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10/16/2006 What's up? I'm good, on the grind over here. I was just writing right before you called me. What's the Seven Dirty story? Seven Dirty is an artist trying to make a name for himself right now. I was a part of the Ghetto Inmates and we were signed to Loud at one point. I'm sure everybody heard that story. Why the name Seven Dirty? You know how 730 means crazy. I know you know! It's part of the craziness but at the same time, my shit be dirty, so I put a twist to it. What have you been up to lately? Lately I've just been on the grind. I'm trying to etch my name in the stone and separate myself from the shadow of my brother. He's doing his thing. He's signed to the Roc but I'm basically trying to do me. Do you ever feel like you're in the shadow of Tru Life? I feel like there's two ways I can go. I can ride his coattails and be the background rapper, but I'm much bigger than that. I'm trying to get on the grind and do my own thing now. What's your relationship with Tru today? The relationship is beautiful. I got crazy love for him, I'm just not trying to be that dude to ride his coattails. I'm trying to have them respect me as an artist so at the end of the day, I know I did shit myself and I'm the one who made shit happen. We know how your brother feels towards the Diplomats. What's your take on them? With the Tru Life versus Diplomats issue, I was thinking of leaving that issue alone because my brother can handle it. If shit gets really out of hand, I'll get involved. I'm just not trying to feed off of that to get my name out there. I don't want them paying attention to me because I dissed Dipset. I'm way bigger than that. "Do It All Again" did well for you on HipHopGame. A lot of people checked it out on HipHopGame and we got 4 ½ stars. I got a lot of hits on that for somebody that was never heard. I was happy I got that kind of love. That whole record was all truth. It was me spitting my whole life on the track. Everybody loved it so I said, Let me go with that. Did the feedback from people on that song affect the music you're making now? I pay attention to what's happening in hip-hop right now. If you're an artist and you don't pay attention, you're not going to know what's hot. I'm always going to be on top of my game as far as what's out there at the moment. What's your focus right now? Right now I'm working on a mixtape. I haven't gotten the big person to host it yet but I'm definitely going to get that. I'm also working to get this album out there and get it popping off. I'm not going to sit back and wait. It's time for me to get out there and let the world know who Seven Dirty is. What was it like growing up on the Lower East Side? It was really hard growing up in the Lower East Side because it was three bad boys with just their mother. Our father wasn't around. Going through all of that stuff made me the person I am now so I never regret my past. Taking it back a sec, how did the Ghetto Inmates come together? That was formed by me and my brother Tru. I was a co-founder of the group. A lot of people don't know that but they'll know it now. We basically took a bunch of dudes from the hood and put them together. We said we were the best and we were going to take over the game. We rolled mad deep and we were crazy so they called us the Puerto Rican Wu-Tang. We got signed and lost our deal. We had some good times. I never regret anything I've been through. It made me who I am. After getting dropped, what happened to the group? Once we lost the deal, my brother stayed doing his thing. There was a little falling out between him and Raze and Raze went his separate way. The other three members started fading out. Everybody was doing their separate thing. One day, hopefully we can put all this shit behind us and meet at the top like Voltron. We'll see what happens. Aren't you and Raze cool today? Yeah. That's always going to be my man. Basically I'm running around doing my thing and he's running around doing his thing. When it's like that people don't get to hang out. Is it a good time to be Puerto Rican in hip-hop right now? I always say that if we ever had a chance, it's now. It seems like the Latino thing is hitting hard right now. If you're Latin, you better eat now. The pendulum swung our way and it's time to eat now. In a way I feel like that, but people have to know that Latinos have been down from day one. The first one to say hip-hop was Puerto Rican. It came out of a Puerto Rican dude's mouth. And there were cats like DJ Disco Wiz. Exactly. We've been down from day one. People try to act like we're trying to be down. Man, we've been down from day one. What's the next move for Seven Dirty? I'm going to do this mixtape and drop this independent album. From there it should be the sky as the limit. You have to respect the grind. When somebody's on their grind you know it's going to be heavy. The Package is the CD. It should be out by Spring. What do you want to say to everybody? New York is at it's all-time low and it's time for us to take it back to where it was. Without us any unity is not going to happen. http://myspace.com/7dirty

By Brian Kayser

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