By Odeisel

The legacy of a Hip-Hop group is hard to quantify across eras. One thing that rings constant is consistency and originality. Quite frankly there’s a lot of assholes screaming on the mic, but you have never heard them bring the fire like the Mash Out Posse. Billy Danze and Lil Fame have grown musically and personally by leaps and bounds since their Brownsville beginnings. They are as gritty as Iron Mike’s shitty pigeon coop, real as rent due on the avenue, and their no nonsense approach  has garnered them worldwide underground acclaim, if such a thing exists. In this two- part interview, Planet Ill gets to the heart of who M.O.P. is, and what that means to the streets and to Hip-Hop. We throw a few curveballs in for good measure.  Enjoy.

Planet Ill: When y you hear the word Brownsville, what does that mean to you?

Billy Danze: It mean home, man. That means struggle, that means a blessing; that means everything to me. Brownsville participated in making me the man that I am today.

Planet Ill: How far have you come since The Hill That’s Real?

Billy Danze: Myself, in my personal life, I’m much different. Obviously I’m a little older but I see things different now. I understand, I mean I’ve always understood right from wrong. I still play by my own rules but I see things different now. We got the kids; we got younger kids in the street looking up to us. The audience, which our audience is worldwide, they look up to us. I mean I can still get down and dirty if I need to, but I’m a little more focused on the big picture now, which is winning.

And winning to me is more than getting a couple dollars. It’s actually spreading a message worldwide because we never really feel like we can get out of our situation, especially living in the bottom where you don’t’ see no outlet. M.O.P. is living proof of that.

Planet Ill: So what happens when you get off the corners and you get away from the bodegas and the gun shots and you start seeing the world? What does that do to your mentality and even your rhymes?

Billy Danze: It gives you more motivation than you can ever think of hanging out down there. It helps you see a little clearer. We can always go back to the bottom; we never really left. When you seeing different things around the world, seeing different places gives us some inspiration to keep pushing forward so that the generations behind us could understand that life is much bigger than hanging out in one spot.

Planet Ill: Notorious B.I.G., famous Brooklyn emcee said “Niggas is actors; niggas deserve Oscars” in referring to this rap shit. There’s a lot of people who may have a street background but when you get to a point where it’s on records, obviously you’ve left that life behind. How important is realism in your rhymes and these days does it even matter?

Billy Danze: People do want to party; people do want to have fun. People don’t want life to be so hard but the truth of the matter is, it’s reality and everybody isn’t able to buy what theses rappers have when they showing in these videos and all of that; they not about to do that. The weird part of it is there’s kids down there in the struggle that’s trying to get ahead and again they don’t have the outlet. So it makes a lot of sense for us to continue to represent that part of society that people try to forget about because without M.O.P. or without people that’s making music like we making, the voices won’t get heard down there ; there’s nothing for them to do, there’s no outlet.

So we got to continue to push forward and people love what we do. You know coming from Brownsville, Brooklyn, where we’re voted most likely to fail, we’re not supposed to be loved in Japan and China and Australia. For us to be able to come from Brownsville and go to Germany and go to Switzerland and people treat us with a lot of love and a lot of respect? That means that we won, regardless fo how much money we made or making now or will see in the future.

Planet Ill: A lot of groups from that 90s era were self-produced.  Even though you guys have an affiliation with Gangstaar and DJ Premier, people don’t really know that Fizzy Wo is doing a lot of that production and doing a lot of that song crafting. Do you think that not having to go outside the family has helped keep your music gritty?

Lil Fame: Yeah, that’s part of it, but we’re just musically inclined. I mean I’ve worked with other artists.  You’ve got some of the dopest artists that don’t know how to pick a beat. They around some of the dopest producers and still don’t know how to pick a fucking beat. I think that’s like a natural gift that we got. Cause like coming in the game, when I was younger, I felt all the artists that I looke dup to produced they own shit, like EPMD, like G Rap, like Kane.  I thought that was the shit you HAD to do! So I was hands on with it early in the game. So thank God for that.

Planet Ill: Let’s stay on Guru for another question. When he passed last year, there was a lot of controversy about the guy Solar. He had everybody talking like “We gone get you!” and in the end nobody did a damn thing. Did they do a disservice to Guru by popping all that shit and not doing nothing? Or are things still going on?

Billy Banze: You know what? I don’t know much about that situation. I’ve never even met Solar but if somebody said that they’re going to do something and didn’t do it, maybe they was just talking at the time because they were upset that Guru passed. And I think that people felt for some reason, I’m not sure why, but that Solar was keeping Guru away from the people that helped him get in the position that he was in before his passing.

Think if somebody wanted to do something to him if they really felt like they were gonna do that then I’m sure something would have happened.  But I mean come on man it’s like you can’t fault Solar for anything. Maybe Guru had some personal issues with all of us or with the other people around that he just didn’t   want to be around people anymore; didn’t want to deal with people anymore. But hats off to Guru, man. Guru participated helping M.O.P. get to the position that we’re in, the whole Gangstarr Foundation.

Lil Fame: It’s not like Solar is walking around , bopping around and shit.  I know a lot of people that had feelings you know what I mean?  Don’t think that Solar is just skipping around and ain’t shit happen.

Planet Ill: How does M.O.P end up hooking up with the Snowgoons?

Lil Fame: Pretty much we used to run into the Snowgoons on the road a lot. Everywhere, when we travel out in Europe. The guy Chuck from Babygrande he  came up with the idea; he had Snowgoons already signe dot his label  and he was working out a situation with us and he thought it would be a dope idea that  we do some music together to try it out. So we tried it and it was working out so we ran with the idea.

Planet Ill: What is this album [Sparta] about? What is the flavor on this album and how does an entire album, with different production, change the mood of an M.O.P. album?

LilFame: Ain’t nothing change man. They got something a little extra with they production. I appreciate all the music on the album. It’s all Hip-Hop; it’s all raw shit. It’s just that these guys are European; that’s the only difference. What I know is that this album is a fucking banger they also got a fanbase. So it works two ways. Which is a good thing for both of us.

Billy Danze: They are incredible producers dog. They do what producers should do. A lot of producers want to have that producer sound where you can always recognize their work, but these guys, they do everything. And this is what a producer should do. A producer should be able to create different sounds because he’s working with different artists or different types of artists. They sent us about a hundred beats and the hardest thing about doing this record was picking ten tracks out of the 100 tracks because everything was dope on its own; in its own light.

Big shout out to the Snowgoons and like Fame said, this album is incredible; maybe the dopest project we ever…

Planet Ill: AYYYYE…. You’re saying a lot, man… I got all those classic M.O.P. joints. You’re saying it’s better than On the Front Line?  That’s a tough statement man…

Lil Fame: In my opinion, it ain’t taking nothing away from all the other work that we did

Planet Ill: I been there for a long time…

Lil Fame: It ain’t taking nothing away from the old stuff that we did, none of the classic Premo shit. This shit just got its own lane. And it’s crazy. It works for right now at the time; for what’s going on. It’s the perfect timing. Like any fucking beat; like I do beats, or if you do beats. I don’t give a fuck if James Brown’s nephew did the beat, if it’s funky I want to be on it And they had what I liked at the time. They had what we liked at the time. It was an honor to be a part of this album, for them to be on the album and to come with the music that they came with.

Billy Danze: [laughs] He said “Watch your mouth..” You’re saying a lot.

Lil Fame: At times, it’s what your ear demands, too at the time; what your ear needs. What you’re going through at a certain part of the day. At a certain part of the day, I can hear some shit that I love, that I been loving all week. And then I’m just not in the mood to hear that shit right now. So it really depends on the mood. Nowadays, it’s about image. So people they fucking make the music to fit they image. If they want to wear the skinny jeans, they make skinny jean music. They want to dress like characters, they make the character music. They can go blablabla on a hook and the whole world will be singing that shit and think it’s dope. It’s crazy nowadays ; it depends on what you believe in and how you’re feeling.

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