Long before Young Money came into the picture, The Hot Boys were the biggest draw on Cash Money Records. An obvious counterpunch to the boy band craze which took over the late ’90s, Juvenile, B.G., Lil Wayne and Turk were the solja rag donning, white tee sporting, foul mouth antagonists to every thing mainstream America believed they understood a “boy band” to be. Hit the jump to view the full story.
The Hot Boys – along with everyone associated with Cash Money – would go on to spawn timeless classics, both solo and group-wise. Like most other set ups in life, however, good fortunes eventually came to an end. For Turk in particular, rough legal troubles matriculated into an eight year prison bid which saw his former label mates all go on to achieve varying levels of success and pitfalls during his absence.
Fast forward nearly a decade, Turk is a free man once more ready to pick up where his career and life left off. The New Orleans Saint chopped it up with me via telephone last night and we discussed a variety of topics ranging from creativity in prison, future music, which MC’s held him down while he was away and even a hilarious story about he and Lil Wayne being stuck on a New York City elevator during the recording process for Guerrilla Warfare. Which, if I may add, helped provide inspiration for one of their better records. –Interview by J. Tinsley
Without further ado, dive in…
JT: I know you’re on this crazy media run right now, so I appreciate you taking the time to do this.
Ahh man, anytime. I do it for the people, ya heard me? I’ll stop everything for them.
Just out of respect, I know you did eight years and know you’re trying to put that behind you, so I’m not even going to bring that up.
(laughs) You must’ve been keeping up with me. Everybody always asking me about it. I don’t even wanna talk about that. We on to the next one, ya heard me?
You can’t change anything in the past anyway.
For damn sure. You can’t change that. But it is in the book though, my autobiography (The AutoThugography of Turk). I talk about everything in there, so just go get the book man. You gonna get all the questions answered that you had, ya heard me?
Speaking of the time you did, what has it been like balancing your personal life and getting your feet wet back in the business again?
You know, I’m focused. That’s the advantage of when you doing time. You can multi-task. You can do more than one thing at one time. It’s kinda been easy. It’s kinda been cool. It’s kinda been astonishing. I just appreciate the love, man. You know what I’m talking about? From both sides, man. The family and the industry.
So when you were locked up, was there anybody that kept in touch with you on a consistent basis?
Yeah, man. Definitely. My dog, B.G. Free B.G. He kept it 10x 100. You know we don’t keep it 100 no more, we keep it 1000. Lil Wayne reached out to me. T.I. reached out. Rocko, Waka [Flocka], Trae Tha Truth, Paul Wall. A whole flock of people, man. If I’m forgetting anybody, they know who they was. I appreciate all the love. But for real, I had love from my fans most importantly, you know what I’m saying? They kept me alive while I was gone. And you know my woman she was there, ain’t miss a beat. So it was kinda like I was on a lil’ vacation. It wasn’t hard, but I was missing my son, missing my family and missing doing what I was doing. Other than that, it was all good, ya heard me?
A good woman is a rarity.
Yeah, man. Hell yeah. They rare. That shit a diamond in the rough, you know what I’m talking about? It get tough, but we gon’ stick it out. We did it through them bars and through that glass. So shit, this ain’t nothing out here. We good.
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