Alonzo Williams: Was Suge Knight A Genius Before Everything Went Wrong? Excecutive Wants Spotlight

Added: 2026-05-16

[00:00:00]Hip-hop is one of the few few industries that the the label owners can be just as controversial as the artists.

[00:00:07]>> Yes.

[00:00:07]>> Yeah. Yes.

[00:00:09]You know, you got J. Prince out of Texas, you got Puffy in New York, uh Jay-Z. Everybody pretty much has their own persona.

[00:00:21]All right. So, um talking a little bit about Suge Knight, um before the controversy, was Suge Knight actually a business genius?

[00:00:32]Not that I know of.

[00:00:34]When it came to it when it came to the record business you talking about?

[00:00:38]Mhm, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Oh, um genius? I wouldn't call him a genius, but that that era in that era there were a lot of people to go to to get advice. Mhm. And in the R&B level, I mean, let's let's let's let's go back to Death Row for forget that, Death Row, Ruthless for a second.

[00:00:59]>> Mhm. But Ruthless dropped an album.

[00:01:04]Every bus [ __ ] in Los Angeles had that advertising on there. Yeah.

[00:01:09]Same thing with Ruthless with Death Row.

[00:01:11]Death Row got ready to do something, it was everywhere. Yeah. They spent money on marketing. And they knew how to market Death Row, Ruthless, all those labels knew how to market. They they specifically bought [ __ ] ads in South Central, Compton, areas that were heavily uh heavily uh uh traveled by minorities, like by the bus.

[00:01:35]You didn't see them you didn't see them in Torrance, you didn't see them too much in Gardena, but you saw them in the hood, okay?

[00:01:41]>> Uh Death Row, I mean, uh yeah, Death Row took that same that same pattern. And that was something that none of the big boys would use. So, if you got a big budget, and you know you got a hard a hard artist coming out, you uh you got to market it in advance.

[00:01:58]You don't just drop it out there, and it later. You see, "No, no, no, no, no, no." You make people want to go buy it.

[00:02:03]Yeah. And the fact that the material was good just made it that much better.

[00:02:06]Yeah. Yeah. I keep saying that. I feel like Suge was a great um marketing.

[00:02:12]Yeah. He had a He had a great marketing mind, but >> not so much the business.

[00:02:16]>> his mentor. Dick Griffin was one of his mentors. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:02:20]Dick Griffin had uh Solar Records, which was Lakeside, Whispers, uh Dynasty, uh uh Shalamar. That's pretty good. And you know, he did a great job. He comes from that whole camp. So, [clears throat] you have you got guys like that who are willing to talk to you and give you game on how to make things happen. And then you have a new product nobody ever heard before. It's like when the guy did it Y'all don't know about this right here.

[00:02:43]Y'all wouldn't know. I'm going to give you a reference. You might not know about it, but if you didn't, I'm going to teach you about it right now. Okay.

[00:02:50]Guy that made the Pet Rock. Mhm. No, I don't know what that I know the Pet Rock.

[00:02:53]>> Oh, yeah. Yes. Yes. Okay. Yes.

[00:02:55]Okay. He promoted the hell out of the rocks.

[00:02:58]>> He did?

[00:02:59]He promoted the hell out of the rocks and he made people want a rock.

[00:03:02]>> Yeah.

[00:03:04]Everybody wanted a damn rock. That was [laughter] the craziest That was the craziest thing that happened. Like everybody Everybody WANTED A ROCK. $5. MHM. For perfectly good rock you could have went to the beach and picked up any rock you got.

[00:03:16]But because it was your pet rock, he sold you that rock.

[00:03:21]You bought that rock. Same thing. Yeah.

[00:03:24]Yeah. It's not just you know who they were, but they had They had certain names attached to it. Dr. Dre. That's true.

[00:03:31]Whatever the case may be. Eazy-E. Yeah.

[00:03:34]And because it was on that label, they had such a such brand recognition, people had to people had to jump on it.

[00:03:41]Just to see what it was about. It's the same [clears throat] thing the same thing I talk about right now when it comes to the internet. Mhm.

[00:03:51]You have artists that are getting multiple streams, hundreds of thousands of streams, sometimes millions of millions of streams because what they saying is so disgusting. Yeah. There's two types of of streams. One that likes it, one that can't believe you said it. Yeah. But they all end up being what? Mhm. Yeah.

[00:04:12]Okay?

[00:04:13]They all end up being what? The the internet don't care. Same thing at the the similar similar but a little bit different in the record industry.

[00:04:22]If somebody bought your record, oh that's that's on Rufus. I'm going to see what they talking about. I know they going to say something crazy. I'm going to buy that record.

[00:04:29]But in the record business if they don't like it people stop buying it and they got they got what they call returns. That's what I talked about earlier about the reserve. That's why they hold the reserve in case people buy you ship out a half a million records, all of a sudden they stop selling at 250,000.

[00:04:48]250,000 coming back. You don't you don't get that in the internet. But every record don't come back. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:04:56]So when you got the whole purpose for having you having people out here promoting in the beginning of the product is that people go to the store and want to buy it all buy it up. You can't really take records back. Mhm. If you don't like it.

[00:05:10]>> Yeah.

[00:05:11]It don't work like that.

[00:05:12]>> Right. But people but the word goes out this [ __ ] is wack.

[00:05:16]Don't buy it. Mhm. Okay? Or here's here's a copy of it. So now you got another problem. But if it's dope, if it's really like people really like it, they'll keep buying it. Like Michael Jackson.

[00:05:26]Yeah. [laughter] Yeah. That's true. That's true. So did you have a mid-show before the whole Death Row thing like back in the '80s?

[00:05:34]We had it. We had a brief two brief encounters. We had a brief encounter at a hotel and one day he happened to come by my club. I have a cafe downstairs. He popped in the cafe to get use the restroom or something like that and I would have been talking to him for a hot second. We never had a full never had a sit down chicken conversation. Okay.

[00:05:54]Now, do you do you think his business model, like when he started beating people, started abusing artists, peeing on them and stuff, do you think that was that was his demise, the downfall of Death Row Records? That was the beginning of the That was That was the beginning of the end cuz people started getting hit with lawsuits. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, lawsuits, he started going to jail. It's hard to run a record company from the from the penitentiary. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You get tired of that. Yeah. Yeah, then you start getting multiple cases and you're on probation, you can't go nowhere. It's It's you know, and at some point enough of I would I would have been his mentor, I would have told him, "Man, sit down, dude. You're doing too much. You got too much money at stake to be doing what you're doing." Yeah.

[00:06:41]So, something that you said earlier about like you you know, your your model was to to be part of the group, you know, and in charge of you know, the the label too.

[00:06:56]He should kind of seem to want to be part of it, but he didn't really have musical right musicality to be able to to be a part of it. Do you think that that might have been kind of what that problem was is that he wanted to be in that limelight so bad that he just inserted himself in any way that he thought he could, which was kind of gaining, you know, that the the viral I never thought about that before. I I never thought about that particular angle, but everybody wants to be famous.

[00:07:25]Yeah. Yeah.

[00:07:26]Cuz fame is a very alluring situation and maybe because he could not be on stage, he thought he would be a new version of I don't know, Berry Gordy? Yeah. With a with a more more of a gangster twist to it, I'm not sure. Okay.

[00:07:45]Well, that could be, you know, you know, back in the eight in the hip-hop hip-hop is one of the few few industries that the the label owners can be just as controversial as the artists.

[00:07:56]>> Yes. Yeah. Yes.

[00:07:58]You know, you got Jay Chris out of Texas, you got Puffy in New York, uh Jay-Z over Everybody pretty much has their own persona. You know, and all these guys can just go on stage sometime time children that jump on stage kind of guy maybe thug Okay, I'm going to I'm going to be the big boss. Yeah. The big cigar smoking, you know, don't take no [ __ ] kick ass kind of guy. Yeah. It worked for a while. For a little while. Yeah, then it stopped working. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

[00:08:26]What do like I mean is it having creep and blood in the same building working together?

[00:08:33]It's like a con- conflict of interest?

[00:08:35]Because I mean you you have two rival gang gang members Yeah.

[00:08:39]>> in there. At some point they're going to fight. I would think, probably.

[00:08:44]I I've done that before. It's It's It all depends on how you present yourself.

[00:08:47]Okay.

[00:08:49]See, un- unlike most guys, I never I never took chose a side. I live in a red territory, but they know I'm not I'm I'm not per- I'm not per se pro red. Right.

[00:09:00]Okay. I I work with guys on both sides of the on both sides of the field. They came to my studio and work. I've been made it clear, "Hey, man, we here for what color? Green. If that's not If that's a problem, thank you for coming through." And everybody pretty much adhere to that. And that that's the difference. Yeah. I wasn't trying to, you know, belittle the blue team cuz the red team Well, you don't do that. I My club even after dark said between everything.

[00:09:28]Mhm.

[00:09:30]I could not be heavily affiliated with anything cuz it would it would have blocked my money. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:09:37]>> [clears throat] >> I knew all of the red team guys. I knew the blue team guys.

[00:09:42]And I respected everybody. They asked everybody, while you're here, could you please respect each other? And for the most part, they did. Outside, that's a different situation. Yeah. Right. But inside the building, for the most part, they respected each other.

[00:09:54]Cuz they they had nowhere else to go.

[00:09:57]Yeah.

[00:09:57]>> This is all we got. Yeah. Do you want to blow it up with some [ __ ] Yeah. Most cases, they understood. It was cool.

[00:10:03]Okay, since you were like neutral from the beginning, do you think is the same approach as the A house as you with Dr. Dre? Because they never really claim anything. They always wear black. They never really wear red or black. Is that Is that coming from you?

[00:10:21]No. That's just me being smart.

[00:10:24]>> [laughter] >> Okay.

[00:10:27]Yeah.

[00:10:28]Yeah.

[00:10:28]>> When you if once you declare, especially if you're a a artist, Yeah. there are so many different pockets around the country, around the world, that your stuff the side the color that you declare is not appreciated or is being hunted.

[00:10:45]>> Mhm.

[00:10:45]So, you can't stay universal. You're only limited to certain areas that you feel comfortable in. Yeah. You know, it Well, although when you get to the venue or concert venue, whatever, you're on stage, but you still got to be in a hotel in the meantime. You have to travel in the meantime. That's true.

[00:11:02]Last thing you want to do is get your bus shot up or get the hotel uh run through by by a bunch of uh gang activity. You don't want that.

[00:11:11]So, uh to to wear a a neutral color, and black and black had its issues, too, but it wasn't nowhere near as uh connected as red or blue. Mhm.

[00:11:25]Yeah.

[00:11:26]Yeah, we we had 68 on here, and that's what he he said he He was like, I'm wearing black cuz I don't want to be, you know, I want to be neutral at all costs cuz yeah, this is not something he wanted to be a part of. So, yeah.

[00:11:38]>> No, why would I want to do that? And he's from Atlanta. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:11:41]He's from Atlanta, why would he go to LA and join a gang? Right.

[00:11:44]>> I'm way over the age. You know what I mean?

[00:11:46]>> Yeah.

[00:11:47]Yeah. My whole point is if you're from LA, you were born and raised there, that's fine. But there's no way I'm coming from Haiti.

[00:11:54]And then I go to LA and join a gang and become a Blood or [ __ ] That makes no sense.

[00:11:58]>> Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. I'm a five. Yeah.