Star Studded • NEW SONGS UP! on MySpace Music - Free Streaming MP3s, Pictures & Music Downloads

THE REAL LEGACY of Mac Dre is not his criminal record but rather the music he made and the label he started, first called Romp Records, after his release from prison in 1996. In a characteristically generous move, Dre first released Rompalation (1996), featuring the new generation of Crestside rappers who'd begun to establish themselves in his absence. In 2001 Dre relocated to Sacramento and renamed his company Thizz Entertainment, downplaying the association with the Romper Room Gang. Originally slang for an ecstasy high, thizzin' grew to be an extremely elastic concept in Dre's hands, encompassing a wide range of hedonistic associations.

While Thizz long boasted an impressive roster of largely Crestside-bred talent, the death of its charismatic leader and best seller obviously threatened the company's existence. But Thizz wouldn't die...

"When the cuddie passed, I made a vow: I'm not gonna let this story end. I gotta step up and keep Crestside music alive." said Mac Mall

Thizz has done more than stay alive. The period since Dre passed has been one of the hottest times for Bay Area rap in years, and no label has brought more heat than Thizz.

In addition to maintaining Dre's own vast catalog, Thizz has dropped one underground banger after another this year, releasing new albums from its established core of Crestside artists like PSD (The Guru), Little Bruce (Base Rocks 2 Pimp Socks), and J. Diggs (California Livin': Part 2), as well as more recent affiliates like former Steady Mobbin' member BavGate (The InstaGator) and North Oakland's Mistah F.A.B. (Son of a Pimp), whose Droop E-produced single, "Super Sic Wid It," featuring Turf Talk and E-40, cracked the top five on KMEL-FM in September, making it the label's biggest radio success. (Dre's own Sean T-produced "Feelin' Myself," from his 2004 album, Ronald Dregan, continues to play in heavy rotation.)

Mob Figaz member Rydah J. Klyde, a friend of Dre's from his Sacramento days, already had two big albums on Thizz this year: The Best of the Mob Figaz and a duo album, as Money Gang, with Johnny Ca$h of Da Hoodfellas, called "Bang Fo' Bread", when he dropped two more: one solo, "What's Really Thizzin?", and one duo, with Freako, "El Pueblo Children".

This doesn't even exhaust the list, which also includes four Thizz Nation compilations. Taken as a whole, it's an unprecedented single-year output for a Bay Area independent hip-hop label.

The sheer volume of Thizz releases over the past year has been made possible by an increased level of collaboration within Bay Area hip-hop's notoriously cutthroat business environment. Dre's goodwill extended far beyond Crestside, and the tragic circumstances of his death provided a sudden common ground on which a divided scene could unite.

"We're trying to carry on what Dre had going on to put the shine back on the Bay," he continues. "This is a fire he started. It's up to us to keep it lit. It'd not only be disrespectful not to - we'd be idiots."

Mistah F.A.B. says they wanted to release their own music as artists but they also wanted to keep Mac Dre's legacy alive. "He started a lot of things that's taking place now. We want to put the Bay Area back out front."

This new spirit of cooperation involves more than just pooling creative resources, though that helps. In F.A.B.'s case, he recorded his entire album, including guest shots and producers, for free, as favors in exchange for his contributions to Thizz projects. More radical, however, has been Thizz's adaptation of the co-branding principle to local hip-hop on an unprecedented scale, teaming with rappers like F.A.B. and BavGate, who often produce and release their own albums. "We do albums and we bring them to Kilo, who is the CEO," F.A.B. explains. "Each artist has their own different ways of completing his album. But if it's an album Thizz feels is worth putting out, putting their stamp on, they're gonna put it out."

In exchange for a cut of the profits, Thizz lends logistical support and promotional dollars, as well as the "Mac Dre Presents" logo. Ultimately such independent dollars only go so far. As is increasingly the case even with major labels, it's ultimately the artist's responsibility to break the record. But Thizz lends the power, infrastructure, and name recognition of a corporation to artists who otherwise might not be able to push a record. It also exposes them to potential new fans through association with other Thizz artists.

"There comes a point of saturation," F.A.B. confesses. "You don't want people to burn out on the whole movement before it even gets a chance to expand." What is striking, however, is the sheer quality of the Thizz releases thus far. Obviously Dre's death has lent an incredible urgency to this music. The effect might best be gauged by comparing PSD's current "The Guru" and his 2003 "U Ain't Heard of Me???", both co-released by Thizz and his own Gateway Entertainment. While the earlier disc is an impressive, if overpacked, collection of a top-notch rapper, "The Guru" is a true masterpiece of an album, bluesy and soulful, tinged throughout with PSD's Mississippi roots.

With the addition of Keak Da Sneak, who confirmed his much-awaited upcoming album will be a Thizz co-release with his own label AllNDaDoe, Thizz continues to gain momentum. The one holdout thus far is Dre's fellow Cutthoat Committee member, Dubee. While he willingly helped PSD finish the group's second album, "Money Iz Motive", among Dre's final projects, Dubee doesn't feel ready to drop another album yet. "I put my game on pause," he says, "out of respect for the cuddie." While he may not agree, PSD understands his friend's position. No one wants to exploit Dre even as they want to further his work.

"We could have used more songs with Dre," PSD says. "But we were like, no, save it for his kids. We have to eventually let go. We can't just keep giving you Dre songs like Dre alive."

VALLEJO'S CRESTSIDE neighborhood occupies a tear-shaped square mile on the northeastern edge of town, wedged between a major thoroughfare and the freeways shuttling tourists to nearby Marine World. Centered on Crest Ranch Park, with bucolic street names like Miravista and Haviture Way, it was clearly designed as suburban space – modest homes with tidy lawns are laid out in traffic-impeding loops and dead ends, at once labyrinthine and insular. But far from being a commuter haven, Crestside is the toughest hood in Vallejo, home to a small, proud, extremely close-knit African American community that contributes a disproportionately large share of talent to Bay Area hip-hop.

The Mac may have been first and Mac Mall may have been more famous due to his mid-'90s stint on Sony/Relativity, but the undisputed king of the Crest for more than a decade was Andre Hicks, better known as Mac Dre, a pioneer of Bay Area independent rap who scored his first underground hit in 1989 with "2 Hard 4 the Fuckin' Radio." A prolific artist with more than 20 releases – the vast majority released after 1996 on his own Thizz Entertainment/Romp Records label – the 34-year-old Mac Dre had already dropped three solo albums in 2004 and was more popular than ever when he was murdered on November 1st that year, in a Kansas City highway shooting.

A year later, in the Crest for a block party marking the anniversary of Dre's death. The Associated Press's subsequent characterization of the event as a "memorial service" attended by "150 people" fails to do it justice; there had to be a few hundred people in the street, mostly Crest residents of all ages who came together by word of mouth, without a permit, to celebrate Mac Dre in the most spontaneous manner possible.

"Dre loved his neighborhood," his friend and fellow Crestsider PSD says. "He loved people. As a result, people loved him."

The feeling is palpable in the Crest. Riding with another of Dre's friends, J. Diggs, in a van wrapped in an ad for his CD California Livin': Part Two, one of six new albums released that day on Thizz. Approaching the block party, Diggs cranks Dre's "Boss Tycoon" and literally dances the van through the crowd, assisted by a half dozen dudes who jump on the running boards to rock us in time to the beat ("Dipped in sauce"–step–"I floss"–step–"I'm a boss"–step-step). People dance, or rather, parade, in front of the van as it struts around the block, and for a few moments you're in the center of a communal outpouring of love, the kind usually reserved for folk heroes and saints. Dre's charisma had that effect on people, even his closest associates.

"He was the word of the Crest," affirms Dubee, a.k.a. Sugawolf, who started a neighborhood supergroup, The Cutthoat Committee, with Dre and PSD in the late '90s. "Just to get a response back from him was to know your existence in this turf shit was acknowledged."

Like many aspiring emcees, Dre began writing raps to stave off boredom in juvenile hall. After his release in 1988, he hooked up with the Mac and producer Khayree, who'd already put out the Mac's The Game Is Thick. (The last album Dre released, 2004's The Game Is Thick, Part 2, on Sumo, is a sequel/homage to his friend and mentor's underground classic.) Building a buzz with songs like "2 Hard for the Fuckin' Radio" and "California Livin' " (1991), Dre was clearly on his way to the majors when his career was derailed by an arrest for "conspiracy to commit bank robbery." Accused of being a member of the Romper Room Gang, responsible for a string of old-fashioned bank holdups in the Vallejo area in the early '90s, Dre wound up doing four years and four months in federal prison. But he maintained he was framed by Vallejo police, whose inability to catch the robbers he had mocked in the 1992 song "Punk Police."

According to J. Diggs, Dre's codefendant, who served eight years on the weightier charge of conspiracy to commit armed bank robbery, "the Romper Room crew was a group of youngsters growing up together – the name 'gang' was attached to us by the media. Our crew was only 11 deep and 9 of us went to the feds."

"I was into the bank robbery game," J. Diggs freely admits. "But not Dre. We was going to Fresno to rob a bank – me, my cousin, and another guy who was an informant wearing a wire. Dre ended up coming down there with us, to go mess with some girls. We had 32 FBI agents following us around for a couple of days.

"All they wanted out of Dre was to say, 'Yeah, I knew they was going to rob a bank. I didn't have nothing to do with it.' He could've went home, but he kept his mouth shut. Out of the crew, Dre is the only person I can say went to prison for nothing, for basically not telling on nobody."

Regardless of how you weigh such testimony – and Lt. Rick Nichelman, the Vallejo Police Department officer named by Dre on his recorded-over-the-phone-from-jail album, Back N Da Hood (Young Black Brotha 1993), maintains Dre was guilty as charged – one thing is certain: If Dre committed a crime, he'd done his time. Friends and collaborators describe the post-prison Dre as completely focused on music, to the exclusion of extracurricular income.

"Dre wasn't a criminal," PSD insists. "He wouldn't know how to steal. I heard him denounce pimping, the whole getting supported from a female, three or four Gs every night. He said, 'Man, I just want to rap.' He was dedicated."

Dubee similarly recalls Dre's encouragement to concentrate strictly on music: "I'm a street rapper. He used to get mad at me because I'm so street. 'Dubee, you got to leave this street shit alone sometimes.' We didn't know it, but Dre had stopped looking at us as 'the little cuddies.' He was like, 'Y'all with me now.' "

"He gave a lot of people the opportunity to do music," says North Oakland rapper Mistah F.A.B., who became tight with Dre in the last year and a half of his life. "He was a good dude, a philanthropist. He didn't base a lot of things on the materialist ideology a lot of rappers have. I've never heard anyone say anything bad about Dre."

Such universal goodwill in the notoriously factional world of Bay Area hip-hop is rare, but stories of Dre's own generosity to his fellow artists are legion. Perhaps the most illustrative comes from producer One Drop Scott, who himself was brutally beaten and left for dead in an incident at the Berkeley Marina a couple of years ago.

"When I got out the hospital, I was at Harm's studio at the Soundwave. I ran into Mac Dre. He listened to what I'd been doing since I got back. He was loving that I was still doing my thing. He came back the next day, handed me a fat-ass check. 'Drop, I need you, bro.' He was the first to chisel me off and make sure that I was cool."

Clearly Dre appreciated defiance in the face of overwhelming odds and appalling setbacks. When he was about to blow up, he was sent to prison for what would be considered his prime in an age-conscious industry like hip-hop. When he got out, he had to start over at a time when the Bay was ice cold; even then, he consistently moved around 30,000 units, with the occasional disc selling more than 60,000 copies, according to SoundScan reports. When he started getting hot again after the Treal T.V. (2003) DVD, he warmed up the Bay with him. When he was about to blow up again, he was murdered.

*All words courtesy of Garrett Caples
(The San Francisco Bay Guardian)

MySpace a place for friends

Get Flash now!