Hip-Hop Wired: After doing some research, I saw that some tracks from BOOM were two years old. What made you select from that pool of records, rather than create all new ones?
Kent: Well, we never stopped creating fresh material. We have a very close relationship with our producers. We see each other all the time and we’re working on music all the time. I think what took so long is the fact that we wanted our hard work to portray in what we receive — from not just our fans — but from people who can give us money to do what we do.
I don’t know if we were necessarily looking for a deal, but we were looking to be recognized in a bigger way before we dropped music. We didn’t want to just keep dropping free CDs and not be able to send our kids to college one day. It started getting more realistic for us.
We didn’t want to give out free music without a plan, a well-developed plan.
Hip-Hop Wired: Well, it looks like your plan worked, but you guys signed prior to you dropping BOOM. Did you give the powers that be an advanced listen?
Kent: We actually met with almost every label. We met with almost every label, and we only played them… probably a couple of songs. When we met with Bryan Leach and Peter [Edge] from RCA, it was just so organic; they got it. We damn near played them like at least 20 songs, and he got it.
It was just from that point on, we already knew we were probably going to roll with RCA, even though we had met with Epic, Tricky Steward; even though we had met with Joie Manda at Def Jam, we still knew at the end of the day we was always going to be with Brian Leach.
