By Odeisel

Some people rap to get girls.  Others rap because they are too scared of the corner.  Mickey Williams had a way out of the hood. He could have been working on a law degree, interning with law firms and living a very comfortable life.  But his love for Hip-Hop culture was too strong to cheat on her. So after much thought, he dropped his side bitch and committed to this life full time. 

Since that decision, he’s dropped mixtapes, grown his fan base, worked with some well established artists and even had time for a national Honda promotion. We sat down with the affable Mr. Williams and kicked the actual facts.  Here is part one.

Planet Ill: You don’t have a jump shot and you’re not on the corner.  So you had options before you decided to take up this life. What was the process of elimination in determining your decision?

Mickey Factz:Actually, I did have a jumpshot! I was actually very good at ball. But Hip-Hop and music it just overcame me. And I fell in love with it at an early age. Ever since then it was like this is what I wanted to do with my life.

Planet Ill: You hear a lot of people say they love it, and love’s a fairly powerful word. But those that say they love it always seem to be able to find what’s wrong with it. What’s right with it?

Mickey Factz: Everything is right with it. The melody, the aggression, the sweetness of love songs, freestyles, the culture. There’s no better culture for music out there than Hip-Hop. Even though it can sometimes be violent and ignorant, it still shows unity within each community.

You can go to anybody’s hood and if you like the same record that somebody else likes, you have something in common and that’s just a beautiful thing. Music for me is like therapeutic in my life.

Planet Ill: Obviously to give up something that’s as potentially lucrative as law, you have to have some kind of business acumen, regardless if it’s love or not, ass gas or cash, nobody rides for free. What have you employed in terms of business acumen that has allowed you to function and prosper without having a major release?

Mickey Factz:Well being that I was going to school at NYU, studying pre-law and I worked at a law firm, I was able to take those same qualities working in the business world and take them to the music world, dealing with corporate. To the point that I got me a Honda commercial, and then after that I worked with EA [Electronic Arts].

I would go up in offices by myself, me and my manager, and most times I would speak because I have that proper etiquette and I just know what to say to the big wigs; to get them to understand that I speak their language too and I can relate to them as much as I can relate to the guy that’s hanging on the corner. So my business acumen is very extensive and I use that to my advantage.

Planet Ill: How was the Honda experience?  Usually you have Scion loving Hip-Hop, but Honda’s a bit of a different animal.

Mickey Factz: It’s a very different animal but the fact that they were very receptive to who I was as a human and who I was as Mickey Williams; they kind of just ran with what I was trying to do. For me it was a great experience! Just the fact that I was in my chair. You know how you watch commercials or you know behind the scenes when they’re shooting movies and the stars have their names on the back of the chair?  I had my name on the back of the chair!

Planet Ill: Did you take the chair?

Mickey Factz:  I should have taken the chair!

Planet Ill: Come on Mickey, you should have taken the chair.

Mickey Factz: I should have taken the chair. I had my own trailer, I had my own assistant manager to make sure I was good. If I was hungry, they’d bring me fruits and food. It was great, it was an amazing experience. And off of that experience I got my SAG[Screen Actors Guild] card. So now, whenever I choose to do more acting gigs, I can do it, and I’m extremely pleased about that.

Planet Ill: How do you make the decisions you make artistically? You had the Alpha project, which is a little bit different; the Dark Phoenix thing that’s a bit different from conventional Hip-Hop. If that was someone’s first experience with you, it may be colored a different way or skewed a different way than your norm.  How do you handle that?

Mickey Factz:  At the time I was really in love with the band Phoenix. I fell in love with their music and like with any artist when you fall in love with someone’s music you just want to emulate them. I wanted to show my gratitude by doing their music over. I felt like there was nothing wrong with it. A lot of people may view it as different, but we live in a society where the young child is listening to Young Jeezy, and then they are listening to Paramour.  They listening to B.o.B. and they listening to T.I. . They listening to Eminem and they are listening to Weezer.

So I feel like for me doing that project, I was reaching those people. And for the people who are just figuring me out, they were like he can rap, but this sounds a little weird. The beats are not knocking enough. I’ve done that.  At some point, my response is, if you woke up every day and ate chicken every day, you trying to tell me you wouldn’t be tired of chicken? After like maybe a month? You want to try something different and that’s what I wanted to do with my music, I wanted to try something different and there’s nothing wrong with that. But now, with this new music, I’m back to doing what I do best, and that’s rap.