by Alex Shtaerman
Whether you know them as the Lox, Double R or D-Block, make no mistake about it, Jadakiss, Sheek Louch and Styles P have had this rap shit on lock since 1997. Flawlessly traversing the divide between mainstream exposure and street credibility, the three childhood friends from Yonkers have made constant evolution a hallmark of their near decade-long legacy. Set to drop his second solo album After Taxes on September 20th, Sheek Louch is ready to take his game to an even higher level. With support from an all star cast that includes Redman, Ghostface Killah, Raekwon and P. Diddy, Sheek is also set to address D-Block’s lingering beef with G-Unit on the aptly titled cut Maybe If I Sing. According to Sheek we may finally see an end to the feud. “That I think is the nail in the coffin. This is the one that’s going to crush the buildings. This joint here is going to be on repeat in every car, everywhere”.
RIOTSOUND.COM: Yourself, Styles and Jadakiss recently inked a deal that will bring your company over to Koch Records; how did that whole situation unfold and what were some of the driving forces behind you going to Koch?
SHEEK LOUCH: First I gotta give Styles a whole lot of credit as far as pushing the whole indie situation, ’cause I was all about all these majors all the time and I’m seeing how they work and I was just so caught up in the whole system. That’s when Styles was like “yo, let’s go take some meetings dog”. ‘Cause I was at Universal and things didn’t go according to how we wanted it to go. They didn’t really get our whole focus, our vision on which way we wanted to move as far as videos, as far as songs that we wanted to put out.
So at the end of the day Universal wanted me to start on my new album but I wasn’t really trying to move under the circumstances right there. So we left; [Universal] let us off and we took a couple of meetings with several indie labels and Koch was just talking the right amount of money off each project as opposed to a major label where you’re only getting 35 cents of each CD. Now we getting eight dollars a record; its real beautiful man, [to me] those numbers sound great.
RIOTSOUND.COM: Would you say creative freedom was a big issue with you leaving Universal, or was it more money?
SHEEK LOUCH: Definitely creative as far as being artists and with everything we wanted to do besides just myself – directions that we wanted other projects to go and money also. Being veterans in the game they tend to let us do what we gotta do and they trust our judgment.
RIOTSOUND.COM: You got a new album dropping called After Taxes; how did you come up with that name for the record and what’s it referring to?
SHEEK LOUCH: Everybody love that title man [laughs]. After taxes is just me saying like when they give you a number after you won the lottery or something, you’re amped at the beginning but at the end of the day they take so much away from it. [My album] is like the real deal at the end of the day; so the name After Taxes is just a metaphor for me of describing what [my album] really is.
RIOTSOUND.COM: You got a lot of outstanding veteran MCs featuring on this album.
SHEEK LOUCH: The first solo album I did, I didn’t want nobody on it, I wanted just Sheek; so you could feel me, get to know me and understand everything that I am trying to say and so I could tell ya’ll where I’ve been at, since ya’ll just been hearing Jada and Styles all the time. So after putting that album out; they loved it but they wanted me to rock with some more people. Everyone was like “yo, why didn’t you do this or you would sound good with this person and that person”. So [for the second album] I called up my man Redman and he was in the middle of recording his album – and I love Red for that ’cause he just jumped on it; we had the joint done like the next day. I called up Ghostface and Raekwon and they jumped on it and also I pulled out Carl Thomas and of course my boys, Jada, Styles P and J-Hood.
RIOTSOUND.COM: I heard you also got Puff on the album.
SHEEK LOUCH: Yea, P. Diddy is an old friend, we go way back.
RIOTSOUND.COM: How did the relationship with Diddy evolve, from you signing with Bad Boy, then you wanting to part ways and now being cool again; at what point did the relationship with Puffy rematerialize?
SHEEK LOUCH: I mean, you know like our whole story as far as getting away from Diddy and why we got away from him. But us and him we don’t hold no grudges. At the time we were young men and now we’re grown men. He respects our business decisions. We rebels in the game man, he respects everything we trying to do and how we trying to get more money and everything. I’ve seen him a lot of times, I done partied with him after that and talked about certain things. He was going to come out at Summer Jam with us but it was a little too late. But we’ve done certain Bad Boy anniversary things with him, so it’s all love again.
RIOTSOUND.COM: As far as the beef between G-Unit & D-Block where does that stand at this point; I recently read D-Block would not be replying to anything Tony Yayo says over the course of the feud?
SHEEK LOUCH: [laughs] Tony Yayo, we don’t really like to say his name too much simply because I don’t think he’s of that caliber to even get involved with anything as far as lyrically. We MCs man and that’s what we do. I don’t think he should even open his mouth. I know he has an album dropping and I know a lot of things is political. If I was him I’d try to get involved my damn self to boost some sales and do whatever you gotta do. They ain’t fucking with us man, it is what it is. The beef is the beef, they opened their mouth over some stupid stuff and now we gotta shut ’em up.
RIOTSOUND.COM: Is there anything on your new album directed at G-Unit?
SHEEK LOUCH: Oh yea. I got one joint on my album called Maybe If I Sing. That I think is the nail in the coffin. This is the one that’s going to crush the buildings. This joint here is going to be on repeat in every car, everywhere. It’s sick like that.
RIOTSOUND.COM: Being in the game as long as you have it seems like the Lox have continually reinvented themselves, first with Bad Boy, then with Rough Ryders and now with D-Block; do you feel that sort of progression and evolution has helped you stay in the game as long as you have and attract new fans over the years?
SHEEK LOUCH: Definitely, shit, you summed it up man. I feel we definitely have reinvented ourselves, even if you look – the last Lox album was like five or six years ago. [Since then] we’ve been putting out solo projects, even this whole D-Block movement. We always out there, bangin’ out and switching with the times. Like right now, I walk outside and the kids love me man. I been in the game ten years or more but the kids [still] love me. We’ve been here and it’s still the same love. I come out on stage and it’s still the same love. Still on the mixtapes, #1 on every mixtape or definitely in the top five and they still calling. It’s dope, it’s a good feeling to feel all the support from all the hoods and from the streets. It’s like we an underground group but we above ground as well as underground.
RIOTSOUND.COM: Yourself, Jadakiss and Styles P grew up around each other; how does it feel to still be doing this after all these years and to do it around the people that you started out with?
SHEEK LOUCH: It’s dope, definitely. Me and Kiss was just running around in high school and junior high school selling our TDK tapes for five dollars each back when they had the walkmans and all that. And now getting the recognition from all these big songs; shit, we wrote The Benjamins baby. Them songs will blast and play on for a long time to come.
RIOTSOUND.COM: Before signing to Bad Boy the Lox were originally known as the Warlocks; can you talk about the whole process and logic of changing the group’s name?
SHEEK LOUCH: Really [it was] your boy P. Diddy or whatever he’s being called right now. At first we was a two man group, me and Jada. We was a two man group and we wanted to sign Styles at the beginning, that was our whole motive. Even as young boys we was thinking about making more money. So what happened is we got up to Diddy, Mary J. Blige brought us in and we went in there and Diddy was like “yo, check it out, ya’ll name ain’t the Warlocks no more, ya’ll The Lox”. We was all sitting around like – yo, what are you talking about duke, we just met you.
And then he said after that, “as a matter of fact, ya’ll a three man group now”. So a whole lot of changes went on in that one little hour or however long we was up there. But I mean, you had B.I.G walking around up there, Craig Mack and everybody. We was like – we ain’t arguing, duke know what he talking about, so we rolled with the punches. The Lox – it stands for Living Off Experience. If you going to change our name, we going to make it mean something.
RIOTSOUND.COM: I remember when the Lox first came out and you were the new kids on the block; now it’s almost ten years later and Hip-Hop has changed a lot in that time span. In your view has Hip-Hop evolved to a better version of itself or have there been certain things which you can point a finger at and say this right here has not been so good for Hip-Hop?
SHEEK LOUCH: Nah, I think Hip-Hop is at a great point right now. I think it’s great. It’s giving people a chance to travel, so Luda and them can make videos in Africa and all that. [Now] we can go overseas and do all this stuff. Hip-Hop is dope man and everybody is millionaires right now. They own basketball teams some of these rappers now and [rappers] are switching to presidents of some of these Hip-Hop labels and now got their own labels. I think it’s definitely giving us a chance to grow.
RIOTSOUND.COM: What would you say to people who may feel like the subject matter in mainstream rap music has become watered down and repetitive in many ways?
SHEEK LOUCH: It sells. I can’t tell Common to be Kool G Rap and I’m not going to tell Kool G to be Common, everybody do what they do. But if they are talking about the clubs and the chicks and all that – they also keep coming out with the same movies over and over and that’s ’cause it sells, the same concept all the time and it sells. You see one guy shooting his gun off and all that and it sells man. So they know what they do; and hopefully they just put it in different terms and just word it differently, give it a little interest to it.
RIOTSOUND.COM: Is there another Lox album on the horizon?
SHEEK LOUCH: Yea, actually we started working on it here and there when we all in town. It’s called Live Suffer Celebrate and we in the works right now. We got some people interested in taking over the Lox project right now as we speak. It’s looking like Def Jam.
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