The glamour and glitz in the hip-hop world may draw some initial attention but it’s not what keeps the fans interested. It’s the independent labels, underground rappers, and up and coming executives that really keep the game exciting. Major labels are publicly traded companies so we know where their money comes from but to see one or two guys put everything they have into an indie label is what hip-hop is all about. Whether you want to call it the struggle, the come up, whatever, that’s what has always kept hip-hop alive even at a time when most think it’s dead.

One man who truly epitomizes the grind is hip-hop veteran Tonedeff. An original B-boy, Tonedeff was break dancing before his age hit the double digits. That soon transformed into rapping and it seemed that Tonedeff had found his niche. He rhymed constantly and perfected his flow and skills, spitting quick enough to rival fellow quick spitter Twista.

It wasn’t long before Tonedeff would take one step further in his career by starting his label QN5. He didn’t have much money but he kept it moving until the company became a true indie powerhouse with artists such as the Cunninlynguists, Session, and Substantial. Talk about building something from the ground up.

Sixshot.Com’s Jon Michael caught up with Your browser does not support inline frames or is currently configured not to display inline frames. G>Tonedeff to discuss the early days of QN5, his speed talk training, and his take on hip-hop music today.

Sixshot.Com: What's up man, how you doing?

Tonedeff: I'm doing well, mane. I’m just on my grizzly without a muzzle.

Sixshot.Com: All right bro, your roots run so deep in hip-hop so I want to know, when did you first really get into it?

Tonedeff: I go back like Chino XL's widow's peak. (Laughs) I mean, as long as I can remember, I've been a hip-hop head. One of my older sisters brought home Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" on the original 12" and I've been hooked ever since. I remember doing laps around my dining room table where the record player was in the house and repeating the extended version of that song until I had the entire thing memorized down to the vocal inflections.

Basically, I was your average inner city Chicago kid doing head spins at seven years old on cardboard on the street. I even tried to catch tags in my apartment building with Crayola markers. That didn't work out to well though. I rap now.

Sixshot.Com: You've been an artist for a long time. What made you give up the music to pursue college?

Tonedeff: It was basically a thing where I needed to decide at that stage of my life whether I was going to gamble everything on music or do something proactive for my future. Not to mention, at the time that I had major deals lined up, I was already feeling the ire of industry on my back. They wanted to sculpt me into Fresh Prince number two and not Tonedeff number one.

I was a 17 year old kid on the precipice of life as an adult and working with people I didn't trust, not being able to make the kind of music I wanted to make was definitely not what I had in mind for my music career so I told everyone to fuck off and that I was "quitting rap" to go to art school. All things considered, I can't really complain how things turned out. I would have been in and out as fast as Da Youngstaz and ABC.

Sixshot.Com: Do you feel like the time you spent in college would have been better spent being an artist?

Tonedeff: Not at all, because I never really stopped. Ironically, it was in college that I recorded my first solo EP in 97 ("The Monotone EP") which I founded the label with. Music is just one of those things that I can't seem to ever fully let go. It's in stuck there deep down in my soul next to my spleen and my recently abused liver. I need to stop drinking so fucking much. I mean I definitely feel that life experience has taught me a lot about myself and being able to delve into the foundations of 'art' in the visual sense gave me new ways of processing what I was doing with the music.

Music and art are sibling mediums. A lot of musicians are visual artists and vice versa so it definitely helped me develop a sense of artistic self-awareness I wouldn't have gotten anywhere else.

Sixshot.Com: Tell us, how did the rapid-fire delivery come about? Was it just a natural thing?

Tonedeff: When I was a kid, my father realized that I had a knack for speaking really fast so he called some talent agencies and low and behold he connected with John Moschitta, Jr. a.k.a the Micro Machines man. J-Mos, as I call him now, trained me for a good 2 years, while he did his commercial work and it just kind of developed from there.

Sixshot.Com: Do you truly consider your flow to be the best in the game?

Tonedeff: Absofuckinlutely. 100%.

Sixshot.Com: Did you enjoy your time on the battle circuit?

Tonedeff: It was definitely a lot of fun, that's basically where I met all my friends on the scene like PackFM, Substantial, Poison Pen, Mr. Mecca, Immortal Technique, Pumpkinhead, Breeze, the entire Plague and Stronghold cliques, etc, etc. The list goes on and on and then on some more. But after a certain point, which I think all of us realized, we had to step off that stage in our careers and focus on making music.

At the end of the day ain't shit a battle gonna for your a career that a timeless piece of music can't do a thousand times better. Plus, an audience's mental capacity for dick jokes times out after about 20 minutes. We know, because we timed it.

Sixshot.Com: How did you have the funds to start the QN5 label?

Tonedeff: I didn't. I basically poured all my paychecks into getting the ball rolling, but don't get it twisted, we didn't have jack shit. When I look back on how I started everything and how somehow we managed to get to where we are its fucking mind-boggling. I do know that all the work we put into cultivating our fan base paid off in the end, but we were essentially a broke label that was fighting a losing war with no money against other "indie" labels run by trust-fund babies that had multi-thousand dollar budgets.

I mean our fucking slogan was "No Rich Relatives" for the first 5 years. We didn't even have proper distro until a few years back. (Laughs) I seriously don't advise anyone starting a label unless they have serious drug money and a good accountant. We got lucky because the music did most of the work.

Sixshot.Com: Also, how did you attract artists like the Cunninlynguists, Domingo, etc?

Tonedeff: Well, I offered everyone their very own subscriptions to OnionBooty and the Oxpass network, told them that I had distro through Interscope and that I could shop beats to Eminem. Everyone seemed game. After about three years, we realized we all had a common work ethic, musical tastes, and the drive to spit in the face of what was popping in the genre at the time.

We all connect on a very concrete level of what we think hip-hop is truly capable of and what it should sound like so I saw an opportunity to unite all of these artists from different backgrounds with one vision in mind which was and is to make the best hip-hop music possible without resorting to the bullshit gimmickry that's still hella rampant. It's really more of an artist-collective. Birds of a feather, man. Native Tongues had the right idea, as did Flava Unit, as did Okayplayer, we're just next in line. Right after the whole Hipster Rap thingamajig is over.

Sixshot.Com: Were you happy with the response you got to Archetype or do you feel some things went wrong?

Tonedeff: Luckily, I had the Blue Schoolers (aka QN5 fans) to release it for, and they are undoubtedly the most supportive fans on earth. They're the ones that made the entire ordeal worth it. They're the ones that put songs like "Porcelain" and "Pervert"' on the map by word of mouth and by coming to shows. So in that respect, yes. I was very happy by the response it got from the people that actually heard it.  Ah well, perhaps time will play it favorably. That damn album will never get the shine it deserved.

It was an exercise in patience and frustration as multiple distro deals fell through and at the end of the day; I had $0 to promote it when it finally dropped. I just decided, "Fuck it!" and dropped it because I was tired of sitting around waiting on imaginary money to come through and push it correctly. This is a pay to play industry so if you ain't got no promo dough you can pretty much guarantee that no one is going to hear your shit or talk about it.

Sixshot.Com: From way back in the day you've had a couple major deals that didn't work out. Were those big disappointments for you?

Tonedeff: Eh. It's all relative. For my entire career, nobody in the industry has known what the fuck to make of me. I'm singing on one song, I rhyme on another; I'm playing piano and doing mosh pits. People are clearly confused as shit, when my own fans can't agree on their favorite songs. But I kind of like it like that. I refused to be pinned down by anyone as any one particular thing because like any human being I am not one particular thing.

I am many different types of artists in one simply because that's the level of expression I need. Why should I limit what I can do because of what someone expects me to do? That'd be lame. I'd love to play for a larger audience, but again, it'd have to be on my terms meaning, my vision the way I see it. Major labels don't tend to trust their artists' visions, because they know deep down that they didn't sign any "artists" with any real "vision" 95% of the time.

Tori Amos told me that sometimes great artists slip through the cracks of the wall and end up getting what they deserve. It's really all about timing, chance and circumstance.

Sixshot.Com: As a guy who's been doing the indie thing for a while would you say this is a good time to be an indie artist?

Tonedeff: Nope. If you've noticed your MySpace accounts choked with spam that's basically because everyone and their grandmother's uncle's cousins raps and produces too. Ain't no fans left to buy and spectate. If you want to be an indie artist pick up a guitar, you'll have much better luck on the rock side of things.

Sixshot.Com: All right man, tell us what you have coming up that we can look out for.

Tonedeff: My next project is produced entirely by Kno of CunninLynguists and is entitled Chico & The Man. I'm also working on a new Extended Famm album with Substantial, PackFM and Session, as well as executive producing more material from the label. Everyone can stay tuned for news and details at QN5.com. That’s where it all goes down.

Sixshot.Com: Anything you'd like to say to all the fans out there?

Tonedeff: I fuckin’ love y'all! Word to Hayden Panettiere's legal-labia!