New article off that Noisey.vice.com make sure you read below as they dropped a dope interview with that #916 hitter Mozzy.
Basically everything you need to know about the way Sacramento rapper Mozzy presents himself can be gleaned in the first 90 seconds of his hit song “Bladadah.” He starts out with a refrain about how his music relates to his actual life: “If niggas know me then niggas know.” He explains his method of achieving depth from candor: “It’s deeper than a punchline and trying to sound lyrical / you don’t want to live like this my life difficult.” And then he demonstrates what he’s talking about with undeniable rapping, his crisp, descriptive bars falling into place like an intricate domino design: “Pour baking soda in the pot and let it marinate / Snitching is the style now, niggas want to narrate / Dope spot barricaded / Task force Tuesday / Macintosh hanging from an Air Force shoelace.” Once again, all this happens in 90 seconds. In the past nine months, Mozzy has released four albums worth of similar music.
Riding on that consistency, Mozzy has been having quite a year—perhaps even “the best run of 2015,” as Complex recently claimed. “It's like anywhere I go in the Bay Area, any mall they scream my name, everywhere I go they take pictures, they want autographs, any new merchandise I get they eat it up it sells out within a week,” Mozzy told me over the phone when I called him up to find out a little bit more about his “Word Up” video, off his album Yellow Tape Activities, which we’re premiering below. Perhaps I should have assumed that Mozzy—whose songs are delivered in a clear, unrelenting clip with minutes of rapping on end with minimal hooks—would have plenty to say about his life, but I was nonetheless quickly given far more than a short synopsis of his recent work. In the same matter-of-fact way that his lyrics lay out street truisms and offer blunt statements about hyperlocal crew politics, he unspooled his biography and thoughts on music in considerable detail, with little prompting.
The 28 year old, whose real name is Timothy Patterson, has a complex perspective on life—one that, once again, is abundantly clear in his music, where a song like "Love Slidn" might take a smooth, almost spiritual, sax-driven beat and turn it into an anthem equally about ordering shots and watching friends "die to gunfire." It doesn't all go down particularly easily, but hearing Mozzy talk about it, on a track or over the phone, is mesmerizing.
Noisey: When do you feel like music really took off for you? You put out four albums last year. Was that really what made it happen, or was it building before that?
Mozzy: Nah, it's been building. I've been rapping since a child. When I say child I’m talking nine, ten, 11, years old. I’ve been for real about it. I had dreams of being a Bow Wow, Lil Romeo. I turned 16, 17 realized I’d never be that, it was too late, I’m finna be in my 20s. So as I said, I changed my dreams, kind of lowered them, and said I want to be like the Jacka. Rest in peace Jack. And it feels like I’m there right now. It feels like I’m living that dream, like with just all the Bay Area love. I just wanted street love. I didn’t even care about the rest of the world. I just wanted love from the streets, and I got it. And it’s like the rest of the world just is making bigger.
But it really took off for me—I did a collaboration feature with Philthy Rich, and it’s called “Just Being Honest.” The Bay started recognizing me when I did “The Truth.” After I did “The Truth” the other person in the video—it was just me and another person—he actually got killed. So it was a lot of commotion behind that. Like the news started picking up on it, and a lot of people in the streets, they started gravitating to it. Then they came back with a response video, and we did the “Just Being Honest.” And when I did “Just Being Honest” it went crazy. Sacramento, that video followed probably 22, 25 shootings in Sacramento. And that’s when it got big. I went to court, and I went to jail for gang enhancement, and it just really got big from there. Like when I was in jail the fan mail was crazy, the guards in the jail were playing my music. The enemies were playing my music, at the same time saying fuck me. But they was still memorizing the lines and laughing about the shit.
When I got out, I got out to probably $7,000 in iTunes, and I just invested it all in the music. I never had like real hard copy CDs and shit, so I just put it all into the music, videos, and the fans was already on it from “Just Being Honest.” And I was dropping music while I was still in jail, like Next Body on You, Next Body on You Part 2. My team E Mozzy and CellyRu, they kept it popping, and it was just like the momentum they was waiting on me to get out of jail. So when I get out of jail, when I drop an album within a month of my release, they just ate it up. And when I saw they ate it up, I was so hungry and broke I was like ‘fuck it, I’m gonna just flood it because I need the money.’ And from there it just picked up, and right now it’s like anything I do they just bite it, they eat it up.
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