FSD: With the resurgence of the Chicago music scene, there has been an abundance of rappers coming out of the woodwork and surprisingly aspiring directors as well. With the DJ field being so saturated now, do you feel like this lowers the worth for DJs like yourself?
Hustlenomics: Yeah it has! Yes, to an extent—I only say that because of artist loyalty. I’m not blaming Chief Keef — you are going to work with who’s hot. Shout out to DJ Victoriouz and MoonDawg, but it’s like they didn’t know about him until he hit Worldstar and FSD. Me and him were dropping hit after hit even after the mixtape dropped. My name was on the Back from the Dead cover a week before it dropped. Then MoonDawg and Victoriouz name were put on it, so I was like damn! It kind of made my name slow down for a minute. It did cause me to lose money and slowed my buzz down — but that’s business. To answer your question, having an overload in the same field will cause you to lose.
FSD: So you don’t associate with a lot of DJs in Chicago?
Hustlenomics: Nah, I mess with a lot of DJs: MoonDawg, Victoriouz, Pharris, DJ City — the list goes on. There’s no animosity or no type of beef, it’s business. It’s mainly the artists at the end of the day. It’s like when Jeezy and Drama was always doing mixtapes together, that’s how it supposed to be. But it’s not like that here. I’m actually working with some of the DJs I just said.
FSD: Do you feel that Chicago as a whole lacks loyalty?
Hustlenomics: Yeah, Chicago lacks a lot of loyalty, man! Trying to be like the next person can be the cause of that. If are you going to rap, don’t try to be like Chief Keef. Don’t try to fuck with the same people who Chief used to fuck with back in the day. Don’t try to act like he does in his videos. Just be you, and stay with the people who want to see you get on. Some people are going to look at you like a pay-day. Atlanta is like “We are in the same hood, we going to do songs together.” The South has that loyalty period. Out here, it’s a lot of games and greed. All that stuff kind of breaks us up.
FSD: So aspiring artists latches on to an artist status rather than putting in the ground work?
Hustlenomics: Yeah. For example, people hit me up because I got a tape with Chief. They look at it like “Him and Chief took off together, so maybe me and Hustlenomics can take off.” You can’t knock them for that, honestly. It’s like with DGainz, when you got icons in the city, you want to work with them. Salute to D.Gainz, all the DJs, FSD, and everybody else. It may seem like people dick ride certain artists, they just realizing what good music is and what’s good for the city.
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