THE REAL: Cover

BRONX, NEW YORK | COVER

INTERVIEW TERRELL “REALIFE” BLACK PHOTOGRAPH @AC_THOUGHTS

VALIDATED: What is your earliest memory of Hip Hop culture?

COVER: Well, for me, I started out in ‘95 as an artist. I first had a deal with Tommy Boy Records and I was running around already with my man Shampoo. I don’t know if y’all know Sham. He makes a lot of moves in Brooklyn. Well, we used to do a lot of stuff and he was always there. He was doing his thing on Select Records. We were talking about it today, doing all the runs and going Guerilla out there and putting all the posters up and all that in ‘95. So, I got with my man Ski Beatz, he does all the Jay Z stuff, he did the Camp Lo stuff. And at that time, he saw me battling a couple of cats up on Lexington when we were outside. And he just approached me and was like, if I had been to the studio, and I told him no, because I was always just free styling with DJs, shout out Triple C and Doo-Wop and all those at that time.

And he took me to the studio and to tell you the truth, like not even about three months later, they approached me with a deal with Tommy Boy, they took my first single that I did independently, and we put it on Tommy Boy and then ran it for a little while until Def Jam picked it up as an independent record. They did a tribute to independent music and they picked that record. We piggybacked and did a lot of the independent stuff on our own, too… I just wanted to end up doing more Hip Hop. I wondered how I could stay doing Hip Hop and still contribute to the game. And I just followed the blueprint of my mentor, like Ski Beatz. 

Ski came up as Original Flavor. And then he found artists and started producing, and it gave him longevity in the music game. And I just felt like, I could do the same thing because I still wanted to contribute. But I know how the game is, it is the youths game. I just felt like I might contribute to the game by producing. So, I just kept producing and got to this point.

VALIDATED: You mentioned something I want to elaborate on. So, you mentioned “Guerilla”, I know what you mean. But for those who don’t, what were you referring to when you mentioned Guerrilla and promo?

COVER: Well, it’s like when you go and you put a whole bunch of people in a van and you go attack the whole city, everywhere, have stickers running the street all day. All this stuff that you’ve got to do. And actually, you still have to do it, because it’s a lot easier now with the internet and just pressing the button. But you still got to go in some Guerrilla stage, you got to run down these clubs and run down the people and let your face be known not just from the Instagram feeds.

VALIDATED: Sure. I think a lot of the new age artists and producers lose out because they don’t understand the importance of face to face and the hand to hand.

COVER: Oh, yeah. I come from that era, though. Like I said, I had my first deal in ‘95. So, I definitely know the times and then me being a Puerto Rican rapper at that time when we didn’t even have the Puns yet and we only had probably Joe and Curious George and certain rappers that were out at the time. So, it was a little more difficult. So, you had to go Guerrilla, you had to go ape on the streets, man. And plus, I come from a Graffiti background, my whole COD crew, they were all Graffiti. We used to bomb the trains when we were younger and that was our Guerrilla tactics into the game. Plus, we used to do a lot of art directing for Ralph McDaniels and Classic Concept. So, we used to know where the places would be and we would go and bomb it, just to put our names up there. So, all the other writers would go, “Yo, we’ve seen your name on the Boyz II Men video, we’ve seen your name on the Wu Tang video. We’ve seen your name on the Gang Starr video,” stuff like that. That was our first taste of trying to go putting our name out there so people know. And we kind of took the same tactics and did it to our music when it was time to go ape on the streets. It was easy for us to go everywhere and just put a sticker up or poster.

VALIDATED: Now that’s dope. And then you also mentioned working with Tommy Boy Records. For the people who don’t know, what was the importance of Tommy Boy early on in Hip Hop?

COVER: Well, I will tell you the truth, there were only two labels that I used to look up to when I was a kid coming up, when you look to buy records and you look at the credits and all that, you always will look at a Def Jam record, and you will be like, “This is the label to be at.” Or you will see the three men, one upside down or two upside down for Tommy Boy. Because they had so many great stars, they had Queen Latifa, they had Capone-N-Noreaga, Naughty by Nature. And then not only that, I got to shout out my man, Chris Atlas, who ended up being the A&R at Def Jam, and did a lot of the Kanye stuff. He was the first A&R that signed me up, he was a close friend, signed me to Tommy Boy. It was that vibe, right there.

VALIDATED: Did you get signed as a producer or an artist?

COVER: As an Artist. I was an artist first. My producer was Ski Beats at the time. Because at that time, if you had a great cosign… if you were a Producer and already had hits, and I did a song with you, they will give me the opportunity, at least to give me the chance - to listen to me. It ain’t the same now. But back in the days, it was really, who’s next? Who you have in your camp? And it was a lot of camp people who was getting there. 

So, I was lucky to just be there at the right time to meet Ski Beatz and work with him and people caught on to it and I got my deal through them. It happened pretty fast. We didn’t even really shop it too much. We just did songs and people caught interest because we already had FunkMaster Flex playing it. We already had Video Music Box playing the video at the time. And it was a nice feeling. But that was then and that’s the things that fueled me to do the things that I do now. 

VALIDATED: Do you think that it is important to have relationships with other producers? Because we expect Artists to be cool with each other and some are not. There are producers that don’t talk to other producers. How important is keeping the lines of communication open in the game? 

COVER: Everybody should be networking. This is not too much of a secret. I think people sharing wealth and sharing knowledge is important. But I was talking to my man, D Chambers, and I was telling him, you might wind up being a dope producer. If you start making beats, and people are going to stop fucking with you because you not a threat no more. You’re going to be working with all the artists that you wanted to rap with. But you gonna end up giving them beats, because that’s how I felt, now I’m not a threat to them. Ask for a feature or ask to do this or that. As a producer, they hear a dope beat, they gonna fuck with you. 

VALIDATED: No, that’s true. So, how did you transition over from an artist to a producer?

COVER: Well, I always had a studio since ‘95. Anybody that knew me from that time, knew I always had like a D&D looking studio back in the days in my crib. I’m talking about full analog gear. I got people to let you know, we used to have a little D&D, the whole apartment was the studio. And then I always brought producers in. Shout out to my man D Miracles, my man Ski Beatz, he would always come in, Michelob, a few producers and we used to bring my little man Idea Beatz, who got a lot of songs out now. And he came from my camp coming in from that time, being a younger cat. 

And to tell you the truth, I just stopped rapping and said, let me start putting people on these beats, because I was always making beats secretly, but I used to rap on them so I could show people that you could rap on these beats. So, in the beginning, people didn’t have the trust in it, because, “He’s starting to figure it out.” and you go to people and “Ugh, keep doing your thing.” So, at the end of the day, I rap on them. Then people started saying, “Why didn’t I get that beat?” And it was the same beat that I probably showed them, like two weeks ago, but now they can understand it. 

And then just being more about my craft, it just started being the transition, just doing it more every day. Like always updating my equipment, to be up to date with what’s going on in the game. I was always into that, always making sure, even though I always bring back a Boom Bap sound. I store all my equipment that I had from before, if I never want to go back to a certain sound, I know how I could get right back to it because I already know what the equipment does. So, the transition was more around that time, probably when I got around Conan, and Prince and they started rhyming over my beats, my Coke Boys, shout out to Cheese, Dior, Juice, Bracs, RIP Chinks, all of them, Boo City, we used to work a lot with them, and then it just kept blossoming. 

And then after a while, I started working with my team, I had a little team that I was going with, and I got with my man, Charlie. Charlie is my partner who saw the potential and was like, “Yo, I think we can take this out of your apartment. And we can make people come to your studio,” because we have a studio called Umbrella Studios. If anybody looks it up, we have a lot of clientele coming through here, a lot of big names that come through here and get a lot of songs that are on the radio come out of this place right now. We were blessed to get the transformation into that, it all started with doing some beats though, and getting my team to rap on my beats. And then everybody started getting the Mainos and the Jim Jones’s and the Dice Pesos… I got to shout out to my man Dice Pesos. I always did project songs, but me and him took a whole project of Blanco Pack Deluxe. And that kind of opened the doors to the way that I really wanted to start presenting out there. 

VALIDATED: So, I heard you name some of the people you work with, but who are some of the bigger names you’ve worked with other than Fat Joe?

COVER: We just did Dice Pesos and Fat Joe joint. I work with D Chambers. We did Maino joints, Lobby Boy joints. We did Jacquae. We did Jay Critch, Benny the Butcher, we got Ron Suno.

VALIDATED: Did you work with Haddy Racks?

COVER: Haddy Racks, we got the brand new single with him and Jim Jones that I produced. And we got a lot of songs with me and Haddy. Man, the list goes on, I would be here all day. Sometimes I sit here and think of how many songs I’ve done. I remember last year I did about 300 recorded records, it was just countless and all kinds of people from Mariahlynn to Martin Baller, to Grafh to Hocus 45th, all those kinds of names, all these different things too. 

From new shit to Drill, we got The 11224 Boys. We got a whole new genre and vibes, it’s like Hip Drill, like Hip Hop with a Drill feel that you can rap to. We just try to invent new things that come up with new vibes for this New Year. I got my man Ace Hoffer, we got records out right now that’s playing on Hot 97 with Prince Julius that they’re playing. Shout out to Drew Ski, shout out to Will at Power 105.1. You know, just a lot of records on the radio right now and feeling blessed.

VALIDATED: If you had to walk into a school full of 15-year-olds or 16-year-olds and they didn’t know who you were, what song of yours would you let them hear that they could probably feel some kind of commonality with from their parents or something they might not know you produced?

COVER: Well, I did a song called “Blue Cheese” with Jay Critch. We got about 1.5 million streams on SoundCloud for it. When people meet me, they probably don’t know me personally or something like that. But I had artists that came here and once they heard the tag, and they mentioned that record because that’s their vibe and they are in that age bracket to remember a thing like that. And shout out to Ivo Hooley. But I would think that a lot of people now know me more as doing those Dice Pesos records and D Chambers, because we got a lot of records on the radio right now that people circulating too.

And we have doubled up. My man, Prince, he’s right here sitting next to me. He got a lot of records out with us and that’s on the radio right now which is called “Moolah” that they’re actually playing right now on both stations. And, to me, that’s more gratitude than to play a Benny the Butcher record that you know already got a machine behind it, these are homegrown cats that work straight from this studio and put out records and they hit the radio. So, to me, that’s the key in the championship ring when you have one of your own, and they’re getting their shit played. You know that they came from where it started from.

VALIDATED: That’s dope. So, to take it back for a minute, because you mentioned about being into Graffiti. How did you actually get into that initially?

COVER: Well, I think since I was born, I always liked the artistic vibe, I just wanted to be an artist. So, at that time, where I come from, I come from the Bronx, I’m from the North Bronx, I’m from Allerton Avenue. And a lot of that was just getting bad at the time. So, the baddest things that people really did was Graffiti. Before I started traveling out of my circuit, once I started passing and going to the South Bronx and going to Manhattan, going to Brooklyn, going to Queens, and you start meeting other outlaw kids that are doing the same things. Now Hip Hop is introduced to you, and then the streets are introduced to you.

It's 360 because I have a project called All City. And that’s a Graffiti terminology. It’s a Graffiti terminology, where you’ve got to make it around the whole city. You got to get your name known around the whole city. And sometimes you’re going into blocks that you can’t walk through, you could get shot at, you could get stabbed, you’re going to get chased by a group of kids bombing on their block, like, “Why are you bombing my block?” and we did it, and I’m trying to transform that whole style into music because New York got a bad stigma about Brooklyn. Cats don’t want to go to the Bronx, just funny stigmas. 

And I see it because sometimes there are artists who go, “I’m in the studio in the Bronx,” and they’d be like, “What are you doing over there? Why don’t you go in the city? We meet in the city, let’s book one in the city.” So, I know the stigma and the whole idea is just to change it and have cats that are from Coney Island, all the way, with cats from the Bronx or Harlem, it is just about bridging that gap.

VALIDATED: Yeah, I definitely dig that. To me, it’s like, everybody outside of New York sees New York as one. But it doesn’t always seem like New York sees New York as one. So, I totally get what you’re saying.

COVER: Yeah, because you think about it, the narrative is starting to change. Because, of course, now it’s not like, we could change narratives to what we want it to be, you understand what I mean? One time it’s like, once the South got hot, a lot of flow went towards that. So, we almost lost our… Our sound, the way New York could live with it. So now, since the pandemic, everybody wasn’t at clubs, everybody wasn’t doing all that. So people started making… Yo I went to Sam Ash and the studios were empty, you couldn’t buy nothing. There were no more speakers, no more mics, because they sold out because the pandemic made people buy equipment and stay home. 

So, now a lot of music is not the same clubby music that you were hearing before. So, now the rap even you hear Lil Baby, they might have an accent, but they are rapping a lot more than all that other shit that they used to do and it just came back. So, now you start to see it. So, now when I’m doing a joint with Dice or with Jim, that’s a little Hip Hop and is getting the recognition because the door is open again for that. And Griselda and all those other types of acts, Grafh, them niggas rap, and their art was lost in this other wave that was coming out, we were losing the focus on some real lyricists. 

So, now, I’m glad that we got something good out of the pandemic and got some of the cats rapping again and doing these kinds of songs that hit the soul because we were losing some of the soul of what we were doing. I like some of my songs that have pain. I like to hear the difference. I don’t want to clap my hands all the time, even though I do like it. But it gotta change somewhere, you know what I mean? I like that… to have a variety because when I came up there was nothing but variety. Yeah, you had your client that would copy, but those people will get pointed and frowned upon.

VALIDATED: Everybody wanted to sound different and wanted to stand out.

COVER:  Nah, some people back in the days I felt like labels would try to find the anti… like say you with Puff. They wanted to find the anti-Puff . With Pun, they wanted to find that anti-Pun, and so they made DMX. They always tried to find something that was going to be as big but it had to be different.

VALIDATED: I got to ask you, what do you think about these producers that are selling 100 beats or releasing 100 beats for $4.99?

COVER: I come from a time that it was taboo to not know producers. If you really wanted to get a song done, you couldn’t go on YouTube, you had to know a Ski Beatz, you had to know Premiere. You couldn’t just go and download a beat or steal it from a thing and wipe it up and you got a song. Think about it, back in the days, when I first sold my first beat in the 90s, I charged $5000 for a beat when I didn’t even know nobody. Now, it’s hard to get to $250 because of the game. But I don’t worry about that. I just keep doing what I do. And you charge what you charge, and don’t give up on what you charge, and know your worth. And people understand that. 

Because you’re going to know what you get when you are paying for something that you really want and the outcome, because it’s just not the beat, it’s what you get from the dude who is making the beat. And the name alone will help whatever you are going to do. So, all of that is part of the achievement. For any producer, what I try to tell them is, don’t fall for what they do. These guys need to do that because they don’t have their network. Get your networking on and you are going to get what you deserve. Because at the end of the day, when you’re dealing with these labels, the real majors, they are going to pay you  what you want when they want the record. 

So, at the end of the day, in the hood, you can scramble, you hustle your way around. But when it comes back to the majors, they will pay if they want the record. If the record is what they want, they are going to pay for it. So, just stick to your guns man, and you gonna make it happen. People don’t know prices of Gucci and you can’t go to a Gucci store and be like, “I need that Gucci for $400.” Because they got to stick to their guns. And it’s like, if you don’t want it, you don’t have to buy it, somebody else is going to buy it, there’s always a fan for what you do. So, at the end of the day, just keep working to what you do, and people will appreciate what you do, and if they do they gonna fuck with you.

VALIDATED: That is true. So, with your amount of experience and your level of expertise, knowing what you know now, what would you tell your younger self?

COVER: I would tell my younger self to be patient. I ran through my first deals like they weren’t always going to be there. Being a young cat from the street that hustled his way up to do whatever he does and who came up from nowhere… My father did 25 years, so it’s like, not having much, you know that little money like that you feel ain’t nothing, but I feel if I would have taken my time and took the patience to know what I know, I would have been better off then.

But at the same time, I don’t regret nothing that I go through. Because I’m happy with the situation I’m at now, because I’m a producer now. And I feel like I went through the things that I went through, because my calling was to be a producer, maybe I wasn’t supposed to be the artist that I wanted to be and my calling was this because like I said, I had a little good run, I got some checks from music, from being an artist. But it’s really never been the same as being a producer. 

And like I said, I’m really not a threat to anybody to make a song with. So, me just being like that, and it makes me able to work with everybody, everybody that I’m a fan of. And that’s what really I take out of my younger self—to tell my younger self as an older person, just be patient and see it roll out. Enjoy the ride.

VALIDATED: Other than the new artists that you’re working with, is there any artists out there up and coming that you’d like to work with? 

COVER: It’s bugged out because I have seen a lot of the things that I’ve done because I always wanted to work with Jim and even though I’ve seen Jim and Benny the Butcher, shout out to Stove God. Rappers like that, that I’ve had the chance to work with. Shout out to Mos Def. Things like that, I always foreseen it, ,and like I said this music took me a long way and took me to meet a lot of people, it’s always like you want to run with Jay Z on a record. I have my man Ski Beatz and I was there for all of that “Reasonable Doubt” time. I was in the studio and watching them do that magic. So, I feel like I was part of the process some how by just being there.

Yeah, there are so many like, Lil Baby, Future. But then if you want to get into like, rapping cats like Jay Cole and cats like that, I’m happy that I have worked with Benny, Conway, cats that rap. And I just liked the new stuff too, because we all got to evolve and I’m down with the evolution, I was part of that evolution on the come up.

VALIDATED: So, as far as what you have going on now, I know you told us some of it. But what else do you have going on musically?

COVER: Well, right now, we’re working on Blanco Packs Deluxe. We already dropped “Rich Off Pain”. I’m working with D Chambers. He’s dropping a Boom Bap to Drill Rap project that I produced almost the whole majority of. We working with Prince Julius. These are more like my personal things. I’m working with Conan, Brooklyn. They got a lot of songs on the radio right now. I’m doing a great push, shout out to Shampoo and Wine VS, they are teaming up with me too to do a compilation of all these artists that I mentioned. And they all have songs that I produced and I’m putting it out called “All City”. 

And it is with all those artists that I mentioned, it’s like all of those cats that I have on my album. And we’re about to put those projects out… We’re dropping the Fat Joe song, the Dice Pesos video about to drop right now, go check Conan’s videos out, D Chambers videos out. It’s just so many, man, and just stay in tune and check Cover out and you get on my Instagram and y’all see what’s going on.

VALIDATED: You got any last words for the people?

COVER: Hey man, I appreciate you guys keeping the culture alive and having this conversation about the culture because it’s always good that we control the narratives of what’s going on and let them hear our stories from our own mouth. Each one, teach one. And that’s another thing, man, Umbrella Studios has got classes that we’re doing every Sunday here for the youth that’s in school, we’re teaching them how to produce, we’re teaching them how to DJ and if they even rap, we teach them how to get in here. If they got good grades in class, they could come in here and enroll in our classes at Umbrella Studio NYC. So check us out there and if you’re willing to learn come check us out. We’re just trying to make moves for the next generation and give back to the next generation too.

VALIDATED: And how can we support you on social media?

COVER: Check me out @therealcover on Tik Tok, I just started my Tik Tok because I’ve seen that the algorithms go crazy on Tik Tok. You put up something and you get a thousand views quick and I was like, “Damn, I don’t even have that many people,” but you can check me there or check out our site for Umbrella Studios NYC on Instagram @umbrellastudiosnyc. You could check my man and my manager Charlie at @CharlieDopeCEO, my man Shampoo at @YNVSCEOShampoo. Check out our pages if you want to get at one of the guys who work with me directly and you have to get the biz through them.