Matt Fingaz [Guesswhyld Records] – The Unkut Interview

Matt Fingaz is living proof that unpaid internships can be more than just slave labor for record companies, as he was able to parlay his connections into an independent record label with Guesswhyld Records before he made the move into project co-ordination with the B.O.C (Business of Coordination) management company with Stat Quo, which handles with music, sport and fashion. Matt took some time out to kick it about those idealistic days when making an underground rap record was as simple as knowing the right guys in the neighborhood, as he helped everyone from Mos Def and Talib Kweli to Sha Money XL get their feet in the door of the music game.

Robbie: What led to you getting involved with starting a label?

Matt Fingaz: In 1994 I was a DJ for college radio and I interned for Blunt Records – Mic Geronimo, Royal Flush and Cash Money Click – Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and Tuesday and Thursday I was interning at Relativity, when Common and the Beatnuts and Fat Joe and Bone Thugs was popular. I just loved vinyl, I loved collecting records – I didn’t even want to be in the music business! One day my friend Brandon put out this record called The Derelicts, and I said, “Wow! You put out your own record?!” He said, “Yeah, and I put it out in Japan!” He had this check and it said “$1,000”. I was like, “Oh, you’re rich!” Cos we were just kids. I was nineteen years old and I was really good with the college promotions and marketing, but I was terrible in the mail room. Basically I didn’t know how to tape up packages, and they hated me so they complained. I used to work under Irv Gotti – he was DJ Irv at the time – and I worked under this guy Chappy. Chappy was like, “I’m sorry but we can’t use your services anymore.” I’m like, “You’re firing me? I’m working for free!”

I’m sitting in this hallway and I had a choice to make. “Do I continue with school and economics? Everyone’s up in this label saying, ‘Oh, Mic Geronimo should get this producer’ and ‘He should get this feature’ but they’re not doing anything! You know what I’m going to to do? I’m going to take all this information and apply it to myself and put out a record!” So I said, “Brandon, help me find Hub Servall in New Jersey with distribution and manufacturing.” This is before Fat Beats even had distribution. I just needed to find the right artist. Somebody I knew knew Lace Da Booms and I went up to meet him at his college and said, “Hey! I’ve got a little bit of money that I saved up when I was thirteen years old, I’ve got connections with Domingo and Buckwild and all these people now. Let’s do a record!”

Where did you sell that first record?

I went direct when I first started. Fat Beats was just starting their warehouse and they were like, “Let’s get 3,000” and then Rock & Soul would say, “Give us this amount” and then Manhattan Records in Japan would say, “We need a thousand of this.” I was just going hand-to-hand, and eventually Fat Beats Distribution started developing, and then B.U.D.S. Distribution and then Landspeed and Sandbox Automatic with Ed Wong. That’s when things started taking off.

That would have cut out a lot of leg work for you I imagine?

Oh yeah. I was done with taking my mom’s truck and driving around the city with all the boxes of records. That was ridiculous! [laughs]

Was “Cut That Weak Shit” your first release?

Yeah, 1996. Domingo did the b-side, the a-side was Buckwild.

How many copies of that did you sell?

Almost 10,000. That allowed me to put out Mike Zoot. That record brought in the income to make it legitimate business so that my uncle would lend me money – because he saw that I was bringing in money. Deals to do double vinyl in Japan of Lace Da Booms and Mike Zoot, so Manhattan Records would give me an advance and be like, “Can we do an EP with you?” One record would lead to the next one, and I was always big on attention to detail. I always wanted to making sure I was putting out independent records that sounded as major as possible.

How did you meet Mike Zoot?

A friend of mine named Druts who knew Lace Da Booms, they grew up in East Flatbush together. He said, “Matt, I’ve got this artist for you – Lace!” Then he said, “Yo! You’re not working with Lace no more? I got Mike Zoot. He’s on some De La Soul meets Redman type thing.” So me, Mike and Druts met up at McDonalds on 14th Street on Union Square, 1996, towards the end of the year. I just said, “You’re exactly the type of artist I want to work with!” We did our first record with EZ-Elpee, they made a good chemistry and me and Mike and Kweli would always hang out so it was like, “Let’s do a record with Hi-Tek and Mos Def.”

You gave a lot of producers their first placements as well, such as Sha Money XL?

Just Blaze, 88 Keys first work. Hi-Tek’s first record, which was “High Drama” with Mike Zoot and Mos Def, Talib Kweli’s first features before Rawkus, Mos Def’s first independent features. For a lot of people it was their first time working independent and getting out there was through Guesswyld. Kweli I knew through when I worked at TVT because he was my friend Chappy was like, “Matt, I want you to meet Hi-Tek. He’s been producing for Mood.” Mood was on Blunt and Kweli was cool with them, but nobody knew who Kweli was because he hadn’t put out a record, so Kweli was like, “Matt, let’s put out Reflection Eternal.” I was like, “OK, cool.” But I was a kid! I didn’t have the type of budget necessary to fund other projects. I was just happy getting Mike Zoot out. Mos Def did the same, he was like, “Yo Matt, can you put out ‘Universal Magnetic’?” I was like, “Oh man, I would love to, but I’m doing all this out of a bunk bed!” I’ve got my G.I. Joes and Transformers on my bunk bed and I’ve got a bunch of records! They just dug how I dealt with them personally, but Rawkus at the end of the day had Rupert Murdoch money, FOX money, so that’s really what started that whole history off.

How did meet people like DJ Spinna and Buckwild?

Buckwild I met because he was working with Royal Flush and being at all those studio sessions. It’s word of mouth, I would hear a record and ask somebody at Fat Beats, “Who did that record?” “It’s DJ Spinna.” “Yo, I need to speak to him!” Or if I did a record with Buckwild he would say, “Matt, you should work with Showbiz. You should work with O.Gee. You should work with Lord Finesse.” It started with them and then it just spawned out. Sha Self (Sha Money) was working with Royal Flush, so a lot of it came from my intern days. That really made a big difference.

Did you have a long-term plan at that stage or were you just going from record to record?

The long-term plan wasn’t a proper perception of the music business, because you’ll say, “I want a label deal,” but you don’t really understand what you’re asking for when you say that, because you have to put up half the marketing money, you have to put up half the money to put through the records. If you want a production deal and an imprint? That’s different. When you’re a young kid you really don’t know what to ask for, because we were dealing with a time period where there were no mentors. We were kids doing something together for the first time, like trial and error learning. For me, it was constantly adapting. When I did the Tommy Tee record, people overseas would say, “Yo Matt, can you get us Mos Def for a concert? Can you get him for a feature with a Norwegian rapper?” So then I started Project Co-Ordinating and it became more than just Guesswyld, It became a broader business. But my goal was always to get Mike Zoot on Loud Records! I always wanted to do something like that.

Did you ever have meetings with those guys about that idea?

Yeah, I knew all the record label people. It’s just that back then, what would sell on record labels was Ma$e, Puff – big commercial records. You’re doing a record with scratching on the hook? It wasn’t something that a lot of people were going to throw money at. A lot of these artists on the underground didn’t really know how to make that crossover record, and a lot of them didn’t want to! They looked down upon it. Mos Def had leverage because of acting, that really made a huge difference. But these artists are not Mos Def! He was only one of the few – Common, Kweli – there’s only a couple of guys from that genre that really broke through during that time period. Mobb Deep/Wu-Tang is a whole ‘nother level.

It got to the point where it was a full time job to keep up with all the new records coming out.

That’s where the issue started coming up for me. When I started up there was six people putting out records – Tru Criminal, Spinna was putting out records, Bobbito was putting out records – it wasn’t a lot! All of a sudden, everybody’s got posse cuts! Everybody’s got Masta Ace and Sadat X on their record. I didn’t do a posse cut because it was cool names on a record. I did it because I heard a voice that matched the beat and thought, “Oh, Pharoahe Monch! Then Mike Zoot can come four bars after that! Then Prince Po can come after F.T.!” I really cared about the songs more than just the political statements I was trying to make with it – they just happened to have big names. What a lot of these artists didn’t understand is that hip-hop – to really make it as a career – is entertainment. You need to have a good live show, you need to be out there promoting your records, going to the radio stations. You can’t sit at home all day just doing songs! It’s not enough.

Is that in relation to the artists you worked with or in general?

It’s a general statement, I don’t want to throw anybody under the bus. Sometimes people don’t want to evolve their music, and you can’t force them to. You can say, “You should do something with so-and-so singing on there” and they want to rap for fifty bars. I give them the best platform possible and they do they best they can. I think Mike Zoot really maxed it out. He did really well for an artist with no music videos and he rapped with every major person at that time period and he did some really quality records. A lot of rappers grow up – whether it be Brooklyn, Bronx, Queens – and everybody in the neighborhood is like, “Hey! When are you gonna be on MTV? When are you gonna be on BET?” But they don’t really understand that there’s something valuable with being independent and doing what we did. So the rapper would always say, “Oh, that’s nice. I’m gonna do a show with so-and-so in Norway. No, I wanna be on MTV! It’s not good enough!” So it’s like the grass is greener, and when they get to the other side of that grass it’s like, “Oh, I kinda wanna go back t getting $2,000 a week for features and do records with Buckwild and Spinna again.” I’d be like, “Yo, it’s over!”

At what point did the independent record business lose it’s appeal for you?

What really changed things was Fat Beats and these companies, instead of being distribution companies they became A&R’s. They were trying to tell everybody what type of records to put out. They were like, “We need Ed OG on the feature and Pete Rock on the beat” or “This M.O.P record isn’t exactly ‘Ante Up’” They actually said that to me. So I said, “Well you try to talk to Lil’ Fame inside of a club and you try to talk to D.R. Period and see if you can go get ‘Ante Up’. Even if I gave you ‘Ante Up,’ do you have the radio push behind it to do what it’s supposed to do?” And it was no. It became very frustrating for me because this wasn’t why I got into this business. If I want to be told what to do I’m going to go corporate! At least I’ll be properly compensated for it! And when people started getting home equipment and Fruity Loops and being able to record at home, and MySpace came around? That was the worst part of hip-hop, because everybody became an artist. Back when we did it, if you wanted to be a rapper you had to pay money out your pocket for studio time. If you wanted to be a producer you needed $2,000 to get an SP-1200 or an MPC. You couldn’t just get something for $100 online and start playing around. It showed you who was serious and who’s not.

How did you get into deejaying originally?

When I went to college there was a guy named Dan McNeil and Dan was a DJ. There was something about the hand to the needle to the record to the sound that just looked so cool! So I said, “Ma, I gotta get some turntables!” So I got some turntables and I didn’t know that you needed slipmats, I used the big rubber mats. So the first time I put a record on there, I’m scratching and I said, “It’s not working! These turntables are broken!” I go to Sam Ash and they told me, “They’re not broken! Take that rubber matt off and use this.” I used to get Evil Dee mixtapes – I told him this – and I used to imitate Evil Dee’s scratches. Tragedy named me Matt Fingahz because I get my hands on everything. Before that I my name was Finger Tip, but I hated people calling me Finger Tip cos they would call me Tip. “Nah, that’s Q-Tip!”

It seems like all the best producers started off as DJs.

BPM’s definitely help drum programming. I think some of the best drum programmers were DJ’s. There’s only one producer I know that was not a DJ who’s one of the best producers in hip-hop history, and that’s Q-Tip.

If you could A&R a new version of “The Symphony” who would you put up?

I think Biggie, Big Pun, Nas and Jay-Z would be a serious song. What?! If I was going to put together a top four sleeper team it would be Pharoahe Monch, Black Thought, Mos Def and Busta Rhymes.

What about your efforts as a rapper? “I’m on some wild out white shit!”

Oh my god! [laughs] That was the third record that I ever rapped on, I was like, “I wanna do a record with M.O.P and I want them to do my adlibs!” It was like a kid with candy! I was never a full time artist, now I’m even better than I was back then, I’ll do records with Game or Prodigy or Elzhi – you name it, I’ve rapped with them. But I felt like coordinating and connecting the dots and doing great things and putting them together was my strong point. But jumping off stages with Young Zee and Rah Diggah and G-Unit in Norway! Large Professor brought me out at Lincoln Centre with The Roots and Jay-Z, I got to perform there. That was one of my favorite hip-hop moments.

What was the story with that song you did with Large Pro, Rahzel and The Game?

I was working on an album, early 2000’s, and me and Large Pro did a song with Rahzel. I sat on it for five years, because back then it cost so much money to make the records! I got free beats back then, but I was still paying $1,000 a session to record it! So I started and didn’t have money to finish! I said, “I got a Kweli verse I did with The Beatminerz, I got Rahzel and Large and then I’ve got a song with Game. Just Blaze did a record…let’s put all of their voices on this one song and make it a resume record. So when I go to get coordination jobs they’ll hear this record and they’ll hear all these people co-signing me and giving my email address out at the end of the song. It was never supposed to be a “song” song, but Green Lantern would play it and some other people so it was kinda cool. It’s literally an audio resume.

Did it work?

I got one big account that changed my life.