PITBULL

As you’ve been coming up in the game, is there anybody you’re a fan of that you’ve met?
Well, it blew me away when Fat Joe was like, "You did your thing on ‘That’s Nasty.’" Shit, I used to look up to Joe. I still look up to Joe. I even told him when I seen him, "Thanks for opening doors, ‘cause if you ain’t do what you did, and let Pun do what he did, I wouldn’t be here doing what I’m doing." It would be ten times harder. Basically, everybody who’s showed me love has seen me from before. I knew Lil Jon back when he was just "Bia Bia" and "I don’t Give a Fuck," and look at all the shit he’s got now. But it’s not like success fell in these people’s laps, it was something they had to work real hard for and that’s what I respect. We respect each other. But I look up to Jigga, Jay-Z. He’s a rapper, businessman, classy. I like that. I like a person that ain’t the type to just set something off. He’s calm, but very deadly at the same time.

You’re on the cover of the upcoming OZONE June "hustler’s" edition, talking about different aspects of the drug game. Everyone has addictions of some sort - what would you say are your addictions?
Women. But groupies? Yeah, I try to stay away from them because it’s a problem. I’ve had all my fun. I used to go on the road with Luke, I’ve seen a lot of shit. I learned a lot from that muthafucker. I know that pussy makes the world go ‘round, and like I tell women all the time: pussy is powerful. I mean, I fuck around sometimes, but for the most part I just stay to myself. I got a daughter and a son, and a baby mother that I love to death! That’s my heart, but she know I be fuckin’ around and all that bullshit. And at the end of the day, you know what’s gonna happen? Tables turn. Karma. As for these groupies out here, I just let the crew fuck around with ‘em. I think it’s usually the people that’s with the artist that fuck with groupies, just because they know they can fuck whatever’s there. And it’s fun, to them. It was fun to me too, at one time. It’d be fun to me if fuckin’ J. Lo gave me a piece of groupie ass, that’d be beautiful.

Your mentality changed?
Oh, of course. Having children makes me go out there with that attitude, you know, it’s like I gotta get this shit. I gotta make this shit happen. And the way I’mma be with my daughter, it’s different. I can’t tell my daughter, "You can’t do this, you can’t do that." She’s gonna be what she’s gonna be. I can’t ever be mad at her, ‘cause I love her to death. She could turn out to be whatever she wants to be, I just want her to know that I understand.

Based on your experiences in the game, how would you explain the "groupie" mentality?
I don’t know. It’s fucked up, cause I know a lot of them – even my mother – were raped as young women. Being raped, that lowers their self-esteem. They feel like they’ve been stripped of their value and they just go out looking for love in all the wrong places. All they want is that affection. I know because of my mother. My mother, to this day, she’s still traumatized by that shit.

What kind of relationship do you have with your father?
I love my father to death. I talk to my father about everything. My father’s a real father. Not in the sense that he was there throughout my life – ‘cause he wasn’t, he was caught up in his own shit. But he’s a real father in the sense that we can sit down and talk real shit. He talks about what he used to do in the 80’s, I can talk about what I do now and what I used to do to get money and all that shit. You know, we just relate to each other. He sees me as him, back in the day.

Are you gonna be there for your kids?
Oh fuck. I gotta be there. Because I don’t want them to live like that. I used to hate my father. If it wasn’t for my mother telling me, "Look, he’s sick," I’d hate that nigga to this muthafuckin’ day. Being an alcoholic is a sickness, and my father was an alcoholic. But the more I grow and learn and work with people and hustle, the more I see that I’m just like him. So I don’t hold no grudge against him. Me, I’m very fortunate and very happy to be raised the way I was raised and live the life that I’ve lived, ‘cause it’s built me. It build my character. A muthafucker can’t tell me shit at the end of the day: I love the fact that my life is the way it is.

- Interview & photo by Julia Beverly, jb@ozonemag.com