The New Year represents new beginnings and after a successful run as a member of The Team, Clyde Carson is pursuing his career as a solo artist. Clyde recently signed a major deal with Capitol/Black Wall Street records and is placing the final touches on his upcoming album Theatre Music. Its been a long hard grind to get to this boiling point but all the sacrifice is starting to pay benefit for the once Team player. The obviously enthused Carson was all smiles when he met with STASH on a gorgeous Saturday afternoon in San Jose to “chop-suey.”

Ev: You just clocked a major deal with Capitol/Black Wall Street records with Moe Doe still in the mix. Explain how all that works. Clyde: Nothing’s changed, we just did a joint venture with The Game. But this how it went, my producer BedRock went down to L.A. to shop some beats to this kid named Earl Hayes who got a deal with Interscope. BedRock was tryna take it to the next level and get some major work going. While he was down there, some of his beats actually had my songs on them, previous songs that were on the Team album like “Summer Time In the Town”, as well as other production I have for my new album. Well he forgot the beat CD in Earl’s car, which I would usually be furious about, but it just so happened that Earl heard the shit and was like “I can get this nigga a deal.” I was out there doing the Soul Train shit with Goapele, so I called him up. Earl was like “I want to get you a deal”, and all this stems from E-40 and “Tell Me When To Go”, cause at the time it had just dropped and everybody trying to figure out what the was going on with this Hyphy Movement. I was talking to both Capitol and Atlantic but Wendy Goldstein, the executive vice president of the urban department up at Capitol, was interested to another level like, “I want to sign you.” Wendy wanted me to do something with The Game or Jazzy Pha because they both had production deals at Capitol. I wasn’t trippin’, we just wanted the deal cause we knew that once we get in the door, it’s over. So she let The Game and the other folks at Black Wall Street hear my music, which started the frenzy to sign me. Once Black Wall Street got in the picture they proposed that we do a joint venture, Black Wall Street/Moe Doe. We were in the Capitol building already, but Black Wall Street basically made the push to make it happen. But it’s still Moe Doe, nothing’s changed.

Now you just got them backing you. Yeah it was an important move for me. I knew some people who would be sour while others would understand. When I say sour I just mean in the Bay, cause it’s so Bay’d out that you don’t want nobody else around you. It feels personal like he’s ours, we don’t want him to be with nobody else. But for me it was a smart move because Game is the biggest artist on the West Coast and it unifies the West. I still represent Oakland to the fullest, I don’t talk, dress or act like I’m from anywhere else.

So Capitol is providing all the funds? Yeah I signed a major deal as an artist to Capitol, not a label deal. It’s a joint venture with Black Wall Street and Moe Doe but the initial deal was with Capitol Records, that’s the major, that’s who cuts the checks. I didn’t want to be in the Bay Area ten years from now saying I was dope but be bitter that I never took it further. There has never been a multi-platinum artist that represented the Bay Area and Oakland on a national level the way it needs to be. Hammer went diamond and shouted Oakland but he didn’t represent what Oakland was about. My whole goal is to make music on a national level, where you can go to New York and they be like “Clyde is hot.” I lived out there, I know how they think of us.

Where’d you live in New York? I stayed in Edgewater, Brooklyn, Queens, if there was a couch in Harlem I was at that motha fucka. I was in New York for a year and a half.

Where are you originally form? Oakland. Stayed in Berkeley and Richmond and lived in Vallejo, but I’m from the town.

Brief us on how you got started. When I got out of High School I was gonna try and do my hoops thing but I didn’t feel that I would have been as big in basketball as I would be in music. So I stopped hoopin’ and started rappin’ at 18 with Mayne Mannish.

Where did you meet Mayne? In Berkeley, we used to go to school together and met in seventh grade. I always bounced from city to city but wherever I was we always stayed in contact and we was always cool. We put together my debut album in 99’, which was my first raps, so I’m on there rappin’ way different, it wasn’t me.

You still had to find your style. Yeah, you got to find yourself. When you first start rappin’ you don’t really know. I had a clue, that’s all I had. But I was just putting words together, even if the whole sentence didn’t make sense, I was just rhyming. That was my demo to Hip-Hop. How did you connect with Kaz Kyzah and form the Team? Mayne’s half-brother is Jungle who introduced us to Kyzah, who is his cousin. Kyzah was in the pen and when he got out, that’s when I met him. We hooked up with Kaz and seen he could spit, kicked it one day, and from then on we was always together. We just clicked. For a good minute we would be everywhere hustlin’ the Clyde Carson demo CD’s. After that faded out we felt we need to do something else, so I was like fuck that, I want to go to New York. We wasn’t doing shit but drinking gallons of cheap ass Bacardi everyday and I needed to get the fuck out of Oakland. So I go out to New York to get away and try to get a deal, but throughout my stay I’m constantly on the phone with Kaz and Mayne. I was meeting all types of industry people and soaking the energy cause at the time the East Coast was on fire. You start seeing and learning a lot of shit because it moves a lot faster out there. Long story short I never got a deal so I moved back to Oakland, which is when we formed The Team and decided to do an album titled, Beyond The Glory.

How big was that for you? That was our life. We sold around 24,000 copies, all hand-to-hand. We knew we had something good when people started recognizing who we was. Around that time Kaz and I did the song “Everybody In The Club” and when we finished I was like ‘this shit is crazy.’ So we took it up to Big Von and he played that shit like five times the first day.

What was the next move? From there it was a decision of do I do my solo album or a Team album? I felt like I can do my solo album but I want to do the Team right now. So we did The Negro League album and that shit popped off. We had the single “It’s Getting Hot”, which changed the sound cause everybody was yelling and we started whispering. That record basically leads up to how we got the deal. Why did you decide to go solo? After the second album it got to the point where the group wasn’t like when we first started, everybody was going they separate ways. When we was selling CD’s out the trunk we was together everyday and if he had five dollars I had five dollars. It was like a family, but niggas grow up. We was 21-22 at the time, you can do that, but when niggas start getting 24-25 my money is my money and yours is yours. We still folks, it’s just I’m doin’ my thing, you doin’ yours. When I was going for the majors I felt it was time that niggas start focusing on they careers, ‘cause we not really making records like that. The Team album consists of my solo album and Kaz’s solo album. We just threw verses on each other’s songs and created the album. So I decided it was time to go solo.

Talk about your upcoming solo album Theatre Music. I just gave you my history on music, so now that whole shit is going to bleed into Theatre Music. I got tracks with Krayzie Bone and Wyclef Jean that are crazy. One of my favorite joints titled “If I Was A Pimp”, features Too $hort and The Jacka. I wanted to challenge music, with this album you’re getting 100 percent me. I listen to all types of genres of music, so the album is rock, it’s reggae, it’s classical, it’s Hip-Hop, but nothing’s going to throw you off cause its all in the same element of music. It’s universal music.

Lastly, I’ve heard opposite stories of where Hyphy Juice stands from a business perspective. One that it’s prospering while on the other hand it went bankrupt. What’s the truth? Naw we did 12 million last year, we not playing.

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Comments

MrFrost says:

I like Clyde Carson.. he did a song with Game & Ya Boy on the "Black Wallstreet Vol.1" mixtape called "We Out Here".... it's a banger.

I really wanna see someone from Oakland make it to the big stage again

Posted 8 months ago | Delete

bagelradio says:

That's one long-ass post.  Dude!

Posted 3 months ago | Delete