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12/5/2005 Trife da God - Put It On the Line Album Breakdown Cocaine Trafficking (Trife and Ghostface) - I had this beat for around three years. I had done something three years ago over that track and I didn't like how it came out so I went back to the drawing board and redid the whole shit. I invited Ghost to get on the track and that's how it came out. I wrote that in my mom's crib, looking out the window just zoning out. It wasn't even called "Cocaine Trafficking" until the mixtape niggas got a hold of it. It's really called "Major Niggas," because in the intro, it's like "you have some major niggas from New York slinging dope." The mixtape DJ's put it as "Cocaine Trafficking" because those were the first words Ghost said. I wrote the hook too, and it just went out like that. Put It On the Line (Trife) - This is the title track for the whole CD. I had this beat for awhile too. When I get beats, I like to sit on them because sometimes when I first hear them, I won't like them until I listen to them over and over again. I wrote this in my mom's crib too looking out the window, looking at the city and the lights and all that. I just had a lot of things that I wanted to touch on, like me growing up and living in the Stapleton area. The hook says "We love Hip Hop and live a life of crime, feel like I've been robbed, gotta take what's rightfully mine, so I'm staying on my job yo as far as the grind, gotta put in that work everyday and just put it on the line." Whatever you do in life, you've just got to put it on the line and just go for the gusto. It's more of like a tale of how I grew up in Stapleton and being mixed inside the hood life. Struggle (Ghostface) - He did this song around the time when he did "The Pretty Toney" album but it didn't make the album. This is like a lost tapes-type joint. He wrote this off his own experience, he went real deep on this. He's talking about his struggle growing up in the Stapleton lifestyle and how he was out there struggling and he made it out the struggle. Hustle Hard (Trife) - This is the most recent track that I've done. This wasn't even supposed to be on there. It's some mixtape shit. It's over a Green Lantern beat with 50 on the hook. It's self-explanatory. I heard the beat, heard the hook, and just went on some hustle hard shit. I'm talking about how I used to hustle, bagging up and cleaning off the blade. "We hustle hard in the city of gods where dedicated dealers take the shit for a serious job." I'm saying how niggas hustle and grind with this. I took the skit from the film "Paid in Full" when Mekhi Phifer was talking with AZ about how hustling was the only thing he knew how to do. I ran off of what the hook was saying and I wrote it like that. I recorded this in my nigga Phenom's spot. He recorded this track for me. That's a good dude. He really represented. He has me hitting the mixtapes and all that, so he hit me with this instrumental and was going to have me mash out some freestyles. Event (Trife) - This is produced by Emile. I had this beat for awhile too but held it until I wrote an ill rhyme to it. This doesn't really have a storyline, it's just about things that took place. The first verse is talking about how niggas got bagged uptown with mad grams. There's a little story-telling I'm doing on there. Emile set the studio time up in The Cutting Room and we banged it out and mixed it down right there. We were up there blowing some cheeba and drinking our liquor, and just zoning out. It was me, Emile, and Krymelife just bugging out. I wrote the second verse in the studio, there's a little bridge piece at the end that I just put in there on the spot. That one came out real good, shout out to Emile for the beat and for mixing it down real well. Gangsta Shit (Trife and Tommy Whispers) - This one has me and my nigga Tommy Whispers on it. My man Jeff Duval from Brooklyn produced this track. I met him at a party for one of the New York Jets' sons. He was DJ'ing and he said he had some beats for me. As soon as I heard that beat, I started writing it. I never had a hook for it so Tommy Whispers wrote that hook for it. I recorded that at my man Ant Acid's studio. That's where I record most of my shit. I laid down two verses and then had Tommy Whispers get on there. He had the hook and we both said it and doubled it up. Fire (Trife and Ghost) - This was produced by my man Jim Bond. He hit me with 90 beats, but as soon as I heard this one, I just automatically started writing to this. I picked up my pen and I wrote that in my crib. I got me a little bottle of Hennessey. I went in, wrote it real fast, boom, wrote the hook on the spot…I had written the second verse too but Ghost wanted to get on the song so bad I was like "fuck it G, just take the second verse…" That's how that came about. That was supposed to be a solo track but he liked it so much I told him he could jump on it. I like the sample in this too, "Playing with fire…" I felt that was appropriate for myself. Project Soap Operas (Trife, Krymelife, and Tommy Whispers) - This song is about two years old. I did this in my man's basement. This kid Dave came all the way from Chicago to meet up with me. We laid the song down…we already had the song mapped out. Me and Tommy Whispers had our verses ready and Krymelife had to write his verse on the spot. He wasn't even going to make the song but he felt like he had to be on the song. We waited for him. He threw his joint on there, we threw the sound effects on there. We put that whole song together, even with the girl talking at the end. My man Cue Trax put the emphasis on there at the end. I was talking about a kid where him and his man got killed in a car accident because they were too high and crashed into a telephone pole. That's a story joint that I went into. War (Trife) - This is another solo track produced by my man, my nigga, my ace, Phenom the Don from Mental Instruments. Me and Phenom had been out of contact for a minute. One day he called me and was telling me he had these tracks for me. He hit me with 15 tracks, but this one right here stuck out. "War" has a Bob Marley sample with "War in the East, war in the West…" When I heard the track, I'm not talking about niggas warring. I'm just talking about the whole United States: "Welcome to Jamrock, where niggas get popped, buried in sandlots, New York niggas triple they money hitting the grand spots, West Coast bangs for their colors and they demand blocks, Southern niggas barbequing, sizzling ham hocks." This is a record I did for everybody to bang and represent their own town. I shout out New Orleans niggas, Ohio niggas…I ran off the hook. The beat didn't originally sound as it does now. I had Phenom chop it up and paste it how I wanted it. I went in and banged out the first verse. I recorded the first verse, took it home and studied it, listened to it over and over. I wrote the second verse and went in and laid that, and I had to write the hook over what Bob Marley was saying. We were in the studio in the daytime. I like to go in the studio in the daytime. It didn't take me too long in there. Out the Way (Ghostface and Wigs) - I don't really know how this song came about. I know the chemistry was there. I don't really know how they did it or how they flipped it because I wasn't there. Drugz (Trife) - This is another solo joint I did. I fucked around and heard the beat, and the beat sounded like it was saying "Ain't Mine." First I was going to talk about the kid ain't mine, writing it to a bitch that was trying to pin a seed on me. Then I decided to talk about getting pinned for drugs when they're not mine, getting thrown in the van and all that. I had written the hook and my man T.Marvin is featured on there singing on it, saying "the drugs ain't mine." I wrote this whole song in two days. I wrote the second verse in the studio, matter of fact. I wrote the second verse on the spot in Ant Acid's studio. I had also written the outline for him to sing, "Mr. Officer, please understand, them drugs ain't mine, you've got the wrong man…" This record is about how police are getting grimy and try to give niggas jail time. This kid Dirty Dean had made the beat. He had given Ghost the beat-CD. We had used two beats off his CD. We also used one of his beats for the Bonecrusher song on the Theodore Unit album. Milk 'Em (Trife and Ghostface) - This song had so many different names and hooks. This isn't the original beat that was on the CD. This song was for a kid out in L.A. He wanted me and Ghost to do a song for an album. I wrote this whole song too. I wrote the hook and my verse, Ghost came and laid his verse. This was a feature for somebody else out in Cali. They sent the money through, so we banged the shit out. Late Night Arrival (Trife, Ghostface, and Wigs) - This is a crazy one. It was produced by J-Love. It wasn't originally over that beat. Me, Ghost, and Wigs were up at Def Jam. Some beats were playing, so we all wrote the song and recorded it in their studio. I think it was a Mobb Deep. J-Love fucked around and got his hands on it, and made it sound 100% better than the original. He named the song "Late Night Arrival" because he got it in the late-night. He was going up to Def Jam looking for new music and they gave him that. We wrote it in Def Jam, recorded it in Def Jam, and J-Love did the rest. Man Up (Trife, Ghostface, and Sun God) - This has myself, Ghost, and Ghost's son, Sun God. This is produced by Anthony Acid. I walked into his studio with Solomon Childs. He played the beat. It had that hard organ sound. He played the beat and I had a hook and verse that was already in my stash, so I went in there and laid my verse, did the hook, and Solomon Childs sang the "Man Up" on there. Matter of fact, he was the original one that set the song off. We had a falling out. He's still my man though. He ain't really rocking with Theodore no more though. He's a good dude though. I guess he felt that he couldn't wait around. We had took him off the song and my verse went first. We recorded this in April or May. I think my manager Mike played it for Ghost. He was taking long to get on it. Ghost's son was spitting rhymes too. He's the newest member of Theodore Unit. He's only 17. Mike had said, "Write to this beat," and he was on it. Ghost was the last person to fuck around and get on it. Anthony Acid mixed it down, made it sound real chunky, and we just serviced it to the streets. Game Time (Trife) - This song is like "its game time, lace up your kicks." Throw on your game face and just go in. This song doesn't have a real meaning. I went straight to the studio in Staten Island. My mans from Queens, shout out to DJ Phantom, he got the producers Now-n-Laterz. I only wrote two verses and a hook for it. Tommy Whispers was in the studio when I was recording it and I was like, "Fuck it, get on it." There's no real formula how a song comes about. I might do it in the studio on the spot or in my crib. That's how it goes down. "The Watch" and "The Sun" were songs for "Bulletproof Wallets" that didn't make the cut. They just wanted to use those and get those on there. The "Ghost and Giancana," I'm not really sure how that came about. "The Watch and "The Sun" were recorded around 2001. Tracks 1-15 are new shit, and the 16-18 are bonus tracks that are older. You probably saw them on mixtapes and all that. Now you have them all on one CD. There's songs that were supposed to make this album too, but with the politics on this, sample clearances, all that shit, they didn't use a lot of the songs that were meant for this shit. It's sometimes not the artist's fault, it's just how things work. The DVD is crazy too. It's mainly Ghost's set. There's Cappadonna, Genius, Killah Priest, Masta Killa…when you see the DVD, you're going to see how niggas perform on stage and how we tore it down at B.B. King's that night.

By Brian Kayser

[5] REACT