I greatly enjoyed this interview with Atlanta’s Lil Weavah that declares he won’t rap about dealing crack after the following experience:
Two years ago, I was driving down Simpson Road which is in Bankhead. I saw two crackheads who looked like they didn’t even have faces. At that point, something hit me and I said, “I will never talk about sellin’ crack in a song no more. I will not talk about anybody else capitalizing off crack in a song.” It hit me like…this is my community. I’m not gonna brag on that right there. That’s somebody’s momma. That’s somebody’s momma who’s probably a classmate of mine.

Not only that, he knows his business:
With every product I do, I’m expanding the markets. I don’t see how anybody outside of Florida, South Carolina, and Alabama could’ve got the Home Team CD. Then on the mixtapes – boom, we hit MixUnit and others. We’re getting a bigger audience. With Underground Music, we’ve got national distribution on an underground title. Now, when I’m looking at the sales sheets, I’m seeing Idaho, Montana, Rochester, New York. Atlanta DJs have always been my backbone. DJ Drama, Burn One, DJ Scream & MLK, The Black Bill Gates and so on, they’ve always had my back and helped. Now you see me workin’ with DJ Envy, DJ Whoo Kid, and Kay Slay. That’s how you expand the market.

One thing though, and it may not matter to the artists (though I bet it does), once you start using that Lil, no one’s ever going to spell your name right.  This interview adds the apostrophe, as in Lil’ Weavah and, if you notice, Lil Jon’s name gets screwed up all the time.  I even saw it mispelled Lil’ Jon in the headline of a recent press release.  But at least it doesn’t affect the pronunciation!

On the spelling tip, always try for the official website:

MySpace Page – Lil Weavah (check out My Rims)

Official Site – Lil Jon