Renegade47
Superstar
yea
“While countless resources from Cinematic had gone toward promoting Joey as a star, Steez wasn’t getting the same attention, and AmeriKKKan Korruption wasn’t taking off. Cinematic had two professionally made videos produced for Joey’s tracks around the time that his mixtape, 1999, dropped, but, other than a rough, amateur video for AmeriKKKan Korruption cut “Vibe Ratings,” the crew didn’t release a Steez video (for “Free the Robots”) until September 2012, five months after its initial release. In a similar vein, “Survival Tactics” had initially been credited to Joey Bada$$ and Capital Steez—Steez had found the beat, and the song was his idea—but it had been rebranded as “Joey Bada$$ featuring Capital Steez” by the time the video made by Cinematic’s multimedia partner, Creative Control, was released. It was Joey who Cinematic had been after the whole time, and though Steez had impressed Shipes, he hadn’t convinced him that he would be a good investment. “I don’t think everybody is meant to do business together and that just wasn’t something that fit,” says Shipes. Joey was an easier artist to promote, an energetic MC with plenty of skill and an ineffable cool, in contrast to Steez, whose scruffy image and strong viewpoints didn’t lend themselves easily to the superficial whims of the blogosphere. “He could have been commercial if he sacrificed a few things, which he wasn’t willing to do,” says Jesse Rubin, who worked at Cinematic before leaving later in 2012.
Steez was painfully sensitive to the lack of recognition for the project. During the WNYU segment in April 2012, he talked about feeling like he was getting “slept-on,” and that Joey was soaking up all the attention. “I don’t get hit up for interviews as much as I would like to,” he said. “Forgive me—like Joey, he gets free clothes. I wish I got free clothes!” A video interviewreleased by The Source in June of that year captures the stark differences in personality between the two. Relatable and charming, Joey holds court in front of the group with a microphone that he rarely relinquishes, a kid who clearly enjoys entertaining a crowd. Steez, by contrast, is less polished and a little out there, talking bluntly about his “ascension,” his massive weight loss and how “truthfully in my mind, I’m living in 2047.”
In July, Joey and his mother officially inked a deal with Shipes, and soon after registered Pro Era as an LLC owned by her and Joey. On Cinematic’s Smokers Club tour that summer, a two-month jaunt through 30 cities with headliners Juicy J and Smoke DZA, the group was billed as “Joey Bada$$ and Pro Era.” Steez was becoming the second-in-command of Pro Era, a lieutenant in his own squad. He went on tour anyway, where he had a number of firsts: he did shrooms and lost his virginity, according to his friends, and he went to Canada, where he said to an interviewer that he smoked weed four to seven times a day. But he told his friends back home that he didn’t enjoy eating junk food, getting little sleep and other aspects of life on the road.”
Capital STEEZ: King Capital can read about it here.
with the bars