As evident throughout their discography, and his recent singles “Godbless & Goodnight”, “Gangsta” and “Savages”, Billy Danze and M.O.P have never been ones to hold their tongues and their music reflects their environment, although without the flashy-ness and braggadocio of some of their contemporaries, they’ve still maintained a global fanbase that supports their every endeavor. “Where I come from in Brooklyn, ain’t no rappers come from down there only boxers and gun runners and shit like that, you know what I’m saying? Drug-dealers and shit. Ain’t no rappers, really. Ain’t no disrespect to the other rappers that come out of Brownsville – some of the dudes from the Boot Camp Clik, Smoothe Da Hustla, Trigga Da Gambla, Lil’ Jinx or whatever – M.O.P has been the biggest rap group ever from Brownsville.”

The legacy Billy Danze built with M.O.P has allowed him to navigate his way through the music industry and pull in a lot of favors to help him finish ‘Behind Gatez’ but the grind to get his singles on radio, deals on the table for distribution and suitable publicity is his to bear alone although that, too, hasn’t been as hard as anticipated “You know what? Strangely it’s not [harder to grind now, than prior to being signed] because I’m finding myself dealing with people personally not through the label and not through the promotional guy.” Billy Danze laments “I’m just doin my job – tryna get my shit to another plateau without kissing ass, you know? Basically that’s all niggas is doin is kissin ass because they don’t know each other. I don’t wanna deal with nobody I don’t know, or nobody I ain’t comfortable with. It’s actually easier now [than with a deal], because you know what it is, I’m on my phone every day, I’m on the computer every day, I’m putting these calls in and sending these joints out myself and whatever blasts I’m getting from people that’s helping me out. So I’m actually doing it all on my own and I really feel a little bit better because I know if anything go wrong, it’s my fault. I got nobody to blame, and I ain’t gonna whoop my own ass. This is actually what I do, I been doing this for a large part of my life, I gotta really do it to death this time.”

The ability to talk to people on a grass-roots level the world over has empowered Billy Danze and his music in such a way that his fans can count on him to bring the hard hitting, grittiness back to Hiphop. “My main thing this: you’re the same kind of dude that I am, I’m the same kind of dude that you are and we represent that part of society that people forget about everywhere, and that’s hood. It’s more hood than suburban areas, it’s more hoods than there’s upper class areas I don’t care what nobody says. We keep putting that street music out, that hood music out – we always gonna be good. Our people is always gonna be there” Danze concludes “My older brothers hung out in the street, my father hung out in the street, and from what I know his father hung out in the street. There’s a long generation of hood here – it ain’t goin’ no where.”

- interview conducted by Mark Thomson, special to HIPHOPGODS.com