By Duane A. Gallop

Chuck Chillout is angry. No, Chuck Chillout is nervous and, well, maybe a tad bit nostalgic. And you would be too if you were him, for then you’d be one of Hip-Hop’s legendary disk jockeys who ruled the airwaves every Friday night on 98.7 Kiss FM in the ethereal time affectionately known as “back in the day.” Now a regular on XM satellite radio, Chuck remembers the good old days where gigs were plentiful, A & R directors took chances, independent labels were ubiquitous and the sound was constantly changing.

But now…

“It’s nervous out here,” Chuck says. “I think people ain’t got no money. A lot of people lost their jobs.”

Chuck, whose Full Blast Records label has set a May or June date for the release of their artist, Fort Knox, says nothing is “looking good” right now.

“People are losing their jobs and if you have $20 in your hand are you going to buy food or a CD or shake your booty in a club?”

Chuck’s nostalgia may seem to be a bit warped. He sounds almost whimsical when he speaks about how, “you don’t even see the drug dealers anymore.” But what he means is that while the love of money is still prevalent in rap, the reality of money is no longer available. Clubs, record labels and whole radio stations are closing. Yes even in this materialistic era of “bling-bling” diamonds and Bentleys are just as common as Chapter 11 filings and pink slips.

“We got to get Bush out of office,” he says. “Think about it. Really sit down and think about it. Everything was all right before he got in. People had jobs. Then he gets in office and everything goes wrong. This about this: you’ve got Elektra and Arista going out of business Friday. That don’t make no sense!”

Both Arista’s and Elektra’s artists, Chuck says, will only get one shot at a hit album at whatever label they end up in. And even if they are successful, there are still two less labels out there. This leaves the remaining labels a heck of a lot more hesitant to throw money on an unproven artist.
“You know what the labels are doing now?” Chuck rhetorically asks. “They’re scared to sign. I had a meeting tonight and it ain’t like it was before. People, when they heard stuff before, would sign someone. But now they’re scared. They don’t want to lose their $90,000 a year job. So what they do is, they sit there and they wait for somebody else.”

Chuck says he would like to be optimistic. He says usually when things are wrong they turn themselves around. But right now he says things are getting worse and worse.

“It’s beyond just the music,” he says. “You got Foot Action filing Chapter 11! They’re about to go out of business in a minute dog. It’s rough out here B. It’s rough out here dog. Look at WLIB. There ain’t no more WLIB! They fired everybody! They fired all 150 people! There ain’t no more Caribbean sound. It’s called Air America now. They’re not playing dog. They fired everybody man. It’s not good. It’s rough out here.

“You know people don’t have any jobs man. I mean WLIB’s whole livelihood was the Caribbean, you know, Brooklyn. If no one’s in them stores buying things, then they don’t have any money to pay for commercials that keeps WLIB a float! So they had to do what they had to do. They had to create a transition and you can’t blame them for that, but now there’s no Caribbean outlet. It’s bad out here dog. Not good.”

Chuck remains in the music business through his label and his gig on XM satellite radio. He still does parties and believes Hip Hop is on the final loop of its 360-degree turn.

“What’s happening right now is that it’s going back to the way Hip Hop started with the independent labels. When we first started playing rap on the radio, no one believed in it. So a lot of independent labels gave us records and we played them. And they sold records on the strength of the mix shows. And it looks like it’s going back that way now because you got record labels folding and people aren’t hearing nothing until it pops off in the street.”

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