Where are you all from?

MR. MO: I’m from Eastside Atlanta.  Well, really I’m from all over Atlanta.  I’m all over.  I went to high school on the east side of Atlanta, but right after high school my parents moved out there to the College Park/Riverdale area so I’m really from all over.

Cutty: I’m from Decatur where it’s greater.

Whats life like growing up in the Dec?

Cutty: It was cool, man.  It was cool.  You had everything growing up around you know.  You had the great looking chicks.  That’s what the Dec is known for –the trunk of women that we have.  We really had everything right down the street they trapping, down the other street they were playing ball at the basketball court.  You know you’re typical hood stuff.

How did you all come in contact with one another?

MR. MO: I came in contact with my boys in Jim Crow through the Attic Crew.  We were all niggas you know.  Us three just happened to do a record and we just decided to keep it going.  That was back in 1998. But we’ve been knowing each other since 92.

Why do you all call yourselves the Attic Crew?

MR. MO: My boy Big Floatie, he had an apartment that his mama had hooked us all up with.  Everybody used to stay there and it was hot as an attic because it didn’t have no air conditioner.  So we just started to calling ourselves the Attic Crew.  You know just regular nigga shit.

Now you being from the Dec. how did you hook up with the Attic crew in ATL?

Cutty: Well.  Sean Paul from the Youngbloods and MO moved to Decatur and we ended up kicking for a whole summer.  I had met his cousin Pretty Ken so at the time Pretty Ken and my homeboy Big Floatie got an apartment and they were over there working on beats.  I went over there to hang and I never left.  It felt good over there.   It actually felt like it was supposed to happened.

Now a lot of people, for some reason associate the Attic crew with the dungeon Family……..

MR. MO: Yeah of course certain niggas got family members off in the Dungeon Family or know certain members whom they are real close with.  Like my boy Big Floatie, his cousin is Cee-lo….just stuff like that.  Yeah, we’re related but we ain’t Dungeon family.  We’re just potnas and we all down with each other.

Who were some of your influences rap wise?

Cutty: You know we were listening to that Rakim Paid in Full album, Public Enemy’s nation of Millions….as far as Atlanta Hitman Sammy Sam was a big influence.

When did Jim Crow come together?

MR. MO: Well we did one song called “They Love It, They Want It” in 98 and we just kept on going.  Everybody was saying man yall need to stay together as a group.

Cutty: The first experimentation of me, polo and MO on a record would probably be in 98.

They already had an ideal already.  Polo and MO had already laid the song down and Polo said that they needed a little singing part done so I went in there and laid the singing part down and everybody said damn, that song jamming.  It was Buddy Lee’s (aka Noonie’s) ideal that we form a group.  At first we weren’t going to be a group, Polo and Mo were together, but I was going to be a solo artist.

Why did you decide to call yourselves Jim Crow?

MR. MO: As you well know that Jim Crow was the laws that they used back in the days to force Black people to use one water fountain and whites another.  It was the basis of segregation.  They were set up to discriminate against Blacks because we were different from whites.  So Jim Crow is a group coming from the South so we represent that and being from the South, you know we have it twice as hard trying to make it in this hip hop game.  It’s like we have to be twice as good as groups from other regions in order to get noticed.  Because, worldwide, people wasn’t really feeling the South back when we started, we’re just now beginning to get our shine right now.

Polo: Jim Crow is us, the group, three Black men from the South trying to come up in the game of hip hop.  It’s hard for rappers coming from the South to break into the rap world.  It’s just hard to get accepted, we still face discrimination.  So Jim Crow the group is symbolic of the struggle Black people went through in the South during the days of segregation.  That’s our vision when we came up with the name.  We understand that we have to keep on striving, we gotta keep on striving to make it in life.

So you all feel that people in other regions don’t respect you all because you all are from the South, you are being Jim Crowed?

MR. MO: Exactly.  But it ain’t just about rap; everybody is really Jim Crowed if you really think about it.  I mean everybody that has been through a struggle, everybody that has been denied, everybody that has overcome some boundaries are Jim Crow.

So it’s not just a regional or racial thing?

MR. MO: Naw, not at all.

Polo: Jim Crow still exist today only this time it’s not just a racial thing.  Nowadays, anybody that dares to be different….like walking into a nice club wearing tennis shoes and baggie jeans or dressing different from other people brings discrimination to you then, guess what, you’re Jim Crow.  If you really look at everybody jumps Jim Crow at some point in their life.

Okay, let’s talk a little bit about you all’s recording career.  At one point you all were on Epic, how did that happened?

MR. MO: Yeah.  The guys we were signed to had a deal going on at epic and we were signed through them so it was Noontime Epic.

What happened that made you all part ways with Epic?

MR. MO: They basically was trying to jump on the Southern wave and they didn’t really know how to promote no Southern record so we got caught up into the whole politics of that.  We could’ve have stayed with Epic.  In fact, they wanted us to stay, but we just decided to get off.

Was it frustrating to have a critically acclaimed album and be on a record label that didn’t know how to promote it properly?

MR. MO: Yeah, it was frustrating.  We weren’t getting the help that we deserve to help us turn all our hard work into a hit.  It was hard, but we just had to suck it up.

Why did you all decide to go the independent route instead of going with another label?

MR. MO: Well, we had some offers to sign with other labels.  We decided to form our own label called Scare Crow Music and partner up with Noonie one of the partners in Noontime and drop our album Right Quick independent to see what we could do.

Right Quick like was a classic.  We were working on an independent budget so we couldn’t do everything that we wanted to do with it, but it got its shine.  It did what it was supposed to do right quick.

So are you all re-releasing the album or will this new one be all new material?

MR. MO: Well, we’re grabbing a couple of songs off the independent album.   We’re doing a couple of new records and we’re taking some other records from when we had started recording another album. Before we had started recording for Interscope we had started doing a new record.  We basically are putting all of those records together and making a new record for Interscope.

So what’s the name of this brand new album?

MR. MO: It’s self title Jim Crow.  We were going to call it Bird Shit, but it might be subject to change.

I heard that this new album is something totally different from what’s out there.   I heard that it’s not like anything that you’ll ever hear from a Southern group….

How would you describe the album?

MR. MO: With this album we’re going back to the Crow’s nest days.   Really it’s a lot of street records on there.  It’s a lot of fun records on there, there’s a lot of records that will make you feel good.   It’s not really any dark and gloomy records on the album.

Cutty: You know what, that exactly what Jimmy Irvine said when he heard it.   He said this doesn’t sound like a Southern group to me.  He said, realistically you all are wide open.  You all can go in any direction and thats what let me know that we needed to go with Interscope because he was paying attention to our music instead of just trying to sign us he was actually listening to us.

Polo: The one thing that we try to do is do something different every time.   Of course we’re not going to go too far left because we always know what the people want to hear, at the same time, we always want to give you something that is going to keep you on your toes.  This album right here is a little like our old album.   It’s a dab of that in there, but we’re moving on as well.  What you’re going hear is some head-bangers.  I mean the beats are hard.   We’ve definitely stepped it up on the production.  We’ve always had great production but these beats are even harder than the last ones.  It’s not typical of a rap album period.  What we do is music.  What we do is melodic, it’s bluesy, it’s funk, it’s soul –it’s all of that.

I understand you all did a remix of Holla at a Playa is that true?

MR. MO: Yeah, we put Petey Pablo on there.  We’re also doing a song with Bubba Sparxx called “Boi Look.”

Who are some of the producers on the album?

MR. MO: Jazze Pha worked on it. Rob McDowell and David Banner and we got a new guy named Sam I Am.  Plus we are going to get a track from Timberland.

We want people to know that this album here is about to be a classic.  Interscope wouldn’t sign us if we were on some bullshit.

by: Charlie Braxton © Down-South.com