I’m going to say J. Cole (laughs). His new album is phenomenal, it’s really something.

What are the albums that you guys did the worst at that point?

My album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. I’m trying to work on it, and we need some help with it. We got more money to spend, but we can’t put any money in that album.

When did you guys start putting on your own things? Did the two groups — Redman and the Red Stripes — give you a lot of material? How did the different crews come together?

We didn’t know each other when we were together. We had an idea that the group would be a group but didn’t know each other, and we thought that we’d form this group and just put out an album, but there was no chemistry to it. So we decided to call it “The Red-Collar Unit”. I just put out four records a year and we had no money for another four-five years. So we thought that we’d put out one record a year like a band, but it just wasn’t working out so well with the label. So then we found our own label. And it felt like everything was coming together.

How was the Blackstreet label?

We never really worked with this big-time label. We never heard of them. We just found our own label and got started. There’s not a huge difference between a label and a music store. The label is doing things. They’re paying people to sell records. So after a couple of labels, we found ourselves at the Blackstreet warehouse trying to break in again without the big-money label, because we just couldn’t get an A&R person that was going to let us sign up and do a business deal, because it was a lot more hard work doing a business deal. So it was kind of hard finding some big-time A&Rs because they weren’t going to put in the time and money.

Was the deal with A&R going to be the same?

The deal was very different. The thing was that nobody could really know at the time what we were doing. I think that we had a little money and no pressure when I was trying to get signed. It’s not like that today. You’re not even being paid a lot. So you’re more like on your own.

What does a typical

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