| Sunday, January 21, 2007 |
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EDDIE MEEKS IS NAMED MP3.COM's MP3 ARTIST OF THE YEAR!!!
Sorting through the seemingly infinite number of musicians who have posted their musical labors of love onto the pages of MP3.com is a massive task. Determining the best of the best was near impossible, but we narrowed it down to these five incredible acts. We hope you enjoy these artists as much as we have.
This Tennessean seems to have adapted to his ATL relocation quite nicely. Eddie Meeks rips the microphone in half with a combination platter of Southern styles, a gymnastic vocabulary, and a champion voice. Words to the wise: Put your money on Eddie Meeks the Bitterdose in 2007.
CHECK IT OUT HERE:
MP3.com Music Awards 2006 - Best Music and Worst Music |
| Posted by BIG MEEKS at 12:45 PM |
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| Thursday, January 04, 2007 |
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MP3.com: Eddie Meeks: Meeks Comes Out At Night
Eddie Meeks: Meeks Comes Out At Night
By Brolin Winning
Conducted January 3, 2007, 09:00 PM
An underground favorite with over 15 years on the mic, Eddie Meeks speaks on his relentless grind, the future of his crew Prophetix, and the bittersweet reality of the Southern hip-hop.
Audio
Eddie Meeks
After This...I'll Holla (On Everything I Love)
Brolin: So you’ve been doing this for a minute, you’ve been putting out independent records for like ten years now?
Meeks: Yes.
How did you get started and when did you start?
Ah man, it’s way beyond ten years, that’s for sure. I mean I’ve been, submitting demos, making demos, performing for A&Rs since like my junior year of high school. It’s something that has really consumed me more than I ever expected. But, you know a while ago I heard somebody say, matter of fact it was my man, Shaka Zulu who’s over at DTP – with Ludacris. He said people don’t realize how many lives hip-hop saved.
No doubt.
And I really believe I was one of them because up to that point where I really discovered the music, when the music discovered me, I could have very easily been a statistic. But, it hit so hard, you know, to the point where I almost became like a recluse, or like this anti-social – not wanting to come out of the house ‘cause I just got this new record. Or you know Yo! MTV Raps had just started coming on. You couldn’t get me out of the house, man. So it was like, you know if I had been out on the streets with like the rest of my partners and stuff, I probably could have gotten into a lot more trouble than I did. I didn’t really get serious, serious about it till my college years.
And this is like early ‘90s?
Yeah, early ‘90s man. I started out, actually me and Mello [Melanin]. And then we ventured off to a five-man crew. And as a result of that, we won a talent contest here, sponsored by oh man, wow, Priority Records. And we won a chance to go up and perform at the Apollo Theatre up in Harlem.
Nice.
So after that man, I was just wired up. I’m like, "this is what I’m going to do!" No matter what it takes, I’ve got to be a part of this, this culture, in some kind of way. And try to leave my mark the best way I can. So yeah, the early ‘90s but really mid to late ‘80s for me.
And then you started putting out actual 12-inches and stuff - that was like mid-‘90s on your own label.
Yeah. That started like ’96, I would say. We dropped a 12-inch in ’96, which was on Asylum Entertainment. And that was "Larger than Life," b/w "Gun Clappin and Pistol Whippin."
Nice. And this is Prophetix or this is pre-Prophetix?
Now this is Eddie Meeks and Thareeko. This is before Prophetix. This is like the first venture, it was kind of difficult. It was a real rough time for me and my partners. It was like six of us involved in it, with the label and everything. You know we had been doing a group thing up until -- just this one-day that we finally figured out, and I’m not beating my own drum here, but they didn’t want to hear anybody else outside of the group but me. They wanted my man; they wanted my man on production! And it was harder for me to step to those guys and tell them what was going on. That was very difficult for me to do.
I’ll bet.
Because I’ve never been one to really just want all the spotlight. You know what I’m saying? I like to have some of my people are involved in what I’m doing, you know it would make it so much better for me if I could have some like-minded people around me. That goes for any business, anything that you’re trying to do to better yourself - if you’ve got some like-minded individuals – and it’s definitely a plus if you consider them friends or family - to come along for the ride with you then I think it’s that much greater. You know what I’m saying?
Yeah.
I’ve never been the superstar type where I can do this all by myself. "I’d like to think the little people" [laughs]. I’m not that cool. I like to share the wealth, you know? We came to that conclusion and this was around the time we started recording for the single. We dropped a single, took a trip out to Cali. Got out with Matt Kahane, he was working for Big Beat/Atlantic. And still doing the Goodvibe Label too on the side. But he was working for Mike Caren over at Big Beat. And Mike Caren had his little side hustle, which was Serious Entertainment, which had like DJ Adam 12 and Saukrates.
Right.
And he brought me into the fold. And that’s how the Larger than Life EP came to life. He was the one that like really solidified the fact that I need to be doing, you know I had a promising solo career. Because he was the only one, out of all the pavement we pounded that week out at Cali, all the labels we hit up, all the demo packages we dropped off, he was the only one that reached out to us. And he was like, "you’ve got something there." We spent a little bit more money and go back in the studio and do like five more joints. And dropped that EP. And you know, I’m still out here grinding.
And then how did Prophetix come together? How did you hook up with Jon Doe and get that group going?
Well I’d come to realize that there’s always, no matter what you do, no matter how much time and energy you put into your projects; or just your overall love for the music, you know your existence in hip-hop or whatever, there’s always going to be some limitations or some obstacles. You’ve got to reach a point where you have to go back to the drawing board and kind of reinvent yourself and things like that.
So just like things kind of went sour with the five-man crew that we were involved with, things kind of got a little ugly with me and my man Thareeko. And not so much on a personal level, but there was so much stuff happening in our individual personal lives – and it kind of blared over into the music. So he was dealing with some tragedies. He lost his mom and some other things within his family. The same goes for the guy that handled a lot of the footwork for us. He was having some personal problems and all I ever wanted to do was the music.
Yeah.
So it was like, you know, it got to a point where we weren’t on the same page anymore. So we kind of deaded that. And I mean when I say it was ugly it was really kind of ugly. But to this day those two cats are some of the best friends I’ve got on this planet. It wasn’t anything personal; it was just, people sometimes grow apart, or whatever. Life unfolds, as it should. I guess that was meant to happen. So, you know, I started to really start thinking some things out. And I wanted my next move with the music to be very calculated and well thought out and stuff like that, so. I went and got married, and I guess my wedding gift from my wife to me was a Platinum Discover Card [laughs].
Nice!
With a $10,000 dollar limit on it.
That’s good stuff.
She told me to run with it and see what I could make happen. So I called by boy Mello up and I wanted to see if he still had something in him for the music. And I told him I’ve got something we can run with. And we just put our heads together, got with a producer by the name of Gee Supreme. And that was the first Prophetix project that we put together. And it was titled: Da Unfold. And I spent every bit of that ten grand too [laughs]. You’d better believe!
And that was also on Asylum?
Yeah this was Asylum Entertainment once again. This was also around the time that we figured out that a major probably wouldn’t want to deal with us because we’ve seen a whole lot. We kind of, at that time we were in our mid-twenties. And it was like we’re a little too old for a major label. A little too wise, you know. We really know where we want this thing to go. And it’s like we’d probably be taking a step back dealing with major label politics and what not. So you know, we just kept with Asylum man, and just kept moving. So we dropped Da Unfold like around, say ’99; ‘98-‘99.
Okay.
Got that out there. It did some wonderful things for us. And around ’99-2000, Jon Doe moved from Nashville. He’d just graduated from Vanderbilt University. He moved from Nashville to Atlanta and was trying to figure out what was going on with the scene at that time. And we just kind of mixed him in with us. And there you go: Jon Doe, Mello and Meeks. Prophetix, you know.
Right on. And then you connected with DJ Fisher for the second Prophetix record, right?
Yeah, for the full-length album. And that whole relationship was kind of crazy because I had known DJ probably three years before that. When he was doing the Boiling Point Distribution thing with a partner of his. And he used to always tell me, he’s like "man, if there’s anything I can ever do, I can help out in any way, just let me know." I never really knew what he was talking about ‘cause he was just kind of vague. But I used to tell Jon and Mello like—this dude keep telling me if we wanted to do something to get at ‘em. I don’t know what he’s talking about though, so…There was one other time I got him on the phone and I was like, "what do you mean by that exactly?" He was like "well, we could put some money behind you guys; you give us the product, we’ll split the product with you fifty-fifty. And you know we’ll just keep it moving like that. Plus I’ll give you a cut of whatever money we make on our end." I was like, Well! Okay! That’s the way it went, right off the bat! So, we started out with Boiling Point, handling some of the material that we already had. And they folded, of course.
Right.
And I guess it took like a year or two for DJ to get back on his feet and do his thing with the Day by Day. Yeah, which is him and [MF] Grimm. So we know we got back in touch with him again. We never lost touch with him. But I knew it was going to take him a minute to get back on his feet because he just kind of like broke out from Boiling Point. So you know, he got set up with Day by Day and that’s when we dropped High Risk.
Nice. And then, through Domination, you put out the After This...I’ll Holla!!!
record?
Yeah I did the After This...I’ll Holla!!!. I also did my mix CD, which was Live from East McLemore, Eddie Meeks presents: Getcha Money Maiyne, Volume 1. And that was a lot of fun, ‘cause I’ve never been the kind of dude to like fall into gimmicks and do what everybody else is doing. So when Jon and DJ, they kind of had to beat it in my head. Like, you need to do a mixed CD! Everybody and they mom got a mix CD out now. It’s like there’s no way we can throw that out there, and stand out. But I kind of had this indirect association with this dude - underground rapper, that's been in Memphis for years, Kingpin Skinny Pimp.
Oh yeah, I’ve heard of that cat.
Yeah. And I got him to host my mix CD. So I was like okay, that’s what’s going to stand us out. It’s like you’ve got real hip-hop with this underground southern rap legend.
He’s been around for a while.
You know what I’m saying? This was like, it doesn’t get any better or crazier than that, so. We kind of ran with it. And the whole experience on doing that mixtape, mix CD was real. I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. It was a lot of fun. It was just, you know, us, jackin dudes for their beats and spittin over em. You know, it turned out real hot. I got a big kick out of that. So we had that floating around before the album dropped and then we dropped the album on Domination. And here I am man.
Nice.
We keep it moving and that’s just something I always tell people. They ask me how do we continue to do what we do. It’s just like right about now, everything that we do is pretty much on auto pilot except for making the beats and writing the rhymes and going into the studio and doing the work. I mean we grind it out like that. But for the most part, the name is out there, people know about us. It’s contests like the Rock The Bells contest that keep the name out there. Jon is on once a month on BBC Radio, doing a mix for Mr. Lawson, The Show with No Name, over there in the UK. So it’s like, we do what we can to get the free publicity, and keep the name out there. But it’s up to the individual to want to continue to do the music and still provide people with quality music.
Absolutely. So what’s next for you? Are you doing another solo record? Another Prophetix record? Or both?
No, we’re going to get back to the group. We’re going get back to the group and focus on the group. Because honestly that’s where we had a lot of our success, with that High Risk album.
That’s a great record, definitely.
Yeah. Thanks Man. And people are ready to see us do that again. So we’re, I’d say about three songs away from being completed with this UK project that we’ve been working on for the majority of this year, with a producer by the name of Wytfang. The album is titled Catfish and Chips.
Nice.
And kind of give it a mix on the southern hip-hop, to do with the UK culture with the fish and chips and everything. So it’s like we kind of mixed it up a little bit. That dude’s got something. He’s incredibly talented on the production tip man. And it’s just a great feel, man. So I think that’s going to be pretty big for us. I also think that’s going to be our ticket to finally getting overseas and getting to show those people over there what we’ve got. They want us to come over there so bad, but it’s just like anybody that wants to see a group that they follow and they love. "When are you going to be in town?" "Well if you guys are ever in town we can do this and this." The only way I’m going to be in town is if you book me.
[laughs] Yeah, totally.
I mean they don’t understand that we’re not a 24/7 hip-hop, dude. Me, Mello and Jon, all got wives, got kids, got day jobs. You know what I’m saying? Honestly, hip-hop does not pay the bills. You know what I’m saying? It’s something that we love to do. We make enough money to keep us going, keep us with stuff we need for the studio. CD’s, we do all our own mix CD’s and stuff like that. We can keep the machine going but it doesn’t feed us, it doesn’t put food on the tables, it doesn’t keep the lights on. And anything like that, so. We seriously grind it up, you know, like real hard. You’ve got to really handle some serious business with us. It’s like fifty percent up front, we need lodging, all of that you know. And it might be a little bit too much for some of these promoters to handle. But you know if they do it right everybody can eat. And that’s what I keep telling dudes. It’s like our name isn’t going to make people come out. Just the same way we grind, we’re looking for promoters that grind it out like we do.
Yeah, yeah.
So that at the end of the night you don’t have to go looking for this dude [laughs]. That ran off with the money or whatnot. It’s like no, everybody does their part, plays their role, everybody can eat. And it’ll be a good experience, so. Those are some of the things we deal with.
I hear you. And now, so where can people find you? I know you’ve a page up on MP3.com. But do you have like an Eddie Meeks website, or MySpace, or anything like that for people to check you out at?
Yeah. I’ve been getting a lot of interest from booking agents from this one site that I set up after the album dropped. And it’s: www.prophetix.net/press.htm. And that link is up on my MP3 page as well. It’s got one sheet up there, the bio, some pictures, some exclusive MP3’s, contact information etc. Of course we’ve got the MySpace pages. We’ve got one for Bigmeeks, and we’ve got for Prophetix.
Cool.
And there’s also Prophetix.net, where you can find out everything you want to know about the group. We’ve got music up there, an online store, where you can get the whole catalogue – everything that we have from vinyl to mixed CD’s to the full length albums. We’ve got an artist page set up through Domination. You can pretty much Google Eddie Meeks or Prophetix. We’re all over the place, it’s crazy. It’s a beautiful thing, man.
Excellent man. Well I’ll let you go in a minute. I just wanted to ask - on a more general question. You’re from the South…
I’m from Memphis, Tennessee, born and raised.
But you live in Georgia now?
Yeah, I’ve been here since ’89. I came out here to go to college and I never looked back.
I just wanted to ask, being from the South, what your opinion is on the whole situation? And how the South has basically been like running it -- in terms of mainstream rap for the past few years?
Honestly, it’s – man, to be totally honest?
Yeah.
It’s a little bittersweet for me. It’s like, for so long people been--and then just talking about Atlanta in general, people been expecting this place to blow for the longest—you know what I’m saying, ever since the day like Jack the Rapper. And you know whatever else, Freaknik and all that, that’s when Atlanta really, really got put on the map. But now, we’re in the spotlight and we’re running things for so many wrong reasons. Because definitely I could not honestly sit here and tell you that I think the music that comes from Atlanta or from – you know you’ve got Mississippi involved now, Tennessee, Alabama. You know Florida is doing their thing – I can’t tell you that a lot of that stuff is quality. You know what I’m saying?
I mean, to say that means that I have to say that everybody else that wants that type of success, whether they’re from LA or New York, they kind of want to mimic what the South is doing right now. Which continues to bring the music, the quality of the music down even further.So it’s cool to be, you know, having award shows here. And everywhere you look up this group is from Atlanta. Are you going to remember these songs ten years from now?
Or even like you know, one year from now.
A year from now even. Six months from now. It’s like what happened to those dudes? You know what I’m saying? It’s just, it’s not what it’s all cracked up to be. It’s cool, but at the end of the day it’s really not that cool.
One of my guys from back in the days, he’s like, "Eddie, just write me that one song that everybody is going to want to play on the radio." And I was like dude, I could have done that fifteen years ago, if that was in my mind frame. But I’m not; I’m not in for that man. Another thing about being from the South is people don’t understand why I rap the way that I do. And it’s like well, when I was coming up we were getting everything from New York. So we were getting it late, but that was all the hip-hop that was coming our way. Run-D.M.C., Whodini, EPMD, all these dudes. That was my daily diet. It was like there was no D4Ls, there was no…
Snap music wasn’t around then [laughs].
Yeah there was no snap music; there was no trap music. Nothing was crunk. We was getting a pure music.
Right.
And it’s like you know, that inspired me to do what I do. And I get tired of—I don’t really get tired but it just kind of amazes me. You know people, they hear my music or I can be talking to somebody over the phone, so it’s like, so you’re from New York right? And I’m like Nah man! I love to visit New York. I try to go to New York at least once a year but no man. [People say] "Where you from dude?" I’m from Memphis, Tennessee. They're like "dude you’re bulls***. You lie." I’m like seriously dude. I still, as a matter of fact I’ve still got Tennessee license and a Tennessee license plate on my car right now. I’ve lived here almost twenty years. By 2009 I will officially have been in Atlanta for twenty years. I’ve still got Tennessee tags and license. And that’s just how down I am for you know, my hometown. It’s like the music that comes from Tennessee, Alabama – all this stuff it’s like so idiotic man. I just wish them dudes would just like not try to glorify. I mean it’s cool to come up the way that you came up. But come on man, it’s like I know you’ve got something else to talk about.
Yeah it seems like any substance and sort of diversity in topic matters aren’t really popping these days.
No. It’s not popping at all man. You’ve got cats from New York, you know dudes that I’ve looked up to for years, that they feeling the pinch a little bit. So what do they go and do? They go make the next strip club banger!
Yeah, totally.
They get Lil Jon to come in and do a beat for a Rakim. I’m like, come on man, don’t kill it like that. It’s hard enough out here to even, for the music to even be considered credible right now. It’s like man you want to go in and play the game everybody else is playing. So like I said, it’s kind of bittersweet. For me, I just wish we were getting our recognition for a totally different set of dudes.
Right.
You know, ‘cause I would love to be mentioned and some of that, but it’s just like, I’m not willing to do what they do. I don’t think I have to, you know what I’m saying? So that’s just how I feel about it.
Okay. Right on man. So you got any shout outs, or any words to potential new fans out there?
Man I definitely want to shout out MP3.com. It’s really been taking care of me ever since the contest. Just looking at my stats, my page stats on there. That’s crazy man. 8,000 streams you know, 3,000 page views, it’s like – and the numbers keep going up.
Yeah we’re happy to help man.
That’s a good look man. And I just love the site. I think it’s very well balanced. I know you all got to touch the mainstream stuff. But man the fact that you all show love to people like me is beautiful man. I definitely want to shout out Domination Corp. and its DJ Fisher - all those people over there – Prophetix. You know anybody that’s out there that’s trying to get it like me man, keep your head up, and keep it moving.
All right man. Well good luck to you Meeks.
You bet. Take care brother. |
| Posted by BIG MEEKS at 5:55 PM |
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