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8/14/2006 What's up? I'm good. I'm chilling. I'm waiting for the weed man right now. I'm excellent. I'm ready to live! HipHopGame definitely sends our condolences to you in losing your father. I'm parentless. I have no parents alive. Rest in Peace to my moms and pops. My moms is Agatha, that's why it's Agatha Music. It's nothing but up from here. Did the death of your father change things for you? When I had one of my parents alive and both of them alive, if I got arrested, I was like, "Damn, what if my pops finds out?" Now I'm responsible for everything. People who have their parents around understand this. It makes a big difference. God has always been my father and my mother. He saw where I needed to go and I'm going there. You're talking about your suicide attempt on "Ready to Live." Why do that? A lot of people hear my music on the audio page but they hear it next to other rappers. You're not going to hear Swigga talking about how much crack he sold. That's not my zone. I used to talk about that when I was younger but I don't do that anymore. The whole way I come across with it is my new style. I'm not going to change it up. My music makes you think. My music deals with the spirit more than the outside world. That's where I'm going with it. How did your attempted suicide change things for you? It's funny. I was talking to my boy and he was saying, "I hope people don't think the suicide attempt was a publicity stunt." I was supposed to be dead, so how could it be a publicity stunt? I took forty-something pills. If it was supposed to be a publicity stunt I would have taken just enough to get sick. That's why I say, "This is my afterlife." I'm having fun and I want people to know that. Don't compare me to nobody else because then you're putting me in a box. I don't want to be Jay, Nas or Snoop. I want to be Swigga. How did you not die after taking forty pills? This happened in my uncle's crib. My uncle came home and found me laid out on his couch and he took me to the hospital. It wasn't that long after I took them. I was unconscious when he found me. I was unconscious for three or four days and they told my sister I was going to die. I woke up and had no idea how I was still alive. It has to do with the Most High and Him wanting me to be alive. That's why people who hear "Swigga" and say, "Swigga/Jigga" or anything else, they don't understand that I don't want to be anybody else. I'm alive through God's will. That's all I can say about that. Was it hard talking about your suicide attempt on records? At this point I understand it. I'm coming into the game as a survivor. I know the symptoms of my suicide attempt and what triggered it. I know how to tell other people how it's not an option and how it's wack. It's hard to understand the mind of somebody who wants to attempt suicide unless you've done it. People think "Swigga is crazy." When demons attack you, you can either choose to kill them or roll with them. I killed them. I was like, "Ok, I did what you wanted me to do, now get out of here." That's where I'm at right now. Are you concerned with what people will think hearing your music? Not at all. I read somewhere that hate is the new love. I don't know where I read that, but hate is the new love. I understand that so much. The same guys that will diss my music will diss the new Eminem, the new Nas any anyone else. They're mostly up-and-coming artists. They'll say, "They're wack, here's my MySpace name." I know this is my destiny and I don't have to beef with nobody. Everything will be taken care of. I see the planets lining up. Do you read the comments on the Audio Page? Yeah, I do. I love it. I love the repeat haters. That means they really sit down, say "This is HipHopGame time" and they probably sit around with friends. "Have you heard the new Obie Trice?" "Yeah, but I don't like the snare on that." I love it! Your writing is all over the place in a lot of songs. How do you write? To tell you the truth, when I write now, the song does the writing for me. I'm just the middle man. I'm just conveying what I'm told. A lot of what I say is from a spirit. It's not outside forces affecting what I say. I say things that I don't always understand. Sometimes I write a song like, "I can't believe I wrote that." There is definitely another force like some Star Trek shit doing it and I am just the messenger. What's your favorite track on Ready to Live? I like "Smile on my Face." That's incredible to me, with the melody and all that. "Smile on my Face" is special. I also like "Look!!!" They're all special to me. I'm big on my arrangement. Even though it's not The Chronic or Doggystyle and I'm not on that level yet, you get that quality with me. This came out exactly how it was supposed to come out. I don't say the years on my songs, but there are some songs I wrote a year and a half ago, like "Crabs in a Bucket," but the song is new to me. If I wrote that song over today, it wouldn't be much different. Was Biggie's Ready to Die an inspiration? Yes and no. My homeboy JP came up with it. He sees all my recordings. He said, "You're music is going in a different direction. You're going opposite of Ready to Die." I was like, "Damn, he's right." I was worried that people would think I was trying to shit on his legacy, but in no way am I dissing or downgrading the legacy of Big. I love him. Ready to Live has been out for a few weeks. How's it doing? It's my fifth one. It's doing more than good because I'm building a Swigga fan-base. It feels good. People who have heard the others understand the elevation on here. It's doing well with everyone who's heard it. It's doing well for us. You've done a lot of work with Scram Jones. How is it working with him? Since I changed to Swigga, he's been my main producer. When I was doing Natural Elements, Charlemagne was my main producer. I've been recording with Charlemagne since I was 13. When I changed, Scram understood. Scram understands me. People say Scram gives me different kinds of beats, but it's just that I attack them differently. I find the flow on them. He raps too, so when he hears a certain flow and he thinks I should say it differently, I roll with him. He could kick something on that same song that could blow somebody's mind. Peace to him and Beast Music and Venom. Scram is very instrumental to Swigga. What's a session like with Scram? He lets you rock. He'll stop you when he thinks you should have said something differently. He never says anything about the words. He's recorded a lot of people like Saigon and others. The words are not the problem. He knows how it should be. He's not real meticulous. 95% of the time he loves it because it's just a beat until an artist is on there. He's very easy to work with. What's going on with the Northeast Wildcats today? That's next! Animal Features 2.5 is next. I record everything simultaneously. I'll go to a session and do eight songs. I'll do two Northeast Wildcats, three in the spirit world, that's what I call the Ready to Live songs, then I'll do two tracks for the mixtapes over other people's tracks and then I'll do a track over Haydn in England's beats. He's got some fire. He's going to be an in-house producer. He did a lot for Ready to Live. Back to the Northeast Wildcats, we're recording simultaneously and then I'm going to drop Cross Country 3. The Northeast Wildcats should drop sometime late September or early October. Big up to Eddie Brock, Al Giddy and the whole Northeast Bronx! What are your plans for the rest of the summer? I'm about to start building a studio with my half-brother. Big up to my half-brother. I just started getting cool with him after my father passed. He's an architect in the Caribbean. We're going to build some studios. Look at how when you want to do a CD, you have to get your CD's from one place, cases from another place, graphics from another guy…I want to make it where you can get everything in my spot. I'm also going to keep recording and make sure that I never stop. I can drop in December, drop three singles, and have another album ready to drop. I can do that for the next five or six years. I'm also still on the label hunt. My thing is I don't need a million dollars. I just need what I need to feel I can sell what I should. Steven Spielberg has to put $300 million in to get what he wants out of it. I'm not sweating the labels, but me and my lawyer are doing that simultaneously while I'm hitting the streets. I'm making sure the people in the streets are getting my music while there's no red tape, which is where the label comes in. Some people say they don't need a label, but you need it to be successful. If you're not on Miramax or something, you're going to be at the Cannes Film Festival or Tribeca. I don't care how many CD's I need to put out, but I'm going to get there eventually. We're doing everything at once. All my stuff is about to be on iTunes. We're just doing what we need to do to secure the right deal. If that means putting out CD's and all that, whatever we need to do, that's what we're going to do. Keeping the consistency is my main thing. If three people say, "Swigga's hot," then I did my job for that day, and then hopefully eight people say, "Swigga's hot" the next day. I'm just taking it one day at a time and it's going good. It's going excellent. What do you want to say to everybody? Swigga's that deal. AgathaMusic.com. Clear your head of any other artist you've ever heard when you hear my music. I'm not trying to sound like anybody else and I'm not trying to be anybody else, and subsequently I sound like nobody else. My music is for the spirit. The Northeast Wildcats stuff is for wiling out, but Swigga music is for your mind. I'm talking to your spirit when you hear my rhymes so don't think something strange is going on in your mind. It's really that real. That's what I'm touching on. Peace to everybody. Hate is the new love and we're going to keep it moving. http://agathamusic.com

By Brian Kayser

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