An Interview with Viper.............................Hayward

aN interviwe with da man, da legend, da rapper.....VIPER by Cisco “da beez kneez” Haywire and David “where am i” DeMark

No Fidelity: I’ve noticed you have hundreds of thousands of albums on Spotify. How do you do it?

Viper: Man just hard work you know, working in the studio! I’m working on an album right now with a dude named Cali Cash Flow. He’s doing five and I’m doing five: we doing five together. And I’m working on an album right now, The Jaminiest Album You Ever Heard. I’m doing two versions of it, a regular version and a chopped and screwed version, so that’s two albums right there. All my music is original music, I just work hard. I’m blessed because I have my own studio at home, so it’s very cost effective for me. I can do 10 or 20 songs in one day. Because of the way that I rap, and I’ve got so much material. When I was in jail I wrote like 500 songs, man, lyrics for 500 hundred songs, and I dip into those when I am doing stuff. A lot of product, and you know I make my own beats, I can make a beat in ten minutes and flow on it in five, and then before you know it you got a song in fifteen minutes, and then I go to the next one. If I set a goal to get two albums in one day I’ll do it. If you got three hundred and sixty five days in year and I’m making two albums a day, all new material, it shows how I’m doing it.

NF: That’s…That’s intense as fuck.

V: I set the Guinness Book of World Records, for the most albums released by an artist in a year, 2013.

NF: Wait, is that documented?

V: It’s not documented, but, if anybody out there wanna get it written let ‘em know.

NF: You said that when you were in the pen, you wrote a lot of lyrics. So that’s obviously influenced your work, but are there any other life experiences that you draw on to craft your sound or lyrics?

V: My music is constantly changing. When I first started in the rap game in the mid 90s, I was a freshman in college. And basically, you know, I was a lot younger, and I was in a situation where I was just trying to figure everything out, as far as the industry. I was enrolled in business school as well as real estate school, and I had all these different things going on. So, if you look at my music then, you’ll see that it’s changed from now. Now I am a lot more financially stable. So I don’t wanna say that my music back then was erratic, that’s a strong term, but it was more all over the place. And I think that relates to a lot of the younger people. I think that a lot of the younger people can grab some of my older music and really relate to it. And they can relate to my new stuff, because it’s pertinent to what’s going on today. I address a lot of issues, that you see going on in the media, but I address it on a broad scale. No real specifics, I kind of just address it from my stand point and where I’m seeing things.

NF: You mentioned how you spent some time in college trying to figure out the music industry. What conclusions did you come to?

V: Well, I was very fortunate man. I came across a lot of luck. And in the industry, it takes a lot of persistence, and it takes a little luck too. You see these guys, with major labels with major deals, that’s like the handful out of the millions. The odds are extremely against you. It takes a constant work ethic. I was constantly just making music man, just all the time. Regardless of what I had going on, I would come to house and make a song. Come to the house and make a song. I tried to get at least one song a day. When I did that man, it kind of made it to where I was learning as I was going. I was fortunate because I learned Pro-Tools when I was real young. I played for my dad’s church, I was a pianist, an organist from age 7 to 17. I already had the playing ability to make music, but at the time in the early 2000s, there was not as much technology as there is now, so my music sounds a little different. Cuz back then, I was using a lot more keyboards, kind of had an R&B-ish swag. Now, it still has an R&B swag, but its going more to an R&B-Trap swag cuz I’m using fruity loops, and I’m using different things, a motif keyboard, bunch of different things. But it’s good to be a one-band-man so to speak, everything goes through me, I do my own tracks, I create my own tracks, I write my own lyrics, everything. Everything is Viper. So when you hear a Viper product, it’s good because you know that it was 100% me, and you know that there was no other outside influence, and you agree or not agree with what I’m saying based solely on me.

NF: What are you using now to produce? Have you been doing any sequencing inside FL or have you been configuring the Motif to drum things in via MIDI?

V: Basically, what I’ll do is, I’ll play a patch on the motif, you know, keyboard. Then I’ll slide in through MIDI, as a line, and then sync in the fruity loops, because fruity loops is good for the beat part of it, your hihats, your

kicks, your snares. I got a MIDI keyboard, but it has a limited amount of sounds unless you buy a bunch of patches. So I just use the Motif, because it has a variety of sounds. But I still try to keep my sound basic man. In certain situations I’ll give a full fledged R&B swag rap track something that will really touch the heart as far as the depth of the chords and music. It all depends on the message I wanna bring on the song. On some songs, I won’t do that, because the human ears can hear certain things. If the track is really really good, it’s gonna hear the track. If the lyrics are really really good, it’s gonna hear the lyrics, so depending on what I got going on for that particular idea, I balance those two.

NF: You mentioned earlier that there were gonna be two versions of your new album. Is that something you do often?

V: It’s a new concept. The chopped and screwed movement is really hot right now. I’m really tapping into that. A lot of people will download a chopped and screwed album just because it’s chopped and screwed and not even care about who the artist is. So when I heard that was happening with this particular genre, with these two albums I really wanted to make that available. And that’s the new one, The Jaminiest Album You Ever Heard, and then my new album that I’m dropping with Cali Cash Flow is called Haters Make you Famous. Those two albums, I’m working on right now. Actually, I’m gonna be shooting 15 videos for The Jaminiest Album You Ever Heard and five with Cali Cash Flow, for the five tracks on our album that we putting out. I’m really trying to make myself a household name now. I’m at the point where my royalties and the money I make from my other businesses are getting big enough to where I can make some substantial moves. It’s really just a matter of time, I really think my tipping point is gonna be the end of 2015 to the middle of 2016. I think that’s when you’ll start seeing me on MTV.

NF: Yeah, I saw that you had a little thing on MTV Artists! It’s got videos for some of your tracks. How did you get that?

V: I’m gonna post all my videos on there, all fifteen of them. Actually it’s 20. I’m gonna post all my videos there and on my Youtube channel, which is called “Rapper Viper.” I’m gonna try to get atleast one or two on WorldStar HipHop, but they’re really expensive. They are charging like 700 bucks to upload one video into their database for just that one day. It’s a decent investment because once your video is in the database, it’s in their search engine. But I’ve got an alternate website that I want everyone to know about, if you are an artist. It’s called “World Rap Star.” I’m trying to compete with WorldStar HipHop. The website is not fully functional. I’m gonna be letting artists upload their videos for under ten bucks at the beginning. And also I wanna put something out there. We never talked about YCDESC (You’ll Cowards Don’t Even Smoke Crack), that’s kind of the album that put me out in the limelight. The whole purpose of the album was really to show the gritty side of hip-hop and the gritty side of rap, and actually I respect the fact now that people are seeing me as an artist and not a drug user or anything like that, because the whole purpose of the song, if you listen to it, it was about addressing anything that you have that you may be afraid of. Growing up as a kid I vowed to myself that I would never be afraid of anything. It was really kind of a slap at the industry to say “a lot of rappers are scared to say certain things, and I’m gonna say it because I can.” But at the same time, I’m a musician. So of course, and a lot of people don’t know about this, we underground artists have probably done about every drug there is to do, so it’s not about doing drugs, it’s about sending a message: don’t be afraid of anything out there man, because if you are, it’s gonna make you a judgmental person. And sometime down your life, you gonna have to deal with whatever it is you afraid of. It’s best to deal with it while you are young and get through that, get past it, and move on in life, than to be afraid of it and not deal with it until later on in life when you late. You might not be mentally prepared to deal with it. Another reason I did that song was, when I was younger man, I was selling dope. That was part of my thing in college, to make extra money. And when we used to cook with my gang, the Five-Nine Boys, when we used to cook dope, we used to always check our batches you know, you’d have to take a blow of it. Because if you were selling some BS on the street to a customer they will rat you out quick. So you have to check your batch to make sure you sellin’ a good batch. And I just made the song because, letting the people know, you know, don’t be scared of it, you know what I’m saying? Do it and let it go. That’s why I never got a dope case. I always sell good dope. Good powder, good work, everything was always good. So I never got a dope case. All these other clowns out here, sitting in jail now, can’t get nothing, can’t get assistance, cuz assistance has been taken from them cuz they got a dope case. In Texas, once you get a dope case, you can’t get any kind of assistance from the government. So, you know, I still got all of my stuff man. Cuz I never caught a dope case, you feel me?

NF: I feel you.

V: I’m a college graduate, I’ve got a business degree from U of A, I’m a real estate agent, I’ve got a website called FreeMovers.com.

NF: I was about to ask you about that: how’s that going? That’s the website where I actually got your number.

V: Yeah. FreeMovers.com, that’s my baby man. I started that concept back in the late 90s, and I had one competitor here in Texas, but he never decided to take his company public. I’m taking mine public.

NF: You mean like, publically traded stock?

V: Publically traded, yes, I’m going on the pink sheets. I should be trading by late March or early June. The goal is just to get the concept out there. FreeMovers.com, basically what we do is we are a full service real estate company, I am a real estate broker licensed in Texas. Basicallly, whenever you move from one place to another, if you let us, your realty company, move you, we will give a free or discounted move as part of the service. And that’s why I am gonna kill ‘em across the board. Because when they see a house that says “Free Movers Realty” in front of it, they see they are saving 2000 dollars by letting us move them for free, instead of letting another realty do it, like Remax or Century 21 do it. That’s why I am going public, so I can really get it out there, nationwide, and do it like that. That’s my one company. I’ve got two other companies also. I’ve got a products company called “National Products Wholesome.” We deal all sorts of products, nationwide, to all sorts of entities, private and public. I also have the “National Services Corporation” where we deal in services across the board. So these three companies I’m taking public man, and the amount of money I’m gonna see from these businesses will dwarf this rap money. But I’m just doing everything to show that business is all combined man, it all works together.

NF: So once these three businesses get off the ground, how are you gonna balance that with making a song every day, and how have you balanced that in the past?

V: In the past it was pretty easy to make a song a day because it only takes me 15-20 minutes to make a song. And now, as a CEO, time is kind of opening up for me. Now, I’m getting royalty checks from rap money, nonstop every day while I sleep, I’m getting paid. Same thing with the real estate business. I got people that work for me, so I don’t have to do any of that. So really, I have more time to work on music than I did before. Now, when the point comes when I do go public, there’s gonna be some time, I gotta make some executive orders and discussions and meetings. That’s when the time will probably be a lot less. But I’m still gonna try to stick to that commitment, and depending on what I’m trying to do, the focus is still gonna be there for rap music, but I’ll just have more finances, to really put myself out there.

NF: Well, that quite frankly sounds awesome. Going back to YCDESC, why did you choose to use the word “You’ll” in the title?

V: “You’ll”…

NF: Cuz I think that one of the reasons that people passed that album around was because they were expecting it to be “Ya’ll cowards.” On the cover, though, you have it spelled “You’ll.” Was that an artistic choice?

V: Oh yeah, because the other “Ya’ll” would’ve been spelled with an “A.”

NF: Yeah.

V: Yeah that was an artistic choice, I’m glad you caught that, not too many people do. Yeah man, it was just an attempt to say, “I’m not really trying to talk to a group of people, I’m trying to talk to the individual,” you know? Even though they are collectively a part of that group, I’m really talking to the individual.

NF: I was looking through your discography, and I was listening to Cloudy Grinna, and the track “The Next Thang I New” sounds eerily similar to the track “Flawless” off another one of your albums from 2014, “Yo Main Luv Handcuffin Me.” Is that a remix? What’s up with that?

V: Yeah, I did some changes in the song, and the key is, I’m trying to get the listener to really listen to the different music because you are gonna get some songs that are similar but not identical. And so if you really listen to em, there’s gonna be something in the song that’s been changed. It’s gonna be something there that’s gonna flip your mind, you’re gonna be like “Oh Snap!” It’s kind of like reading the bible, man, every time you read it, you could’ve sworn that it said something totally different the last time you read it, and when you get back to the same part, it’s different. That’s how my music is. I’m making it to where it changes up. Every time you hear it, its gonna be something different.

NF: So have you been taking songs, tweaking them, and then releasing them on different albums all throughout your career?

V: For the most part it’s all new stuff. Every now and then, I’ll make a remix album, but for the most part its always new stuff.

NF: That’s a new decision that you’ve been making.

V: Yeah. Exactly.

NF: Did you ever expect to gain as much notoriety as you have, and what is it about your music that gave you that notoriety? Why do you think people wanna share Viper with their friends? Why do you think people like your music?

V: I think what they see is the grit and the hardcore-ness that has kind of been lost in the industry. The industry has become diluted in the sense that it’s not what it used to be. Don’t get me wrong, I listen to a lot of the younger guys, and really that’s most of what I listen to. But at the same time, as far as the market, I think people are still hungry for that one element that you miss, that’s not quite there. I don’t actually call anybody out by name, because a lot of artists that had that element are still around. At the same time, there are a few that I can’t compare myself to because some of them have passed away and I wouldn’t be able to fill those shoes. In the end, people like artists that can make their own music. The Dr. Dres, the Warren Gs, the Soulja Boys, people who actually make their own tracks. People like that. But then you take that same element, and you throw a shirtoff thug along in with that, and then you’re thinking: “well how can this guy do that, how does he have time to be able to do that?” So that’s what I’m trying to bring in the whole package. People are gonna be like, amazed, because people are gonna be like “Well he’s got a nice body, he’s doing all that other stuff, where does he have time to do all this?” But the main thing is: I wanna bring back that take-your-shirt-off / bandana / sweating / lifting weights, you know, Thug aspect, with chicks in the background, just gritty, you know, swag that’s gone. I’m bringing that back. That’s my goal, to bring that back. And right now, I don’t think the public is gonna see it till 2016 because right now the media is really tied up in that new sound; with that younger group of guys. It’s a wave right now of that. It’s a little bubble right now, just like the internet bubble. But that bubble is about to burst. It’s not gonna burst this year, it’s gonna burst probably the end of 2016, maybe 2017. But when that bubble bursts, that’s when there is gonna be thirst and a hunger for people like me. So that’s why I gotta just keep grinding and pushing my stuff and pushing and pushing until I can get on MTV, get on the radio, and then I’ll be seen. What I’ve been doing is just making sure I’m mentally ready. My time isn’t quite yet. Like I said, I really think it’s gonna be around 2016 or 2017. A lot of the younger guys right now, that wave, it’s runnin, and its runnin’ hot. But it’s gonna die out in about a year or two, and when it does, that’s when they gonna reach out for people like me.

NF: What do you have to say to all of the cowards who don’t even smoke crack?

V: [Laughs]. Man, this is my third interview in as many days, and that’s the question I knew was gonna come up, and so I’m prepared to answer. Well, half-way prepared. I got family members that have never touched the stuff. Me myself, my daddy’s a preacher, my mom is a retired school principal, so she never drank or did drugs, he never did drank, and back to my granddaddy, great granddaddy, they were all preachers, and my mother’s mother was like a saint, so they never drank or did drugs. So the whole thing about the drug-ism, or drug-addictism is that it’s not in my genes to be a drug addict. So I can try a drug and just do it, and then do it again and do it again, and its nothing to me, I can just drop it. Some people don’t do that. Some people, they try something, they gonna be really hooked, because hereditarily it’s in their blood, it’s in them to have addictive personalities. So, my suggestion is, if you are gonna do that type of drug, make sure that you can mentally and financially handle it. When I was doin it, it was just testing stuff, and every now and then, you know, I’ll do anything with my boys. If I’m with a chick, and you know, she smokes, hell, I’ll toot with it just to make her happy. But I don’t go out looking for stuff. It’s like that with any drug. I’ll blow a little bit of meth with my boys, or one of my homegirls because she has some, or a new chick I just met, but I don’t go out looking for it. Right now, I’m grinding. So whatever you doin’, in my opinion, if you gonna do crack, coke, whatever, just do it like a leisure thing as fun. Once a month, once every few months with friends, nothing that you going out looking for.

NF: That’s good advice. Certainly some of the folks at college could use that advice. See a lot of people headed down the wrong track.

V: Word.

NF: Thank you so much for the interview! That’s all the questions I have prepared. Any last words?

V: That’s about it. I wanna tell everybody my cell phone number is 281-690-9705, that’s my business number until I get a 1-800 number when we go public. Don’t call me on it, just text me. Fans are free to text me. Any album you see on the internet, you want it autographed, I can get it to you, just PayPal me $19 bucks. Imma send it to you autographed, package and everything. Check out my WorldRapStar, check out my FreeMovers.com. Like I said, I got that open door policy, 281-690-9705. Feel free to text me whenever you want. Any kind of problems anybody having with drugs or anything, feel free to send me a text. Imma send you some good advice. I had a lady the other day, she had a family member that passed away. I gave them some words and it kept them from doing something seriously bad to themselves. So anything or any way I can help the people out there, hit me up!