Written, arranged, produced and performed...

...and Soopafly, he played the keys.

 

 
DATELINE – Just another summer day at Soundcastle Studios in the Los Angeles suburb of Silverlake. I’m scanning the gold and platinum plaques on the walls of the rec room. Atlantic Starr…. But no g-shit far as I can see. Well, maybe not for long.
 
The rec room is pretty sorry, reminds me of a teachers’ lounge. Kurupt is bombed out on a couch. Priest “Soopafly” Brooks may turn out hits like Ron O’Neal turned out hoes, but getting that 4-ball in the side pocket is another thing. A football player (I don’t know who, but he wears #05 for the FUBU team) is cleaning up the pool table while ‘Fly can only watch helplessly. “It’s only your third day playin’, Priest,” sez Poppa Snoop consolingly. Soopafly knows when he’s licked, so he retreats to the studio, where no NFL nigga is gonna outshine him.
 
“I heard of Daz and Kurupt, so when u step in the game?”
 
It wuz about ’93 that a bass player named T. Green took this 19th street Long Beach Crip named after a moviestar pimp, not a holy man, with him to a studio session and introduced him to Dr. Dre. ‘Fly walked in with no beats, just a keyboard. The Good Doctor listened to the recommendation, nodded, and put the young G to work. His first piece of work for the mighty mighty Death Row wuz “Natural Born Killers”, from the Murder Was The Case soundtrack – Soopafly played keyboards. His first production credit followed with “Who Got Some Gangsta Shit”, also from Murder Was The Case. A year later he told the world “I Don’t Hang” on the Thin Line Between Love and Hate soundtrack, and this year his first single “Like It Or Not” has crowded the dancefloor of every club I stepped in
this year. His first album, on DPG Records, is yet to come. And when it does, it’s gonna be real.
 
“ ‘You hear something?’….. fiddle-faddle …… ‘No….No….Yes.’ …. ‘Play it like, whoo whoowho whoo..’
 
‘Okay that’s it.’”
 
That’s not my smoke-damaged brain, that’s Soopafly acting out the engineering process. Music is in his blood: his dad wuz musical in church, his grandaddy a jazz musician. Priest started fuckin around at five years old. Seeing him in action behind the boards, I realize there’s no way to describe what he does in under a thousand words. “I ain’t shit without my homeboys,” sings the girl in the vocal booth. Again. And again. And again. I sit on the couch for an hour and all I hear is that she ain’t shit without her homeboys.
 
It’s a sentiment that ‘Fly can obviously get with: Daz, who sits off to the side sacked-up, is Soopafly’s mentor and closest partner in the DPG; ‘Fly calls them the Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis of rap. At first, some people in the camp felt he came up too quick. “But the fact is, no one else could do what I do. You can’t stop chemistry. Me and Daz are the only two – besides Dre – that can make that Dogg Pound sound,” he sez proudly, and it’s true. Since Daz taught him the drum machine, ‘Fly has been able to turn out hits on his own, like Xzibit’s “Pussy Pop”, while still playing keys for most every DPG-related release. For the record, Soopafly offers this rule of thumb: “If you hear something with me on it, you can bet Daz had something to do with it; if you hear something with Daz on it, you can bet I had something to do with it.” To understand the bond between these two you have to know that it wuz formed in the shadow of Death Row – a place where,
for a behind-the-music nigga like ‘Fly, there were no guarantees. So when ‘Fly had bills bills bills to pay, it wuz Daz that slid him his cut under the table.
 
Looking at Death Row in his rear view, Soopafly recites the single greatest lesson he learned from his days on the Row: “NO means YES; if someone sez NO , you mash on em until they say YES.” ‘Fly’s partnership with Daz in DPG Records is the only kind of deal he could live with: complete control, so if a mistake is made, it’s made by him on his own label, “so I ain’t gotta go whup nobody’s ass.” It’s clear that ‘Fly plans all his moves to be the exact opposite of the tactics that ran Death Row onto the rocks. Thinking of ‘Pac, I ask him how small the circle is these days. It’s small, he confirms. In the aftermath of the drama of the last few years,
‘Fly sez he’s become more private, more busy working at the crib. “Everybody that wanna hang around you don’t have good on their mind,” he frowns, dragging on a Newport. So how is it handled when someone has to be cut off? I’m thinking of Lil’ C-Style’s line: “That’s why we ex-‘d yo bitch-ass from the Pound…” My imagination conjures up grisly scenes: a gunshot to the back of the head…a nigga fed to the sharks… “People like that cut themselves off,” he sez simply.
 
The interview continues. At one point, a full-figured gal comes out the building and heads for her car. A gang ‘a niggas across the way start hollerin’. Soopafly breaks off mid-sentence. “Whoa, slow down,” he shouts at the pack. That’s that rapper nigga I hear one of them say. “That your bitch?” someone asks. “That’s my lil’ singin’ girl,” Soop’ returns. Nuff said. Soopafly’s face is tinted glass. “It’s all good,” he hollers. I ask him what his favorite subject for a song is and without hesitating he sez “a bitch”.
 
He’s been hard on a hoe from jump: Bitch ain’t no trick up yo sleeve that can get wit yo weave… “We (the Pound) got a pretty equal understanding on females: Bitches ain’t shit but hoes and tricks. Now, I’m not the best of persons, so women in general treat me like I treat them.” So I wonder: how about the women he works with – does he be like, Jewell, bitch get up in there and sing that mothafucka like your life depend on it! ? Not at all, he sez. “I’m a good people person,” he insists, “but I don’t take no shit, and I can figure out really quick when someone’s bullshittin’ me.” Not even cheeseburgers.
 
Finish this sentence, I say. “I need to sell a million records cuz I need a new--”
 
“Life,” he sez. Bills paid. Relocation to a new city. The whole nine. When Soopafly sez he can’t see the world going on like it’s going now, I can tell that he’s sour from something. I ask him what he thinks the people of the world need to know; he sez that’s too much for him. “What I can say,” he sez slowly, “is to all these hoods out there – stop bangin’.” This is the subject that’s made his heart heavy. This is the reason why L-Dogg from the 107 block is only a memory. In a tired voice, he reflects: “We went to the pinnacle of being hard, and surpassed it. We’re all killers since the days of wayback.”
 
Soopafly is needed back in the studio; seems like they can’t do shit without him. He’s happy to be working, tho, like the ant stocking up for the days to come – “I’m not preparing for if the world ends, I’m preparing for if it doesn’t.” Then put out that cancer stick. He laughs. “Yeah, I know I need to quit, but I ain’t gonna hear it from nobody. The Dogg Pound motto is: A nigga is his own nigga.” So he don’t gotta whup nobody’s ass. At this point I gotta sit back; this is the same nigga talkin’ bout “things don’t go our way, we go ratta-tatta / stomp down / your compound, make your dreams shatter..” ?! I had thought Soopafly would be a mothafuckin fool. I ask him why my preconceptions were like that. He shrugs it off. “I’m just a REGULAR person. I sit in my REGULAR room in my REGULAR
house. Only thing is, when my voice comes on the song, I don’t sound regular.” He sure don’t sound like a nigga that can’t shoot no pool. But mothafuckas don’t need to know that. Just know that Daz laid the beat and Soopafly, he played the keys – or vice-versa. Whatever he’s doin’ on the song, he swears “you gon’ feel me, smell me and pop yo collar.” That’s gangsta.
 
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