Greg Gates

WordofSouth.com: Go ahead and introduce yourself for the people.

Greg Gates: Alright, it’s your boy Greg Gates. 850 Fort Walton Beach, FL. I’m a writer for Down Magazine, Murder Dog, and The Source. I’m the head of Revolution DJ’s record pool, and I’m the CEO of “Greg Gates Music Conference.”

WordofSouth.com: How’d you get started writing for all those different publications?

Greg Gates: Man I have been writing my whole life. That’s the only thing I really know how to do really extremely well. I guess I’m just gifted. I’ve been doing this pretty much professionally, pretty much since I was sixteen years old.

WordofSouth.com: How’d you make the transition from writing to do conferences?

Greg Gates: Well, that was just something that I thought was needed. I never transition out of writing, I’m still a writer. I thought it was just a gap in my region, which is the Gulf Coast region, Panama City all the way to Houston, TX. I would go to all these other music conference and say, “Man we need one of these for our area,” because the Gulf Coast is really one of the strongest coasts of music. You Got New Orleans, you got H-Town, you got Pensacola, you got Mobile, you got all these little regions that are producing all this hot music. If you look at the history of hip hop, New Orleans and Houston, TX and pretty much the state of Florida have produced the majority of the music that’s come out from hip hop. Just look at the map and you’ll see. A lot of music coming out of Florida, a lot of music coming out of New Orleans, and a lot of music coming out of Texas.

WordofSouth.com: Tell me a little bit about you conferences, what’s to be expected?

Greg Gates: People can expect a lot more; I would say my conferences range from anywhere over 900 people to around 700, 800 people. A guy like TJ Chapman, he had 2,000 people only in one building, or a Tony Neal, he might get 500 people, but they’re spread around the building. I try to get everybody at one time and let them network. Let you touch and feel… Like I’m saying, I’m going to introduce the A&R. Some places, they might not even let you know that an A&R for Jive Records is in the building. They might not let you know that Jay-Z is in the balcony. I’m gonna let you know. That’s the reason I invited these people anyway. I want them to introduce themselves, because if somebody wouldn’t have gave me a chance, which it was a guy name “Black Dog,” you know he didn’t know me, he gave me a chance. He was like, “Yo send me your stuff, if I like it, we’ll use it.” And that’s what happened. If you don’t give people a chance, you don’t know what you’re missing. You might miss that next T-Pain, that next Rich Boy, that next anybody, Rick Ross, the next Young Jeezy. The way I met Young Jeezy was, I heard his mixtape “The Streets is Watching,” I got from one of my partners, his name is DJ Q, he introduced me to Young Jeezy and I was like, “Yo I gotta holla at this dude,” I gotta give him a chance to get his voice heard to the rest of these people. You know he was doing these interviews, you know he had something in the XXL but it was real small, it wasn’t that impactful. I gave Young Jeezy a chance and because of that, CTE still calls my house. They don’t call my cell phone, they call my house. If you look at the early days of CTE, every CTE artist that was signed at the time, I’ve done an interview with. And that’s because Jeezy showed me a lot of love too. I gave them an opportunity, I didn’t ask for no money or nothing, and that’s what I wanna do for all these other people that come to my conferences. You know some education first of all, and an opportunity to network, because I can tell you, “You need to grind, you need to do this all day,” but really a lot of people wanna know is, they wanna meet somebody who can take them to the next level. Particular, where I’m at the music industry isn’t as have as Miami, or Atlanta, or New York, Houston or Chicago. This is the only time they’re gonna be able to meet a major dj like, a Juggie, or a Michael London, to really network with these people because they don’t travel. It’s opportunity to network. Like a couple of guys have already got signed just for the fact from coming to my conference.

WordofSouth.com: Tell me about your record pool.

Greg Gates: Ok, Revolution DJ’s is a record pool I just started. It’s just really getting off the ground now. I kick it off at my last music conference which was in Mobile in September. And the reason I did that was because, I always see everybody with these record pools, but they really weren’t doing nothing with these others that were large and expensive and stuff like that. So, like I said before, I saw a gap from here in the Gulf Coast area, and guys needed an effective record pool with connection, so I decided to feel that gap, because it was always a need. So that was a big thing for me, to provide a need for my area, because my area is full of talented people. So I started Revolution DJ’s and the difference between my record pool is, the dj’s are the star of my pool, I’m not the star of my pool. I got guys like Juggie from New Orleans, DJ Colock that’s the “Panhandle mixtape King.” I got guys like, DJ Freaky, that’s out of Pensacola, who’s really a fixture in the Pensacola music scene. I got two, three out of H-Town, real heavy. DJ Princess Cut, out of Texas, you know she’s part of UGK Records. You know I just got a lot of people who weren’t getting a lot of shine, that I thought should. Guys like Michael London; he’s a veteran in the game. He started his own record pool, he’s apart of my pool now, he’s helping me build it up. Hot Girl Maximum, out of Montgomery. Like a lot of people can’t really appreciate these guys, so I’m helping them get their shine, help them build themselves, so people will wanna be apart of my record pool. You know some guys will say, “I don’t wanna be apart of his record pool, because I’m just gonna get pimped.” I’m not the star. You’re the star. You know I got guys like DJ Who, where who’s amazingly doing all these things, I think more people should know him, because he’s a dude who does things effectively and he’s out of New Orleans and Baton Rouge with all this great stuff and they’re like, “You need to holla at Who” and I’m like “YOU NEED TO HOLLA AT WHO!” “Well who is that, I’m from Baton Rouge and I don’t even know him.” Dog you need to know him because he’s a mover and shaker, but you don’t know him because he doesn’t brag about himself. I help him brag about himself. I can help them get into magazines, and I can help them get into outlets, and build their career and get with the right people. That’s what Revolution DJ’s is all about.

WordofSouth.com: Since you deal with a lot of independent artist, in the past 10 years what have you seen be the biggest change, whether it be good or bad?

Greg Gates: The biggest change honestly has been independents going back independent. For a while it was, you blow up and you sign to a major, and that was the thing. And they deal with the labels and the labels would screw them over and they wasn’t selling anymore records than before when they got with the labels. Now that’s not all the labels fault, you can’t just blame the labels. But now they got it like, “You know what? I don’t care about a label. I’m an independent and the labels will come to me and now we can start negotiating.” Like everything is going back independent. Like people don’t realize, you don’t need MTV like you used to. You don’t need BET like you used to. You got You Tube, you got My Space. The game is changing so much, you got I-Tunes, and you don’t the major distributors to get your product out if it’s in demand. People are really looking at it like I don’t need a major label. I can sell 100,000 ring tones, a million ring tones. That’s the new thing, ring tones is the new business. It’s no longer cats selling whole albums, its selling pieces of albums. They’re not buying whole albums, people are downloading, and they just want those one or two hot songs. You get a cat like Soulja Boy who I just did an interview with yesterday for Murder Dog, this dude is selling ring tones everywhere. And I ain’t just talking in America; I’m talking about Japan, UK, and Australia. This dude is 17 years old and he’s made more money than people that have been signed to Mr. Colli Park for years. You know ring tones, its people going back independent. Resources to make things happen. Cats don’t care about major labels anymore, they gonna make all this independent money. So, I don’t believe there will be another Cash Money deal, but somebody’s gonna make an impact, and the major labels are gonna give them a stupid amount of money.

WordofSouth.com: Would you say it’s easier now to make it independent even though it’s a lot more artist out than there was ten years ago?

Greg Gates: Absolutely, it’s easier and it’s harder. I know that sounds wishy washy but it’s easier to get your music out there. If you’re a real grinder, and you have good music, that’s not gonna be a problem. The cream is always gonna rise to the top. If you got quality music, it’s gonna get spread around. With cats, thinking just because they can rap and they’re thinking they’re up there with the top 10 rappers. Nine times out of ten, no, you’re not, you’re a below average rapper, with below average beats and you’re not really doing that great. You’re talking about the same stuff that everybody else is talking about, and you gotta think about that. The people that are in the music business, they listen to music all day. They are experts at what they do. Now a lot of them don’t understand street music, but they understand BDS and sound scan, but its cats that also know a hit when they hear it. The first thing I tell cats is, “Make a hit!” Then you won’t have to worry about all these other people, because when you have a hit, a hit separates you from everybody else. Everybody talking about, “Aaah man, everybody rapping now days, it’s so hard to get out there.” It’s not hard to get out there, it’s hard to make good music that everybody’s gonna listen to. THAT’S THE HARD PART! To have a hit. A hit eliminates all excuses. Look at Soulja Boy, he even admitted it. He said, “I’ll probably never top ‘Crank That Soulja Boy.’” That one song got him cartoon deals, movie deals, television deals, clothing deals off that one song. So anybody else has no excuses. Now it’s harder now that everybody realizes, “Yo, I’m competing against everybody else.” So the level of the music goes up, so basically it’s a good thing. Because basically what the labels would do was, find somebody with a good decent look, look at Kriss Kross. Jermaine Dupri found them, styled them, wrote their music, put their stuff out there and there was no other group out like that at them time except for I think ABC. So he put a little bit of money behind them and boom! They blow up. The record label starting doing it, they started putting more and more up and they said, “Hey we can sell this product, all we have to do is package it.” So the situation now is going back to great music. At first you didn’t have a whole lot of options, because the record labels controlled who got in the front of the stores. People don’t realize that. Yo they pay they record labels every unit to put their shit up front. This is a multi-million dollar business. When you see those videos on MTV, somebody’s paying for that. Jay-Z’s on the cover of XXL, they don’t realize that there’s ten Def Jam ads in that same XXL. At ten’s of thousands of dollars a pop. If XXL is selling those ads at $20,000 a pop, that’s $200,000. Now they probably got a deal so it’s probably less than that, they’re probably buying ads every single issue, so they probably got em at $15,000, $10,000 a pop. But see what I’m saying, multi-million dollar business. So yeah, it makes it harder because everybody’s out there, but there’s more opportunity to take your listeners away with quality stuff. It’s a more competitive market, but it’s more competitive for some body hot coming out.

WordofSouth.com: Going off of what you said about the cover page, not knocking any publication, but I know a lot of interviews are bought through advertisement, what does it take to actually get the recognition without buying ads?

Greg Gates: Hustle and grind, and quality music. First of all, it’s about the music. Don’t ever let anybody say, “You can buy your way…” I know a couple of cats, and I’m not going to mention any names, but they got more money, they sleep in piles of money and they can’t make a hit, they can’t do the things they wanna be able to do. If you have hot music, it’s gonna get to a writer, it’s gonna get to a DJ. And if they like it enough, it’s gonna get passed along. See people get fooled into thinking that, “Aah man the only way you can get in a magazine, and is you buy your way.” That’s not true, that’s bullshit. Nine times out of ten, a lot of the bigger publications, you can’t buy your way. So you gotta think about it too, especially for the little guys anyway. If you have enough hustle and grind where people are becoming aware of your product, your music, if your music is “good,” emphasis on the word “GOOD!” Not even good, music now days has to be GREAT! Great songs, hits! And you get it out to the masses, that means handing out cd’s, sending out mp3’s, posting it on WordofSouth.com, networking, and grinding for real and not just, “Oh I’m gonna give out a 100 cd’s and give it to my homeboys in the hood” and that’s it. No you gotta get out there, and once your music gets out there, they’re gonna come to you. WordofSouth.com is gonna come to you. Down Magazine is gonna come to you. Murder Dog is gonna come to you. I came to Young Jeezy off the quality of his beats. I had heard his stuff before and I didn’t like his early stuff. The stuff I had heard before, I had thought he had sounded like T.I. Then I turned around, and on The Streets is Watching,” that was it, I was a Young Jeezy fan ever since.

WordofSouth.com: Some artist speak down on artist because of a bad review other nature, how do you keep such good relationship with so many artist?

Greg Gates: I’m honest with them first of all. If I don’t like it, I’m gonna tell you I don’t like it. And cats be fooling themselves thinking that they’re music is hot, and they know it’s not. THEY KNOW! You know in your heart, nine times out of ten, your shit is wack! Or it’s just good, it’s just decent, it’s okay. It’s okay. You know that, but you still wanna bring to somebody, who’s job it is to listen to music, and critique it. So I just keep it real, and I tell them straight up, “I’m gonna listen to your music, and if I really think it’s that hot, I’m gonna call you back.” Ask me how many people get phone calls back from me. I tell them all the time “Hey, keep sending music, if you serious about the music business.” Half the people in the music business, especially young cats, they full of shit. They don’t care. They see these rappers on TV and say, “I’m gonna do it like them, and I’m gonna do it in six months.” Man I been in the music business hard in the music business since 2002. Like real hard. And I keep good relationships because I’m honest. I’m a stand up dude. If I tell you I’m gonna do something, even if it cost me money, I’m gonna do it. I’m not gonna lie to you, I don’t have to. Why? Why? The reason so many people are dirty in the music business and they don’t like journalist, is because they make a whole bunch of promises that they can’t keep, and they try to knock every cat they meet all in the head for money for something they really can’t do and provide. Now I can’t knock nobody that says, “Hey, if you wanna get your paper work together, it’s gonna cost you $200.” But when you telling somebody else it’s gonna cost you $4,000 to do X,Y,Z, and then you go talk to somebody else, and they say “Aah man, that shit cost that much?” What you think they gonna do? They gonna get mad at you. I’m straight up and I’m forward and honest with them. I tell them, “This is what you gotta do, X, Y, Z” for this to happen. This how it operates. Most of these industry cats, they’re not street cats. They’re college educated. So you cannot come to them as you would somebody in the streets. I just so happen to be from the streets. I’m from the hood; I’m from Fort Walton Beach. I’m from a small town, they got two hoods, people got shot, sell dope, all that stuff. I experienced, I just rose above it. These industry dudes, they’re not built like that. They’re like, “Yo, do whatever you gotta do to get your money.” This is how they make their living, just like how cats make they living in the streets. You start messing around with them cats in the streets, and mess with they money, they gonna pop you. A lot of these artist and CEO’s is victims. Like, “Yo, I’m here to get everything I can get out of you, and use everything to my benefit.” I keep a good relationship with people because I’m honest. It’s not hard, I don’t make my living off this rap stuff, so I don’t have to mess you over to get money. Therefore, I don’t have to be a shady mother fucker. A lot of people are, I know people like that. I don’t do business like that. They’ll say, “Ahh man you do this, and you throw a couple stacks on it, get your money too…” Naw man, I don’t do that. You deal with them. “Oh aight Gates!” That’s it. People call me all the time and ask can I hook them up with such and such. If I deal with you, yeah! I’m gonna vouch for you. My word is good, you ain’t never heard nobody say Greg Gates messed them over. If they say that, they’re lying and they won’t say it to my face. 

WordofSouth.com: When you’re doing an album review, what’s something that you look for that stands out to you?

Greg Gates: First of all, how original are the concepts of the songs. I’m a big concept person. I don’t wanna hear about you selling drugs on a whole album. The quality of the music, not just how good the songs are, but the recording part. What type of equipment did you use, is it something I can pop in my stereo and the quality is there? Also, how good are the songs? Are you doing something or saying something that nobody else is doing? Okay, then last but not least, and I know some people may not like that I say this but, how did you put your package together? Because a lot of times this is how people kill themselves, but image is everything in this business. If you give me a CD on a sharpie, I’m going to listen to it, but it’s probably gonna be one of the last CD’s I’m gonna listen to because you didn’t put enough money, enough time and enough love into your craft that you wanna disrespect it to put it on a blank cd with a sharpie and write Jason’s Beats on that mother fucker. And this is real, like DJ Drama, he said it himself, he said, “I’m more likely to listen to somebody who’s put some money into their product, showing me that they’re taking pride in their product versus somebody who’s just disrespecting it.” You think a guy who makes a million dollars a year pushing music is gonna sit there and gonna be like, “Yeah this cat’s gotta have something, he’s got a cd with a sharpie on it, like I don’t get five billion of them already.” You know people don’t realize it, this is really a business. And the people don’t realize that the people who make all the big money are the ones that are not wearing all the big jewelry and not going around flashing their money with a whole entourage, it’s the corny looking dude who’s got on a t-shirt and tennis shoes with his blue jeans and is always playing around with his palm pilot or his black berry and really ain’t talking to nobody and you give him a cd and he look at it and goes, “I don’t wanna hear this shit.” It don’t even give him an incentive to look at it. That’s not really attracting me to the product.

WordofSouth.com: Another thing some artist don’t understand is that besides from having good music, it’s how they present themselves, for example doing interviews. They don’t know how to do interviews being themselves, and I don’t mean saying what the people want to hear, but being themselves and being honest and selling themselves as a product. 

Greg Gates: Artist don’t get any media coaching, artist need to be prepared. People care about the music, but once they’ve heard the music, they care about the artists’ life. When I interviewed Webbie, he gave me one or two word answers, and I was like “What the hell is wrong with this nigga?” Then I realized, I wasn’t asking the right questions, so when I would ask him street shit, like the rumors about him and Boosie beefing, he came out of his shell. So me being a veteran journalist, I picked up on the fact that, nobody has coached Webbie. Like you can’t be script and just say, “Oh this record got some bangers on it.” Why are they bangers? As an artist you gotta be able to sell the product. Not just as audio, but through your personality. Like people are buying into a lifestyle. That’s why some people will be like, “Aah man he sucks,” So then he’ll put the chains on and the rims on and that’s cause the record company will tell them to do that so the kids will really believe that you really doing it so you can sell some records, and these niggas fall for it. That’s why all these rappers are wearing these chains, and driving these cars that they really don’t own and telling you that they’re doing these things that they really don’t do. And that’s why I know a whole bunch of broke rappers with record deals. You don’t have to be rich. A lot of people will say, “Yo man I grew up dirt poor, I grew up in the hood, I signed a deal, but I ain’t rich.” There was so many people that clowned Nelly for a long time, until he really got his bread. Nelly said, “I ain’t rich, but I can help my Momma pay some bills.” He wasn’t lying about it, but he was telling the truth. Then people were like, “Okay, Nelly is being real about it. He ain’t gotta front on you.” Like Dipset for a long time, they wouldn’t let anything make them look stupid. You know what I’m saying, you gotta remember you selling a product and a brand, so when you coming out there you gotta remember, you gotta really be a spokesman about your album. I hear artist say, “Oh my album is the greatest album ever, and it’s a straight classic.” No, you ain’t gotta do all that because journalist have heard that before. Don’t tell people your album is a classic and it’s the hardest thing to come out since “Reasonable Doubt” and “All Eyez On Me.”And Ready To Die.” We’ve heard that before, four million times and it’s not true. T-Pain did the same thing; he did the same thing that Webbie did one time. T-Pain would give real quick interviews, T-Pain was a real weird interview to begin with, and I knew T-Pain before he blew up, and the way T-Pain is now, is the way T-Pain really is in real life. What you see there is not an image that is T-Pain. He was crazy then, and he’s crazy now. He’s real creative, he’s like a Prince or an R. Kelly, I’m pretty sure behind closed doors he’s a little bit more calmer, but…he’s himself. And I was wondering what was wrong with him. I thought I was gonna get this great interview with him, at first he was giving little one or two word answers, but then started hitting the right buttons, that’s when he started opening up. Like I would ask him about his situation with certain executives and about him getting signed. At first T-Pain didn’t realize, you’re ruining your interview, you’re ruining yourself. I’d recommend the artist, to think about the questions that you think they’re gonna ask. Worst comes to worst, find somebody in your camp to come up with a list a questions and ask me, then we’ll go over them and see how I messed up on them and see what I did good on. You’re an entertainer now, you’re not just a rapper, and you’re an entertainer.

WordofSouth.com: You hear a lot of gripe from a lot of East coast artist complaining about how all these artist are getting signed from the South and how we’re messing up the market. But the way I’m looking at it is, the major labels are right in you’re back yard. We’re way down here. The other thing is, I don’t see as many independent East coast artist as Southern artist. Why do you think that is?

Greg Gates: We have a bigger support. We’re more supportive, we have a bigger base of people to draw from. Like in New York, on the East coast, it’s one of the things where their market is so cut throat. Look at their attitudes; you know what I’m saying. They like “We the top dog.” So when you got a million rappers like, “I’m the top dog,” they’re not gonna buy your music, because they think they can rap better than you. Their market is so cut throat as where in the South, we’re like “We’ll support everything.” They did support us in the beginning so we had to make or own movement. We’re more likely to unify. The South will support most of the time, not all the time, because believe me cats from the South will hate on each other more than cats from up North will hate on us. But it’s has the independent spirit of being marginalized in the industry. If you really look at it, we still are marginalized with in the industry. Name five major top hip hop executives that are from the South. You can’t, but name the top three hip hop moguls in the Forbes. Jay-Z, 50 Cent, P.Diddy. How easy is that? So how much control does the South really have over the music business? We are strong in the independent game, but New York still rules the nation. Until we get control of the majors, it’s not as big as we think it is. So to go back to your question, is because we support each other a little bit more, and we don’t have control over the majors. Point blank. So if you got cats from New York who don’t like Lil Jon, Lil Jon is gonna make this independent money.

WordofSouth.com: Was there anything else you wanna say to wrap it up right quick?

Greg Gates: www.gatesconference.com

WordofSouth.com: And when’s the next conference?

Greg Gates: It will be March 22nd, in Fort Walton Beach, FL. It’s going down in a major way, we gonna get bigger and better at every one of them. This is for the people. At the last one we had three A&R’s from three major record labels. We had AllHipHop.com We had tons of DJ’s, Maximum, Chuck T, Michael London, we had 93WBLX which is the major urban radio station there. It was a lot, it goes down. I bring em to these smaller cities that aren’t as big as the major cities and I bring em under one roof and give the Gulf coast the opportunity to come to our conferences, because that’s all they really want is a chance to be heard.

WordofSouth.com: Well I appreciate your time man.

Greg Gates: And I appreciate you listening to all that long ass shit.

– INTERVIEW BY: KJ Armour