Interview in Clout #5 | Click here to purchase this issue!
Interview and photo by: Bron Theron

While trying to set up the 2Mex interview, we played a lot of phone tag. The guy is so busy hustling that it’s hard to find an hour to sit down, smoke some weed and answer a few questions; hell, even when we were doing the interview he was cutting out CD backings for a mix to distribute. I think he actually fit me in next to seeing his parents so he was late to the interview, but that gave me some time to get comfortable at his house in L.A. and speak with a couple of his roommates. It seemed like the whole time I was there everyone was working on music. It was either making beats or calling up other rappers and producers to set something up, planning music videos or cutting out CD covers. This was observation of the full time hustle. 2Mex was hella cool too, he reminded me of one of the homies. If you haven’t heard of this guy, you must be living at your mom’s house in the root cellar because he is up everywhere. He’s in two bands. He has solos out. He has his face branded into your brain with his new Obey logo; I wouldn’t be surprised if a primitive culture worshiped him on some Twelve Monkeys kind off shit. Anyway, he seems to be busting out of the underground by how much publicity he is getting, but 2Mex is still the down cat from L.A. that rocks with the Visionaries, Of Mexican Descent and Shapeshifters, so don’t trip.

Your name and some basic info.
Alejandro and I live in L.A. and I go by the name 2Mex. I have two bands; one’s called Of Mexican Descent and the other one’s called the Visionaries. I’m part of the L.A. underground hip-hop scene, Afterlife Crew, and the Shapeshifters.

How would you define what you do for a living?
I pretty much just make music for a living and hustle it.

Give us a couple reasons of why you do what you do and some of your earlier influences.
I probably make music because of my dad. My dad played instruments like the guitar, the keyboard and the piano and he also wrote poetry. He used to write stories and be part of an acting community/theater and all that stuff. That’s why I do it probably, because of my dad. I have that musical love that my dad has.

Did you start out young?
Yeah, I mean I started hip-hop when I was a little kid. I think like when I was six or seven I got into it. Like in L.A., of course, like Sugar Hill Gang, when Rapper’s Delight hit and even before I think when we were little kids in elementary school one of my friends had one of those records like No-fly and all that. He was like a comedian and shit and he was hustlin’ and shit. No fly’s like Rudy Ray Moore and all that kind of stuff and if you ever listen to those records they’d be making songs like "I’m gonna hit that pussy" or whatever and I was like a little kid and they’re cussing on record but they’re also rapping. It’s like dirty rap, like sex rap shit.

But comedy style.
Yeah, comedy style all the way. I was like a little kid and I was trippin’ off of that shit. Then "Rapper’s Delight" came out and I got into that. There used to be a radio station out here, 1580 KDAY, which was a rap and R&B station; it used to be out until like 1990. They used to play all the influential East Coast stuff. First it was "Rapper’s Delight,” and then some of that Afrika Bambaataa stuff, then it was Run DMC, that was ‘83 right, then Slick Rick and "La Di Da Di", Doug E. Fresh. The crucial time for me was basically ‘88 with Public Enemy, KRS-1, Poor Righteous Teachers, X- Clan and all that political New York stuff along with the De La Soul and a Tribed Called Quest, Native Tongue. All that New York stuff influenced me mixed with over here on the West; Ice-T "Crime Pays," NWA and then later on moving onto the ‘91 West Coast movement with Freestyle Fellowship and the Souls of Mischief and the Pharcyde, Divine Styler and all that shit so I was influenced by all that stuff. I was into all that, Beastie Boys and LL Cool J and all that shit from the moment I was a little kid. I was just like a hard core fan.

How old are you now?
I just turned 31. I kind of wanted to be a rapper just to be a hard core fan. Probably around tenth or eleventh grade I was just like yeah, I want to rap, you know.

Besides doing music and hustling and all that shit what other kinds of jobs have you had in the past?
I was a teacher’s aide, I fuckin’ delivered pagers and shit, used to work at a toy warehouse with my mom. I used to work for a delivery service, I used to be a computer operator, delivered phone books, and all that kind of bullshit. I worked at Subways, I worked at a rare coin spot. I had a lot of jobs.

What label are you under now?
I’m not really under any label, I just do projects with people but the 2Mex Project is under a label called Paladin, which is an upstart label so basically a brand new label. I’m like the first artist on there and it’s basically distributed through these people called Image Entertainment, the people that did that Beef DVD. They did The Freshest Kids and all that stuff. Image Entertainment is like a DVD distribution company and they were just thinking of getting into music so they hooked up with Paladin. I used to work for the record industry so it’s like it’s really important that people at the company actually give a fuck about your record so that’s why I was like, yeah I’m down to do it.

I see your shit up; you’re up now.
They’re putting in work. I talk to them every day. They’re not the kind of record label where you can’t talk to the fuckin’ boss. I talk to that motherfucker every fuckin’ day, ten times a day so it’s like we’re always bouncing ideas. I’ll give him an idea and fuckin’ 24 hours later they’ll do it. You know what I’m saying, they’re cool ass fools; they hustle. They’re hustlin’ like if this shit don’t blow up we don’t got a job, so that’s good you know. They also got Awol One, I hooked them up with ‘Wol.

How often are you doing shows currently?
Right now we just got off tour with Visionaries. Visionaries just did 17 dates with Aceyalone. We opened up for Acey and Busdriver, so that was cool. Last year, we went on the road and we did about over 100 dates so yeah we were on the road a lot just smashing. Thanks to Living Legends they hooked us up man on a 37-show tour, 30 last year, so that was fuckin’ cool. That was the kick off right there, doing 37 shows. So we did that and then we basically toured two more times. We, Visionaries, did our own underground tour with 25 cities with Of Mexican Descent and Shapeshifters. Right now it’s April right, probably already done 40, 50 shows.

What’s your favorite place to play at?
I mean I only played there only once, but Havana, Cuba man. But in the United States I always have a lot of fun playing in cities like Austin, Texas; Boulder, Colorado; Houston, [Texas]; Albequerque, New Mexico.

Tell me about your new logo, it’s like a block print and it resembles the OBEY logo.
Basically one day my old roommate, Tommy V, came to my house and he was like yeah man, at Zen Beats, which is now a defunct record store in Whittier, it’s like a little underground shop that my homeboy Canoe and this other cat Les used to work at and run. Basically my homeboy Les, who was a designer, made that logo himself out of his own freewill. He had it on the screensaver on his computer and he had made a poster of it and put it in the store, just to be a cool cat, just fuckin’ making shit. I guess he saw the Giant shit and just flipped it so basically my roommate Tommy V was like yeah, that shit looked sick. You need to look at it, make a sticker of it, something you know. So I went back there three or four weeks later and I was like that shit’s crazy you know. I’m gonna use it as a logo for sure. He had the hookup on stickers so we made like 2,000 stickers just to have you know; they probably made some more stickers and then we’re like we should make some shirts so he made a run of shirts. They looked like they were spray painted on and we’re like oh that’s cool so basically right around the time we were gonna come out with the 2Mex Project, they were like is that you’re logo so we went with it. It’s simple you know. And it’s like obey, obey me.

Have you ever done any graffiti?
No, not really man, I was never good with my hands and art. I just respect graffiti as an art form and I respect it as one of the four, five parts of our hip-hop culture so that’s why I’m immersed in it in the sense that I’m down with a bunch of [writers]. I went to elementary school with SINER LTS, and being down with the Shifters, ROB ONE and CBS cats. I’ve known those cats ever since I got out of high school pretty much. I used to work with HEX back in the day at the hip-hop shop. You know, UTI, LTS, all them fools man, all those different L.A. cats I just knew from growing up in that era. Besides being a fan of it, I never did graff, never had a tag name, the only reason I call myself 2Mex is because I needed to come up with a name and my homeboy MEMO, rest in peace, actually came up with the name 2Mex as a crew and then that same day I went to the swap meet. I got a hat that said 2Mex and the next day I took it to school and fools started calling me 2Mex. I didn’t even name myself you know what I’m saying. I don’t have a problem with people knowing what my real name is.

Have you ever been to jail?
Yeah. One time I went to county for four or five days. That was in ‘97 and I’ve been driving since I was like 16 years old, so from the time I was 16 years old to 1997 I never paid any tickets. I fuckin’ got two speeding tickets and had a failure to appear and I was just like fuck it. I was just like a dummy man, you know and I had a gang of tickets. And one day it just caught up to me in ‘97. One day I got pulled over and they just took me there. I was like aw, it’s for the best. That was one time and then pretty much extensions from that time. Let’s say you had all these tickets that you had to pay and warrants and you go for the third time and then you get out and then a year later another warrant that never popped up that should’ve been taken care of with all that shit, just pops up again, so I got hemmed up [more than once].

What kind of drugs have you done or experimented with.
Smoked weed, smoked hash, did shrooms…

Do those drugs help creativity or…
I don’t think they help creativity man. In the case of shrooms it’s just something that you gotta…. I don’t recommend it to everybody, but for me, whatever affected my brain, it made me go somewhere else. It let me know that maybe my brain isn’t just what the reality I see. My normal reality when I wake up and I’m just walking around breathing, there might be other little chambers or something; that’s something to go into but it’s not necessarily somewhere you want to live either. There’s a reason that you’re living in this one right now. I don’t really take them anymore. I smoke weed but I’ve made a whole record without smoking weed. I don’t ever think I need to smoke some weed to do anything.

Do you have a girlfriend right now?
Nah, first of all, I like girls – but nah, I don’t got a girlfriend. I’m single all up in this game right now.

All up in this game. Have you ever been laid for being a rapper and if so, how many times?
If I really, really think about it, I’ve probably gotten laid like, I don’t know, five times for being a rapper. I once got laid for a D’Angelo platinum plaque on my wall. It was the one for Brown Sugar. DJ ROB ONE actually gave me a fuckin’ platinum D’Angelo plaque but I ended up smashing it. One time me and my homie ROB were like fuck this, none of these plaques are for us musically so I just smashed them. I had a Cypress Hill plaque, I had different plaques. One time, I smashed up like three – I had six – and then one time when we were really, really, really poor I just pawned them to pay our rent because me and my homeboy MEMO, we didn’t have any money to pay our rent so we just took the plaques off the wall and took them to the pawn shop and sold them.

How much did you get for them?
We got like a hundred seventy bucks for each of them, just enough to pay our rent. I wish I was smart enough to keep them. I had a gang of them ’cause I used to work in the music industry. I had Mack 10, I had the Friday Soundtrack, I had different ones.

Have you experienced any MC beef?
Like beef with other MCs? I don’t really know, I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure people are like I don’t like so and so’s material or whatever. Like sometimes you wonder how someone’s blowing up. You’ll just be like people like that? And you don’t get it, you know what I’m saying. A lot of it is me not getting it. There’s a lot of good stuff that’s out there, especially in underground that people are just swearing to me is on point, but I just don’t get it. You’re not meant to like everything. I’ve heard people that don’t know me hear my shit and be like that shit is weak. And I’ll be like that’s what people think, that’s cool.

You’ve never had to fight over some rap bullshit?
Nah, not at all man. There might be like maybe one person, two people out there in the whole planet, or if that, if I see them I’ll just walk up and sock them. I don’t really try not to harbor too much hate even to fools that have done me wrong. To be honest with you, I’ve probably done fools wrong in life so you don’t know, you know what I’m saying. I really don’t harbor no feelings man because in my life, I’ve probably made mistakes where I’ve done some fools wrong. I don’t want to be walking down the street and some motherfucker run up to me and just start to scrap on me. I try to stay away from that kind of vibe.

Have you ever been jumped in L.A., like while just minding your own business?
I did man. We’re not going to mention the gang but when I was a little kid, I was a little kid, I got jumped in L.A. by a gang; I remember that. I got jumped, motherfuckers tried to jack my bike, like three fools beat me down. They fucked me up.

That sucks. Around here?
Around by my junior high which is by Fairfax and 18th Street. That was the only time.

On your tours and all your adventures, have you ever met famous people in the clubs doing random shit like say Alec Baldwin snorting coke or something in the bathroom or some shit like that?
I’ve probably seen fools smoking weed but never somebody doing coke that’s famous. I’ve seen fools that I might like their acting and shit at underground shows, so that’s cool but nah, I’ve never seen no one doing no dirt, unless smoking weed is dirt.

Nah, it’s pretty common. So what are some of your favorite foods?
I love Cuban food, rice and garlic and shit. I love Thai food man, fuckin’ shrimp and rice and all that shit. I like hamburgers; I eat all that nasty shit. Whatever man, coffee, ice cream, it’s pretty much it.

Do you have any tats?
Yeah I got two tattoos. One on my left arm, an interpretation of my homeboy MEMO who’s passed away and I got a tattoo of ROB ONE, it’s a mixed cassette from motherfuckin’ ROB ONE.

Have you ever been surfing?
No, I’ve tried one time but I suck at it. I can barely swim man.

Who would you really like to do a song with if you could?
I like MF Doom a lot. I like his beats and I like his rhymes; I’m a huge MF Doom fan.

Who do you usually have produce your beats?
Right now the team is definitely Omid from Beneath the Surface and he’s helping with the 2Mex record. Omid is pretty much my main producer. Liferexall from the Shapeshifters, Deeskee, Subtitle; Deeskee and Subtitle are my roommates. From there on it depends on the band and the project. When we work with Visionaries, Key Kool and Rhettmatic are our main producers and then the Visionaries production extended fam is like J-Roc from the Beat Junkies, Evidence from Dilated. I’m looking to work with a bunch of other cats.

Are you a boxers or briefs man?
A boxers man.

Do you ever wear jumpsuits?
I’ve got a big ass Missy Elliot jumpsuit that I wore on a video. It’s red.
How many pairs of shoes do you own?
I probably have like ten pairs of shoes but I only wear one – ever though.

You’re wearing Vans right now.
Yeah, when these run out, I don’t go to the other ones. They’re just shoes I got for free but they’re not really that comfortable. I had a gang of them but I gave them to the Salvation Army. Those [ten] are the ones I kept that I still like, but don’t wear for some stupid reason and shit.

You know what’s hella popular, those trucker hats.
Yeah, we made some 2Mex trucker hats but to me those aren’t trucker hats, they’re farm worker hats. To me, I wear them because it reminds me of a…. I look like a pysa and shit. That’s some farm worker shit, so that’s why I like them. And I also like them because they’re cheap, like two bucks. So that’s why I rock them. I’ve been rockin’ them before. I’ll keep rocking them after they’re not popular.

So what do you think of gay marriage?
I’m a double standard guy, man. I would say I love lesbians but it doesn’t extend to men and shit. I figure that, you know I’m down with lesbians so I guess I don’t have a problem with gay guys getting married. That’s their business. If that makes them happy, that’s cool, I’m cool with that man. We all probably have fools in our family that are gay. You know, your homies may be gay, you don’t even know, so it’s cool. There’s nothing wrong with being gay. Growing up, liking girls, I used to always be like (makes disgusted sound) but now I’m just like well that’s how fools are. That’s their business man.

What are some of your future goals in life?
To stay alive for as long as God blesses me to stay alive. I don’t know, make music and pay my rent and get a fuckin’ girlfriend. I want to shape up, want to get back to healthier form and shit. Sometimes my head is so cluttered with my day to day running around, paying bills and hustling and getting my music straight that I don’t take care of myself, my body. A lot of my friendships and relationships have suffered sometimes with me running around and doing shit.

What are some of the setbacks from achieving your goals? I guess you kind of mentioned them…
Yeah, definitely man. Shit, personal health, I fuckin’ suffer with that. I don’t always treat myself too good mentality man, I make bad decisions just out of not being disciplined with this shit or you know, our natural urges we got to fuck up. I fall into those traps everyday – still. I just get caught on that. One thing I sacrificed the most was time. Time seeing my parents, my parents are getting older. I kicked it with my folks today but I don’t get to kick it with them often. My sister, I don’t talk to her as much as I should so I’m trying to do that more. My friends and a girl too, try maybe having something that works. I sacrifice sometimes the intelligence; I put myself in situations where I know this shit is going to be wack but you know, you put yourself in those situations.

What do you think about the gas prices going up right now?
I think they’re going to go up and stay up. They’re going to go up right now because there is a real small chance, a real small chance, that George Bush won’t get elected and if that happens they’re trying to get all the cash and shit. Try to keep it up for a year. I think they’ll stay up for a while, you know what I’m saying.

Yeah, I don’t like that. Have you ever been to the Hollywood sign?
No, never. I can see it from my street in mid city though. Clearly, looking right at my house so I’ve seen that shit forever.

If you had to describe an animal that the President of the United States most closely resembles, what animal would that be?
A lizard.

I take it you don’t like Bush?
It’s not that I don’t like him. He doesn’t care about us, so I don’t care about that dude. He’s just an employee; he works for his dad like I used to work for my dad.

Here’s a good question, have you ever been in the bathroom taking a shit and realize there was no toilet paper?
Yeah, all the time here. Every fuckin’ week.

What do you do when that happens?
Go and get the roll of toilet paper I got in my room especially for those situations. There’s always people over, you got to keep it in your room and shit.

You got to preserve the toilet paper in the room.
Yeah ’cause there’s motherfuckin’ three studios in my house and there’s ten people. He uses a lot of toilet paper (pointing at Liferexall), look at him, he’s moving shit in. Why are you moving shit in? He doesn’t live here.

But he lives here though?
He lives in the kitchen (laughs).

That’s the next question, how do you deal with your roommates?
My roommates are cool, but sometimes though, I don’t ever see [Subtitle]. I don’t know, when I do see him we smoke a bowl. He makes music all night in his room by himself, you know. My other roommate [Deeskee] is the same. He always works on music and the Web site. He designed my Web site, 2MexLA, and runs LA 2 the Bay.

Do you cook here?
No, nobody cooks here. Just a bunch of ordering out and shit. But yeah, Deeskee fuckin’ makes beats and just runs a lot of shit. Liferexall, he lives in the kitchen and makes beats and shit. You know, it’s cool man, fools are making music and hustlin’ so it’s like you can’t be mad man. It’s like you wake up and you have four people; all they’re worried about is making music or getting music out. It’s like working on shit, working on shit. You have four people then there’s fuckin’ Die, Akuma, Existereo, Busdriver, Eclipse from Darkleaf and all other kinds of fools that are always here, making CDs and fuckin’ doing everything man. Just a bunch of fools here all the time.

Are you a night person or a morning person?
Night person for sure. We’re up all night; we’re up a lot, I usually sleep at four or five depending on how tired I am.

Have you ever tried to jump on a pogo stick?
No but I’ve tried to ride a unicycle.

Really? Were you able to do it?
No, that shit was hard.

Do you have any regrets in life so far?
Yeah, of course, I’ve got regrets. I wish I wasn’t so busy so I could hang out with the people I love. But then again, I put myself here to do this. I’m the one that’s booking all the shows for myself so I’m the one that’s doing all this shit so I’m saying to be honest with you, I asked to do this. I can’t really complain but yeah, I wish I had more time. But I’m just really addicted to making music and making shit happen. There will never be another time like this. There’ll never be an age like this. This time will never be again so it’s like I’m trying to be as creative as I can for the time being ’cause things change. Our homies man, all of us, are working so much on music. Things aren’t like the days where everyone’s hanging out everyday. Fools are just doing shit so time’s precious.

Do you think that you manage money well?
No, not at all, man. I pay too much for everything and don’t fuckin’ pay attention. I’m a Pisces, I don’t manage my money well at all. I had a girlfriend that was an accountant. She was the shit; she’s gone though. I don’t ever buy something ’cause it’s on sale; I never pay no attention to shit like that. I throw my money away.

So do you have all those things, like a manager, a publicist, an agent?
We might have a publicist for a certain project but we don’t have a publicist for ourselves at all. I don’t have a manager; Visionaries don’t have a manager. Everything we handle, we handle ourselves via phone – straight. Nobody gives a fuck about what you’re doing more than you do.

Do you ever get the feeling that you’re being watched?
I realize I’m being watched but it’s only because I’m asking to be watched. I’m like look, I got a new record out, hey, I’m at a show. You can be DL if you want. One day I’ll be happy to kick it and just be DL but for right now I’m alive. I’m not afraid to be out on the streets or being out in public. I’m not afraid to go to shows and be a fan and hang out. I’m into music; I’m a hard core music fan. If somebody’s in concert and I fuckin’ like them, I try to support them, buy their motherfuckin’ CD, go to their show.

Do you think you’ve been pretty successful in this music industry?
Yeah for sure, not successful enough to necessarily be financially secure but I’ve been successful enough to the tune of, because of people’s support, I’ve been able to travel. These cats just went to Paris for the Paris hip-hop festival. I’ve been to Japan, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Denmark, Holland, Cuba, Canada and all over the place and like 30 states in the United States. I’m about to go to Athens, Greece with Awol. That’s where I feel I’ve been out of control blessed. Pretty much all those places I’ve gone to was to do shows and rap. I’ve gotten to see pretty much the whole planet. I’m going to Australia this year, you know what I mean. And that’s a good thing to be world traveled. You come back home to wherever you’re at and you’re like the world’s small but it’s big, you know what I’m saying.

Do you have anything to say to your fans?
Thanks for the support that they’ve been giving us, to the Visionaries, Of Mexican Descent, to the Afterlife, Xololanxinco, Busdriver, Aceyalone, The Shapeshifters, thanks for supporting our big family of artists. Dark Leaf, Dilated Peoples, Jurassic 5 and all those people man. Thanks for supporting us, we appreciate it.