SA: Steve Austin, the Bioniq MC. I'm originally from a small town called Donaldsonville, Louisiana. [I] grew up between there and New Orleans. I went to school at Southern University and graduated with a degree in physics. I lived out there from '89 to 2000 when I moved to the metroplex. That’s me in a nutshell.

UDC:In about five to ten sentences explain what Steve Austin means 2 you.

SA: It’s somebody who can, at will, pull up the feeling of whatever track he is dealing with, the feeling of the people actually listening to it. If you listen to my music you hear that I don’t particularly have a style per se, although some people say that they can pick certain things out. I like all types of music. I came up as a jazz musician beginning when I was young. I played the trombone by the time I was in fifth grade. I played with Alvin Batiste, as a matter of fact, while coming up through Southern University. But I like jazz, I like rock, I like R&B, I like rap, I like hip-hop and all varieties of the hip-hop genre, which is what people try to break it up into. As such, I can go to the club and listen to Juvenile and Jay-Z and Scarface and whatever. And because I like all those different types of music, I have never felt like I should be limited to “I’m this type of rapper,” because when I came up I was the battle emcee, and that’s where I kind of made my name. But like I said, I found myself liking different things, so to be the Bioniq MC it's like basically a repository or a computer of sorts that you know I can actually access at will. If you want to get crunk, I can do this; if you want me to battle, I can do that; if you want me to talk to the ladies, I can do that too.

UDC: Who are your musical influences? Why?

SA: Musically: Parliament, Charles Mingus, Organized Noize, Nina Simone, Prince—definitely. As far as emcee career-wise and content-wise with respect to the way they do what they do and the way they deal with people: Jay-Z, LL Cool J, Pharoah Monk, Ras Kass, Scarface, Bun B, that’s the one I throw in there and people always look like "huh?"… He’s sick, man. He‘s sick! It's just that it's a different genre in which a lot of people don’t credit them as being good lyricists. But dude is amazing. There are certain things that you have to do in order to touch certain people. What a lot of people don’t understand is that you can be the dopest, most complex, most lyrical person and it's like… It’s a two-way sword—but we’ll get to that later. It's like there’s as much genius in simplicity. If you can say something in a few words or in the common vernacular of whomever you're dealing with, then you can get your message across. You know a lot of people won't listen to a lot of things that may be good for them because they're like, "I don’t know what he is saying." Now that’s not to say that they're not intelligent enough to understand it. It's just saying, "hey, you're talking to me in a language I don’t use every day." So those cats that I named, they can convey messages intelligently, but they also convey them in an efficient manner. They appeal to the street, to the ladies, to the people who want to dance, and that’s what music is supposed to be about in the first place. It's supposed to appeal to everybody.

UDC: How long have you been involved in music?

SA: Music, in general, even before picking up the horn in fifth grade. Claybourne Williams is my great-great uncle. My whole family—my great uncles, all of my cousins were jazz musicians. One of my cousins is in the Dirty Dozen Brass Band out of New Orleans. So music has always been around me in some way, shape, form, or fashion. I first picked up the mic in seventh grade. I was given an opportunity back then by a dude named Soul Man. He used to have the Soul Show on the AM station. But he saw us rhyming at a talent show and it was a good thing because he was trying to keep us out of trouble, keep us doing things. He said, ”Look, every Sunday, you can come on my show and do a new song." So we would go every Sunday. On Sunday mornings, we would have to go to church, then haul ass down to where he was. And doing that gave us a work ethic because we always felt that we had to have a new song.

The thing was, we were in Louisiana at the time and nobody wanted to hear rap at all. It was that thing that people thought was going to die out in a year. At that time, P and Cash Money hadn’t blown up, then I got caught in the middle because I came up off Tony Tone and the Cold Crush Brothers—cats like that—and getting mix tapes from New York. Then P and Cash Money blew up and that music was all anybody was looking at Louisiana for. So now I’m in the middle; it's like they didn’t think I could rhyme at all. We couldn’t make any money rapping. Now they got ol' boy who's all they want to hear and we were not that either, so we couldn’ t do that. But it’s starting to open up. It's starting to come around.

UDC: Is there a message or a theme in your music if so what is it?

SA: There’s a message or theme in some songs; in others, there aren’t. And that’s to be real with you. I'm not going to sit there and tell everybody to get it together. I want people to do that, but it's like at times I want to go out and dance; at times, I want to holla at this lady over here and try to get a hump; other times I’m mad and I want to talk about how people have done me, or something is wrong and I speak on that. But I do it more by the beat than a conscious decision of I'm going to do this with it. If your music ain’t jamming, don’t matter what you're saying. Nobody is going to listen to it. So I make it connect first, then I connect the message. Overall, that’s one of the things that I want people to enjoy, even if it’s a song about pain. I want them to enjoy it to a point that they know that they're not alone. I’m not going to say that I have a prevailing theme over everything. I just try to make good music.

UDC: So what is priority number one for Steve Austin?

SA: Get as many people as possible to hear as much of my material as possible. I’ve gone from selling CDs to giving away as much music as I can afford to do, which I can’t really afford to do. But I know people will listen and it’s been proven because now I get people calling me and leaving messages saying they like that one. I'm an EMCEE—not a salesman or hustler. I’m not going to sell you on this. That part of the game was frustrating me 'cause I’m out on the street saying, "Come on, man. five dollars." Honestly, if nobody has heard of you or any of your work, they'll go spend twenty dollars on someone they know right now before they'll spend five on someone unheard of. I’ve seen it happen. And I can’t blame them. As far as bad music goes and money being a premium to everybody, everybody wants to get what they want for their money. You could be the tightest thing ever. They don’t know. It’s basically buying something that’s unseen.

UDC: What are the three most essential items that you need when at the studio?

SA: Quiet. I ‘m one of those people who listens, then turns it off, and I can sit and think and write and come back and see how it fits and if doesn’t fit the way I want, then I go back. I've never been one of those people who sit there with people milling around. I like to hear the beat. Just pen and pad and a beat. Being an engineer myself, I can record when I need to record the way I need to record. As long as the beat's good, that's all I need. Peace, quiet, and beat.

UDC: How do you feel the internet has affected your genre of music and the music industry as a whole?

SA: That’s a tough one. I know it has damaged sales because I can sit here and say I buy after I listen, but I am an exception. I download it, but if I download it and I like it, then I buy it. But if I don’t like it, I'm not going to listen to it again. I’m not even going to waste a CD, you know. So maybe that's decreased sales to me because I heard something that I may have had to buy before, so they lost a sale there. That's why I used to love Blockbuster, but that’s why they stopped it because people stopped buying music. 'Aw, that sucks. Put that back.' Well, was it packaged? No, it wasn’t. People weren’t buying because what they were putting out wasn’t good. The people knew and weren’t buying it. If it’s jamming, then they want to hear it first and they go cop it for everybody. That being said, I wish somebody would bootleg mine. They can bootleg mine right now because you bootleg mine to a hundred thousand people, then tomorrow I’ll put out ten thousand CD’s and I’ll sell them—all into my pocket. So cool, bootleg me. Put it on the internet. But those are the types of things that the Internet has done. It has harmed sales. This, in turn, has made record companies less likely to experiment with anything. But I don’t feel like it's hurting as much as they say. They took too long to embrace it. If they would have led the right way, then they would be making money off of it. Now they're trying to do it and the way they're doing it is going to upset a lot of people more than anything. It's helped independent artists. I mean, I’ve done shows in Canada, Michigan, Chicago, Washington state—I had to drive, but, hey, I got those shows just from meeting people via the internet. It's gotten me sales. I sold out my first CD just off chatting, talking to people, saying "hey, how're you doing," whatever. It’s a way to get things out, but you have to work at that even harder because it requires so much time in front of the computer. The bad thing about my position is that now that I feel I have commercial, valuable music and beyond all of that, I have to sit there and promote. I have to make the music. I have to get out and pass it out. I have to get myself my own bookings, then work my day job, and I’m starting a mastering business, so I do professional mastering through my business, Bioniq Labs Mastering. I have to do all of that and that’s a bad thing, too, because I have to be the artist and try to be the manager, the go-between person, and sometimes the manager has to be an asshole. But when the artist that doesn’t have any clout has to be an asshole, what ends up happening is you get blacklisted from some things. The internet has both helped and hurt the industry.

UDC: Describe Steve Austin five years from now?

SA: Five years from now, I‘ll be on top of the game as far as emcees. I’ll probably be dropping my black album. It’s just a matter of time. I have what it is. I haven’t gotten to the point where I have been able to put my package in front of someone who can actually DO something with it. When I hit that person, it's over. I’m working hard day and night to get to that place and person. In five years I’ll have my success. I’m thinking gold and platinum. I do want that. Honestly, I don’t want to sell ten, fifteen thousand records here and be done. Some people are content with that. It’s good money, don’t get me wrong. It's good money in your pocket. I don’t want that. I'd like to do that first, sell my company off, then have someone else put me out where I can hit the world. That’s what I want. That way, when I have certain messages that I do want to convey, I can hit the most people. Don’t get me wrong. I do want to make money, but I love what I do. That’s why I’ve lost so much behind it. And believe me, I‘ve lost a lot. I’ve lost friends. I’ve lost jobs. I’ve lost cars. I’ve lost places to live. I’ve slept outside, in a house with a big ass hole in the floor and no water—all because I’m trying to rap. Through all that, I do want to make money because I like doing it. I want to hit people—the most people that I can hit and the best way you can do that is if you have somebody major putting you out to as many outlets that you can get out to. So, I want my music in movies. I want to put my face in them so they can hear my music. Do I want to act? Do I want to model? I’m not really interested in it, but I’m pretty good at it. I just want to do that so when people say, 'I saw this. I’m going to go buy his album and I’m going to listen to it.' I just want as many people as possible to hear my music. I have people right now telling me 'You give it away. You could sell it for a couple of dollars.' No. There’s a method to it. I want to make sure you're going to listen.

UDC: What types of pressures do you face as an artist in hip-hop music?

SA: Stereotypes—And it's been bad sometimes because when I’m out, what I learned is that I’m always supposed to be on. I always have to be Steve Austin when I’m seen. I’m a naturally moody and quiet person, but when people hear my music the first thing they assume is that he's egotistical, he's arrogant, he's cocky, he’s this, he’s that and that's farther from who I am than anything, but that's what they hear and that’s a pressure because all people know of you is what you put forth in your music. I can say this in this interview and I guarantee that there will be people saying, “Man, I saw him out last night. He's lying.” They're going to say it, I know it. Anybody that reads this and sees me at certain places, they're going to say that because if I’m at a show, nobody cares if I had a bad day. Nobody cares if I can’t pay my bills. Nobody cares how I’m feeling that particular day. That's your pressure. How do you get yourself across? And even if you claim that you're being yourself in your music, you still have to give the people kind of what they want. Sometimes they don’t want who you are. That’s a pressure too. Another one, in particular, is to conform. I'll tell you a story. Go into the radio station, try to get radio play, you hot in the streets, got some Dj’s playing you, whatever. The radio stations will ask you: 'What you sell in stores? How many units you moving? Well, you got to push some units and we'll put you on.' Then you go to the store and try to get your record in there if you're not distributed nationally or major by somebody, then they ask you what's your radio play like. So where do you go? How do you start? Somebody has to take a flyer on you. In all of that, man, that’s another reason why I’m happy that the type of music I make. From the song "Cut Buddy" to "Take it Outside" to "Swagger"—in some of those you're going to find such a vast pendulum between them. I'm happy that it came out that way. Because now I’ve done shows at Jamie’s; I’ve done shows at Blue Notes; I’ve done shows at Erykah Badu’s place. If you know the crowds and the differences in the music that they play at some of these places, then I think that’s going to be a benefit. Because that’s also a pressure that you face because you can get pegged into a hole, you know. Like some people have only heard "Take It Outside." That’s crunk. But people hear that and want to put you in a box. Or people have heard "Cut Buddy," and it's kind of a raunchy song and they put you in that box. So once they put you in that box, you can't get out, especially if you make some money at it. That's one of the other pressures. And once you get put into that box and they're like, 'Okay he’s this kind of person.' Now that makes those people comfortable. They're happy knowing that I can get this from him, but for me, I would be comfortable knowing that you can get something from me that you want, but I would also rather it be to the point where it's like 'Okay, I can get something, but I’m going to experience something else.' Lack of money—that's a big one. That's the biggest one, especially in this area. Because of the state of the business, you don’t have people who are willing to say, 'I’ll put twenty five, fifty thousand dollars on you' because a lot of people with it want quick money. They want you to put out a record and sell it tomorrow. Naw, it doesn’t work like that. You're going to take a loss that first year depending on how much you put in. I don’t care if you got a hit; you got to take a loss to get a hit. And there’s not enough people who want to take chances on anybody new that’s unproven, whether the music is good or not. So, money is the biggest thing because if you're not some millionaire's cousin, brother or sister or don’t have any connections anywhere else, I mean, right now if I had enough figures behind a one or two or a three, I can walk over to Universal and get a distribution deal and they’ll put me in the stores because I have the work ethic. I have the material. But you have to have the money to be able to do something with it. And business people here have taken losses so they don’t want to deal with it anymore. They have taken losses because they were still trying to ride the flavor of the month or people whom they think are what it is. It’s like any other business and they don’t understand that you get people who know what they're doing.

UDC: Are there any words that you would like to express to your audience?

SA: Listen to me. That’s what I want them to do. Just listen and listen to me thoroughly. That’s it.

STEVE AUSTIN
The Bioniq MC

www.SteveAustinOnline.com
www.sonicbids.com/BioniqMC
SteveAustin@SteveAustinOnline.com
214.264.6666
214.682.5001

Interviewed By Exodus@undevco.com
Edited By Tia Shabazz
Photography By Ean Pegram