Back in 1991, Ronald “Money-B” Brooks was rocking stages with ‘Digital Underground’ and an up-and-coming rapper named Tupac Shakur. Nearly thirty-five years later and the legendary MC from Oakland is still clutching the mic at venues around the world and consistently dropping new music.
His most recent release, ‘Sit Next To Me,’ is a smooth G-Funk-style track with a bass-line that knocks so hard it makes me wish I had sub woofers in my car. Featuring Guapdad 4000 and produced by Xcelence, it’s now available as a set of 100 unique non-fungible tokens minted by Gala Music.
A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to catch up with Money-B to talk about music, his latest release with Gala, and some advice he has for younger artists. Here it is.
The following interview has been edited for concision and clarity.
Tell me a little bit about your project with Gala Music. How did it come about, and what can fans expect?
Gala Music is a Web3 music platform that runs on the Gala Music coin, which is on the Ethereum blockchain. I was introduced to Gala by my good friend Ray Luv, who’s also an artist. He used to rock with Tupac back in the day, and he told me that Leila Steinberg was the president there.
Me and Leila go way back. She managed Tupac. She was the one that brought Tupac to Digital Underground. And so, I felt comfortable because of my relationship with Ray and Leila that it was something that I would at least check out and give a try.
I have a single. It’s called ‘Sit Next to Me.’ It features Guapdad 4000 and it’s produced by two-time winning producer Xcelence, out of Chicago. Guapdad is from Oakland, like me. It’s a hundred-piece NFT music collection. With Gala, you buy the NFT, and as a holder, you can earn Gala Music tokens from people streaming your music.
But also, if you’re a holder of my NFT, you become a part of the Digital Underground collective. If you’re at any Digital Underground show (and we’re touring heavily right now), I’m going to give you the VIP treatment.
You can come to the meet-and-greet area or sometimes backstage. You get to hang out, a signed piece of merch, and you can take any pictures you want. But even more than that, I’ll treat you as part of the collective. So, if we’re on Discord, I have a channel specifically for holders of the NFTs that I’ll jump on every Tuesday or Wednesday and you can ask me anything you want.
Lastly, I have such a huge catalog of music, so I’ll be able to drop exclusives tracks. You might wake up one day and find a new Money-B Digital Underground track in your wallet.
Let’s talk more about this song ‘Sit Next to Me.’ It’s a great track with a classic feel to it. In 2024, when there’s so much content and music out there, what’s the difficulty of making a classic track?
I can only speak on my process, and I feel like I’m at a point in my career where I know that I’ve contributed to the culture — myself, and with Digital Underground and Tupac — we’ve made timeless classics.
We made music like ‘I Get Around,’ ‘The Humpty Dance,’ and ‘Kiss You Back.’ For the rest of your life, you will hear those songs. So, I feel like I built the equity where I can do what I want, and I don’t really care what people think. I used to make music thinking, “I hope they like it.” Now, I make music that I like.
So, it’s liberating or whatever you want to call it. I’m free; I don’t chase trends or try to see what’s happening now. Also — and I tell this to younger artists — every time I make a song, I try to make timeless music, meaning you never know when I made something.
I’ll make a song and sit on it for three years because I know it’s still going to hit the same. I’m never in jeopardy of losing or thinking, “Oh man, everybody’s doing this now. If I don’t put it out, it’s gonna sound old.” I believe that the music I make is timeless because I could play three songs of mine next to each other and you’d never know when they were made.
Is this single part of an album?
I’ve already shot and edited five videos for the album that’s going to be released, which will feature ‘Sit Next to Me.’ The album’s going to be called “Midway,” which is the airport in Chicago on the West Side. The producer Xcelent is from Chicago. And obviously I’m from the Bay Area, Oakland.
We did a few tracks, and I said, “Let’s make a concept record.” Nowadays, people just get producers from all over the place, and it sounds like a compilation. But what about making an album that has one consistent sound and one consistent feel? So that’s what I did with him.
Most of this album is produced by Xcelence. I have some artists from Chicago, and of course Guapdad (Oakland) and Young Hump from L.A. — my brother from Digital Underground.
I heard in an interview with B-Real (Cypress Hill) that you recorded a track with Run DMC?
Yeah, I recorded with DMC. DMC’s manager reached out to me and said he wanted me on the track, and those were my heroes when I was kid. I used to have the Run DMC posters on my wall!
So, the fact that I was able to meet those guys and become — well, more friends with DMC — but I’ve met Run and we’re cordial. When I first met him, he complemented my music, and I was blown away that he even knew my name or who I was. And then years later, DMC is like, “Hey, you want to jump on the track?”
I’m like, “Hell yeah.”
But I also heard the track never got released?
Yeah. It didn’t come out [laughing]. But I did it.
As an artist, there are all these tracks you might be sitting on, or you collaborate with someone and the song never comes out. There’s all this lost music. Do you think Web3 is a good place to recover some of that music?
Absolutely. It’s his track (DMC), so I couldn’t drop that track. But there is a lot of music that maybe I missed the window of putting out. Now there’s a platform where I can release music and people can hear my art. And I don’t have to worry so much about whether each song has a marketing plan and this, that, and whatever.
It’s kind of like, when I feel like it — guess what? Here’s something for the people that are a part of my community. Here’s a gem that’s been sitting in the vault. You can have it.
What else do you have going on in Web3?
I own a parcel in the Voxels metaverse, where I built a Digital Underground headquarters. It has an underground museum with a train in it, a club, a merch store for wearables — and I throw parties in there.
So sometimes you can come in and I’ll play exclusive music. You have to create an avatar and come into the Voxels metaverse, but I release music there as well.
Do you have any advice for younger artists?
Whatever it is that you do, don’t let anyone steer you off your path. A lot of people will try to dissuade you from doing what you do because they’re afraid to do it. You know, “You can’t do it”— because they can’t do it.
So whatever it is that you want to do, go for it. There are two kinds of people: people who always ask why and people who ask why not. I’m the “why not” guy. Why can’t I do that?
So I would tell younger artists, whatever it is you’re into — say if you’re into vampire bear dolls and you want to talk about that. There’s a bunch of people out there that love vampire bear dolls, you just gotta find them. Whatever it is you’re into, there’s an audience. You just gotta tap into where your audience is.
There’s nothing you can talk about, there’s no music that you can make, that nobody’s gonna like. Somebody’s gonna like it. You just have to find your people, find your audience, find your community. And once you find them, you cultivate that relationship.
So back in the day, say the 90’s when record labels were the thing, it was always about having the largest audience. So, “Hey, you just sold 100,000 records. Now we gotta sell 200,000. Now we gotta go ‘Gold,’ now we gotta go ‘Platinum.'”
What I would suggest for younger artists now is to find your 1,000 true fans and cultivate that relationship and they’ll be your fans for life. They’ll buy into anything that you do.
If I can get 1,000 fans to spend say $200 a year on me — they buy my NFT or a hat, or they come to my concert — that’s a living and you don’t have to go outside of that.
Thank you
For more information on Money-B and his latest release with Gala Music, click here.
Here are some other interviews featuring artists from Gala Music and Gala Film: