St. Laz - The Workaholic


From Issue #5 of Foundation Magazine


WORDS: Philip Mlynar


“I just heard that I’ve been offered the contract to be the independent judge on the hip-hop version of American Idol. I’ll be doing that for two weeks.” St Laz, the Brownsville-raised mixtape menace who’s already had tracks played on Hot97 by Kay Slay and Whoo Kid, is talking about how you go about making the type of power moves that transform mixtape hype into mainstream recognition and a swag bag of dollars. “You have to have that little bit of fame and notoriety before you come to the money,” he continues confidently, “and I’ve got that, but I’m a workaholic, so now it’s time to take it to that next level.”


The idea of rappers grinding furiously in hopes of pulling themselves up from the underground and onto bigger things is nothing new, but when Jive Records released Papoose, the mainstream industry’s mixtape experiment, from his much-bragged about $1.5 million contract without even releasing an album, it cast doubt on the idea of where a mixtape career can go. For St Laz, a man who’s already recorded “around 700 songs”, such doubts can easily be deaded by simply manning-up and taking control of the situation yourself.


“It’s like, yo, everything can’t be blamed on these majors,” he says, when asked what he thinks of Pap’s situation. “At the end of the day, as an artist when you’re on a major label it’s not the major label’s duty to make you hot - you’ve got to make yourself hot. You’ve got to make yourself a priority, you’ve got to make them put your product ahead of everyone else’s. You can’t be the hottest thing on the underground then just sit around and wait to become the hottest thing in the mainstream. You’ve got to be every day at the office, knowing the president, knowing the dude that takes the garbage out, knowing the dude that signs the checks. It’s a team and you need a relationship there.


“So I don’t know what was going on in that relationship with Papoose and Jive,” he continues, “but I know when you an artist and you get to these majors, you can’t depend on them to just give you a free ride and a fancy car because money in the music game is not what it was ten years ago. You gotta be a renegade now; you gotta do your own promotion on top of whatever they do for promotion, if you wanna be relevant and not get lost in the sea of other new artists trying to promote themselves.”


While Laz talks freely about building up his own stash of dollars and dividends – along with setting up his New Industry Records label and his Pottersfield super-group, he also drops hints about a new “multi-media device that’s gonna make people millionaires overnight” – for him the music game should be about more than just empty brags. So, dropping the details behind his name, he slides into a deeper zone.


“St Lazarus is the saint that the poor prayed to for assistance and help,” he explains. “I’m that rapper that’s trying to give assistance to the poor, that’s why I have that name. The ghettos where I come from, I’m trying to be that dude that can lend a helping hand; I’m trying to be that dude that you can lean on. That’s what this rap thing is really about, not just bopping your head and dancing, but a voice for a people that can save the entire world from itself.


This hip-hop culture is the message to the world; this music did so much, crossed racial barriers – basically put an end to racial barriers across the world. For example, a cop that pull up a brother, he see me with a hood and some saggy jeans and he may think twice before he pulls the trigger if he’s from a suburban white neighborhood, because you know what? His son listens to hip-hop and wears a hoodie with baggy jeans!


“When I was in jail was when a lot of hip-hop like ‘Pac, Biggie and Nas hit,” he expands, talking on his decision to first start writing his own rhymes. “Before that I was a younger dude, so it wasn’t so much that I was seeing my peers rapping, but when dudes in my age group started breaking through the scene, that made me believe I was going to do it. These positive influences like Big, ‘Pac, Nas, Jay-Z, Mobb Deep, they drove me crazy up north, just listening to them and wanting to be out and doing the same thing.



“So to listen to that music at that stage of my life, when you’re so easily influenced, I caught the positive influence from the greatest rappers and it made me strive for great things, just like these rappers. I’m from Brooklyn, I’m from the worst part of New York City, Brownsville, the place where the crime rate isn’t down, and they’re from Brooklyn too. They made a fantasy a definite reality, and they made that reality closer.



“I did so much time in jail that I thank god every day that I’m in this free world and I vow that every day I’m going to make something happen,” he says, bringing things to a close. “I’m a workaholic, I stay up to five, six in the morning, ‘cos I don’t want to miss even one second of time.”

1 Comment to “St Laz”

1. ILLSTRIP — Monday June 30, 2008 @ 9:45 am
   

   what up St Lazarus good interview !!!!!!!

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