#105 - Mickey Factz

it back up recently. All right. So I always when I think of Mickey Facts, I think of golden era, of the blog era of rap music. Yeah, at the time, there's not right, there's two Dope boys and all these just staples, and you know, really the real an rs of that era were those blog sites, right, and you were one of the forefathers of that era. I feel like, you know, you kind of you know, yeah, grandfathered a lot of that shit that was going on at that time, man.

And you know, obviously was on the second Freshman cover yep, the one that really made the Freshman cover like blowing, because that first Freshman cover was cool. It was great artists on there, but it wasn't like really a thing until the second one hit. Second one hit. It changed the game because the first one as as great as I thought. It was a great cover, but it didn't do too well. It was like Crooked Eye. Joel Ortiz Loope was boozy on it, Sagon Ye Pap. It was

a couple of people on it. The thing about it was like the game was changing from the streets to the to the Internet. And when Dayton Thomas got there, he was like, I want to do a freshman cover and I want to cover the blog. The people who was big on the blogs they said hell no, and he was. He fought and fought and fought and made it happen because the last one didn't sell well. When we did that one, that's like the top selling that

was one of the top selling magazines. Yeah, because it was you, Asher Roth, Walle Bob Bob, Charles Hamilton, Corey Guns. Every time I hear Charles hand was his name, I just I have such a big fan Free Charles. He's locked up? Oh is he ship? Yeah? Corey Guns was ace Hood on there, Theacehood, Cuddy Cuddy currency Wow and Blue. Wow. Yeah, that's a crazy cover. That's a crazy cover. And it's funny too because at the time I remember, like the the the people who you were, like, h it was

like Ace Hood. Acehood made the cover and I was like hmm. I mean, obviously Ashood went on to have hit records in like a great career and stuff, but incredible, but yeah, that was such a it was to me. It just kind of really time stamped the era perfectly perfectly. It was a perfect, perfect, perfectly balanced liked say were you know? Was there a lot of camaraderie between a lot of a lot of you guys on that cover. At the time the time, Me and Corey were very cool. Uh.

I was a fan of Blue. Me and Currency was super cool. Uh. Me and Wiley had a little bit of issues. Me and Cuddy had did a record. We were cool being Me and Charles were cool. I had met Acehood that day, so for the most part, I was cool with everybody there. What was it? What were the issues you had with La? It was just some music stuff. Like I was trying to get some music done with him, meet him and push. I was trying to get a track with us three on it and

it just didn't happen. So I kind of took offense to that. I was new to the game, so I didn't really understand what was going on. I didn't know how. I thought if somebody sent you a record and you know, you guys are on the same level, you're coming up, you just get it done. But he was real busy at the time. He couldn't get to it. So that was like one of my first lessons in the industry. But I took it to heart, and that's why we kind of had issues at that time. Was it awkward? Shoot?

It was a very aw shoot, very awkward, but you know there was you know, darker forces behind the scenes, and when he kind of realized what was going on, he kind of spun the block and was like, Yo, my fault. You know, I understand what he was trying to do. And there was people that was in my ear at the time, so you know, he apologized and we kind of got behind it after that. Yeah, It's it's crazy because if you look at a lot of the guys on that cover, right, there's so much like

what IF's on that cover? Right? Yeah, what if? Asheroth came out five years later, because I feel like Asherroth missed kind of the window to be like, I guess where Jack Harley is now or with Gzy and mackl like, like you know what I mean. I think when Asharrock came out, I don't think people really got it all the way. I think all of us. I think when you look at that cover, all of us were the guinea pigs for every other artist that came out after.

You know, from you you take someone like you take someone like Asha, like you said, you know, people saw that, and then you have Mac Miller. Afterwards you look at somebody like Blue, you see that, and then you know, after Blue, you have like a Fashan or you have a Ja Cole right currency right like currency was just incredible.

After that, you know, you get with w so like people saw what the mistakes that we may have made and just kind of was like, Okay, I'm gonna stay away from that and kind of do this, or I'm gonna do this, or I'm gonna work with these guys that came out before us. And what about for you? What do you think like for you, maybe you know, were the things that transpire that maybe kind of prevented you from me to your full potential because you had full you know, full record deals and all that shit.

Like two main things with people taking my style being a little bit more popular than me at the time, I was the guy doing skinny jeans. I was the guy who was fashion forward. I was the guy putting a song out every week on the internet when nobody was doing it. Yeah you did that. It was either you were Crooked Eye. Crooked Eye did the freestyles. Shot the Crooked Eye. He did the freestyles every week. I was putting out songs like I put Drake. Drake was

on that series when nobody knew who Drake was. Cuddy was on that series. You know, Corey was on that series like I was. When I was doing that, it was it felt different. Buckshot was on that series. It was just a whole bunch of craziness. So I think that mixed with the fashion people kind of took the skinny jinks and people were baggy like if you oh for sure, people were crazy looking at the time. So so those two things and then Jive folding. When Jive folded,

that was the end. That was the That was the end of my trajectory because now I'm moving on to RCA. I did a deal with RCA because I didn't get dropped. It's just the label folded. So the people did get dropped, but I had got another deal. It's the same me and Justin Timberlake won the same label, so he got moved to RCA EPIC and I got moved to RCA, did a new deal. But it's people who didn't believe in me. And understand, yeah, the same people who were a RS, the people who brought you on the team,

they're no longer they're no longer there. And when you're like that in in a building, it's like you're no man's land, no man's LANs. So that's what happened, and that's the reason why it kind of just fell apart. It happens a lot, right especially, it doesn't even happen when the label folds. It happens when someone gets fired. Yep. Then you get somebody who doesn't your president comes in. They didn't a sign you, they don't believe in you.

They just following the numbers, the analytics. So that's kind of what happened to me in that space. And you know, stuff like that has happened to a lot of artists for sure, and they and a lot of them haven't recovered XV. You know XV somebody who signed with Warner and just they didn't know what the fuck to do with him, and he was an alien like actually was like Kendrick Lamar level talent, insane, insane, huge support system and fan base. But like you said, once you get

into that system, then move. They were still moving by the archaic rules, you know, get a radio record, do some promo, whereas the Internet was just coming along. Spotify hadn't started yet, Spotify and it was SoundCloud was around that time when he got his deal. So like things,

you know, the labels didn't know what to do. The blogs were in charge at the time, so it was tough for them to figure out how to make money off of a world where it's post Napster presently, z Share and hulk Share, media Fire, Media Fire, and then we're right before SoundCloud, Spotify, Apple Music and things like that. Yeah, that's crazy because like like when you think about that cover is like, you know, so like I was a huge Charles I mean, I was a huge fan of Bob.

Bob obviously went on to have hit records and hit records, but it also took a while. Yeah, it took them two years. Yeah, you know, like even I even think about like Coal, like Cole was the year after or two years later. Cole was the year after he was on the twenty ten cover. I think it like even Coal, like they didn't know what to do with Call Forever

he popped in twenty twelve. Yeah, Like it was like, bro, like it was a weird error for the industry because, like you said, like it's how do you monetize this internet buzz if there isn't a hit record because the labels now, as long as it's streams, it doesn't matter if it's played on the radio. It took them ten years to figure it out. Yeah, because Napsta pops up two oh three, and you know, then you have whatever else, uh streaming sites that was out around that time. I

forgot what the other ones were. But then and then it just kept moving moving forward, moving forward, YouTube five, you know, MySpace, Twitter, everything just started. So the labels were confused. You know, when I first joined Twitter, nobody was on Twitter, right, there was no labels on Twitter. There was no news sits on Twitter, there was nobody

on Twitter. So once they started to get the hang of it, then they started to put their minds together and it was like, we're gonna we're gonna take over by doing this, doing this, doing that, and now this the streaming services. It's back to the way it was.

They're in control again. Yeah, it's almost like Carl Cherry's like the new sk kind of right, or like you know, because you would think, like I mean I saw with my own eyes, like if you could get Shake or Meg to post it your ship on two dope boys, you like it literally, like will change your life, life changing. Yeah, if ESK posted, you forget about it over like at that. At that in the real like early stages. Not Right was the blog period. It was not right and then

you know, everyone else was coming up. But not Right was like the standard. Like if if you got on not Right, it was like, oh shit, this I got it. I listened to everything. I'm not right. I was on that right three times a week. That's crazy. Every week for the year, I was on it three times a week. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's I missed the era of music because it did feel like those guys had like legitimate love for quality, and I think that the blog era.

At least the gatekeepers, in my opinion, were the best gatekeepers we've ever had because they were the most tuned in and they you know, like I'm real. Over the years was really tight with Shake and Mac and those guys, and like they like genuinely like if they didn't like

your music, they didn't post it. Yeah, And that was that's different, right, because now you're gonna get on a playlist because it's an algorithm or because like you know, even if the song sucks, if you're the bigger name or you got you're on the A label, you're getting on rap caviar, even if someone who's running that playlist is like this shit is ass as to where back then, I feel like at least the gatekeepers were like hip hop no herds, and they wrote about it it was

over and they had a post where they typed and it was like yo, like they took pride to like help building people's careers like I owe my careers and right and all of the blogs on Smash to Boys, even World Star hip Hop, you know, start they would when they first were starting out, you know, they were underneath not right, and then you know, the fights helped them, But a lot of times it was the music, my freestyles that would go up there. It would help build

up the site, you know. So you know a lot of these places was just starting out, even hip Hop d X all hip hop, they were just starting out. Do you remember the forum days before the blogs hip hop game, hip hop game, there was a realist nwords dot com. I used to download all my mixtapes off of Slums of Boxton Love. Oh my gosh. You know back then Jay Electronica he would post links and then delete them. Oh really, he would go into these chatrooms, into these forums, post a link to like Act one

or Act two and then delete it. That's crazy. Yeah, those those are those That's how I got my name. I would illegally download mixtapes and albums from those forums and then go to the swat meet when I was sixteen and sling them bitches. Wow. Yeah. I used to sell mixtapes in bootleg albums when I was in high school. That's crazy. Hey, what up man? We gotta interrupt the interview real quick to tell you about our family at

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it all. So make sure you hit that website odd socksofficial dot com save twenty percent off with the promo code bootleg keV. All right, go do that. Shout out to odd Socks let's get back to the interview. I just think, like now it's kind of it's kind of like somewhere in the middle unfortunately, like you know, like there's not as many gatekeepers, right, there's only a few. Yeah, and you know, I mean I consider call Churry a gatekeeper. Yeah.

And Carl's super tuned in. He's super He is a hip hop fanatic, you know, like Carl's he was a part of the double XLF Freshman cover. Yeah, Carl's a fucking one of the good guys, I say, you know, and Carl's taking chances on a lot of artists too. Like there's a kid out of La Na Nana that's incredible that like doesn't even have ten thousand followers, but he's a fucking incredible artist. Grip, who just simon Shady Grip. That's my boy. I love Grip. You know. I found

out about Grip. I had a show in Nebraska and the promoter he just kept playing Grip and I'm like, who is this guy? This guy is incredible? So yes, guy named Grip Man, he's dope. I DM Grip immediately He's fired. I didn't even know he was signing. He got album called Snubnose from twenty nineteen. That's Fire. I think that was the album I was listening to. He is incredible, and you know I hit him up like, yo, man,

I think you're dope. Would love to work monf late to sign of Shady Wow, kind of break down the fake internet altercations. Obviously, you and Lup are real close, right, We're like, yeah, that's my bro. You guys like we're kind of trolling each other for a while. I don't

know if he was trolling each other. I think it was one of those things where we was just kind of having conversations about hip hop, you know, just trying to you know, there was this talk about who's the best, and you know, I was just trying to conduct the interview. I wasn't. I actually think Loop a Fiasco like lyrically as like a just pure rapper. He's he might be

like top five to ten. Ever I'm not talking about like and by the way, he's got classic projects, yes, but like, if we're just talking about putting you in a room, here's a pad of paper, go crazy. I'm not sure there's many people in the history of this planet that can hang with Lupe Fiasco. I say that with all due respects. I agree. I agree he's one

of the greats. He's my biggest what if. Yeah, like Lupe to me should be on the like like when I think of like Loope's trajectory and like how Atlanta kind of stalled them, I feel like Atlantic stalled him out, and I feel like at some point in time he might have maybe just lost not necessarily lost passion for the hip hop like as an art form, but just

for the industry. Yeah, I mean, I think I just think he wanted to do what he wanted to do, and I think Atlantic saw the success of Superstar, right, we need more of that, We need more of that. And he's like, bro, I'm an artist. I want to do this, And then Lasers comes out and it's like shout out to my guy Poube, you know. But at the time it was going by MDMA. But like there's like a lot of these like commercial like aren't like weird R and B hooks that just didn't feel right.

But it's like, yeah, that's not why we came here in the first place. It's not why Lupe has got a fucking cult following. They're not here for that ship yeah, I mean they gave him his biggest records though, I think you know, I mean obviously, Yeah, it's like you said, the record with which Tray was huge, Trey record was nuts and even you know, the Show goes On. I think that might was that on that album. Yeah, show

goes On, I think huge. I think that might that is either between that or Superstar might be the biggest, right show. Yeah, it's one of those two. You know, those are the two biggest records. So you know, I think he has a love and hate relationship with Lasers, but you know he's still top five tops man. Listen.

I was I don't know, was it twenty fifteen that Murals they saw Murals came out and he was rapping for nine minutes straight and it was just and I just remember like saying, anybody who thinks Lupe fell off, just press play on that Nels and it's like, what the fuck? Like that Smithsonian rep right there? Yeah, it's crazy, man. But uh, you have a joint project out with Blue. Yeah, that's my brother. Shout out to Blue. Somebody else you

know his album is that? That first album with Exile was another moment and like Below the Heavens is got backpack you know moment, It was like a moment in backpack history. Yeah, that boom back, Like wow, shit, Like he was right. I want to say he was right before the blog era because that dropped in seven, So he was right before yeah, because it came out when I was in high school. Yeah, and that project is I'm a fan of that project. Yeah. So you guys

originally met at the cover shoot. We actually met. We had a show together at Rock the Bells. Was it Rock the Bells? No, it was the Booklyn Hip Hop Fest. We had a show together and that's what we first met, and then we met again at the cover. So you guys have obviously kept rapport throughout the years, and now you know what was this? What was the Whose idea was it to do a project together? It was mine.

We were on tour in twenty eighteen and I was like, yo, I think we should do a project while we were in the car and he was like, yep, that's do it. And I was like all right, so I went. You know, we both was reaching out to different producers to see who could do the whole thing, and we settled on Knots. Nots is a legend and nots was like, yeah, let's do it. So, you know, we just kind of went and picked beats and we put this project together. It

was crazy. It's crazy. It's called the narrative. How is it? Uh? Because you know, when you're working on solo shit, you really only have to worry about like your vision, right. It is not you know, you know what your perspective is is you know how to get your point across? How is the dynamic changing when you have when you bring a whole nother prolific rapper to the table and

you guys have to collaborate on like these things. For the most part, I'm a pretty easy going m see if he a lot of times Blue would have concepts and I'd be like okay, and I was just run with it. And there were times when you know, I would put I put like maybe the two of the songs together and he was like, okay, cool. I mean, once you have two people that don't have big egos that come together, they're both just trying to make sure that the project just comes to other pretty well. It

was very easy project for us to put together. It took forever to come out because of the features we were waiting a long time for the features to come. Who was on the album? We got coded a friend shout out to Cota. We got a tank uh, Tabianna Bell from Tanking the Bangers. We have Si the Kid on There's Dorof is on there, Fishawn is on there. Oswyn, Benjamin Oswyn is my guy. My producer Tony Chuck and

him are doing a whole project together. Yeah. It's funny because he was going to do, uh, he was going to do a High on Life freestyle. I listen. So he calls me while I'm in New York and he's like, yo, Mickey, I got to do a High on Life freestyle. And I was like, I got to do a bootleg cav freestyle. But I haven't written anything yet, and he was like, y I'm I'm about to get on the flight. I said,

I when you land my verse would be done. So when he landed, I called him versus done and we both split our verses and he was like, y'all tell bootglet cad myself up because he's he's he's on my bucket list. No, he's coming up here. Yeah, he was like, yo, he's on my bucket list. I said, yeah, Kevin is on my bucket. He lives in my hometown. He's out, He's in Phoenix now, Yeah, he's in my hometown. Yeah Yeah,

Osmind's gonna gonna have a nice career. He's incredible, he can do a lot, he can see it rap, He's very I mean, I don't think like he's had the moment where we can say he's slept on yet. But you know, I think he's bubbling and when his moment comes, it'll be soon, it'll be big. It's gonna it's it's on the way. I believe it's on the way. I think he you know, he just has to, you know, figure it out. Once he figures it out, he's out of here. Yeah. He's got a lot of talent. Yeah,

that's dope. So with this album, do you feel like you know, because I do feel like, was there a point in time where you kind of just stepped away from music? Yeah? I quit music in twenty thirteen at the end of twenty thirteen. And was that like a hard thing for you to do? Man? Because I know, you know, I know this industry will spit you up, chew you up, and spit you out. Man. It was too much that was going on. You know, I left RCA. It just wasn't it's a shitty label and it's your priority.

Shout out to RCA, but God bless them, but yeah, if you're not a priority, fuck they had d one on RCA forever and didn't know what the fuck to do. Anyway, I digress. I left, and then I lost a lot of money in twenty thirteen not working and I had full fourteen in my bank account, and I was like, man, I'm not doing rap no more. And then twenty fourteen comes around and I'm like I couldn't get a job because I hadn't. I hadn't worked since two thousand and seven.

So by April, when I realized that I couldn't get a job, I was like, well, I'm trying to wrap again. And that just kind of was my resurgence, and I went into my Plan B, which was just being this MC that can just that just goes to just wraps, and people just kind of, you know, it just continued to snowball, snowball, snowball, snowball, snowball, And now you know, I am I'm here, you know, yeah, I think what's

dope is like, now, uh, there is no middleman. If you want to drop music, you just get a distro kid account and you're on, and you're on, and you can run up your indie catalog and even if you have a thousand and fans that are your core fan base, there's a way to monetize that and make a living off of this rap shit. Yep. Everybody like you got to be consistent and you have to like figure out how to get to a point where you have enough fans that are like die hard fans. It could be

five hundred kids. So if they support everything you do and you're strategic and you're smart, you're gonna be able to pay your bills off rap music. You know what I'm saying. You turn five hundred into six hundred and so on and so forth. And I think that's what's kind of been dope about. Like somebody like, you know, what Griselda has done is like they've just racked up so much catalog and Russ, who took a page out

of your book, shout out to Russ. Russ is you know, did did a one song a week for a year. But it's like just betting on yourself knowing guess what, not every record is going to be a hit. No, it doesn't work like that. But it's okay because every record someone's gonna listen to it, and it just commuticly it's it all adds up, like it all builds up.

It all adds up, And I think that's what matters, right, like being able to, you know, put out content that your supporters really appreciate and they want to support you because they feel like you're giving them the soundtracks and not only your life but their life, and that matters to them a lot. So you know that it also puts you in a dope creative position because now you're just giving people what they want, not with the people on the fifty second floor once right, because they're all

about numbers and analytics. Like now, you guys, I'm Mickey facts. People fuck with me because I could wrap my fucking ass off. So let me give y'all some of that. That's why. That's how I got here, That's how I got here, and that's how we're going to stay here. Yeah straight up, man. Well, look the album is out, go support it. The narrative me Blue Knots, make sure you guys go pick that out is crazy, yo, Go support. Shout to Knots legend. He's from Virginia, right, Virginia, beach man.

I don't know what's in the world. He did a whole album with Asher Roth. I believe that bucking crazy and yeah yeah yea and me nas is that he's incredible. Yo. Shout out to Virginia for producing Pharrell, Timblin and Knots and Bink and Bink. Wow. I didn't know Bink was from Virginia. He's from Virginia. Something about something in the water in Virginia for producers. Boy, is Missy from there? Yeah? Is she from Virginia? I don't know if Missy's from Virginia.

Think she is? She might be wa wit checking at is Magoo from Virginia? I don't know if Hey the first timer landa Macgo album. Finally, he's on DSP shot out to the Empire. Uh yeah, crazy, she's a producer to the clips, the clips, the clips, Chad Hugo, we got we don't get enough, give enough love to chat chat is man? Monster? Monster? All right? Well, look there's gonna be another YouTube video where this guy's look wrapping his ass off, blacking out. Let's go, yes, sir,