Paul Wall

CONFRONT: So we’re with Paul Wall, here at the Bell Center in Montreal. So how is the tour going so far, on The Honda Civic Tour, for you?

PAUL: It’s going great! I’m loving it; I’m having a lot of fun. We’ve been to maybe 10 cities already. We’re getting a lot of love; great response from the crowd; kids, they love us. It’s a lot of fun.

CONFRONT: That’s great! You’re also part of a project called Expensive Taste. We were just told [Skinhead Rob from Transplants] and Travis [Barker, from +44] are here.

PAUL: Yeah, yeah!

CONFRONT: How did this project get started?

PAUL: We just met one time and we got to be pretty good friends, you know. And one day we just said: “Hey! You wanna make some music?” and we started making music just for fun. And all three of us we’re part of different separate groups already. We said: “Why don’t we do it?” and we just did it, we just tried some stuff out, we made some music and next thing you know we got maybe forty songs already recorded.

CONFRONT: Wow!

PAUL: Yeah, it’s a lot of fun doing it because it’s different from what I’m normally used to doing. Travis does all the production, he knows what he’s doing; he does a great job. Other than that, you know, it’s just us being friends and just doing our thing and making music and having fun.

CONFRONT: But now that Travis is on tour with you and everything, does that give you time to work on [Expensive Taste] at the same time?

PAUL: Yeah! Definitely! He’s got a studio in his bus and I got one on my bus too. So you know, he’s doing the production on his bus and suddenly he comes up to our bus and then we record and then bam! We got another song done.

CONFRONT: That’s just great!

PAUL: Yeah!

CONFRONT: You mentioned on your MySpace that you were working on a screwed and chopped version of the +44 album.

PAUL: Yeah!

CONFRONT: What did the guys think of it the first time, when you told them that?

PAUL: Oh, they loved it! They wanted to hear it. When Travis was in the Transplants, Travis and Rob, when they were The Transplants, I screwed and chopped that. And we put that out and it was pretty cool. But yeah, they loved it. So, I finally got to give it to Travis last night, I gave him the final version of it.

CONFRONT: Can’t wait to hear that, wow, that’s going to be awesome.

PAUL: Yeah!

CONFRONT: You filmed a documentary in Sierra Leone…

PAUL: Yeah!

CONFRONT: Called: “Bling’d: Blood, Diamonds and Hip-Hop”. So what did you learn, how did that change your life?

PAUL: It made me want to be involved because I didn’t really know about what was going on; the situation over there. You know, with the poverty, with everything, with the diamonds and just the conflict I didn’t know about it. So, you know, hearing about it through Kanye West has made me want to be involved and then going over there just really inspired me to really do something, make a change; just be a part of it. No matter how big or small, who knows, but I just wanted to make a change. So we started a foundation called Bombay Bling. It’s a non profitable organisation charity where in a documentary we went to an orphanage, with the children affected by war who were displaced or child soldiers, who were kidnapped… And the orphanage was getting shut down and they were getting evicted so we put some money together to help keep things going. And also, they don’t have any public waste system so… They got a lot of problems over there! You know, education problems, opportunity problems with no job opportunities, the corruption in the government, no real hospitals so there’s health problems… So little by little we tried to make a change and help people out. That was just great.

CONFRONT: What’s the difference between the movie, Blood Diamond and reality? Is there truth in there, in most of it?

PAUL: Well, it was a different time, you know, Blood Diamond, the movie. It was based on what happened between ninety-one and two-thousand and one. So, you know, I went after the war. It was over when I went, I went over last summer. But what I can tell, it pretty much tells the story of how it was, you know. It was a crazy time. People fearing for their lives; it was a very dangerous time. Little kids running around, eleven, twelve year old kids running around with ak-47s killing each other, cutting off each other’s hands… It was a wild time. There’s a great book that one of my friends [Ishmael Beah] wrote, who went and actually documented; he went over with us. The book is called ‘A Long Way Gone’. It was one of New-York Times’ best sellers. It’s a great book. He was a child soldier, he was kidnapped and forced to be a child soldier for I think five or six years in the middle of the war. And then he escaped and was adopted in America. So it tells his whole story, this incredible story.

CONFRONT: Wow, we will check that out definitely! You started at a young age, at fourteen when you started working for Def-Jam. Did you ever think at that time that you were going to get to this point?

PAUL: No, I was just doing it for fun. Just, you know, a hobby. I had nothing else to do, so I just did it for fun. I loved music, I loved the music industry, so I just wanted to be involved and be a part of it in some kind of way.

CONFRONT: That’s great. You also have your own jewellery brand, Grills by Paul Wall!

PAUL: Yeah!

CONFRONT: Specialized in custom made grills.

PAUL: Yeah!

CONFRONT: How did that start? What got you into that?

PAUL: I always bought jewellery. And I just found that I could get it the best and the cheapest if I did it myself. Not just jewellery, with everything in life you know; I could cut the grass or I could pay somebody else to cut it. Well I’d rather to do it myself instead of paying somebody else. It’s the same thing with jewellery; I just got in with a guy who made the grills. I got in pretty cool with him and we worked out a deal. And I started promoting for him and bringing him a lot of business. And next thing you know he started to show me how to do it and I was making my own grills so…

CONFRONT: That’s awesome!

PAUL: Yeah! But our website, we actually sell a lot of grills up here (in Canada). Especially for the show, we can get a lot of orders on our website, grillsbypaulwall.com. A lot of kids man, just regular people, they want to have their grills ready for the show!

CONFRONT: That’s sweet!

PAUL: Today my sister told me, she was like: “Yeah, we’re getting a bunch of emails, everybody thanking us for the grills”. And they got the grills, because a lot of people they were worried they wouldn’t get them on time for the show.

CONFRONT: (Laughing) That’s just great!

PAUL: Yeah! We’re actually, we’re selling them here too at the show.

CONFRONT: Oh that’s great too!

PAUL: Yeah, we’re selling them so…

CONFRONT: Your new album, ‘Get Money Stay True’, just came out in April. So the title is a pretty obvious message. Do you think that the rapping industry gives out the wrong image, are you trying to change that?

PAUL: I don’t know, I don’t really get caught up in that too much. I just try to do my own thing; you know make music and trying to push forward what I’m trying to do with my life. I think a lot of times, just in the music industry period or just in life period, a lot of times, lots of people see some success, it changes them a little bit. They turn into something and the success changes them. You know, that’s just a message I’m trying to put out; get money but stay true to who you are. Of course it changes your environment, it changes the situations around you, but don’t let it change who you are in your heart.

CONFRONT: You worked with your wife Crystal, Crys Wall, for the song “Tonight”.

PAUL: Yeah…

CONFRONT: How did that experience go?

PAUL: It was great! You know she comes around; she used to hang around the studio with us anyway whenever we record. And it just would be fun, you know; we would all kick it, me and all my friends at the studio hanging out. We would be talking about different situations and from whatever we talked about, that would kind of dictate where we’d go with whatever song we made. The album, most majority of the music we make, it was all based on our lifestyle, you know, it’s our life. So whatever we’re living, whatever we’re doing, you know, that’s the kind of music that we make. So she’d be around in the studio and on that song, she wrote that song, her and also my boy Lil’Keke, they wrote it with John B. John B. came in and sang on it. She was singing on a couple of other songs too, she’s such a great singer so; she would contribute like in the background here and there. You know, we make music, we have an open mind where we try new things and it might work, it might not, but we give it a try. If it doesn’t work, you know, we keep moving.

CONFRONT: That’s a nice experience. You’re a renowned DJ, rapper, artist, writer, and businessman. How do you keep your focus?

PAUL: Just, you know, being grateful for the blessings that I have and just remembering how it was when I didn’t have the opportunities. I was young, trying to make it, with ambitions… Now, me and one of my best friends, his name is T. Farris, he’s my manager, we always talk about it all the time. We always remember back; we reminisce how things were when we were broke. We didn’t have any opportunities and now we got all these opportunities! We feel like God is blessing us with putting these things on our lap and what are we going to do with it? Are we just going to sit back and relax and not do nothing? Or we’re going to keep striving and keep making forward progress and being grateful for our blessings? Just try to move forward with your career.

CONFRONT: That sets a good example. You studied communications at the University of Houston.

PAUL: Yeah!

CONFRONT: How did that help you to get to where you are today?

PAUL: Well in school, in terms of what I learned in the classroom, all I learned is how to cheat and how to pass.

Both Laughing

PAUL: I learned so much, like it changed my life just in terms of what I learned from the people around me because the University of Houston is such a big university, with so many different people from different walks of life. So I got to see different people from different parts of the world. And I would hear their stories and I would just learn from them, how they survived or whatever, you know. Some people analyze at lot. Me and one of my friends we used to just analyze everything. So, you know, we’d see people who are just spoiled or some people who didn’t have anything and they were just making the best of their situation. It just makes you realize, some people they have opportunities and they don’t do nothing with them and some people don’t have any opportunities. So, I learned so much, it just changed my life in terms of just in life! Education wise, this is just what I learned, about life, about people you know. But in class, I didn’t learn anything.

Both Laughing

CONFRONT: How was your experience with Jermaine Dupri, working on your new hit single “I’m Throwed”?

PAUL: Oh it was incredible! He’s the man; he’s an incredible producer. He’s always a lot of fun to work with, he’s real talented. He’s the man; he’s one of the best!

CONFRONT: And what can we expect of Paul Wall in the near future?

PAUL: Definitely our new group, Expensive Taste; we got our own new line of clothing to go along with it at expensivetastemerch.com. And MySpace is www.myspace.com/expensivetaste and Travis is doing a lot of production and me and Skinhead we’re doing all the rapping and it’s just a lot of fun! We got a lot of new music, just innovative, creative music and we’re having a lot of fun doing it.

CONFRONT: We have five questions that we always ask every artist with CONFRONT Magazine.

PAUL: Cool.

CONFRONT: Our main objective is to redefine mainstream. To us, it’s just the ability to reach a lot of people with your music.

PAUL: Cool!

CONFRONT: What is your definition of mainstream?

PAUL: My definition of mainstream. I guess, I don’t know… (Starts laughing)

CONFRONT: Do you think it’s necessarily bad, if you’re mainstream?

PAUL: No, I don’t think it’s bad. I think mainstream is just the majority of the people. So if you do something mainstream, you just reach the majority of people, I guess.

CONFRONT: What’s your first and last CD purchased?

PAUL: My first CD ever purchased I think was Lil’Keke. He had a CD called ‘Don’t Mess With Texas’. And the last one I purchased was +44 I think, yeah +44.

CONFRONT: Awesome! First and last concert?

PAUL: First concert I ever went to, I don’t know… I know the best concert I ever went to was Master P and No Limit Records. They came to Houston to the Summit with the Houston Rockets, the basketball team used to play. And they sold it out. It was him and all the No Limit Records artists. It was March 8th, no May 8th, 1998. The last concert I went to, other than this… I don’t know…

CONFRONT: It’s been a while?

PAUL: Yeah. I think, that I didn’t perform at, the last concert that I went to that I didn’t perform at… I think it was Street Dreams, Young Jeezy, they came to town. Or maybe Nas, I saw Nas perform in Las Vegas.

CONFRONT: Cool. We have a section called the Daily Urges which lets our writers and readers share their favourite artists of the moment. Who do you listen to lately?

PAUL: +44!

CONFRONT: Yeah?

PAUL: Yeah! I’m a big fan of my friends, but I love the music.

CONFRONT: And if you could choose one thing you would like the public to remember from you, what would that be?

PAUL: I’m People’s Champ!

Both Laughing

PAUL: I might not always win, my CD might not sell the most, but the people love me, I’m the People’s Champ, I’m here for the people, I’m making music for the people.

CONFRONT: That’s great! Well thank you so much Paul!

PAUL: Thank you!