SHAQ The MC - Wheres my copy of the Mixtape (part 2): Respect in this industry is hard earned and you can pay dues all your life if you’re not careful. While money talks elsewhere, favors run tings here and respect is the currency that buys them (how some get that respect is for a different blog however). Bottom line is money does not necessarily give you people’s time.

I remember an 'all expense I paid' recording session that got moved around for hours after I arrived because more important artists kept coming to the studio. It was funny, because mine was one of the few names in the book that day. So anyway I kept hearing this humming in the booth that nobody could hear in the studio. It bugged me whole night and the engineer kept telling ...

SHAQ The MC - Wheres my copy of the Mixtape (part 1): Mystory began many years ago; “dropping math in the back of my bio book in the back of my history class”; venomously spit over beats made with fists and broken pens on desks during lunch hour; replayed from squeaky cassettes dubbed over and over on my cheap stereo set from Homelectrix – but I’d say its been official since around 2002.

When I finished one of my first official recordings, ‘I'm coming’, I sent it to Steve Raze at Allhiphop’s ‘Breeding ground’. I expected that the witty lyricism and genre fusing production would surely stick out like a crossover hit and 'buss me' after getting his immediate thumbs up. I was quite disappointed by his response…

‘You just need work overall wi...