Interview With The 050 Boyz (@050_Boyz) !

050 Boyz are a group of 3 artists hail­ing from Newark, and East Orange New Jer­sey. With their own unique styles are are on mis­sion to bring Hip Hop Back.

Q. Hi guys, intro­duce yourselves and tell us about how 050 Boyz got started 

Rid da Kid — It’s RiqDaKid. 050 Boyz got star­ted through the pro­cess of com­ing togeth­er to work with Prince AK musically.

Tru Trilla — Everything Jer­sey, what’s good, this Tru Trilla. We got star­ted a couple of years ago as far as the group 050 goes. My bro Fee came up with the name, it’s the numer­ic­al code for Jer­sey so we embrace it and brand it and Prince AK was bridging it together

Prince AK — I’m Prince AK of the 050 Boyz. We got star­ted after I called Trilla & told Riq da Kid we’re about to form a group & we made it happen

Q. You’ve worked with Treach from Naughty By Nature. How was it work­ing with someone from you’re own area of New Jer­sey, espe­cially from a group as legendary as Naughty By Nature?

Riq da Kid — It’s a bless­ing, to get guid­ance from Treach or to have toured with them dur­ing the Garden State Greats pro­ject. Observing how to per­form and make songs. Vin Rock was sup­port­ive out­side of music work­ing with youth. That’s anoth­er pas­sion of mine. And I’ve done a couple joints with Kay­Gee work­ing on scores for the movie “CookOut 2”. Plus Kay­Gee helped me with my first group Col­liz­ion’s second mixtape

Tru Trilla — Man it was an hon­or you know, the war­ri­or embraced the move­ment and has­n’t stop sup­port­ing it yet. Salute to my bro !!

Prince AK — It’s a bless­ing to have him around because we need that guid­ance on doing & mak­ing the right decisions

Q. Prince AK, you like many oth­er hip-hop artist have gone into act­ing. What attrac­ted you to act­ing and has a role ever temp­ted you to stop work­ing on your music and focus on your film career? And would you want to do some­thing sim­il­ar to Ice Cube, going from a rap­per to being a house hold name in film?

Prince AK — I went to school for act­ing years ago and was taught by Tracey Moore who also taught a lot of oth­er well know artists like 50 Cent and Busta Rhymes. It meant that though I star­ted in music, I did in fact take a lot of years out to focus on act­ing before I returned to music again, and now con­tin­ue to do both. I’ve appeared in inde­pend­ent film and tv shows, like “The Zoo” and “Black Van”, so really in my case I’ve always done both one way or anoth­er.  So I’d be down to be a house­hold name in rap­ping and film.

Q. And Riq & Tru, we hear you’ve also had some act­ing roles. Tell us about those, and would you see that as a pos­sible future career?

Riq da Kid — Yes, since I was little I always wanted to be on TV, but when music became my pas­sion I always said I would per­fect music then trans­ition over to act­ing. I had a small part in “Zoo” the movie and

also in “Black Van” play­ing one of Treach’s child­hood friends, but I was also masked play­ing one of the char­ac­ters who would kid­nap people! lol There may be a Zoo series, so it’s pos­sible I will have a dope role in that

Tru Trilla — yes, I had a nice spot in “Nick­names” pro­duced by Salaad­in Newark. Plus the Zoo series up and some oth­er com­ing pro­jects are under­way, so you would see us splash­ing it up

Q. Clin­ton, you’ve pro­duced the whole album, how did you approach the over­all concept? Was there any cri­ter­ia laid down by the group for a sound they were look­ing for, or did you already have an under­stand­ing of what would work best giv­en you’ve known them for some time?

Clin­ton Place Peace. When an artist asks me to make beats like some­thing they’ve heard, it’s kind of offens­ive!! LOL. And I do the abso­lute oppos­ite. When it comes to cre­at­ing beats, I have nev­er cre­ated a beat with an artist or group in mind. My motto about my music is I do music I like with the hopes the artist likes it.

The 050 Boyz did­n’t ask for a spe­cif­ic sound. Prince AK got at me and asked if I wanted to do a mix­tape with them. I’ve known him for 20+ years. Since our street hust­ling days, long before we took this music thing ser­i­ous. So it was­n’t even a ques­tion. I got his email and sent like 20 beats that night. I’ve pro­duced whole albums for a few artists. When they get at me about their pro­ject, I may make a few new beats, but most of the time I go through my cata­logue and ran­domly select joints. LOL!

I’m actu­ally hor­rible at pick­ing beats for artists. I feel I’m more of a pro­du­cer­’s pro­du­cer. I’ve been told my beats are ahead of their time. I believe that. But not in a arrog­ant way. I just feel it seems like it takes artists a longer time to pro­cess my sound. They get the beats and it’s like, Whoa, where is this going.  They have to put the beats away and come back to them. In the 050 Boyz case, which is rare, they attacked the joints as soon as they got them. They did­n’t want the same olé sound­ing music that 90% of new artists want. They are seasoned and I feel that played a part in why the pro­ject came out the way it did.

Q. And 050 Boyz, do you find it bet­ter when one or maybe two people pro­duce an album? Or are you also inter­ested in the mod­ern take of hav­ing mul­tiple pro­du­cers on one project?

Riq da Kid — Well I hon­estly think it’s bet­ter too have 1 or 2 because it gives you more of a con­sist­ent sound

Tru Trilla — Well that’s an option, but so far we have a lot of up and com­ing pro­jects pro­duced by one pro­du­cer. I think it brings you and the pro­du­cer work­ing closer togeth­er and makes it more per­son­al so the listen­er gets the whole pie instead of a slice

Prince AK — We def­in­itely appre­ci­ate dif­fer­ent sounds, but Clin­ton had everything we needed to make an LP with an ori­gin­al sound

Q. When watch­ing your “Hot Damn” video you had that MOP kind of vibe in the visu­als. Are there any hip-hop groups/artist you source inspir­a­tion from when per­form­ing or start recording?

Riq da Kid — Run DMC, MOP and def­in­itely Naughty by Nature.. Their show per­form­ances are crazy!

Tru Trilla — There’s a lot of war­ri­ors, but we really just go in with the State on our back and the people on our mind

Prince AK — Shout out to MOP, but my big bruh Trig­ger Treach gives me a lot of inspiration.

Q. Everything 050, when is it out? Why that title and what does the pro­ject mean to you guys?

Riq da Kid — It drops August 4^th. The title meant Everything Jer­sey!  Everything onpoint! That Jer­sey sound, that hiphop boom bap sound was miss­ing. So it was like everything was on 050 Boyz to bring it back! It’s our blood sweat and tears. Our struggle, our baby our suc­cess togeth­er. It means everything

Tru Trilla — It means a whole lot. For instance, it’s bring­ing back skill­ful flows, jew­els drop­ping, everything on point. The pro­duc­tion is amaz­ing, that keeps everything on the same page, everything Jer­sey or everything 050. It means what it says, you’re get­ting everything Jer­sey. August 4^th is the due date for the album, we got a lot of flame throw­ing on this project

Prince AK - August 4^th it drops and we Ccose that title because it rep­res­ents Jer­sey Hip-Hop and it means a hell of a lot to us

Q. The con­nec­tion to your home State is obvi­ously import­ant to you. Through your music, what would hope to achieve for New Jersey?

Riq da Kid - Ori­gin­al­ity. Every­one not being afraid to sound like where they’re from just to be suc­cess­ful. Acknow­ledge­ment for our state again and to bring up new artists and show our youth that they can dream again

Tru Trilla - To open doors as well as ment­or new young spit­ters with a pur­pose of main­tain­ing your iden­tity and put Jer­sey right back in the arena of greatness

Prince AK — Yeah, our mis­sion is to open doors for our town, that’s always been at the heart of what we’re about.

Q. From the cur­rent crop of new artists who’ve emerged onto the scene in the past few years, who are you feel­ing and why?

Riq da Kid — JCole, he’s unique and ori­gin­al, not afraid to be him­self and be hiphop. Kendrick Lamar, a lyr­ic­al beast and pushes the envel­ope.  Meek Mill for energy and Tink, she’s dope

Tru Trilla — I’m feel­ing J Cole, Joey Bada$$, Kendrick, they’re just coast­ing in their own lanes and being dif­fer­ent. Thats dope!!!

Prince AK — Drake, Kendrick & Rich Homie Quan

Q. And who are your top 5 rap­pers of all time and why?

Riq da Kid — Nas, B.I.G, Jay‑Z, Pac, and Rakim

Tru Trilla — I don’t have a top five really, there’s a lot of great­ness out there. But I’d say 2pac, Big­gie, KRS‑1, Lakim Shabazz, Scarface

Prince AK — Big­gie, Nas. Lox, 50 Cent and Eminem

Q. Any­thing else you’d like to say to our read­ers in the UK? Where can they find you online?

Riq da Kid — Make sure y’all get “Everything 050” on August 4^th. Twit­ter & ins­tagram: RiqDaKid_050

Tru Trilla — Shout out to I Am Hip Hop Magazine and the read­ers, salute to y’all, big ups!! We work for you. August 4^th,Everything 050 drops, sup­port real music. Get at us on Face­book Page “050Boyz” or on twit­ter @050_Boyz. My own twit­ter account is @EgoFree2_050

Prince AK — Big up to all the heads in the UK who appre­ci­ate that real hip hop sound, we’re just like you. Thanks to I Am Hip Hop Magazine for reachin out.  You can find me on twit­ter @PrinceAK_050

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Aaron3000

Digit­al Mar­ket­ing and You­Tube chan­nel man­ager who loves that good hip-hop.

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