Interview: CJ, President of Wrongkind Records, pt. 2
We continue our talk with CJ, president of Wrongkind Records. In part 2, CJ runs through San Diego rap music history from Gangsta Ern to Filtered Souls. Then we shift gears, speaking on the gang injunction and its relationship to the recent spate of violence in Southeast San Diego.
SDRaps.com: Let me go back. You said you used to work at Fam Mart. You probably know tons of San Diego rap history.
CJ: And another thing: I know whose CD’s really sell and whose don’t. [laughs]
SDRaps.com: I don’t even know where to start. I wanna ask you who has been hot every year since–
CJ: The first three rappers that I could really say in the early ’90s that had city-wide recognition: Big June from Skyline, Green Eyes from Lincoln Park, and Gangsta Ern from the Brims. Gangsta Ern by far was the city superstar. He was HUGE!
SDRaps.com: This was way back.
CJ: This was ’91, ’92. These dudes go back to ’91, ’92.
SDRaps.com: They were first rappers with city-wide recognition–
CJ: –that put out CD’s. You know, because there were dudes that rapped that didn’t have a CD out. When Gangsta Ern had a CD out and he was a superstar, people knew Black Mikey could rap. And you heard Black Mikey rap but you heard Black Mikey rap in person. He might be at the playground in Bay Vista, there might be 40 people around him listening to him freestyle. You knew Damu could rap. But they just didn’t have records out yet. But yeah, those were the first three that really had a song that people knew throughout the city. Gangsta Ern had a song where, when you threw it on at a party, the party went HAM. The party would explode when you put that on.
SDRaps.com: I’ve heard a lot about Ern. But I know almost nothing about Green Eyes.
CJ: Green Eyes had a song that was real big too. “The Struggle Is On.”
CJ: There were rappers back before that, but they didn’t have the city-wide recognition. They was more obscure with it.
SDRaps.com: Yeah I’ve heard some other names but they sounded more like disco groups sorta.
CJ: Right! Soulful Ernie.
SDRaps.com: Yeah! There you go! Alright so what about afterward? People know about June and Ern. Who came around the mid-90s or the late-90s?
CJ: It was a long timespan of nobody. Because it was a lot of gangbanging and a lot of drug dealing going on where people wasn’t really … It was a war on the streets and people wasn’t really concentrating on no rap shit. And Ern died. Big June went to jail. Green Eyes–I’m not exactly sure what happened but I heard rumors that he was drugged and it caused him some mental problems. So we never heard from either of the three again. Jayo was around the mid-’90s. The late-’90s … Before Mitch came out, we put out a single that Mitch produced but didn’t rap on. And that was maybe ’98, ’99. But that was on cassette and it didn’t really get the attention that–when Trigeration Station dropped, it changed the whole landscape of the rap scene. It really kinda started the whole scene. Whereas before, it was just like a few people rapping. When Trigeration Station came out, it started a whole scene. Because–oh you know what? Filtered Souls! Filtered Souls was before Trigeration Station and it was big.
SDRaps.com: What was Filtered Souls?
CJ: Filtered Souls was actually a collective of a lot of different rappers like a compilation. Black Mikey was on it. Big Maine. Johnny Rourke. Yeah, he was a white dude. [laughs] And he’s from Canada. You know, they had the money. They must’ve paid for the studio time. The boy, Elo. Elo was the producer behind the whole shit. Filtered Souls was right before us. Filtered Souls was after the Jayo shit and right before Trigeration Station. But Filtered Souls was like–everybody in the city knew about that shit. They did an excellent job of promoting it.
Then when Trigeration Station came out–Trigeration Station was really a vehicle for the whole scene. Because on Trigeration Station, you had Cricet producing. Elo producing. And you had Ecay producing. It was a vehicle for everyone involved in the CD being made. So when it dropped, the album was so popular a lot of people felt like, Damn, if Mitchy Slick being from here–a lot of kids at that point, they didn’t know about the previous albums that had been people from San Diego rapping. To them, it was like, a rapper from San Diego and he put an album out on his own and it’s popular and it sounds good sonically, good quality recording–that was something to the town. So a lot of kids felt like, Well damn, if he could do it, I could rap too. And they also see that there’s producers in the town who do a good job of producing. So all of a sudden, Cricet started getting a lot of people wanting his production. Ecay started getting a lot of people wanting his production. Elo started getting a lot of people wanting his production. So from that record, they became able to make a living off of producing.
SDRaps.com: Yeah I know Ecay and Cricet stay busy. But Elo, I actually haven’t heard much from. Does he still produce?
CJ: I don’t know because I haven’t seen him in some time. But from then until now, he was really busy. He had a TV show for a little while. Grimey Wreck Show. He produced Lunchmeat. B-Stone. Hound Foundation. And so on. Black Mikey. Ecay produced himself and a lot of guys from his neighborhood. They were able to have a little scene in their neighborhood. Cricet: the same. Started producing a lot of guys in his neighborhood. So a lot of things catapulted off that record. And then also, there were a lot of rappers on that record [like Black Mikey, Damu, and Don Diego]. A lot of them went on to put their own records out. So it was a good look for the city. That record gave a boost to the scene here.
Oh and you know what? I can’t not mention Orko. Because Orko was doing his thing previously to us putting out Trigeration Station. Orko had a lot of national exposure. Before Trigeration Station came out, when you said “San Diego rap,” you had to say Orko. And his whole little crew. They got down back in the days. Masters of the Universe. Atom 12. West Kraven. They whole little crew was doing their thing at the time.
SDRaps.com: Did you work with them at all? It seems kinda like this whole other world between Masters of the Universe and Wrongkind.
CJ: When we first came out, that’s who we would hang with and who we would do music with. Before we had an album and we was just going to the studio, Orko and Atom 12 and them dudes was who me and Mitch would be around. Because we knew about a whole bunch of other shit, street shit. We didn’t really know much as far as recording. A lot of that shit, we hadn’t learned. They was the young cats on the town who was rapping already.
SDRaps.com: So they kinda showed you around the studio?
CJ: No, we actually would do stuff together. We actually would make music together. It just never surfaced. But Mitch made music with them. A lot of people don’t know this but Black Mikey and Orko are cousins.
SDRaps.com: Yeah, that blew my mind when he told me.
CJ: If you listen to the music, it wouldn’t blow your mind. Because both of them are DEEP. But just in a different direction. Both of them are intellects.
SDRaps.com: You mentioned earlier that you do a lot of shows, not in San Diego, but in cities around San Diego. Why’s that?
CJ: For a time, the city’s law enforcement would make it hard for us to do shows here. It kinda spooked a lot of the promoters and club managers and things of that nature. But I guess they got over it because now we get hit up to do shows all the time. And now we kinda have figured out our own lane. And now we’re just too busy doing shows in other places. A lot of times, law enforcement will do something–they will have one intent. And through necessity, it will force us to make our situation bigger. It came out the gang injunction, which forced Mitch to not be around his neighborhood. Therefore, he would go out and be in other places and force him into becoming a name that’s not just recognizable in San Diego as a local rapper but nationally and soon to be internationally.
SDRaps.com: That’s crazy to take something like the gang injunction and to just flip it into something more positive.
CJ: It has its negative effects on the neighborhood. Because you got somebody who’s a perfect example of turning their life around and starting a business that’s successful coming from the background that a lot of kids are in gangs now, in that lifestyle, could see an example of. If it wasn’t for the gang injunction, they could see it firsthand and be able to talk to him and get some insights on what they could do to turn their situation around and get away from the things that are the real causes of the gang violence and the anger. It’s poverty and lack of resources and lack of activities that are positive that keeps these kids in the situation that they’re in.
SDRaps.com: Do you think the gang violence has escalated now from before? It seems like in the more recent music of Mitchy and Cricet and Black Mikey, they have this call to stop the violence.
CJ: I think it’s more, as far as them making the music of recent to stop the violence, I think it’s more of them reaching a certain age and a certain age of maturity. But the violence has always been here. It’s sporadic. At times, certain things will make it worse and they could flare up. In the ’80s, I think it was when it was at its all-time worst, the mid-80s. Then you had other times when it would flare up sporadically.
SDRaps.com: Well, the ’80s was the Reagan Era so …
CJ: Yeah but we’re actually getting back to that. Because the country is in such a terrible economic situation. And when the country is having problems with the economy, the people who traditionally struggled in the country–minorities and inner-city, under-developed urban neighborhoods–it’s ten times worse. The thing about the gang situation with the violence going on is if the kids had something else to do, something to occupy them and keep them busy, such as music and sports and school and work, things of that nature, they would be busy doing that and not being involved in these violent activities. It’s an old adage: The idle mind is the Devil’s playground. So if you’re sitting around without anything to do, you might get into some senseless activities.
SDRaps.com: Yeah I just heard about shootings in the Southeast recently.
CJ: There were like 19 murders in the last 15 days. What I was saying about the gang injunction, it turned out to be a good thing as far as Mitch coming out of our neighborhood, forced him out to the rest of the country, start moving around, get some notoriety from being a rapper in other places. But it was a bad thing for the actual kids that were involved in the gang activities themselves. Because a lot of the older guys from the neighborhood stopped being around that maybe would tell them to not do some of the senseless acts that they’re involved in. A lot of people think that somebody that’s in a gang or from a certain neighborhood, like, everybody thinks the same way. There are people that are in the gang, that are from these neighborhoods, that are older–that have reached a certain level of maturity–that would tell these younger kids to not do some of these senseless crimes. If it weren’t for the fact that law enforcement that’s come up with something like the gang injunction that prohibits them from even being around their neighborhood. The people who are not in the gang injunction are the young, newly-inducted gang members who are the ones who are around doing these things. And the people who could tell them better, they have the means to get out and not be around the neighborhood–and so they do because they don’t want the pressure from law enforcement. But it also affects them in the sense that these kids around here have no guidance and nobody to tell them better than the things that they’re doing.
Trigeration Station is available at a handful of local spots including Fam Mart. If you missed part 1 of the interview on the origins and rise of Wrongkind Records, read it here.
Reading be fun though:
