Money in My Pocket
Ludacris on Anger Management & comin' up in the Dirty South.
2002-08-07
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Possibly the most anticipated tour of summer 2002 is the Anger Management Tour.
Featuring the emotionally frustrated, financially stable strains of new-school
rock bands like Papa Roach and mainstream rap acts like Eminem, this traveling
psychotherapy session for suburban youth has one main goal, according to performer
Ludacris.
"We vent on stage, that's [why] we call it the Anger Management tour - because we feel like music is about emotion. So when we get up there it's almost like the equivalent of somebody talking their problems out with their best friend, only we doin' it in front of thousands of fans. So you know, we can get angry, definitely," assures the Atlanta-based wordsmith from the Def Jam South office it Atlanta. Ludacris maintains that, even though his music isn't too frustrated thematically, he has problems like everyone else. "It could be all your frustrations during the day - personal issues like things with your friends, the staff, everything and nothing in particular. There are just certain situations where you just want to get out there and get it out because that's how you do it."
Unlike his Anger Management cohorts, Ludacris is known for rhymes that have more to do with sex and partying than broken homes and estranged parents, and he admits that his style is little more lighthearted. His recent Word of Mouf album is a runaway hit - a well produced, bouncy collection of assertive party jams peppered with a few hard-edged tracks and even one or two more soulful cuts that solidified Ludacris' standing as a Billboard Top 10 charter. His general vibe is just more fun than some of the bands he's sharing the Anger Management stage with.
"I always like having fun, but I think everybody expresses themselves in different ways," he says. "For the most part, I like to have to have fun so the personality that you hear on my album is one of those where we're just partying. It's the same when we get on stage. We're just doin' our thing, there's a lot of energy and we're just lettin' it out. As for everybody else on the tour, well you know, it's different depending on their type of music."
There is a wide breadth of the music spectrum represented on this year's Anger Management Tour. Aside from Ludacris representin' the Dirty South, Detroit's golden superhero Eminem, Nor Cal angst rockers Papa Roach, bi-coastal rapper Xzibit and turntable pioneers the X-ecutioners all take the stage to do their respective thing.
"It is a wide range, and it just goes to show how music is changing each and every day, and how all the genres of music are influencing one another, and I think that's good," states Ludacris, making an interesting point about the way music in the new millennium crosses genre lines more than ever before, and fans seem to open that kind of thing. "If you look at all the major tours out there right now, it's rock and rap and all different other kinds of music mixed in, so you have different audiences. If some people don't usually listen to other acts, then they're forced to listen to 'em, and most of the time they come out liking it. So it makes people more open to more kinds of music than the one or two they're usually listening to."
Ludacris has had plenty of experience when it comes to dealing with music fans and what they want. As a fledgling MC in Atlanta, he landed a job at the Hot 97 radio station, where he worked under the name Chris Luva. But Ludacris was an MC first and foremost - in fact, his tenure at the radio station was a bit of an accident - and because of his work at Hot 97, he was noticed by big players in the hip-hop game.
"I was always MCing, but going up to that station was just me trying to getting a demo played, and accidentally ending up on the radio," he explains. "Me on the radio was just me being me, putting my personality out over the airwaves because I was a young person and the audience for radio station was young. But I stuck to the script of what I was doing, and I just kept rappin'. Being on that station really helped me out because that's when a mass audience heard me rappin and that's when I started getting' little breaks, like Jermain Dupri and Timbaland hearing me and putting me on their albums. From there, I started building a resume for myself and started puttin' money in my pocket."
The job at Hot 97 might have started as simply a means to and end, but Ludacris says it really was a good environment to get started in. As a radio DJ, he was exposed to a lot of aspects of the business side of the rap game, and he learned a lot about how things work in the boardroom.
"It taught me everything I know," says Ludacris emphatically about his music industry education. "When I was up there, not only did I become friends with a lot of artists but I started realizing that a lot of 'em weren't happy. It made me want to step back and be a little more patient, start readin' up and - because your first shot might be your last - makin' sure that my contracts and business and everything like that was perfect. It taught me a lot being up at the radio station for sure."
As the sound of the "Dirty South" exploded on MTV and urban radio all over the nation, Ludacris - along with other Southern artists like Outkast, Goodie Mob and producer / rapper Jermain Dupri - became one of the movement's main voices. Hit songs like the Neptunes-produced "Southern Hospitality," the Timbaland-produced "Phat Rabbit" and "Roll Out (My Business)," a collaboration with Nate Dogg called "Area Codes" and "Saturday (Oooh Oooh!)" landed Ludacris in the Southern spotlight. Though many of his jams are about sex ("I like sex, what can I say? I talk about what I know."), and despite the fact that a lot of the Southern hip-hoppers run in the same circles, Ludacris says there isn't necessarily one thing that signifies the Dirty South sound.
"There is no way to really stereotype music from the South, but for the most part, we like bass-driven music, 'cause we like ridin' around in our cars, and we have, like, 15-inch speakers in the trunk and a lot of brothers like riding so they like real bass-y, aggressive music, you know? Real mean. There's a lot of live instrumentation when it comes to Southern music also. Some might classify it as bounce because of the tempo, but there's really no way to just put a finger on it. It's attitude," says the 25-year-old Ludacris, who adds that the attitude he speaks of rarely gets in the way of how tight that whole scene really is. "Man, everybody down with Southern Hospitality got love for one another, you know what I mean? We know there's enough money for everybody so we're just trying to bring our city up, bring our hometown to the world and let 'em know what goes down here."
Accordingly, the Atlanta rap music poster-boy is willing to use pretty much any means necessary to get his hometown and his name out there. Recently, Ludacris began stepping away from the mic periodically to assume the role of actor, first with a bit part in the Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg film The Wash. Though that was only a 30-second appearance, Ludacris is preparing to dig into the medium a little deeper and will be starring in the forthcoming Radio as a radio DJ embroiled in girl trouble, and in Skip Day, a hip-hop flavored buddy comedy about high school seniors that is still in the development stages. For Ludacris, film just seemed like a logical move.
"Being in front of the camera so much, doing videos and things like that, I might as well get my feet wet and see how it goes down, because if I'm gonna do something, I'm gonna put 100 percent behind all the time. So with this acting thing, I'm just trying to get my craft perfected before I jump up on the screen," says Ludacris, who seems to step carefully and thoughtfully, no matter the direction. "All of this about practice-makes-prefect, and bringin' up other talent I know who are hungry, who really wanna get put on and really wanna work for it, man, because that's what this is all about."
"We vent on stage, that's [why] we call it the Anger Management tour - because we feel like music is about emotion. So when we get up there it's almost like the equivalent of somebody talking their problems out with their best friend, only we doin' it in front of thousands of fans. So you know, we can get angry, definitely," assures the Atlanta-based wordsmith from the Def Jam South office it Atlanta. Ludacris maintains that, even though his music isn't too frustrated thematically, he has problems like everyone else. "It could be all your frustrations during the day - personal issues like things with your friends, the staff, everything and nothing in particular. There are just certain situations where you just want to get out there and get it out because that's how you do it."
Unlike his Anger Management cohorts, Ludacris is known for rhymes that have more to do with sex and partying than broken homes and estranged parents, and he admits that his style is little more lighthearted. His recent Word of Mouf album is a runaway hit - a well produced, bouncy collection of assertive party jams peppered with a few hard-edged tracks and even one or two more soulful cuts that solidified Ludacris' standing as a Billboard Top 10 charter. His general vibe is just more fun than some of the bands he's sharing the Anger Management stage with.
"I always like having fun, but I think everybody expresses themselves in different ways," he says. "For the most part, I like to have to have fun so the personality that you hear on my album is one of those where we're just partying. It's the same when we get on stage. We're just doin' our thing, there's a lot of energy and we're just lettin' it out. As for everybody else on the tour, well you know, it's different depending on their type of music."
There is a wide breadth of the music spectrum represented on this year's Anger Management Tour. Aside from Ludacris representin' the Dirty South, Detroit's golden superhero Eminem, Nor Cal angst rockers Papa Roach, bi-coastal rapper Xzibit and turntable pioneers the X-ecutioners all take the stage to do their respective thing.
"It is a wide range, and it just goes to show how music is changing each and every day, and how all the genres of music are influencing one another, and I think that's good," states Ludacris, making an interesting point about the way music in the new millennium crosses genre lines more than ever before, and fans seem to open that kind of thing. "If you look at all the major tours out there right now, it's rock and rap and all different other kinds of music mixed in, so you have different audiences. If some people don't usually listen to other acts, then they're forced to listen to 'em, and most of the time they come out liking it. So it makes people more open to more kinds of music than the one or two they're usually listening to."
Ludacris has had plenty of experience when it comes to dealing with music fans and what they want. As a fledgling MC in Atlanta, he landed a job at the Hot 97 radio station, where he worked under the name Chris Luva. But Ludacris was an MC first and foremost - in fact, his tenure at the radio station was a bit of an accident - and because of his work at Hot 97, he was noticed by big players in the hip-hop game.
"I was always MCing, but going up to that station was just me trying to getting a demo played, and accidentally ending up on the radio," he explains. "Me on the radio was just me being me, putting my personality out over the airwaves because I was a young person and the audience for radio station was young. But I stuck to the script of what I was doing, and I just kept rappin'. Being on that station really helped me out because that's when a mass audience heard me rappin and that's when I started getting' little breaks, like Jermain Dupri and Timbaland hearing me and putting me on their albums. From there, I started building a resume for myself and started puttin' money in my pocket."
The job at Hot 97 might have started as simply a means to and end, but Ludacris says it really was a good environment to get started in. As a radio DJ, he was exposed to a lot of aspects of the business side of the rap game, and he learned a lot about how things work in the boardroom.
"It taught me everything I know," says Ludacris emphatically about his music industry education. "When I was up there, not only did I become friends with a lot of artists but I started realizing that a lot of 'em weren't happy. It made me want to step back and be a little more patient, start readin' up and - because your first shot might be your last - makin' sure that my contracts and business and everything like that was perfect. It taught me a lot being up at the radio station for sure."
As the sound of the "Dirty South" exploded on MTV and urban radio all over the nation, Ludacris - along with other Southern artists like Outkast, Goodie Mob and producer / rapper Jermain Dupri - became one of the movement's main voices. Hit songs like the Neptunes-produced "Southern Hospitality," the Timbaland-produced "Phat Rabbit" and "Roll Out (My Business)," a collaboration with Nate Dogg called "Area Codes" and "Saturday (Oooh Oooh!)" landed Ludacris in the Southern spotlight. Though many of his jams are about sex ("I like sex, what can I say? I talk about what I know."), and despite the fact that a lot of the Southern hip-hoppers run in the same circles, Ludacris says there isn't necessarily one thing that signifies the Dirty South sound.
"There is no way to really stereotype music from the South, but for the most part, we like bass-driven music, 'cause we like ridin' around in our cars, and we have, like, 15-inch speakers in the trunk and a lot of brothers like riding so they like real bass-y, aggressive music, you know? Real mean. There's a lot of live instrumentation when it comes to Southern music also. Some might classify it as bounce because of the tempo, but there's really no way to just put a finger on it. It's attitude," says the 25-year-old Ludacris, who adds that the attitude he speaks of rarely gets in the way of how tight that whole scene really is. "Man, everybody down with Southern Hospitality got love for one another, you know what I mean? We know there's enough money for everybody so we're just trying to bring our city up, bring our hometown to the world and let 'em know what goes down here."
Accordingly, the Atlanta rap music poster-boy is willing to use pretty much any means necessary to get his hometown and his name out there. Recently, Ludacris began stepping away from the mic periodically to assume the role of actor, first with a bit part in the Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg film The Wash. Though that was only a 30-second appearance, Ludacris is preparing to dig into the medium a little deeper and will be starring in the forthcoming Radio as a radio DJ embroiled in girl trouble, and in Skip Day, a hip-hop flavored buddy comedy about high school seniors that is still in the development stages. For Ludacris, film just seemed like a logical move.
"Being in front of the camera so much, doing videos and things like that, I might as well get my feet wet and see how it goes down, because if I'm gonna do something, I'm gonna put 100 percent behind all the time. So with this acting thing, I'm just trying to get my craft perfected before I jump up on the screen," says Ludacris, who seems to step carefully and thoughtfully, no matter the direction. "All of this about practice-makes-prefect, and bringin' up other talent I know who are hungry, who really wanna get put on and really wanna work for it, man, because that's what this is all about."
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