Witten by Combat Jack, Thursday, January 15, 2009
You may have read last week in xxlmag.com this post by Gooch where he interviews legendary producer Easy Mo Bee, responsible for really putting Bad Boy on the map by producing the majority of the heat on the Notorious B.I.G.’s first album, the classic “Ready To Die”. In it, Gooch asks dude why he hadn’t blown up after dropping such a masterpiece and Easy starts bitching about how Diddy blackballed him in the industry ’cause he didn’t want to sign to Mr. Combs’ production team and management and such and such types of bitchery. Now, I’m not a hater and I am in no way shitting on dude, but one thing I hate, that really gets under my skin, is when characters from the music biz with mad potential and opportunity start blaming other people for reasons as to why their career never took off, not taking responsibility for their fuck ups. So here it goes, as an obligation to the blogging community, myself, the music biz and even to Mr. Bee, I feel compelled to expose the truth of what had really happened.
It is true that after “Ready To Die”, Puff was eager to sign Mo Bee to his production team. It is also true that Mo Bee declined. Was Puff sore though? Not at all. See, even though Mo Bee had heat, Diddy went ahead and put together one of the illest in-house production teams of all time. His “Hit Men” squad consisted of heat makers Deric “D. Dot” Angelettie, Ron “Amen Ra” Lawrence, Nashiem Myrick, Steve “Stevie J.” Jordan”, along with a host of other mad gifted producers. The Bad Boy machine was making so much effin dough that Puff didn’t have enough time to even think about Easy not signing as he was too busy counting money stacks. As they say, the train left the station and Mo Bee was not on it.
What Mo Bee omitted to share with xxl is how he started acting all…. strange after “Ready To Die” dropped. And I’m talking X-Files strange. See, a few years ago, I too began to ask several cats in the know as to why dude’s career floundered. What I discovered was astounding. One producer that I repp’d told me this story about how he and Mo Bee hooked up for lunch one day to discuss some projects they had on the table. In between bites, said producer told me that as they were discussing business, every time anyone would walk by, Mo Bee would nervously motion to dude to stop talking. This went on for like an hour and since they were in a crowded restaurant, no business was actually discussed. They eventually ended up in Mo Bee’s car. Once in the car, Mo Bee proceeded to turn on the a.c. to full blast, cranked up the car stereo to max, and whispered in dude’s ear “they’re following me, so I have to be careful what I say.” WTF? On another occasion, and I’m talking first hand from various trusted sources, an exec stopped by Mo’s apartment to pick up some DAT tapes of songs Mo was working on. It was in the dead of winter and when the exec got to Mo’s door, Mo stayed eyeballing him out through his peep hole for like 15 minutes. Then, once he figured “the coast was clear”, Mo went through the process of unlocking what must’ve been about 12 locks before letting my dude in. Once in, the exec was strangely greeted by Mo who was wearing nothing but a terry cloth bath robe and house shoes, but sweating profusely, like he had stepped out of an effin steam room. Mo then motioned for dude to be quiet. After cranking up his stereo, and a.c., I guess to drown out any sound, Mo pointed for dude to hold their meeting in Mo’s bathroom with the shower on blast and with consistent toilet flushing taking place. Mo then started whispering, nervously looking around and asking more than once as to whether my dude was followed as “they’ve been watching me, following me closely for some time now, and I can’t really discuss shit or give you anything today, in case they try to trap me and take me away.” Believe me when I believed dude that he high stepped it out of Bee’s crib with the quickness. On top of the craziness of that scene, my dude told me he was also getting cold, as it was in the middle of winter, with the a.c. cranked up and what not.
Now all this could probably be summed up as hearsay, but here’s where the straw breaks the proverbial camel’s back. At the time, not only was Mo noticed by fans, top execs in the industry were also fawning over dude’s musical talents. Apparently, short T.I. Jimmy Iovine of Interscope fame was extremely interested in luring Bee over to Interscope by offering him a multi-million dollar label deal. Of course, this was back when we was all making cake and deals like this were being passed out like free cheese. Anyways, Jimmy Iovine flies Mo Bee out to Los Angeles to discuss whether Mo would come over to Interscope, produce mad hits and in the process, transform himself from beat making producer to music industry mogul. Mo Bee gets out to L.A. and checks into his hotel room, for like days. When time for his appointment with Iovine, Mo Bee is a no show. Frustrated and really wanting to invest in dude, Iovine calls another producer legend of his, Dr. Dre to see if he could convince Mo to take the meeting and sign over to Interscope. Story goes, Dre AND Iovine drive over to Mo Bee’s hotel, knock on his door, and all they get is an eyeball peeping through the peep hole and all types of whispering coming from the other side of the door. Well, after like 10 minutes of this nonsense, with Dre and Iovine knocking on the hotel door and waiting, Mo Bee eyeballing them and whispering unintelligible ish from inside, Dre was like “fuck this, Jimmy, you ain’t paying me that much dough to be fucking around with crazy niggas like this” and bounced. Iovine was right behind him. Thus, after stiffing Iovine, Mo made it back to New York City, in the process killing any prospects of landing a lucrative deal at Interscope or any hopes of building any types of working relationship with Iovine and Dre.
I know also that Mo Bee pulled this type of shit with several other top uber execs in the industry including Sylvia Rhone, then top dog at Electra and Tommy Mattola who was running Sony at the time. These execs would set up meetings with dude, dude would be all like, “yes, let’s make this thing here happen”, then like…. nothing. No show. Not even a call back with any types of lame excuse. So looking back on all this, did Puff black ball Mo Bee? Fuck yeah. So did like every other effin exec in the industry. Think I’m lying or making this shit up for purposes of blog hits? Do the research your damn self, go out there and ask any credible exec who was in the game during the mid to late ’90’s as to Mr. Bee’s … strangeness. If I’m lying, I’m dying. To this day, if I were to be working on a project and needed beats, and Mo called me offering shit for free, I’d think more than twice about working with dude. I’m not sure where his mind state is today, but if it’s anything like it was then, I sure hope he gets himself checked out, and soon. That peep hole shit is played out.
Daaammmm