Shan also accuses Marley of releasing his material and holding onto the masters

http://www.hiphopdx.com/index/interviews/id.1859/title.mc-shan-recalls-laughing-at-rakim-and-squabbin-with-ll-cool-j-and-exposes-the-label-and-producer-profiting-from-his-classic-material

HipHopDX: I wanna start off by asking you about the video for “Time For Us To Defend Ourselves” . I put the classic clip at number three in my recent “10 Most Powerful Videos In Hip Hop History” editorial for DX, and I was just curious to know if there was any backlash at the time for that striking visual showcasing police brutality in a way it really hadn’t been shown before?

MC Shan: Well, that story really came about because they actually killed my friend, Richard Lou, . And, at that point they really didn’t like me too much, because I wasn’t one of the drug dealers but still I was driving around the 'Bridge in an Audi. They couldn’t really touch me. And then when I made that video about the police, that really made them touchy. I was getting pulled over on the regular. But like I said in the song, “You not catching me doing anything, boy, so catch me.”

DX: I was an avid Yo! MTV Raps and Rap City watcher at the time, but I don’t remember seeing that video a lot. Did you get resistance from the networks?

MC Shan: Yeah, I kind of got resistance, because in the end it shows a little boy with a gun getting ready to take a potshot at the police. And so, just being edgy like that, it got a little flak. It got a little play, but I also had to do an edit on it because of that gun scene in the end of the video.

DX: Did that lead to your separation from Warner Brothers Records? Did that have anything to do with you breaking away from the label after that?

MC Shan: No, Warner Brothers was alright, but they just didn’t understand our music at that time. People always say to me “What’s that Play It Again, Shan album about?” At that time in Hip Hop there were a lot of critics saying that Hip Hop wasn’t music. Warner Brothers being one of ‘em. And so they didn’t really know what to do with our music and they kept on having this little thing like, “Oh, Hip Hop is not creative.” So what I did with Play It Again, Shan was I went and replayed samples and made it a little musical. Just to defend what we doing like, “Y’all say we can’t rhyme over things like that, okay, here’s what it is.” I made a House record, , with some rhymes on it. I did some other kind of stuff . I just took it to a different extreme …. I might not have liked everything that was in the sample, so I’d just take the bassline and play it over, or a little keyboard part, play it over.

DX: Speaking of playing live music for songs …. Can you clarify exactly what you did for Eric B. & Rakim’s “My Melody”?

MC Shan: I played the keyboards, the do-do-do-do. And I mixed the record because me and Marley , we didn’t think that it was . Rakim had a funny style, so every time he’d bust a rhyme we’d go on the side of the wall and laugh. So the track wasn’t something that Marley was really into, and so he just let me mix it. So when you hear those echoes, that’s my mix right there.

DX: I get a sense Rakim is a really keen dude, and I notice he didn’t really work with Marley again after that, so did he realize you guys were clownin’ him and that’s why he stopped fuckin’ with y’all?

MC Shan: No, that wasn’t it. Rakim was really with Eric B., and Eric B. was our friend. So Eric brought Rakim through. So whatever Eric and Ra did after that first came out, that was on them. It wasn’t the fact that . That was just Eric B.’s .

DX: Now, we gotta get to this …. You said in your “True Stories” video last month that “Marley did sucker shit” including taking production credit for songs various members of The Juice Crew produced on their own albums. Is that why you stopped working with Marley after your second album, Born to Be Wild?

MC Shan: No, I stopped working with him like that because we wasn’t really getting it right in the studio. And, I wanted to get the money that he was getting. So when he say ain’t nobody was getting paid, Marley was getting bread back then. Marley had condos. Marley had 24-track boards when people was still getting little bullcrap . So, I wanted to get in on some of that bread. I wanted my publishing. I still got robbed for that – Fly Ty, thank you very much.

As far as my beats, anything that did of mine, he did from scratch. Straight up, he did all of mine. But other people in the crew, they’d bring records. And even Ace said it. I seen a video where Ace said that Ace was the first one that really demanded his production credits.

DX: Yeah. A lot of people don’t know Big Daddy Kane did a lot of his own production too.

MC Shan: Well, I wasn’t trying to throw under the bus.

But … I’m looking at that where Ace saying that I was being a sucker . Anybody that knows me will tell you straight up I’m not no sucker like that. And for them , that really touched me because now that’s on the Internet. That’s gonna be out there forever …. And so what it was three years ago, it coulda been 20 years ago I’m still gonna say something. I’m not no sucker.

DX: It seems like there’s still monetary issues surrounding this whole thing. You said in your response video to Marley’s response video that only Marley’s been getting paid for these CD re-releases in recent years of your albums. So is Traffic Entertainment or anybody paying you for this -

MC Shan: Nobody’s paying me. And look, I just seen on Amazon I’ve got a new album coming out March 13th.

DX: Q.B. O.G., yep.

MC Shan: See! Look at that, even you know about it. So where are they getting this music from? Who got the masters? Marley has the masters. He gotta be involved in that some kind of way. I’m sorry, I can’t just sit back and say, “Nah, nah.” He got the masters. Where they getting it from? The last two that they just put out in 2007 and 2010, there were Marley remixes on there. So he’s not getting no bread off of that? C’mon, man.

DX: Just playing devil’s advocate though, could it be anybody that was affiliated with Cold Chillin’ ? Anybody else besides Marley.

MC Shan: Fly Ty or Marley. Them is the only two that have the masters. Lenny Fischelberg is dead. So if he’s doing it from the grave, big power to him. But Lenny Fischelberg is no longer on this planet with us. And so it’s only two other people that I can look at and I can think of that have control of these things – Because alright, he might not own the whole thing, but Marley owns half of those masters.

And another thing I would like to straighten up right now about that video where he’s saying . I’m not a fake dude; I don’t do fake things. So I don’t want nobody to sit back and say, “Oh, that was fake.” It was not fake, I don’t be fakin’, I don’t fake moves, only fake people do fake things.

I just know there’s another album coming out. If I’m so irrelevant, then why I got three and four and five best-of MC Shan’s out?

DX: Yeah, they’ll be releasing Down by Law 20 years from now, I guarantee it.

MC Shan: Yeah, but by that time I’ll been done took care of my business and I’ll been had my thing straight. ‘Cause I got a couple of people looking at it like, “Yo, word? I’ll take that case!” Ain’t nothing but paper involved. I mean, I’ve got the album cover sheet that says that – Even if they ain’t re-putting out Play it Again, Shan, that publishing belongs to me. There’s a thing on the bottom of my cover that says “MC Shan Music, Administered by Warner Brothers.” Warner Brothers ain’t forwarding me nothing, on anything!