Z-Ro Prison Interview
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Horrible website.
Here is the text in case some of you don't want to go through all that bull shit
Zro for Rap-A-Lot
You released your first album in 1998 and you’re on your 14th album, just six years later. How come there’s so many rappers out there who are like, great MC’s, but they can’t get one record out? Why has Zro been able to be so consistent?
Well really it’s like, after the first album, you can see the business first hand. It makes you real independent. It really makes you independent and they break down a record sale to you. A CD is $10 and you gonna break it down. The distributor gonna get this and you gonna get $1.15. And you say, man, what am I gonna do with this $1.15. It started getting where I was co-executive producer, making my own beats. I’m gonna make sure I get some money out of the deal. You got a whole lot of great MC’s who say “Man, I’m not gonna sign that contract. I know what I got and I’m gonna wait until the right deal comes up.” Then you look up and you 40 years old or something and the right deal ain’t came along yet. So you sitting on all this talent waiting on Jimmy Jam to come through. You might not have Jimmy Jam. You might have Jam or something. A dude named Jimmy can come through and put your record out. You know, making a little money rather than sitting on talent and don’t nobody know you got it, that’s me. Cuz you know I stayed by myself for a long time. Rent, bills, insurance on your car, car note, you got to pay it if you want to keep it. I don’t get into selling, robbing, so I gotta get it. I don’t work no jobs, I do music. So if I got an opportunity with somebody telling me, even down to “I’ll give you $5,000 up front.” O.K. gimme the $5,000 and I’m gonna work with that and I’m gonna give you something to market. It’s a job to me and from my understanding, if I worked at HL&P and they laid me off, I would go over to the water company and try to get me a job. So I do one album and go on and do the next. If it don’t work with this label then I’m gonna go head and do this here. If you sit on it you don’t get no money. A lot of MC’s think they’re the Michael Jordan of this game, but as you see it’s a team thing too. You need other people to help you reach your potential peak. Like with Jordon, him and Pippen, and Cartwright and Paxton they back to back to back. As soon as he went to the Wizards he was just a team player. You gonna shine with certain different people and my situation is you know I could be Zro all day long, but without the proper push behind me I’m gonna be a Zro. I ain’t gonna make too many zeros. So that’s what it is man, I’m consistent with it cuz I need that paycheck so I can travel. I want to see stuff, I want to go places. I want to be able to get up and go eat when I want to. If I want to go to Walmart or if I want to go kick it at Planet Hollywood, I want to be able to pay my cover charge and go in there and be like everybody else. I like that independence. So I’m gonna find me a way to drop me an album everytime.
Well that’s a word that could certainly describe you, independent. You’ve worked with so many people and so many different labels, does that mean you never signed an exclusive deal until Presidential?
I mean I’ve signed exclusive deals before, but up until Presidential I was seeing them all the way out. Like with my first deal with Fisherboy, I did that and saw that out. Then on Guerilla Maab, me and Rakesh and Trae that was our thing so there wasn’t no paper work involved. I oversaw my thang at Straight Profit. It was a one year, one album, I did two albums, Zro Versus the World and King of the Ghetto. Then I went to Presidential and that’s when all the BS started. I get over there and try to see this out, and something happened to them where they couldn’t give me no money, so they was like go drop an album with somebody else as long as you give us our album and everything was cool. Then they got aggravated because I got with somebody else and within two or three months our album was ready to go. They still wasn’t ready with they album. So I was like, you want me to sit up and wait? Then they wanted to put they album out first and I’m like man you know, I’m hungry, I got bills to pay, I got people to feed, rent, I’m dropping this album now. I knew they was gonna sue, but they wasn’t trying to give me no money. I need to be fed out here, I need to be compensated for work. And they was trying to get me to sit down and be cool, come get this hundred dollars or something, man there’s seven people in my house. This hundred dollars not gonna do nothing. And that caused a whole lot of turmoil in my whole life. Relationship, my self-esteem, my attitude, I’ve been seeing contracts out until I got to Presidential. You know you supposed to work two weeks and get a check. Two weeks becomes two years, for real, I’m not trying to feel that.
Well what was taking so long with that?
Well, when I came to Presidential, they didn’t know I was gonna do what I was gonna do. They thinking I’m gonna put the CD out and sell like a copy or something. Man and it came out and people were calling me and saying you know with no promotion, you on Billboard. But that don’t mean nothing to me. What mean something to me is come get your check. Billboards and videos I don’t care, publicity, you know it’s an honor and everything but I’m looking for that check. I can’t take this interview and go get a big screen TV. I need some money. So they got surprised. I was moving units and they didn’t want to pay. So they said to go on and start making this second album and I was like naw man that ain’t what the contract say and I do understand this contractual language. They was really just trying to starve me out and get me to work more to pay them more so I could be paid less. And in the end everything started coming out. Get to the courthouse, and they bring in three contracts. One say two years, one say seven years, one of them ain’t got no date on there. One of them got a thumb print on there. If you gonna do something, at least do your homework or something. They was just trying to use me to get some money. And really build up their company back from the stuff that they had lost. Really it was just somebody trying to win off somebody elses talent. And that’s usually what it is. The record label make money but a lot of times the artist ain’t got that privilege to see the books. You got a whole lot of soundscan going on and that’s what the industry gonna lean on. Then you got the ones you gonna sell out the trunk. They gonna call the mom and pop store and they gonna want 300 of ‘em. They gonna sell them to the store for $7 so that’s $2,100 the artist don’t know about. Artists is missing out on money they don’t know about. So I got with KMJ and it was alright for a little while and I went ahead and seen that contract out. And now I’m here now. That’s why we had to do stuff like the undergrounds like the S.L.A.B.’s, Gangsterfied, stuff we be selling out the trunk and getting money for ourselves. Cuz I gotta get the money.
Didn’t Presidential end up winning the lawsuit?
I mean, they didn’t win. They goal was to have me on that contract with them until 2008. That was that mans goal. To have me over there where I’m locked down. Just to burn bridges with everybody. They main thing was to make it where I couldn’t mess with nobody but Presidential. When they first put the lawsuit on me and we went to court yeah they won. Cuz I didn’t have a lawyer and I had KMJ with they lawyer and Presidential with they lawyer, and we got me representing myself and I’m in the courtroom going crazy, ready to beat people up and everything and they telling me I gotta go outside. Then Rap-A-Lot stepped in and things changed. J called me up a little ebit before I got locked up and he said “the case over with.” He said come over here and get this cash and go ahead and get started on your career. I didn’t believe it but it was real. They won at first cuz I didn’t have nobody doing no legal work for me. It was just me sitting in there and they’d ask “Well Mr. McVey how do you feel about this?” I couldn’t sit up there and cross my legs and say “Well I believe this and that.” I was like “I want them stoned. I want to beat ‘em up.”
Did Rap-A-Lot buy you out?
Naw they didn’t have to, because believe me that was one of the things talked about. They called and wanted to buy the contract and they said something off the wall like “Give us a million,” or something like that. They was just trying to hit them a quick lick. And you know, they got that attorney, and he started digging through things and found loop holes. Finally on the last day of court, they didn’t want to walk into court because of all the stuff they had found on all these people. And they said “if we go in there, we probably gonna face criminal charges now. So lets go on ahead and squash it.” And that’s it.
Coming up in Houston was Rap-A-Lot maybe a goal for you? It’s like the biggest thing coming out of here.
Yeah it’s the biggest thing. I was really looking at Rap-A-Lot and Wreckshop. I was looking at it like that. You know coming up you got Scarface, the Odd Squad, Devin by himself, Geto Boys, TMT, Gangsta N.I.P., Big Mello, I thought they wouldn’t have no slot for me. I’m just really a nobody so I was just really a fan. I listened to it, I bought all that.
How did you end up getting locked up?
Man somebody hating on me. Somebody hating on me and got me in a situation I couldn’t do nothing about. And I got locked up.
What were you locked up for though?
Possession.
Of what?
Possession of codeine.
So were you just caught in the streets?
Yeah coming out of a pool hall trying to go home. Now you jumped around so much to different labels, but everyone always says “Rap-A-Lot for life” when they sign.
Here is the text in case some of you don't want to go through all that bull shit
Zro for Rap-A-Lot
You released your first album in 1998 and you’re on your 14th album, just six years later. How come there’s so many rappers out there who are like, great MC’s, but they can’t get one record out? Why has Zro been able to be so consistent?
Well really it’s like, after the first album, you can see the business first hand. It makes you real independent. It really makes you independent and they break down a record sale to you. A CD is $10 and you gonna break it down. The distributor gonna get this and you gonna get $1.15. And you say, man, what am I gonna do with this $1.15. It started getting where I was co-executive producer, making my own beats. I’m gonna make sure I get some money out of the deal. You got a whole lot of great MC’s who say “Man, I’m not gonna sign that contract. I know what I got and I’m gonna wait until the right deal comes up.” Then you look up and you 40 years old or something and the right deal ain’t came along yet. So you sitting on all this talent waiting on Jimmy Jam to come through. You might not have Jimmy Jam. You might have Jam or something. A dude named Jimmy can come through and put your record out. You know, making a little money rather than sitting on talent and don’t nobody know you got it, that’s me. Cuz you know I stayed by myself for a long time. Rent, bills, insurance on your car, car note, you got to pay it if you want to keep it. I don’t get into selling, robbing, so I gotta get it. I don’t work no jobs, I do music. So if I got an opportunity with somebody telling me, even down to “I’ll give you $5,000 up front.” O.K. gimme the $5,000 and I’m gonna work with that and I’m gonna give you something to market. It’s a job to me and from my understanding, if I worked at HL&P and they laid me off, I would go over to the water company and try to get me a job. So I do one album and go on and do the next. If it don’t work with this label then I’m gonna go head and do this here. If you sit on it you don’t get no money. A lot of MC’s think they’re the Michael Jordan of this game, but as you see it’s a team thing too. You need other people to help you reach your potential peak. Like with Jordon, him and Pippen, and Cartwright and Paxton they back to back to back. As soon as he went to the Wizards he was just a team player. You gonna shine with certain different people and my situation is you know I could be Zro all day long, but without the proper push behind me I’m gonna be a Zro. I ain’t gonna make too many zeros. So that’s what it is man, I’m consistent with it cuz I need that paycheck so I can travel. I want to see stuff, I want to go places. I want to be able to get up and go eat when I want to. If I want to go to Walmart or if I want to go kick it at Planet Hollywood, I want to be able to pay my cover charge and go in there and be like everybody else. I like that independence. So I’m gonna find me a way to drop me an album everytime.
Well that’s a word that could certainly describe you, independent. You’ve worked with so many people and so many different labels, does that mean you never signed an exclusive deal until Presidential?
I mean I’ve signed exclusive deals before, but up until Presidential I was seeing them all the way out. Like with my first deal with Fisherboy, I did that and saw that out. Then on Guerilla Maab, me and Rakesh and Trae that was our thing so there wasn’t no paper work involved. I oversaw my thang at Straight Profit. It was a one year, one album, I did two albums, Zro Versus the World and King of the Ghetto. Then I went to Presidential and that’s when all the BS started. I get over there and try to see this out, and something happened to them where they couldn’t give me no money, so they was like go drop an album with somebody else as long as you give us our album and everything was cool. Then they got aggravated because I got with somebody else and within two or three months our album was ready to go. They still wasn’t ready with they album. So I was like, you want me to sit up and wait? Then they wanted to put they album out first and I’m like man you know, I’m hungry, I got bills to pay, I got people to feed, rent, I’m dropping this album now. I knew they was gonna sue, but they wasn’t trying to give me no money. I need to be fed out here, I need to be compensated for work. And they was trying to get me to sit down and be cool, come get this hundred dollars or something, man there’s seven people in my house. This hundred dollars not gonna do nothing. And that caused a whole lot of turmoil in my whole life. Relationship, my self-esteem, my attitude, I’ve been seeing contracts out until I got to Presidential. You know you supposed to work two weeks and get a check. Two weeks becomes two years, for real, I’m not trying to feel that.
Well what was taking so long with that?
Well, when I came to Presidential, they didn’t know I was gonna do what I was gonna do. They thinking I’m gonna put the CD out and sell like a copy or something. Man and it came out and people were calling me and saying you know with no promotion, you on Billboard. But that don’t mean nothing to me. What mean something to me is come get your check. Billboards and videos I don’t care, publicity, you know it’s an honor and everything but I’m looking for that check. I can’t take this interview and go get a big screen TV. I need some money. So they got surprised. I was moving units and they didn’t want to pay. So they said to go on and start making this second album and I was like naw man that ain’t what the contract say and I do understand this contractual language. They was really just trying to starve me out and get me to work more to pay them more so I could be paid less. And in the end everything started coming out. Get to the courthouse, and they bring in three contracts. One say two years, one say seven years, one of them ain’t got no date on there. One of them got a thumb print on there. If you gonna do something, at least do your homework or something. They was just trying to use me to get some money. And really build up their company back from the stuff that they had lost. Really it was just somebody trying to win off somebody elses talent. And that’s usually what it is. The record label make money but a lot of times the artist ain’t got that privilege to see the books. You got a whole lot of soundscan going on and that’s what the industry gonna lean on. Then you got the ones you gonna sell out the trunk. They gonna call the mom and pop store and they gonna want 300 of ‘em. They gonna sell them to the store for $7 so that’s $2,100 the artist don’t know about. Artists is missing out on money they don’t know about. So I got with KMJ and it was alright for a little while and I went ahead and seen that contract out. And now I’m here now. That’s why we had to do stuff like the undergrounds like the S.L.A.B.’s, Gangsterfied, stuff we be selling out the trunk and getting money for ourselves. Cuz I gotta get the money.
Didn’t Presidential end up winning the lawsuit?
I mean, they didn’t win. They goal was to have me on that contract with them until 2008. That was that mans goal. To have me over there where I’m locked down. Just to burn bridges with everybody. They main thing was to make it where I couldn’t mess with nobody but Presidential. When they first put the lawsuit on me and we went to court yeah they won. Cuz I didn’t have a lawyer and I had KMJ with they lawyer and Presidential with they lawyer, and we got me representing myself and I’m in the courtroom going crazy, ready to beat people up and everything and they telling me I gotta go outside. Then Rap-A-Lot stepped in and things changed. J called me up a little ebit before I got locked up and he said “the case over with.” He said come over here and get this cash and go ahead and get started on your career. I didn’t believe it but it was real. They won at first cuz I didn’t have nobody doing no legal work for me. It was just me sitting in there and they’d ask “Well Mr. McVey how do you feel about this?” I couldn’t sit up there and cross my legs and say “Well I believe this and that.” I was like “I want them stoned. I want to beat ‘em up.”
Did Rap-A-Lot buy you out?
Naw they didn’t have to, because believe me that was one of the things talked about. They called and wanted to buy the contract and they said something off the wall like “Give us a million,” or something like that. They was just trying to hit them a quick lick. And you know, they got that attorney, and he started digging through things and found loop holes. Finally on the last day of court, they didn’t want to walk into court because of all the stuff they had found on all these people. And they said “if we go in there, we probably gonna face criminal charges now. So lets go on ahead and squash it.” And that’s it.
Coming up in Houston was Rap-A-Lot maybe a goal for you? It’s like the biggest thing coming out of here.
Yeah it’s the biggest thing. I was really looking at Rap-A-Lot and Wreckshop. I was looking at it like that. You know coming up you got Scarface, the Odd Squad, Devin by himself, Geto Boys, TMT, Gangsta N.I.P., Big Mello, I thought they wouldn’t have no slot for me. I’m just really a nobody so I was just really a fan. I listened to it, I bought all that.
How did you end up getting locked up?
Man somebody hating on me. Somebody hating on me and got me in a situation I couldn’t do nothing about. And I got locked up.
What were you locked up for though?
Possession.
Of what?
Possession of codeine.
So were you just caught in the streets?
Yeah coming out of a pool hall trying to go home. Now you jumped around so much to different labels, but everyone always says “Rap-A-Lot for life” when they sign.
Is it Rap-A-Lot for life?
I
mean with the current situation I got a three year thing. But it’s just like with Straight Profit. It was a one year, one album deal, but I went ahead and did two cuz I was being taken care of. I get over here and I’m getting taken care of like I seen when I signed the contract, I was like whoa? This what it’s about. More shows, more this, more that, mre appearances. If everything stay how it is, I could disregard the three and just keep going. If everything going cool withme I ain’t trying to go nowhere.
Well the first rumors before you ever actually signed with Rap-A-Lot was that you and Bun B were gonna be the new Geto Boys.
Yeah man , I really would want to do that. Bun cool. He real cool and he an icon in the game. If it could be me and Bun, and a third person, I mean I would want to do it. It’s a respect thing, I’m honored to be considered for it. That would be something and I’d like to see how that would turn out.
What are you looking ahead to?
Really man, I just never had no big goals. I just want to have enough to get by and be comfortable. I’m not thinking about no big old 235 acre estates and no Bentley. I just want to make it. I want to be able to go to Jack N The Box when I want to. Get me a #5 and go back home. My goals ain’t for this earth. I want to be told to go to the right on that last day. I’m trying to be 100 in the long run. I want to see my mama again, I know she up there. That’s my goal.
So you’d like to be rich, but not necessarily rich and famous?
You know, cuz I don’t really like attention. I always feel like somebody gonna do me something. I’m by myself, I’m a cat in the corner. I’d just rather have a little money and just be out of everybody’s way. I want to be like that dude like the CEO cat who don’t rap, but does rap. Just have a little money to be comfortable. Pay my bills so I can just be cool.
Do you feel pretty comfortable about that for when you get out?
Yeah my manager says the response is pretty good. Like right before I go locked up I was already seeing way more money than I had been. Just in those couple of weeks. I’m always getting money from shows and that’s a blessing because of all the albums I got. I feel like I could mess around have me a big old fat knot. That would be just fine with me. Cuz all I want to do is lay back and chill. I see it being something positive.
Are there a lot of rappers in jail?
Man everybody rapping. Everybody telling me listen to this, listen to that. Man I’m not an A&R. Truth be told, I don’t even like to write rhymes, it’s something I do to get paid. What might be jamming to me, might not be marketable.
Well that’s not what I feel when I listen to you. I hear the raw emotion, and it seems like you have to do it.
See that’s why I don’t like to do it cuz it’s something tangible, something I can touch on. I talk about actual occurrences, and a lot of times I don’t like pulling them old hatchets up. Like some of the songs on the new album, it’s stuff I don’t want to pull up no more cuz it done happened already. I want to leave it where it is. But I know I’m not gonna get up and talk about something I didn’t do. I write about my life and that’s what sets me apart from different people. I’m just coming from my heart with stuff that really happened. Ain’t nothing feminine about me man. A lot of times I write something that make me trip out to myself. I write about what I have done or what I have seen in my own existence and a lot of times it hurts to reproduce that.
I
mean with the current situation I got a three year thing. But it’s just like with Straight Profit. It was a one year, one album deal, but I went ahead and did two cuz I was being taken care of. I get over here and I’m getting taken care of like I seen when I signed the contract, I was like whoa? This what it’s about. More shows, more this, more that, mre appearances. If everything stay how it is, I could disregard the three and just keep going. If everything going cool withme I ain’t trying to go nowhere.
Well the first rumors before you ever actually signed with Rap-A-Lot was that you and Bun B were gonna be the new Geto Boys.
Yeah man , I really would want to do that. Bun cool. He real cool and he an icon in the game. If it could be me and Bun, and a third person, I mean I would want to do it. It’s a respect thing, I’m honored to be considered for it. That would be something and I’d like to see how that would turn out.
What are you looking ahead to?
Really man, I just never had no big goals. I just want to have enough to get by and be comfortable. I’m not thinking about no big old 235 acre estates and no Bentley. I just want to make it. I want to be able to go to Jack N The Box when I want to. Get me a #5 and go back home. My goals ain’t for this earth. I want to be told to go to the right on that last day. I’m trying to be 100 in the long run. I want to see my mama again, I know she up there. That’s my goal.
So you’d like to be rich, but not necessarily rich and famous?
You know, cuz I don’t really like attention. I always feel like somebody gonna do me something. I’m by myself, I’m a cat in the corner. I’d just rather have a little money and just be out of everybody’s way. I want to be like that dude like the CEO cat who don’t rap, but does rap. Just have a little money to be comfortable. Pay my bills so I can just be cool.
Do you feel pretty comfortable about that for when you get out?
Yeah my manager says the response is pretty good. Like right before I go locked up I was already seeing way more money than I had been. Just in those couple of weeks. I’m always getting money from shows and that’s a blessing because of all the albums I got. I feel like I could mess around have me a big old fat knot. That would be just fine with me. Cuz all I want to do is lay back and chill. I see it being something positive.
Are there a lot of rappers in jail?
Man everybody rapping. Everybody telling me listen to this, listen to that. Man I’m not an A&R. Truth be told, I don’t even like to write rhymes, it’s something I do to get paid. What might be jamming to me, might not be marketable.
Well that’s not what I feel when I listen to you. I hear the raw emotion, and it seems like you have to do it.
See that’s why I don’t like to do it cuz it’s something tangible, something I can touch on. I talk about actual occurrences, and a lot of times I don’t like pulling them old hatchets up. Like some of the songs on the new album, it’s stuff I don’t want to pull up no more cuz it done happened already. I want to leave it where it is. But I know I’m not gonna get up and talk about something I didn’t do. I write about my life and that’s what sets me apart from different people. I’m just coming from my heart with stuff that really happened. Ain’t nothing feminine about me man. A lot of times I write something that make me trip out to myself. I write about what I have done or what I have seen in my own existence and a lot of times it hurts to reproduce that.