thaFormula.com - As someone who has never that huge mainstream success, how does it feel to still be so respected by fans and many of today's biggest artists?

Royce Da 5'9 - It feels good. That's one of the only driving forces that 

thaFormula.com - As someone who has never had that huge mainstream success, how does it feel to still be so respected by fans and many of today's biggest artists?

Royce Da 5'9 - It feels good. That's one of the only driving forces that are still there.  I guess it’s like that because the integrity has always been there.  My problem has really been just trying to get all the elements to connect at the same time.  You know like right record right time that type of thing.  So it's really just a fate type of situation and I think it's really just gonna happen when it's supposed to happen. But during the process to go and get your respect is not hard to do as long as the integrity is there so I live and die for that, so that's definitely one of the most important things that keeps me motivated and keeps me happy.

thaFormula.com - Does it surprise you though that some of the biggest artists out there will mention your name as people they respect and like?

Royce Da 5'9 -  It does surprise me sometimes even though I respect them just as much if not more.  You know what I learned man is that artists look at each other different from how the fans look at you.  You have to do so much more to impress the fans.  Artistically artists are listening to each other with totally different ears.  It's not all about being artistic to sell records.  You can sell records and not be that artistic.  So I think insiders as far as the industry get the first listen to a lot of cats before the fans do and get to pass their judgment from there so a lot of the guys that I looked up to like you know the Nas and the Puff's and people like that, it does surprise me that they respect me they way they do only because I of how much respect I got for them.  

thaFormula.com - Now I heard you on the “Sound The Alarm” remix with Black Milk, how did that come about and how do you feel about Black Milk?

Royce Da 5'9 - I think he's dope.  I spoke with his manager Hex who is a good friend of mine.  He asked me to do the remix and that was one of those situations where I just went ahead and did it real fast because he asked me. I don't personally know Black that well but I like his shit.

thaFormula.com - Do you plan on working with Milk a little more in the future?

Royce Da 5'9 - I don't know.  It could happen again.

thaFormula.com - Now in 1998 when you signed to Tommy Boy, did you have a certain image that you had in your head of what it would be like seeing that they had signed so many dope acts and was it completely different then you expected?

Royce Da 5'9 - Yeah, it's never the way you think it is.  There is no way you are gonna be 22 fresh out of rhyming at the open mics and then you jump into this huge situation with all this money everywhere.  It’s never what you think because you’re not even doing it for a reason at that moment.  First thing you think of is all the stuff you see in the videos with the cars and the bitches.  You think that it's all gonna just come so easy.  Don't know nothing about the politics until you encounter them.  So it looks great, they make it look real good, they make everything look good around you.  They court you, and they take you out.  So you only know that part of it and then you don't know about the other part until you actually experience it.  So it's never what you think it is at the beginning unless you got somebody above you that’s with you that's been through it before that will kind of guide you and tell you don't do that and you should do it this way.  Other then that, it's never what you expect. Nothing is though.  Nothing that you have never experienced before is what you think it is until you actually go through it.

thaFormula.com - So for you what was really the main thing at Tommy Boy that made you say I'm outta here?

Royce Da 5'9 - I was making records and we were having meetings and playing the records and it was kind of like the records was cool, the records is alright but long story short is they didn't know what to do with the record.  How to sell it or how to break it.  A lot of labels are like that.  Unless they got everything mapped out, they want you to do everything for them.  I'm just a kid, I can make records but I can't tell you all to sell them.  I had never sold any records in my life back then.  I've never had a record deal. All I know how to do is really write verses and throughout that process I started to learn how to write songs being around (Dr) Dre and cats like that.  So I think that when I was turning in records and it wasn't like Dre producing every song and Eminem and Snoop featured on every song which will sell itself, they didn't know what to do with it.  They didn't know how to market a Royce just standing on his own.  So it kind of turned into what that was.  I had like 5 Neptune’s beats.  Back then they were like “who are the Neptune’s?”  A lot of the shit was before its time.  The Neptune’s at that time had worked with Nore and they had the Mase record “Why You Over There Looking at Me.”  They had a buzz.

thaFormula.com - Mentally, how did leaving Tommy Boy affect you as a young 22-year-old kid especially since I know you had all these dreams and visions of how things would be at Tommy Boy?

Royce Da 5'9 - Well you want it to go right and work out and then when it didn't work out, I just had to tell myself, look I can't be bitter because I don’t wanna be there anymore.  I’m asking for a release from the label, I feel in order for me to move my career forward, I need to leave this label.  So it wasn't really no hard feelings.  I wanted to get off of the label because I wanted to put product out and I knew that they wouldn’t do it.  They just had me sitting and that's how the release came about and I started asking for the release.  

thaFormula.com - Now when you left Tommy Boy you started working with Game Recordings.  Who exactly was Game Recordings and how much did they help you with you career and you eventually signing a deal with Columbia?

Royce Da 5'9 - Game Recordings was the same as the Game Videos like the “Hip Hop Honeys” DVD's and they had a music division.  I was the first music artist to spearhead the whole thing.  They started out just doing singles.  I was gonna be the first artist to spearhead the company like to get it started in terms of it being and doing complete albums there.  So we took the company and we went to Columbia and we got the second deal which was Game/Columbia and it was gonna be the start of him doing whole albums.  So when my album got bootlegged real bad, they left Columbia and they decided not to do the rap shit no more.  So they just do the DVD's and promote parties in Vegas.

thaFormula.com - How was the deal with Columbia and did that end up being another situation similar to Tommy Boy?

Royce Da 5'9 - Columbia is like the “radio label.”  They are like a radio machine so I was forced to work within the parameter of the machine.  Not that I was compromising too much.  A lot of the stuff that I was doing uh, I had it in me to be the bright flashy crisp radio sound, I just think it threw a lot of people for a loop.  So it helped me and it hurt me.  It made a lot of the underground people look at me sideways.  I don't think I broke away from the underground and I don't think I took my time to do that.  I think it was kind of a quick transition and I think it kind of caught my core fans off guard.  I developed a lot of new fans, but what I have learned in the process form then and now is that the new fans, they will come and go and they won't judge me, but they will always be there.  But my core fans are the ones who's hearts are really in me.  Those are the ones that I can lose.  So now I feel like I need to focus on them.  I'll use 50 Cent for an example.  Like he hit the underground so hard, by the time he got his deal he had hit the underground so hard that he didn't have nowhere else to go but in the club.  He went everywhere else.  I had too much leeway.  I made like a big jump when I should have just went ahead and worked my way to that spot.  At Columbia I was kind of in a spot and this is just my opinion, but I think they wanted me to kind of pick up where Nas left off and they wanted me to jump right in that spot because me and him we are very similar as far as artist wise.  Nas is a Hip-Hop head, he just has commercial success and that's kind of like the same direction that I wanna go. I think that they were on to something when they wanted to sign me but I just don't think that everything got executed properly. I think things were moving fast.  One minute you’re not gonna go with the video, next minute we are gonna go with the video, next minute it's like “hold off on the release date” and then it gets bootlegged.  Like it was just a lot of like little small mistakes with the staff that was made that kind of fucked that project up, but I think it could have worked at Columbia though, I really do.

thaFormula.com - You got your shot at the mainstream right there.  Was your shot at the mainstream done the way you wanted creative control wise, or do you wish you could have had your shot the way you wanted it to be?

Royce Da 5'9 - I wish I could have done it they way I want to do it now.  Knowing what I know now, I wish I would have had that same opportunity because yeah, I had a lot of creative freedom.  That would have been my ideal situation for me now knowing what I know now.  Back then I was just kind of taking it a day at a time.  Again I didn't know exactly what to do in those situations.

thaFormula.com – Did watching D12 and Eminem blow up effect you mentally in a way that you felt you needed to be in that same position at that time?

Royce Da 5'9 - No not at all.  Eminem was a done deal.  I knew what was gonna happen with him from the first time I heard him and when he signed his deal with Dre. I knew where he was about to go.  It never was a competition with him and me.  Like with D12, I never looked at them like that either.  Like all of our competitive ways was outside of the booth and it started with them.  That competition started when I found out they were the competition because I never had any feelings about them.  So watching them blow up is a natural progression.  When you come under that umbrella and you’re secure there in that spot, your gonna blow up.  So I was happy for them.  It didn't affect me at all and it's hard to even pay somebody else that close attention when you are so busy trying to fix situations that went wrong in your own situation.  It's like a 24-hour thing.  I got to a point to where I wanted to stop asking Em to help me do stuff all the time because I felt like I was kind of bothering him.  Every second it was like I was calling him about the problems at my label and he had the power to call and fix them and I just didn't want to keep putting him in that position, so I kind of backed off. 

thaFormula.com - So when you left Columbia, were you fed up with majors at that point and was that the major reason for going to Koch and doing the independent thing?

Royce Da 5'9 - It wasn't so much that I was fed up.  I was at a point where it was like “okay why don't I give this a try.”  It's like “I tried this twice, If we keep trying this and it continues to not work, it's not gonna look good.  So why don't we go try the independent thing while we got time and if that doesn't work, we could always jump back on a major.”  So that's why I did the independent thing for a few years and now naturally I'm just gonna go jump back on a major.

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