Philadelphia Weekly
What's Up With ...Rod Lee
by Dirty South Joe

Age: “Over 21.”
Hometown: Baltimore.

Background: “The undisputed godfather of Baltimore club.”

On the recent globalization of the B-more club sound: “When you’ve been doing it for a while, it kind of pans out to where you’re just thankful for what you’ve got. You try to stay grounded and humble and gradually get ’em on it. If they feel it, it’s a blessing. If not, it’s nothing to get upset about.”

On pretenders to the throne: “When you’ve got some average Joe who you don’t even worry about who takes the club music, puts their name on it and throws it out there , they’re gonna get more notoriety than someone who eats, sleeps and shits it. Doing club music is how I survive and feed my kids. It’s more than just throwing a beat together and trying to make someone dance. It’s different when an outsider tries to infiltrate and create the Baltimore sound. To them it’s not that serious, but it’s what took me off the streets. Now we’re in competition. Now it’s gettin’ fun and I’m gonna have to shut you down.”

On evolution: “All of us DJs worked for the radio stations, and we’d get new music months before it came out. As soon as a single would jump off, we’d hit ’em with the club mix. DMX, Ja Rule, Redman, Puffy—they all knew about what we were doing, but it wasn’t a problem. Why would these major labels worry about something so far under their radar? If any of them wanted to come to us and say something, we’d probably buck. It would’ve been real. We weren’t making much money, but in Baltimore we’d die for what we believed in. I got tired of the sampling because you couldn’t get full publishing points and make money for your music. That’s when I started putting my own voice on my records.”

On the future, now: “My company Harm Squad Entertainment is self-contained. We’ve got everything you could ever need as an artist. If you’re coming in as an artist by yourself, now you have a team.”