Interview by Rory Webb

RPHH: When did you first start rapping?

I started listening to Cold Crush… Me and my cousin… Somewhere we got a Cold Crush record from like ’83, nobody had heard it. So, we took the record and put our names in it [laughs]. We used to be in school saying the rhymes. All the time the teachers would be like, “Say that rap again!” Til once, it was like the next year we were doing it, and some dude had moved down from New York… And he wanted to battle us. So we’re doing it and he started singing along with us, like “That’s Cold Crush! That’s Cold Crush!” That’s when I was in like the 7th grade [laughs]. So I started writing my own raps… And I would just write ‘em, but I wouldn’t pay ‘em no attention. Then I got that little drum machine, the Synsonics drums. We had the little Dr. Rhythm’s ‘n stuff. I would make beats and would be saying my raps to ‘em.

RPHH: Can you share some of your early experiences recording music.

I would have my beat machine, and my mic running through my DJ mixer, then I would record, and I would take that tape and put it in my Walkman, put another tape into the recorder, play the Walkman back and do the adlibs over that. It sounded completely hissy, but you could still hear what I was doing.

Eventually, we had three or four tape decks dubbing every tape. There were no multiple tape doubles. We’d have a master tape and box of blank tapes. Every label got written by hand. We’d take them to local music shops, Stedaford’s and Dorsey’s.

I used to make a limited amount, so that I could sit back and listen to people tell me “Man, I need another one of your tapes, somebody stole my tape.” I just wanted people to steal them from each other, cause I had nothing else to do [laughs]. When people bought a new tape they’d buy multiple copies. One for the house, one for the car… knowing that somebody’s gonna steal it. Yeah, you used to have to guard that Homewood tape with your life! If you were riding with somebody that was listening to it and you had to get out of the car for something you’d take the tape out with you.

Smash Money – “Pick It Up” Music Video circa 1992

RPHH: The first song I was put onto of yours was “21” … It’s one of the best storytelling songs/concepts I’ve ever heard.

That started as a ghostwriting track for somebody else. Walt D. asked me to write him a song, he said “I wanna make a song about some young nigga hustlin’, called ‘By the Time I Turn 21’.” So, I said ok, I’ll call you back. And I called him back an hour later with the song and the track done. I said it to him… I played the beat and had the phone to my ear. I had an [Akai] S950 at the time, it didn’t even have a sequencer. So, I got the drum loop and the two sample loops. I’m hitting it, and saying the rhyme with the phone at my ear, reading off the paper. And he was like, “You know what, I’ll never say the song like that. You oughta keep that.”

“21” was released in ’92 on the Thinking and Drinking tape, which also had “40 & A Blunt” with Infinite from F3/Ruff Chemistry. “21” was later released as a single on vinyl. I was doing the white label tapes and a guy came up to me and said he wanted to get involved and try to do some things. So, we came up with a plan… And I think for him the money wasn’t coming as fast as he thought it would. So we weren’t able to see the plan completely through fruition. We did the first pressing of 2,500. I did what I could do, I got some distribution through National Record Mart. But we didn’t get a chance to do it the way we needed to do it.

RPHH: Were you actively performing at local shows?

[Laughs] We used to do shows with lots of people. And if the show started at 7 o’ clock, we’d come in at 5 for the sound check and set stuff up on stage. If you went on before me… your beat machine and your keyboard left with me. There are many people whose music careers I ended. A couple of them thanked me for it cause they went on to do some bigger and better things. One dude I bumped into down in North Carolina, he said “Yo, I wanna thank you for stealing my beat machine. Cause that made me do this.”

RPHH: [Laughs] Any particular show stories you can talk with us about?

The Strip’s Edge, when we had the big fight. We did one Strip’s Edge show that went perfect. And that’s the one that Phunk Magazine threw. Beautiful show, it was nice. So, Nick [Nice] tried to repeat it. We did another one a couple weeks later and it turned into a big fight. I was drunk, got my back broke, it was crazy. It was us, F3, umm… here goes me and my Homewood shit again, I don’t remember anybody else that was on the show but the people from Homewood [laughs]. There were like four or five people on the show, and I think F3 performed and then we were going on. And then the Garfield dudes had set it up to come at a certain time, cause I remember performing, when I was doing “21,” I see a line of people come in wearing red. And then they just start fighting. I’m rapping and everybody’s fighting. And then when they finally shut the mic off I just jumped in the crowd and started fighting too. Drunk as hell [laughs]. I was walking around just grabbing people like, “Oh, I know you, you’re cool. I don’t know you, blaow!”

RPHH: From what I’ve heard, the gang-bangin’ was something of an epidemic during this time in the early-mid ‘90s.

From the inside it wasn’t nothing cause it was the people you grew up with, they just decided to start carrying guns and shooting people. It’s like… Your cousin is still your cousin, no matter what he’s doing. He could be eating people and that’s still your cousin. You’re gonna look at him differently than the people looking at him on the news. So it wasn’t like “Oh my God, they’re killing each other.” We didn’t look at it like that. You know them when they’re playing with their kids, or arguing with their girlfriend, or crying when their mom died… you know that side. Like, I listen back to a lot of the subject content we had… And I didn’t care about too much but drinkin’, fuckin’, makin’ music, and daring somebody to give me an excuse to shoot ‘em. That’s all I cared about when I was 22 [laughs].

Smash Money – “Da 3rd Song” Music Video circa 1993

RPHH: It was around ’93-’94 that signed the deal with Lifestyles, out in L.A. How’d that come together?

We were doing a show. Sam Sneed was on the show, down at Pitt at the Studio Union. He came over and was like, “Yeah, my boy Dre… I’m trying to bring you out there as soon as I get situated.” And he introduced me to Blak Cz[er]. And Blak Cz’ was working on his album at the time. And he was like, “Listen, MTV went through the whole album and they won’t play a video for nothin’ on my album, so I need another song. I want you to do it.” He called the label, they said “Cool, we can do it.” Me and Quiv (Emmai Alaquiva) worked on it together. Quiv did the drums and I did the music on that Blak Cz’ joint, “The Hood.” And then he had B-Dub, who rapped on the song with him. So, they did the video for it and everything. I took a production deal with [Lifestyles] so that I could get in, and then break my click in. I took a corny production deal. I took an ASR-10 keyboard and $20,000. I could’ve got more, but I just took anything so that I could get in and put my people on. I turned all of L.A. out on the ASR-10, a lot of cats didn’t even know what it was.

RPHH: How did traveling and working in other cities with their artists influence your music?

When I was first getting into the music during the ‘80s, the local cats had the greatest influence, cause we hadn’t seen the mainstream people before. So, for me to start, it was Stan the Man and K-Kel, period. Stan the Man, that’s Pittsburgh’s version of Grandmaster Caz. My hip-hop world began and ended with them two. And then when I went to the service and came back, I was really just looking for their respect in what I did. The city’s top DJ and promoter, Sly Jock, had a thing called the Pittsburgh All-Stars, where he would take dudes to Ohio ‘n stuff to do shows. Every Wednesday you were able to go audition. I wanted their acceptance to get into that, cause if you weren’t in that then you were just a nobody. So those are the people that I always wanted to get recognition from. I got a pioneer award from the Pittsburgh Hip-Hop Awards this year, and Stan is the one that pushed for it for me. Which was cool, cause that was the dude that made me want to do it. So for him to recognize and respect what I was doing was big for me.

More specifically in regard to travelling, it made me know that people like other shit. Like, if you never left Homewood you would think B.G. was Jay-Z. If you spent your whole life in Homewood then you go somewhere else people don’t even know who B.G. is. And it’s just those types of things… Musically, it definitely changed my music… In D.C. they don’t even listen to the real versions of the raps, the Go-Go bands will re-do the raps with the drums and all that stuff. Being out in L.A. with their stuff, like the Hieroglyphics movement and Planet Asia… You hear a lot of that, and it just all gets incorporated.

Once I started branching out more, I started learning more about how music was put together. I would listen to everybody, to either learn how to do something or learn how not to do it. I got a lot of stuff that nobody’s heard, that people just wouldn’t  understand, like they’d think I’m Kanye West or somebody [laughs].

In 2011, Smash Money was released from a six year prison bid. He has been producing new music and is expecting to unleash new recordings in the upcoming year. Prior to serving his bid, he produced and recorded “Draw the Line (Outta Here),”which is being presented for the first time on RepPittsburghHipHop.