By Janda

As promised, here is the 2nd dose of STACKS Magazine’s interview with Mark Curry, author of “Dancing with the Devil”. Read on to find out more!

Dose 2

Bels: Knowing the money situation, do you think you should’ve said something earlier? Why didn’t you say anything at that time?

Mark: That’s what this book is about. Because you might think that it’s time to step to him because he owes you some money, but when you realize that when you approach someone like that and they have money, they can run from you. They can go inside their house and never answer the phone and you’re never going to be able to see them in traffic. You’re not going to be able to go knock on their door. So when you say would you have done it earlier? If a person was looking for immediate results, I call that a person who might be salty and a lot of people might say hey he might just be a scorned rapper or whatever. Nah, that’s not the case. If I was a scorned rapper, I would’ve came at him as soon as it was going on. Something similar to how on ‘Making of the Band’, I think when Dylon…he had it in him early. I was like Puff is going to have a hard time dealing with this one. Sure enough, what did he do? He said before I deal with it, I’ll just let you go. Now what if he was good? If he was really good at what he do, then are you signing him because of his attitude or are you signing him because he good?

I’m not really looking for no selfish victory or nothing like that to be like I got back or whatever. It’s not like that. I took enough time. I let time…you know they say time can heal all wounds. So I let time see if it could heal it. So as time grew, my wounds didn’t heal. They’re still open flesh wounds and I’m getting older and I still have these wounds, right. I’m not going to live with that. I was explaining to him that what you’re doing to me is a form of death – you’re killing me slowly and I just can’t see how nobody don’t see it. You might as well put a gun to my head and kill me before you try to starve me out.

Janda: What was his response to that?

Mark: His response would always be something like…playboy it’s not my fault, it’s not my fault…you don’t need to take this out on me or he’ll say it’s your approach, it’s the way you’re going about it. He always would say that…it’s the way you going about it. I would be like, what do you mean the way? I’m going about it the way a man who ain’t ate should go about it. They say a closed mouth don’t get fed, so how else should I go about it? Don’t say nothing?

See, but people when they got that money, they know when they dealing with a person, you’re going to be a little bit inferior. You’re not always going to want to voice your opinion when it comes to dealing with somebody as powerful as Puff and they know it. So they know when you walk in the room, that 9 times out of 10 you don’t want to say what you want to say. But when he see that you almost leaning toward, almost hinting or suggesting that you’re going into or about to open up a certain conversation, he know how to change it. I call that a pep talk, like a coach. He’ll make you leave out the room like he’s telling the truth. The only thing I need to do is work harder, like I can if he believes in me, then I know I can. Then you get home and be like…wait a minute. I went in there to talk to him about my bills not being paid and instead of him saying to me what I really needed to hear which was you know, I’ll lend you some money until or however or whatever you need to do. But instead of him saying that, he let me walk out the room thinking that the only thing I need was one more song and I’ll be able to feed my family for life. That’s where the bamboozle come in. You be like man I have a feeling he just telling me anything. I don’t really think that for a man who said we’re going to do all this stuff and the actions that’s supposed to fall in place when we’re going to do it…I just can’t see you doing it.

Janda: I’ve been browsing a few internet sites and some are claiming to have a copy of your book or some excerpts from it and they are now questioning your credibility saying that it reads as though you’re giving second-hand information or it seems like some of the incidents may be what you heard or what somebody else told you, what do you have to say to those that are questioning your credibility?

Mark: How do I feel about them questioning my credibility? You ask any real ni**a that’s been through something that know me and they’re going to say yeah to my credibility. I’m going to love this as it keeps going on and on because the more somebody tells me something about what I’m saying and questions my credibility…for every time somebody questions my credibility I might want to talk about an artist that act like they singing to a woman, but they really singing to a boy and you want to question my credibility.

Like I read on one site, it said Mark Curry you said that you wrote some of Puff’s biggest hits and then they named his songs and they said that I didn’t write any of those. Bad Boy for Life was one and Come with Me was one, that’s two of the songs that I know I did write. How in the world am I going to lie about work I used to work at. Every person I know in that book, I know and there it is. You don’t see nobody coming out saying nothing crazy right now do you? Did Puff say anything?

Janda & Bels: No, we haven’t heard anything yet.

Mark: He’ll be the first one to speak up when something’s not right…right? I hadn’t heard nothing yet. You want to know why? Because it ain’t nothing he could say.

Janda: What type of ramifications both personally & legally do you think will occur once the book is released?

Mark: Probably none. Let me tell you something about when you approaching a man with money and here’s another thing you’ll learn about what I’m doing. You just can’t get up and say anything you want about a person as powerful as Puff because they can sue you, but if you say something and have it backed by facts, which I probably have 30 pages of bibliography in the book. His lawyers can read it, he can read it and there’s nothing you can say about it because it’s a fact.

Alright, now that you’ve gotten Dose 1 & 2, don’t miss the final dose tomorrow to see what Curry has to say about the music industry’s need for reconstruction, what he’d do differently if he turn back the hands of time, protecting your finances and what’s next for him.