Before the tape, I [finally introduced Screw to] Yungstar. Now I got Key-C, who’s 14, got Yungstar at 15. They were rapping back and forth in the kitchen like a New York City battle. It was magic. Haircut Joe had to say, “Stop! It’s time to make the tape.”
We do Side A. Side A is jamming. Then, we flip over to Side B. When we started the freestyle, we already had the beat planned.
As a matter of fact, a few days beforehand, we couldn’t find Screw. The day before June 27, Screw is like, “Hey, what’s going on?” It’s now a famous line on the Screw tape: Yungstar says, “Screw had a seizure.” [Screw] was telling us, “Man, I was in the hospital, I had a seizure…I gotta stop drinking so much.”
By the time we got to [Side B], it was like an out-of-body experience. Everybody knew, subconsciously, on the strength of that Dancing Candy tape—just hearing that one, with Big Moe singing—everybody knew [it was going to be big]. You could sense it. You see everybody looking in everybody’s eyes like, “You’re making a tape.” It was so hot in there. The energy from everybody—it was the most magical thing I’ve ever been involved with.
How was the mixtape initially received?
It takes about a week to get the tape back. We got it on July 4. We went to Screw’s house at like 10 in the morning to get the tape. We went to Big Moe’s house. Everybody got, like, 10 tapes because everybody knew to get enough. When we got to Surfside Beach, everybody had the tape. Everybody was jamming it already. I don’t know how everybody got it. I just know it was almost like…hearing your song on the radio for the first time.
You know the streets rule the music in hip-hop. If the streets ain’t saying it’s hot, it ain’t hot. But we had the tape for two hours, and every car we passing on the beach is jamming it.
