the two of them. I mean, you take the N.W.A and the Posse album, there's like eight people on there, but it's just Ice Cube and Ren or whatever rapping on those first albums. That was just the thing. The Scarface 12-inch? There's eight or nine people on that cover with us. You know, five of them had nothing to do with any of the music. That was just a Hip-Hop thing at the time: take a cool group photo with whoever you want on there.
Are you in there?
No, I wouldn't have been in any of their photos with them. I'm from Missouri City, which is a suburb of Houston, and they eventually bought a house in Missouri City. So, anybody that came to Missouri City would know Crazy C and Def Jam Blaster. These are the guys that make music, these are the guys DJing and everything, so you hook up with them. And so that's how I kind of got introduced to them: they were out of Missouri City. They're like, "Yeah, we heard about you, what do you have?" And so that was how that happened.
But you know, at that point, I was more interested in doing the production. As far as if a rap group approached me, I wanted to do the production; I didn't want to just DJ for them. So that's how I ended up doing a couple of songs on the second album. I was their DJ for a while, but I don't recall that we ever really did anything. They just said that I was the DJ and gave me the Royal Flush medallion to wear, so it was official. But I don't recall that we did anything as far as DJing any shows. Just doing music together was the main thing.
I guess, had they done any shows during that era, then I would have DJed for them. And, you know, you're dealing with... I mean, I just think the label probably didn't have a lot of pull, a lot of juice to make it do too much. It's a dope album, but you know, the second Royal Flush album is not on Rap-A-Lot. Rap-A-Lot had the juice. They could have pushed whatever they wanted to push. The second Royal Flush album was on Yo! Records or something, so I don't know too much about the label side of that. But I just assumed they didn't really have the juice to push it as hard.
So that was '91, and in '92 you're back with Rap-A-Lot to be Venom on The Invincible...
Yeah, that title track is a diss record, partly against Royal Flush. I didn’t know that when I was initially agreeing to do the work, so once I heard the lyrics, I had to call the guys up and say, "hey man, I’m neutral in all of this. I’m just producing the record." [Laughs]
And he's dissing OG Style on there, too, right? But what was his issue with Royal Flush?
Yeah, it sounded like it was over a girl. He was really just coming after Rick [Flush's King Ricardo, who he calls a "dick lickin', pussy suckin', dog breath MC... Rick get 'em up, 'cause I know you defend her. When I get 'em up, all niggas yell 'timber!' Snap of the neck to crack of the backbone. Impossible to step in the zone of the man they call invincible."]. And Raheem is so good, it was devastating at the time.
...And then we got into the production techniques he used for that track, and a connection it has to a NoDoz song, which is all in the CD booklets. But yeah, I just thought this was an interesting bit of history that's never really been unveiled. Fun Fact: Blaster is also the voice of "Finneas T. Farbottom of Channel Zero News" who announces that Raheem is back on the song's introduction.
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