Like, Kanye had fuckin' smoke! 'In Cold Blood' on The Fix album? That's Kanye with that shit!" I would put Kanye's beats up against anybody's shit. "I got tons of records from Kanye West," Face says. West was fresh off of his successes with Jay-Z's Blueprint album and other Roc-A-Fella Records/Def Jam projects like Cam'ron's Come Home With Me and supergroup State Property's self-titled 2001 album. It was a big record."Īmong the other producers that Scarface connected with via Def Jam was a young, hot hitmaker named Kanye West. Needless to say, it turned out to be big. Pharrell and his partners handcrafted that shit.
That was the only song that I got.it wasn't a beat CD from Pharrell. I don't remember her name-I'm sure Pharrell remembers her name because she was from Virginia Beach. "I know when we recorded it, had a lady on it first, that sung it first. "I remember going to Virginia Beach and fuckin' with the Neptunes," he recalls. "I don't waste a rhyme," he says directly.
The album is the perfect mix of his confident bravado and grim, soul-baring realness. For all of the well-noted polish on the album, Face's sense of purpose isn't diminished by gloss. It sets the tone perfectly for the rest of The Fix. On the album's opening track, Scarface walks the listener through life in his hood, depicting the pain and struggle of growing up facing the hardships of his community. The minute I can't keep it fresh, and I can't keep the rhymes sounding.back then, how the rhymes sounded-then I don't wanna be like that, man." It set a template for what the new album was going to feel and sound like and Face was clearly inspired. They called them 'beat brokers.'"įace explains that he was introduced to a producer named China Black, who produced "Safe,' which opens The Fix. "Def Jam had these people who went around like realtors. "The state of mind I had when I was writing that entire record was.I was comfortable," Face tells RTB. But it was also where he kickstarted the second act of his solo career.Īs he set to work on what would be his seventh album, Scarface was in an undeniably good place. At Def Jam South, the Houston rap icon helped launch the career of Atlanta rap superstar Ludacris and signed Young Jeezy. In 2000, Def Jam South was launched, and Scarface was named President of the new Def Jam subsidiary label. Rap music was now firmly and squarely planted in popular culture's mainstream and southern Hip-Hop specifically had emerged as a commercial powerhouse, moving cities like Houston, Atlanta, Miami, Memphis and New Orleans from rap's periphery to centerstage. Scarface Is Back, and throughout the 1990s, he would cement his stature with landmark albums like The Diary and The Untouchable, becoming even bigger as a solo artist than he'd been with Geto Boys and establishing a reputation for dark introspection, thrusting the genre known as "gangsta rap" into more cerebral and emotional territory.Īt the dawn of the 2000s, change was afoot-for everyone. That same year Face launched his solo career with the acclaimed debut Mr. Alongside cohorts Willie D, Bushwick Bill and DJ Ready Red, Scarface (then briefly known as "Akshen") became one of Hip-Hop's most controversial acts, with their horrorcore-leaning 1989 album Grip It! On That Other Level and the hit follow-up, 1991's We Can't Be Stopped-which saw the foursome whittled down to a trio following the departure of Red. Born Brad Jordan, Face had emerged out of Houston's 5th Ward in the late 1980s as a member of the refashioned Geto Boys.
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