04/30/2026
LEP Bogus Boys were boiling hot in the summer of 2011. They had the Chicago rap game in a chokehold. Their music was menacing and their presence felt whenever they entered a room.
Closed Sessions Vol. 2 was in its final stages. We’d completed songs and documentaries with Raekwon, CyHi The Prynce, Freddie Gibbs, Ninjasonik, Outasight, and others.
On a hot day in July, I ran into LEP outside the PHLI Store on 53rd, and they asked me why they hadn’t been invited yet to participate in the series. It was a good question. Truthfully, we just didn’t think they’d want to do it or didn’t see rubyhornet/closed sessions fans as their fans.
As Dash says at the beginning of this clip, “I bet you got a lot of happy songs on this,” 🤣🤣🤣
We thought about it more and it became more exciting and appealing. A chance to “f**k people’s heads up,” as we used to say a lot around the CS office. That was always part of the mission - can we do something fresh?can we bring something not expected?
LEP came thru and immediately announced their intentions to compete with the rest of our catalog - to be “the top of the catalog.” I think the whole Closed Sessions experience came to be viewed as an event in the Rap Olympics to many of the artists that participated. They watched our previous documentaries, listened to the music and many saw it as a major proving ground or checklist item for their ascent. LEP was on that from the jump.
This session was a lot of fun, but it was also very long. Finding the right production was a struggle. At one point, I was concerned that this would be our first Closed Session that didn’t result in a completed song. Luckily, we had Nascent on the “phone-a-friend line.” He came through in the clutch with BP of the Olympicks to create an absolute banger while LEP left to get lunch.
Once we had the beat and LEP returned, the energy became electric and everything came to life.
It also opened my eyes to LEP’s secret weapon, Dash, who is now a heavyweight President of A&R at Geffen.
Shortly after, the photographer Alexander Richter stayed at my apartment for about a week and played this song non-stop. I decided to mak
