Defsounds

People have been wondering where Juelz Santana, mayor of Santana’s Town, has been over the past couple of years. With his last studio album coming in 2005 with What The Game’s Been Missing, you would get an occasional guest appearance or a mixtape with Weezy F., but you wouldn’t really see him on any albums as a guest appearance and Cam’ron seems to have been the reason behind that.

Free of his contractual obligations to Cam’ron and DipSet, now working solely on Def Jam, Juelz talked to MTV News about how he felt about being “sold”.

"I was upset about the part of me being 'sold for $2 million,' " Santana explained. "At times like this, nobody is trying to 'sell' me. I could have come out and said, 'Oh, yeah, Cam got bought out.' But I didn't go that route. They just gotta watch me move. We gonna make it hot."

Juelz also stated he couldn’t make guest appearances on other artists’ songs because Cam wouldn’t clear the collaborations. Cam even went as far as suing people for compensation in such cases as the Nike commercial and Chris Brown’s hit single “Run It”.

Juelz said a lot of material on others songs never saw the daylight. "I'm just gonna say a lot of big records. ... I was on a good portion of those records, or asked to be on a good portion of those records that [Lil] Wayne was on — along with him, not like they asked me before they asked him, or vice versa. I know I was on a good portion of those records, 'cause the I Can't Feel My Face thing. We were pushing that hard. People wanted to get both of us. I couldn't go as far as the clearances. I could do my verse, then it got to the point where I couldn't go there with people, because I didn't want them to think that it was me being the bad guy not clearing stuff. I didn't want that on my name. So, I would let people know, 'I can't really. ... If you wanna just put it out on the mixtapes, we could do that all day. The fans definitely missed out on a lot of Juelz due to my contract."

Despite the contract fallout Juelz has no problems with Killa and still yells DipSet.

"I have no hard feelings towards Cam," he explained. "I tell people I couldn't do business with him. But I will say he gave me the biggest chance I needed. I'm a dude from the 'hood, so the chance he gave me is a chance I needed to never turn back. I'm good. My artistry, my talent, my career was never built on controversy. So I would never come out and say a whole bunch of things that could be said. All I can say is, I'm sorry he can't be here to be a part of what's about to happen, because we're about to tear 'em up."

Look out for Santana’s new crew of artists, Skull Gang, which is an acronym for "Street Kids United by Loyalty and Loot, Goons and N---as Getting It." The crew includes artists from Harlem, Virginia and Queens, and they will be heavily featured on Santana's next LP Born to Lose, Built to Win (The Rise of the Skull Gang).

"Everybody could get a whiff of the future," he exclaimed.

"The good thing about [my time with Cam]," he continued, "I got a chance to learn a lot and be around Cam and Jim and watch us, the Diplomats, one of the greatest movements and still one of the greatest movements doing this thing today. I know the ins and outs of what it takes to build a powerful movement. I know the things that got us to the points where we needed to be. Then I know some of the things that was holding us back. I get to work around the things I need to work around. Jim has Byrd Gang, I have the Skull Gang, and Freekey Zekey has 730."

While talking about Dipset, Juelz claims they are still intact but there is some confusion over what Cam has been up to and he would love to do another Diplomat album.

"It's no hard feelings, and now that I'm out of my situation, I don't mind putting a Diplomat album together. All I gotta do is tell my lawyer to handle the business the right way, and the music gets taken care of. I love making music. We all love making music. Me, Jim, Zeke — we all down to do the Diplomat album. You gotta ask Cam what's up about the Diplomat album when you get him front of this same camera.

"At first people kinda looked at us like, 'Damn, what's going on?' " he continued. "They looking at us like we're disloyal. But as the time went by, it's kinda like, what we gonna do, just die out because the dude that was supposed to be the boss and the head of the table decided to disappear? That means we would have vanished along with that. We from Harlem, baby. We hustlers. We're gonna stay afloat. We're not even floating right now; we're surfing. We not even surfing; I'm the ocean."

Fans won’t hear a new album from Juelz for some time, because he wants to take his time and take care of business.

"I had to let everybody know in the Def Jam building that it was no rush to hand in a single, because now I'm a businessman," he said. "There's nobody to go to when things ain't right but me. I had to find out a lot of things I didn't have to find out before. I could let other people handle things for me. I had to let the building know [the business] is where my mind is. There's a lot more people depending on me. I can't just be out here as an artist."

Santana is putting out a Skull Gang mixtape to be followed by his solo street CD, The Regan Era sometime in 2009.