“Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. A person who has great responsibilities, such as a king, is constantly worried and therefore doesn’t sleep soundly.” A line from King Henry the Fourth, Part Two, by none other than William Shakespeare. For years Doughbeezy has been making noise from the underground only to be muffled by the walls and barriers that border Houston. But for some, the noise gets louder and louder, nearly breaking the doors off the hinges. With the release of his latest album, King Beezy, Dough is not only fueled by the frustration of an artist who’s been working hard and wanting to see the benefits but setting himself on a new path in the process. Dough is changing everything he has done with previous albums and making sure this time he is crossing all his T’s and dotting his I’s, changing his marketing strategies, calculating his visual releases and being more involved in the directing process. Normally these are changes that would be taken care of by a massive budget behind him. But for Doughbeezy, he has to work as a one-man band and in the process elevate those who are depending on him, a difficult feat for one man. However, Doughbeezy has no aim in falling backward and certainly never going back to where he started. So as the phrase goes, “You want to live like a King? You have to work like a King!”

First, let’s take a look back seventeen years ago in the room of a friend’s house, where kids are being kids and emulating their idols, freestyling over beats and hype at the moment your friend says something witty. There you will find a fifteen-year-old Tai Carr just having fun, trading bars, and crashing flows. The business-oriented mind of the group, Albert Hughes, takes a few of those recordings along with one of Doughbeezy’s photos and uploads them to MySpace. Al then creates Headwreckas.com and calls Dough’s first mixtape, The Cake Is Baked. Dough, never being one to back down, would seize this opportunity and run with it.

“That was like an unofficial mixtape, and then I kinda started taking music a little seriously.”

Doughbeezy’s name started catching the ears of the Houston group The TMI Boyz, who he began rapping with, in 2006. There was a label deal in place; however, it did not include him. The resilient one that he is, Dough kept moving forward with the plan in play. He recorded five or so songs that would make it all the way to the desk of T.I.’s label, Grand Hustle. During this time Teresa, from SF2, was starting an open mic night called “Kickback Sundays,” famous for giving a new wave of Houston artists a platform to gain notoriety. For those of us who have followed the path of Doughbeezy, know that this night was pivotal to his career. The first-week Dough was there he was passing out his demo, and the following week to his surprise, everyone was jamming it. As Murphy’s law says, whatever can happen, will happen. Dough was riding the wave; his music was being considered by Grand Hustle, and his city was getting behind him. Then T.I. went to jail and put everything on a long hold. Not willing to sit back and quit, Dough pressed over 100 copies of his next mixtape, “Reggie Bush & Kool-Aid” and got to work!

“2 cups to keep the ice cold, I ride 4’s and just swang on 3 white hoes….”

TO READ MORE, CLICK HERE TO ORDER THE MAGAZINE!