More than 20 years ago Cash Money Records was founded. The label's former in-house producer Mannie Fresh recently broke down the development of Cash Money and his experiences with artists like Juvenile and B.G.
Mannie says the label kick started its success with a buzz single called "Bounce Slide Ride" by Lil' Slim. Following the release of the single, the producer noticed a need for a new sound so the label began to transition from bounce music to more explicit rap, according to HipHopDX.
"Cash Money really had no intentions of being a rap label because when it started, it really was based on bounce," he explained. "It was one bounce song after another. I started to doing bounce songs for them, and they jumped off. We thought bounce music was over because it was just over-saturated, that's what made us go to rap. I never thought bounce would be around, or it would evolve to somebody calling it twerk. I was probably one of the first dudes doing bounce beats, but we was just like, 'Damn, everybody doing a bounce song. How do we change this?'"
During the interview, the former Big Tymer recalled meeting Juvenile.
"I had already knew about Juvenile because I was DJing, but the first time I met him was at a bus stop," he said. "I told him to rap, and he just did song after song. It was mind blowing, like, 'Damn, this dude really know all of his songs.' He was like, 'Whatever you want me to rap about, I'll rap about it.' The rhyme schemes that he was using and his wordplay, I was just like, 'Dude, this the future.' I immediately went to Cash Money and said, 'Ya'll gotta get this guy Juvenile.' He felt the same way and was like, 'I been trying to get on one of your beats.'"
The label then signed B.G., a rapper who embodied true-to-life lyricism and secretly struggled with a drug problem.
"B.G. was just like his lyrics. It was weird because [he'd leave and come back] like, 'I'm ready to record.' It was always mysterious like, 'Where you go at?' But you press record and dude go in. He'd finish the song and he be gone. Sometimes the dude would have nothing but talk for you, like 'What's going on in the world?' or he'd be like, 'I don't wanna talk about nothing. I just want to record this song, this is what going on in my mind.' It started coming full circle, with drugs and everything like, dude was really doing this, he was doing everything he was saying. I just thought he was Alfred Hitchcock, like he's telling some deep ass stories and he got a great imagination. But then it's like, 'You know he really do all this shit?' I'm like, 'Oh, I didn't.' Early on [I didn't know about his drug issues]. He never really hung around. Almost like he didn't want us to see it like, 'I'll come talk about it and then I'm gone.' Later on, it became very obvious. We didn't realize that he was really speaking the truth. It came out later on that this dude is not just rapping, like this dude is really doing all this shit. B.G. and Wayne was kids, but they just had street knowledge."
Read more from the interview here.
