Earlier this year, prior to the release of Still Based on a True Story — the sequel to the classic career-highlight Based on a True Story — I spoke in a conference call with rapper Shady Nate and producer DJ Fresh. Fresh — an occasional Nas tour DJ — is an exceptionally talented producer with an ear for a broad range of music and a skilled sound engineer. Particularly when compared with other producers working at street level, his work always sounds lush and pristine, and his samples suggest great knowledge of music history. Shady Nate has an extroverted personality; his voice kept peaking out my recording equipment during the interview, and his enthusiasm was infectious.
First off, your name, and how old you are?
Shady Nate: Yeah mane my name is Shady Nate mane, I’m from West Oakland and I’m 24 years old out here!
DJ Fresh: DJ Fresh, 29 years old.
I was wondering what the first cassette tape or CD you ever bought was, the first time you paid for music with your own money, and how old you were at the time.
Nate: Shit, man, I’ma go first every time, aite Fresh? Actually, the first CD I bought with my own money was Snoop Dogg, the – what album was that first album?
Fresh: Doggystyle
Nate: The first album I ever bought was Doggystyle, but the first album I ever listened to was when I was five years old, my momma had moved us from Oakland to Portland, Oregon, and she gave me a Too $hort CD when I was five years old, and she was like, he from Oakland, like you! You feel me? And that’s when I started bumpin– I was bumpin Too $hort and Whodini and that type of shit. But that’s the first CD I ever really tapped into, when I was five years old.
Fresh: First record I ever had was Run DMC “Peter Piper.” My daddy was a DJ and I had two brother that were older DJs so I was turned on to records hella early. The first tape that I ever bought was EPMD. I forget the name of the album, but it was one of their first albums. I was young, nine years old or something.
What drew you to EPMD early on, what was it that drew you to it – production, rapping, whole package?
Fresh: I was on that song “You Gotsta to Chill,” that was my shit. “You got to Chill”!
Nate: “You got to Chill!”
Nate, I was wondering the first time you started noticing how someone’s rapping—the kind of thing you’d want to imitate, memorize their lines.
Nate: Tupac. That’s when I was about eleven. I never was gonna be a rapper when Tupac was alive, but when he died, and other people started [phone drops out], I felt like I could do it too, if they could do it, I could do it. And I ended up doing it better, I never thought I could do it better, but I did end up doing it better. I started off just having fun with it, and it was a hobby, you feel me? And then it became a job and now it’s a business.
When did you make the decision to make it a career?
Nate: Me and my partners started going to the studio when the block got hot, you feel me? Once everybody started—a couple people died, a couple people started going to jail, know what I’m saying, and I kept doing it and I kept getting more fans…that’s when I started making it a business. When I really made it a business—I used to sell dope, I’ma keep it P.I. with you, I keep it P.I. everywhere I go, that’s keeping it real—I started selling more CDs than I was selling dope. I took the obvious route, you feel me? I was just on the block. This is before we were in stores, I was out on the block with a bundle of CDs and a bundle of coke, and my CDs would sell out faster than my coke. So I chose the music.
How did you decide that was the way you were gonna make music, did you ever think about doing live shows, how did you get involved in doing recording in the first place?
Nate: I had the opportunity, to really–with my brother J Stalin, you feel me, to fuck with him, to be on the same level with him as an artist. He already knew a lot of industry people. He already was fucking with Richie Rich and all kinds of other types of people before we even started getting into stores. So we were coming off the streets, he would just take me around, and once everybody heard me, that’s when I got accepted. Nobody ever told me to stop, nobody ever told me I came weak on nothing. You feel me. So I kept going.
When you started rapping, taking it more seriously, were you thinking about making youself sound different from everybody else, or…?
Nate: I never really thought like that. I always just kept doing me, you feel me. I feel like the more I come with something that nobody’s ever heard before, that’s a mark of being myself, you feel me. So I never try to imitate anybody, namean. Tupac is my favorite rapper, and if you ask anybody, I don’t rap anything like Pac. I rap more like E-40 than I rap like Pac, you feel me. So I always kept my own style, my own swag, and it bled off, you feel me.
What was it about Pac’s rapping, about his style that you represent?
Nate: He’s real, you feel me. Anything that makes you feel a certain type of way, either it makes you mad or makes you happy or makes you sad, that’s a good song. And that’s the type of music Pac played, you feel me. So that’s the type of music I try to make. But I don’t try to be like Pac, I try to come from my perspective. My perspective is, I really was doing–I was really out here on the streets, I really could have been doing twenty years right now. Instead of out here rapping. That’s my perspective.
How did you and Fresh meet? through J. Stalin?
Fresh: We met through Stalin. My nigga Mr. Tower was the one that introduced me to Stalin. Then me and Stalin and Tower, we had a session one day and Shady was there. We didn’t do no music yet, but he was there. Somehow we got to talking and clicked immediately—just talking, though. We wasn’t even talking about no music yet. We all exchanged numbers, and me and Stalin started working on a project called The Real World, and Shady was all on that. He was all over it. I was like, you know, let’s do something too, me and Shady. We came up with the first Based on a True Story. We was in the lab, putting in hella hours, working. I remember he went to go sit down for a brief intermission. The day he got out, I took the whole lab, I took my mic, my laptop, everything. My mind was like, I’m not finna let this nigga get back into no bullshit. I’m finna go get this nigga in the lab and we’re gonna record. Shit, I believed in the nigga. I believed in the movement, and the chemistry we had and everything. We just kept it lit, just kept working. Our whole attitude was let’s work, let’s work, let’s work. And that’s how we met.
When was it that you started making beats? When you were working towards making money, and you knew it was a career you wanted to follow.
Fresh: I started doing beats in 2003. I was fresh off tour with Nas. Everybody was doing the mixtape thing or whatever, and I ain’t even want to do the mixtape thing. I wanted to do my own beats or whatever. I did my first project with Mistah F.A.B. I fell in love with doing beats, having something that was my own. Sampling all the songs that I grew up on and my momma used to play and my daddy used to play, and just playing my own stuff too. It just inspired the hell out of me. I decided it was gonna be my career right when I did my first project. I never really paid attention to the money aspect, always felt like if you do what you love then the money will come. That’s what I stuck to, that’s what I stick to, and here I am today.
What was the first beat that you felt was a success, that really resonated with a lot of people?
Fresh: It was a song called “We Go Dumb Out Here in the Bay” that Fab had did. At the time, no one really believed that it could be on the radio. Not even Fab at the time. He had just gotten signed to Atlantic, and he was working his Atlantic thing. We kind of did it just for fun, but they started playing it on 94.9. That was the first thing I had on the radio.
One of my favorite tracks you guys did together was “Bottom of the Bottle.” Can you tell me a little about your process with making a beat like that. It sounds very pristine. What’s the process like for you?
Shady Nate & DJ Fresh – Bottom of my Bottle
Fresh: I made “Bottom of my Bottle,” I was on the Rock the Bells tour at the time. I was with a group called Living Legends. I was with Nas too. It was a tour bus we were on. I was just trying to make like ten beats a day. I was in super grind mode, because I knew what I’d come home to wasn’t really a good situation at the time. Every beat was like, I’m fighting for my life to try to get out the situation I was in at the time, because I was struggling like a motherfucker. I remember that sample and everything. I was in South Dakota. I went into a gas station out there, we was pumping gas. I bought a CD—you know they had those CDs you could buy—who was it..it was Sting! It was a Sting CD. It had that little sample on there. I wasn’t even thinking it was gonna be called “Bottom of my Bottle” when I gave it to Shady. I just kind of hear a sample, and I just make it, I just go into it. It’s like abra cadabra, it just comes together. And I’ll shoot it to Shady and he’ll take it to the next step. Then I’ll go back and add to it. It’s all chemistry, just working together. Me and Shady got a relationship where if I give him a disc of ten beats, he’ll choose at least nine—or all ten of em.
Nate: Yeah not all of em! Just nine of em! [He and Fresh laugh].
When you did your part of the song—its a very strong vocal—what’s the background on that track, what’s the story behind that?
Nate: Man, I was getting drunk! And I actually felt like I seen the devil at the bottom of the bottle. I ain’t even think about what I was writing until after the song was done. I didn’t even think about how deep it was until after the song was done.
What’s your writing process like? Do you write a lot in advance, or do a lot in your head?
Nate: I switch it up, you know? When I actually did that song, Fresh was gone and he sent it to me. When I was in the studio, I knocked it out right then. When I knock shit out, as long as I got the beat, that’s something I’m going through right then and there, you feel me. Half of the time, I’ll already be ready when I come to the studio, I’ll already have a song written or a concept in my mind that I want to put it on. But that “Bottom of the Bottle,” that came as soon as I heard the beat.
Another one I wanted to ask you about was that “Gimmie Da Loot,” which I think I found on YouTube at the end of 2009 or early 2010, and it only existed on YouTube for a long time. Now it’s on this new record. I was wondering about the process for that one.
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