Bullet, an artist from the North West region of the US, has been running his label, releasing several albums and compilations for the past couple of years.  This time around we caught up with him to find out what he’s been up to since we last spoke.  Check out part one of this exclusive discussion…

What’s up man, how are things?

Things are good, everything is slowly going back to normal or as close as it can get to normal when you out here starving trying to make it. This lifestyle even after 8 years of making records can still make you adjust and adapt to change. There have been a lot of changes in the past year since we spoke last but there changes that had to be made. 

Let me get this straight, you were on the road for about a year promoting your record, then all of a sudden you just left, didn’t post on message boards, no promotions, no running of a label, no guest appearances etc. It would appear that you disappeared off the face of the earth. So what happened that led you to move away from everything? 

No I was on the road for about 5 to 6 months just promoting “When The Rain Falls” and all of my re-release titles. During this time we sold about 9,600 units, 5,200 of which were When The Rain Falls. 

That’s impressive. Were these sales hand to hand or were they mostly consignment deals?

Hand to hand mostly we did 49 to 143 cds a day not including t-shirts, posters and 8 x 10’s. In 2004 we printed 45,000 flyers running through about 42,000 most of which was on the road.

When I finally came off I was tired, physically and mentally just wore out. It is hard being on the road like that, it’s like being in a whole different world and there just isn’t time to do anything but be on the road. After years of neglect, my marriage was really at its end and fixing it wasn’t really possible. Technically maybe it was possible but 9 years is a long time for a relationship where 2 people are like sprinting in opposite directions. 

I’m sorry to hear about the marriage…

Yea honestly she is probably the greatest person I’ve ever met. We just got married real young before we had careers, before she had a million college degrees. In the end she really wanted a family and a normal life, being on a road and doing music just didn’t fall into that spectrum. Right now she is seeing somebody and we still talk occasionally as friends. I’m happy for her and she deserves to be happy. I know she has worked hard and has earned that.

As for music, I didn’t have time to maintain relationships with the artists on the label, most sat back and did as close to nothing as one can do I guess waiting for me or waiting for something… the rest did nothing, I don’t mean a little I mean nothing! (J-Trey & Yuns are exceptions) My website never got finished, I stopped posting on my rap forum, and I stopped networking with other artists and labels and I never even worked press on our releases for 2004. There just really wasn’t time anymore and with the weight of my own label, the pressure to achieve and push forward I couldn’t look back at that time. 

The label really had about 5 people who did the work, 2 of which stopped, the other faded out of the picture as communication became less frequent due to me being on the road. The rest of the people are really just artists.

Some people took it real personal, some people jumped ship, some of my artists walked away from music altogether. For me being on the road like that was really a life-changing event. When I finally pulled the plug, and came home I couldn’t adjust. It was like my life stopped. I was so sick of music at that point, sick of the people leaving everything up to me and tired of living in Portland. I just felt like I had to get away from the music, the marriage, and the city. It just wasn’t me anymore.

At what point did you feel that you lost what music really meant to you? And what does it mean to you right now?

Honestly probably a year ago maybe a little more. I just didn’t love music anymore. As an artist or a fan, its like the desire was gone. I actually have a song about this that I have yet to put out. Its real tight, it’s a song meant for other rappers to understand and respect. As of now Love is really all that’s left, if it wasn’t there we wouldn’t be talking about this and I wouldn’t be putting out anything. I don’t want to run with the rapper crowd, it isn’t me. I don’t like the politics and the massive egos that come with dealing with this crowd. I’m only surrounding myself by those that handle business and work hard. I am not real interested in being associated with, or networking with outside a small circle anymore. It’s not worth the problems to me anymore. I just want to do my music and try to feed my family. 

Where you staying at now…

I moved out toward Eastern Washington near Walla Walla somewhere in between Portland and Boise. 

What made you decide to stick around there for a while? Is that just a halfway house for you? 

No my daughter is out here, and being out here is giving me a chance to establish that relationship and work out the details for joint custody which begins when she gets out of school in June. I bought a house out here and am trying to return music back into my life while building a new relationship as I move away from the past.

You’ve got a newborn baby!  Congratulations man, tell us about that!

Reigna J. Anderson. My daughter is beautiful and the greatest gift I’ve probably ever experienced. Throughout the entire pregnancy to the birth to her being 3 weeks old yesterday I’ve been there every second and I’m proud of that. In the past I wasn’t the greatest father after having kids when I was kid myself. Now everything is different, and so much better. My fiancé has been really good to me and let me do things with Reigna that I didn’t get to when I had kids at a much younger age. Its been hard but we have stuck by each other and really made it a great experience for our families. 

Do you think that this hiatus has made your situation better?

Yes, I am a little older, a lot wiser and have a lot of momentum from last year. The reality is simple “When The Rain Falls” was a dope record that was received well by a geographically larger area than almost every Northwest album of 2004. The people that bought my albums aren’t your everyday NW rap supporter, in fact the majority are women and probably less than ½ even live in the northwest and even those that do don’t own NW rap CD’s with the exception of some Oregon fans I came across that knew Cool Nutz or some fans here and there that knew Mad Ro. We sold CD’s all day, every day and never heard anybody talking about NW acts on any regular basis regardless of what state or city we were in. That’s when I knew what I was doing would be effective and albums like North Coast Rain were really benefiting our region as a whole. After When The Rain Falls, 3 re releases and Bullet Presents Juice I could afford to take the time off to clear my mind and deal with real life situations. All the people around me past and present will say that I have neglected my responsibilities outside music for years, well I took time off and dealt with my life. 

That’s a good thing, that when we so involved in the music one can forget that we have things like family, friends etc. We can get caught up, I think the key word here is “balance”…

Yea “Balance & Options” like Quik said. I don’t know if my life has ever had balance especially since music became apart of it. It’s easy to get lost in music and pretend everything else in life doesn’t exist. Then one day you wake up and the lack of balance pops you in the mouth and reminds you why everything in your life that isn’t right is going to keep being wrong. I guess I finally stopped being hard headed and found a little balance in my life by changing my priorities.

Now my personal life is better than ever, my relationships with my kids are improving and my priorities are as they should be, god, family, money and music. Ever since my priorities changed, my life has gotten better and my record sales have to. I’ve learned a lot, and see the rap game in such a different way after being on the road, reaching new fans, and making plenty of mistakes. Overall I see 2 things more than ever… How important would it be if we could bring more women fans to underground rap? Not just in the NW but globally. The other is how important it is to have a dream. I lost sight of what music really meant to me not as an artist but as a person and I’m glad that I have re established my love for it.

When you were in hiatus what options were you looking at or was it a situation where “music” was the only option? You had to make it work either way?

When I accepted that the love for music wasn’t there anymore, I didn’t see music as an option. I went the other direction and made changes in my life that I knew had to be made. It took about 8 months without music for me to get that love back. I guess for me as a person, I know I can do a million things I hate or don’t enjoy to pay the bills but I didn’t want music to be one of them. I’m actually happy today as a person outside of music, and I finally feel like I’m working with people who want what I want and are working for that same thing. It’s this that makes enjoying music again so easy.

Go to part two

Submitted by: admin