Much love for the support. Glad to hear you all liked the cover. In regards to the "vet" question. All the older Darkroom homeboys are veterans in life. Not just on some hood shit, but in life. Period. All of us have been through a lot of shit in our lives. From Alcoholic and dopefiend parents to being raised on Welfare and food stamps to seeing close homeboys get killed and not make it passed their teen years. We've all been through a lot. And that's the shit we rap about. That's what separates real-life homeboys from people who claim "gangster" when they're far from it. We've never portrayed anything false or tried to make ourselves more than what we are. We're some homeboys from Northern Cali who've done some bad things, some good things, some music and some movies. Some of us have banged, some of us have slanged, some of us have robbed, some of us have hustled. We rap about shit that we've experienced and been through and shit that we used to do and shit that we've seen with our own eyes. Nothing more, nothing less. We've been making tapes and CDs since 1988 and still going strong. Are we flamed up? Of course. We're from Norte California and proud of it. We've smashed on scraps and we've been jumped by scraps. We've done shit that I won't speak about online. And We've done some good shit too. Some Darkroom homeboys have been locked up repeatedly. Some Darkroom homeboys have been hiding out because of warrants. We started out as young ass teenage kids in the '80s and now it's 2007 and I'm a grown man. I'm 33 years old. Duke is 35. We've got wives and kids to take care of. We run a successful music and movie business that has allowed us to not work a regular 9-5 job in several years. It has also allowed us to buy our own homes and get the fuck out of economically depressed neighborhoods so that our kids don't have to go through the same shit we went through when we were growing up. We ain't got time to be chillin' on the block with no responsibilities any more. We're not young anymore. Priorities change. Maybe some of you are expecting some type of robo-gangsters, chillin' on the corner, drinkin' 40s and starting shit with everyone and rapping over and over and over about killing scraps and scrap this and scrap that. I really don't know. I don't know what some of you expect, but we're normal motherfuckers just like you. So yeah, we're vets. In every sense of the word. There are plenty of fools out there, PLENTY, who have never lived the life that they rap about. But the fact is Darkroom Familia has always been truthful about our shit.
As for the new album "LAST VETS STANDING." If you're a Darkroom fan, you won't be disappointed. It's hard ass knocks back-to-back. We've never made any "hyphy" album, so I don't know why that one homeboy posted something about this album probably being "hyphy." This album is truthfully one of our best albums ever, full of true-life topics and real-life experiences as well as some all-around dope tracks. To the Darkroom supporters, much, much love. You'll dig this album a lot. To the hesitant listeners, peep it out. If you can feel real shit, you'll dig this album too.
Once again, I want to ask you all if you're going to download the album, please do so legally through itunes.com or napster.com or the various legal download sites. Just don't download the album for free. You really are hurting the quantity and quality of music being released because you truthfully are taking money out of 100% independent artists. If you're gonna download someone illegally, go download a major-label artist. You ain't hurtin' them. But you ARE hurting us independent artists to the point where it won't be worth it for us to keep making music anymore and you will slowly but surely kill independent music in Northern California.
Much love for taking the time to read this and much love for the support.
-Crooked-Darkroom Familia
www.myspace.com/darkroomfamilia
www.darkroomstudiosonline.com
[email protected]