Ten Questions with 112 (REVISED)

A production error caused the abbreviated version to originally be posted. Here, now, is the FULL unedited version with 112. Keep in mind that due to the speed of the transcript being copied, there may be grammatical errors. We will correct them during the weekend. -Josh

The Mirror‘s Joshua O’Connell, Jen Jaksina from WVOF, and Mike Catallo from Ham Channel had the unique opportunity to interview 112 on November 30 just prior to their concert. A complete transcript follows (an abbreviated version is in this week’s print edition).

Mike: Aight. We’ve got some questions for you. How did you guys get involved with Bad Boy Records and Puff Daddy and all that? Q: We started back in 1993. Our managers at that time had a great relationship with Puff. P. Diddy. However you want to call him. They hooked up a meeting with Puff in front of this night club in Atlanta called 112 actually in the parking lot. We got together, sang for him in the parking lot. That sparked the initial interest. Two or three weeks later he sent a contract and we became artists on Bad Boy. Jen: Very cool. Can you tell me a little bit about yourself? Daron: Myself first of all my name’s Daron Jones, I’m a Capricorn… (laughs in audience) yeah it’s like that. I’m 23 years old. I’m from Atlanta Georgia. I like to sing, I like to dance, I like beautiful women. Jen: Well you came to the right place then huh? Daron: Oh yeah for sure! (laughs) I like to write songs, I like to produce tracks. I believe in God I put him first in my life. What else you want to know? Anything specific? Michael: I can see ya’ll don’t want to hear about the rest of us. Jen: I really want to hear about you. Michael: Nah. (holds hand up) (laughs) Jen: I apologize. How about you. Can you tell me about yourself? Slim: Me? Man, sure. Hey – I go by the name of Slim. I’m the youngest in the group. I’m 22. Man, I love life. Ya’ll can see it. I always got a smile on my face. I love being in this group. I’m glad they allowed me to be in the group. Thank you Mike. I’m just proud to be in the group. We’ve accomplished a lot. We’re still friends, we still love each other. Michael: (sarcastically) Ya! Slim: Bump you. (laughs) (Daron and Michael play around) We still love each other. We have 3 albums out. The first album, self titled, is double platinum. The second album, Room 112, thanks to BIG for that one, double platinum. This album right here that just came off, came out, thank you Janet Jackson, love you, she definitely kept us on a consistent basis, that’s also double platinum and still growing. Aw man I just love life… I love you! I love you all! Josh: Obviously you guys are on Bad Boy records, which is affiliated with Arista. Besides the CDs that you’ve mentioned, you’ve got the DVD of course, which has got 2 singles on there. What do you think about the DVD to help you get your name out there. Daron: Can I see that? Josh: Absolutely! Daron: What I think, with the growth of technology like DVD it helps to propel us as artists and just get our name out there even further. Some people don’t have VHS or CDs and they just strictly relying on DVD right now. Honestly I didn’t know we had that til maybe about a month ago and I walk in the store and seen it for the first time and I was like yeah. The day the Michael Jackson album came out we walked into the store and we were like “woah!” It definitely helps us out though. Mike: Aight. You touched on it, but can you go into how influential Notorious BIG was in your music? Q: First of all man, I want to tell everyone out there that are fans of BIG that we thank ya’ll for the prayers and the letters and the phone calls at the time of his death. It really helped 112 and the whole Bad Boy family get over that. He played a very important part in 112’s career because he put us on the map with our first single, Only You. He rhymed on it and people who knew Big and loved big for who he was gave us a chance because he was on our record. So we really owe a lot to him and you know. When 112 was signed to bad boy he was one of the first to lay down the welcome mat and welcome us to the label. He’s like a big brother to us, gave us the shirt off his back, really always looked out for us. Anything ya’ll need, 112, i’m your big brother come ask me, I’ll make sure it happens so we miss ’em, and we thank everyone out there for the love and support at that time. Jen: OK Mike. I want you to tell me what is the craziest thing any screaming fan has done to you? Michael: Screwing? Oh screaming! I thought you said screwing. (laughs) Daron: She’s trying to play us here. thought this was a family interview. Michael: Give me a minute here. Daron: Rated E for Everyone! Michael: Well we were in Londonone time and this fan was running behind this van we were in, and actually grabbed hold of the van and actually held on for like 20 feet. We were going like 30 miles, 45 miles per hour and she’s just like holding on (laughs) and she finally let go, and she tumbled. (comment in background) Michael: Well she said the craziest. Hopefully she’s all right. I’ll buy her a rolls, cause she rolls with it. She rolled with the fall. Jen: Now something like that, is that like a turn on, well not like a turn on (laughs) I’m just surrounded by like… um… (laughs) Hey what can I say! Is that something that makes you guys happy or do you just frown upon that. Michael: Well someone getting hurt. Just the mere fact. Well, we were on our way here and we spoke to somebody who drove us back to the hotel and they told us that 2500 people, almost 3000 people had bought tickets to see the show. Once you think about stuff like that it’s overwhelming that you had 2500 people or however many people it is come to see you. We don’t look at our success or you’d be overwhelmed because you have four country bumpkins, you know cause like we’re from Atlanta so you know we’re not used to all this glitz and glam and all this other stuff so when it came to us we kind of put it into the backgruond cause if you think about it all the time you would really be overwhelmed because like Daron said we put God first and it’s a blessing to even be here in Connecticut because I honestly never thought outside of this group think I’d ever be outside of Atlanta. There are two or three things to do to get out of Atlanta. I don’t want to say the other two. Singing was def. one of them and the only thing we could do but it’s kind of overwhelming. So when you see something like that it’s like wow. you can tell somebody like that. It really makes you be more conscience of what it is that you say and do because whether or not you realize it you are a role model when you’re in the public eye so you want to do things that make people say “i want to be like that person” or “I don’t want to be like that person” but as long as you set a positive example and you’ll be straight and it makes you feel good that you have people jump on your vans and ride 20 feet. Jen: Well we’re really happy that you are here. Michael: Well we can tell because we see the little signs. Ya’ll make us feel like we’re Janet or something like that. We’ve seen the posters down there and the little fruit trays. You got our riders right. (security guard signals to wrap it up) Michael: Don’t cut us off. We’ve got to do the rest of this interview dog. We’re overwhelmed and we were gonna tell ya’ll thank you on stage. We’ll tell ya’ll now thank you. we appreciate the love. It’s a beautiful thing. You even got our names right. You even said Daron right. Josh: I know you went on your with Janet recently… Do you like doing smaller concerts where you can headline and do a more intimate concert or do you prefer larger concerts where more people will be reached by your music? Michael: Actually, Janet was on tour with us (laughs) Just for the record. Janet was on tour with us. I know that’s a misprint and we hear it all the time. It’s a hard job but someone’s gotta do it. We like the more intimate crowds because you get to be with the fans and you can interact more with the fans. When you’re in front of 20,000 fans it’s overwhelming… I don’t know… it feels to be good to be on both of ’em, I’ll be honest with you. We were on tour with Puffy which was 17,000, 20,000 a night. And then Janet, we had the privelege of being on there with her. But it’s just something about being with an intimate crowd of no more than 5,000 people that they can relate and they can feel exactly what it is. When you’re on that big stage you’re unreachable. it’s like that superstar dumb and that’s when you really get to that level where you’re intangible; where you can’t be touched. We’re in an environment where it’s like “aah. I can barely get him.” but he’s right tehre so it feels good so we like both of them but we like the intimate ones are the ones we really go for, like this crowd tonight. Mike: Some artists feel like they need this time to come up with music. Does it come out on the fly or do you sit down and work on it? Could you go through the production of a song? Q: It depends on the situation. A lotta times… Daron, being the producer, everywhere he goes he takes his equipment. We could be asleep, he could be in the back of the bus beating on the MPC coming up with songs or any one of us, being writers… for those of you don’t know, 112 is a self-contained group. Daron is the producer and we all write. So Daron can either come up with a song or a track and we write to it, or one of us may go to him and say I have this song idea and put a track to it. We could just be talking about something that happened during the day and then we’ll make a song out of it. I think that’s a good thing by being so much in control of your own project because you’re not waiting on somebody to bring you a song. We’er in control. We can just come up with it right now if we had to. Jen: OK guys. Slim – who came up with the 112 stomp. Slim: Actually, it was already a dance in the ATL. We kinda got it from the Attic Crew, it was like a local group in the ATL. We decided to bring it to an international status. What better way than but call it the 112 stop. You’ll definitely see it tonight. Jen: Awesome. We’re definitely looking forward to that. Josh: You can see I’ve got the DVD so I’m with all the new technologies… (Slim goes to take the DVD; laughs) Josh: I wanted to ask you a bit about that. Two big technologies out there that are hot button issues are MP3s of course and then copy protected CDs that will stop people from doing that. I was wondering if you had any opinions, pro or con, about those technologies. Daron: Actually we do. When the whole situation with the Napster thing hit we were upset about that because anytime someone can take your music and just copy it without you seeing any monies then obviously you’re going to be upset about it but the rulings against Napster settled us down a little bit but still anytime you’re an artist and you have something that you’ve created and somebody can utilize it however they want to and essentially profit from it and you don’t see anything from it and – let’s face it – it’s a dog eat dog world and you want to be able to see revenues and monies from whatever you do so it’s a problem. We’re always for new technologies and moving forward into the future as long as it’s done in moderation and with restrictions because if it starts there then you could have video cameras in your house spying on you and stuff like that so you know you want to be able to keep some of your civil liberties but it’s a wonderful thing – technology. Ooh.