In Madman, he says: “Then they started seeing niggas up and putting our friends away. Music was supposed to be different than the streets. The walls were closing in even though ‘Face had devoted time to changing his lifestyle. When murders would happen, feds would show up at the label’s office. Prince had told Rap-A Lot signees and their entourages not to deal and to focus their energies on the collective instead. In 1999, Jack Schmaucher and his DEA team conducted a search of Scarface’s Houston home. He offered me a hell of a deal, and it was something I had to look at.” So Scarface went to work on The Fix, which was to be his seventh album. He wouldn’t take no for an answer, and once again he broke out his checkbook to prove just how serious he was. If I couldn’t agree to multiple albums, he at least wanted me to make one. He wanted me to finish my career at Def Jam, and by that, he meant he wanted more music. In Scarface’s autobiography Diary Of A Madman, he writes: “Lyor wasn’t hearing it. Who else has given to the game like Scarface had? He had earned the right to hang up the mic. Rap-A Lot Records was family, but they had him stuck in a vulturous contract for a decade.
The Untouchable – some days my favorite album from him – put him with 2Pac on “Smile,” a song so raw (even more so knowing what would eventually happen to 2Pac) that it gives the listener an involuntary shiver.
“Mind Playing Tricks With Me” made Geto Boys a household name in every place from Houston to Hacienda Heights. Brad “Scarface” Jordan became an excellent rapper by rapping about death, his proximity to it, and those little harrowing details that only a soldier in the street remembers. He had just helped make Ludacris into a star. With the money he made running Def Jam South, it wasn’t a bad choice.
In 2001 – having successfully launched Def Jam South, still dealing with his lifelong battle with clinical depression and a DEA agent called Jack Schumacher – Scarface decided to retire from recording music.
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