WordofSouth.com: With your upcoming album being called, “Pursuit of Nappyness” is there any kind of personal influence or inspiration from the hit movie, Pursuit of Happiness.
Skinny Deville: Definitely. I think what Will Smith’s character went through to get what he wanted out of life is something we all can relate to. As a man; family comes first next to God and he should do any and everything to provide, protect, and keep his unit together. The grind that Chris Darden had to go through to maintain stability for his child is what we do on a daily basis and often times it seems impossible and very difficult to accomplish. The movie is a true testament to humility, honesty, desperation, struggle, perseverance, patience and straight up grindin’. And for that, I can definitely relate.
WordofSouth.com: How did the recording process for this album differ from the first three?
Skinny Deville: This one was different in various ways. We used technology a lot on this album. When I say technology, it’s not easy and I’m going to say it like this. Me and [Fish] Scales live in Atlanta; Big V lives in Bowling Green and [Ron] Clutch and B. Stille live in Louisville. The album came about with only three sessions of us actually being together in the same room, same space at the same time. One was at Clutch’s house when we went to Louisville for Nappy Roots weekend and we stayed there for about a week and had a session. One was last summer when Clutch, Big V and B. Stille came to Atlanta and we all got in the studio. The last session we just had was in DJ KO’s spot who produced five tracks on the album. Those are the only three sessions we had together.
Between that, we were emailing records back and forth with the pro tools sessions. We were on the road doing a bunch of stuff. We even had a pro tools rig set up in the hotel rooms. We actually used pmpworldwide.com this time. It’s a beat dumpsite and we grabbed beats off that website and actually used them on the album. A lot of producers that are producing and using beat dump sites to gain notoriety, it actually does work. You gotta’ be patient and have the heat. We went through and used PMP Worldwide and a bunch of producers gave us tons of beats. We shopped through them and basically A&R’ed the project ourselves. We would email the producers and let them know we were trying to use it and they were ecstatic. We got a lot of the beats that way.
WordofSouth.com: We’re going to get into the album a bit more. I know Fontana distributed the last album and you already mentioned them here. So they are distributing this album as well, correct?
Skinny Deville: Yeah. We have a nice deal with them. It took a long time for us to get the situation that we have at Fontana. To get what we have now, the ability to put out 4-5 albums a year without somebody standing over us to keep everything from it other than our distribution fee is great. People are taking 360 deals right now just to get in the stores. We have a great situation without giving up our masters, publishing, touring or merchandising. We’re not giving up anything and our able to stay who we are and put out our music and not just our music but anybody we associate ourselves with and we want to put out, we can do that. We can do it digitally or physical. Ron Spaulding and a bunch of people over there like Chris Ayers & Erica Holley, we have a very good relationship.
My whole thing is to be respected and be treated like a priority regardless of where I’m at. At Atlantic, we were respected as a priority, but the game was changing. It was literally changing right in front of our faces and it didn’t make sense at the time for a six man collective to be signed to a major label on the same level as a solo artist. It just doesn’t make sense. How do you retire from the rap game? How does a hoe retire from the hoe game? She doesn’t. She might get out the game and do something totally different, but the pimp is not about to let you retire with a fat ass house and a bunch of shit with your kids well off. They aren’t supposed to do that.
Read the full interview here:
Word Of South - Nappy Flows: The Nappy Roots Interview
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