DJ Paul and the former members of Three Six Mafia are at it again, releasing a new mixtape and just getting off a year- long tour. They all recently reunited, under the name Da Mafia 6ix, and put out Da 6ix Commandments mixtape, which made people realize they were coming back, and coming back hard. I got some time to talk to DJ Paul about various things from new music to cooking steak.

Da Mafia 6ix recently released a new mixtape, Hear Sum Evil, what has the response to that been?

“People love it! They love how I used a lot of our old flavor, old styles you know? They like it when I go back to my roots of the original Three 6 Mafia sound, especially with the samples. They liked that so I did a lot of it on the mixtape.”

You mentioned a new album coming out in February, Watch What You Wish, what can we expect from that?

“Man it’s gonna be even better than the mixtape! The mixtape had a few songs that were my old school style, but not all of them. But with the album I’m gonna go a little farther back to my old style with more horrorcore, and the original Three Six sound for the loyal fans who have been following us for our 24 going on 25 years. So I’ll put more of the wicked of the horrorcore sound in the album. For the people who don’t like that, it won’t be every song it’ll just be like an old Three Six Mafia album you know we’ll have a little something on it for everybody.”

Will there be any special guests on it?

“I don’t know yet, man. I’ll see what I’m going to do with that. I’m not a big fan of features, but I might put something on there.”

Was it difficult bringing together the former Three Six Mafia members to make the 6ix Commandments mixtape?

“Nah, it wasn’t actually. It was easy man, it was easier than I thought it would be, you know what I’m saying, but I didn’t think it would be hard. You know, everyone’s older now and more mature so I figured everybody would have their head on straighter than they did back in the day. It was cool getting all of us back together.”

Growing up, who inspired you to get into music?

“My parents. My dad mostly; my mom inspired me indirectly, but my dad was the pushing force behind it because he was the one like ‘You need to do this or you need to do that you need to be like Michael Jackson,’ which I’m no Michael Jackson obviously, but I am pretty high in the rap world, so it was accomplished. Other than my parents, inspiration came from artists like LL Cool J, Public Enemy, Geto Boys, and stuff like that.”

How has rap changed since you were a kid?

“Rappers wear tight pants now. They didn’t do that when I was a kid. (Laughs) Besides the tight pants, the sound is different. Like back in the day rappers sampled a lot because we didn’t have the technology or really the talent to play instruments. It was always cooler to sample something and make something cool out of it. As years went by you would hear of people putting live instruments in songs like Houdini or LL Cool J. These days there are no more samples you know, not in rap. People don’t sample no more in rap, except for probably me and one other person. Wu Tang just got back together so maybe we’ll bring back old school samples, but other than that these new rappers don’t sample, they put one instrument in a song, and that’ll be it, so its real plain and simple, but it works.”

What influenced the dark or horror style of music Da Mafia 6ix puts out?

“Two things man: one, we were a fan of horror movies, serial killers and all that, and two we grew up in a city that was real dark you know. Memphis, Tennessee, was real dark and it still is. Same with St. Louis. Its dark too. Y’all got a lot of killers up there too man. So, growing up in a dark city and the neighborhoods we lived in you always hear gunshots and you wake up the next day afraid and finding out someone you know ain’t around anymore and it’s just a messed up scene you know.”

You like to cook, how is your BBQ sauce and seasoning business going?

“Man. it’s going good. Right now it’s only online, and I want to get it in some stores one day but I don’t have the time to sit down and do it right now. But people taste it and they love it. If you haven’t tried it, you should. It’s at DjPaulBBQ.com. It’s real good, man. We got the all-purpose seasoning, we got the barbecue seasoning and barbecue rub now, and we got the barbecue sauce out. It’s real good, man. You’ll love it!”

How did you learn to cook?

“When we made our first big money, I got my own house and at the time we were making money, but not ball-out money you know. We were smart with our money and we didn’t want to eat at restaurants all the time, because we wanted to save our money, especially because we ate a lot of steak, which was pretty expensive at some restaurants. We didn’t eat a lot of steak when I was young, but when we did my dad never grilled it and my mom usually made it in a pan or something. I went to this restaurant named Steak Escape where they grill the steak and they would marinate it in this soy sauce based marinate, so I was like ‘Oh my god, this tastes good!’ I love Chinese food but I never had it on a steak before, and I thought ‘man this tastes great!’ So it made me fall in love with steak. So, I went and bought like a hundred steaks! I bought so many that I had to give them to family members because they all wouldn’t fit in my freezer. So, I bought all these steaks and just practiced on how to cook steaks with soy sauce on them and I was burning them and messing them up all over the place because steak is one of the hardest things to cook because you can eat it at so many different temperatures. I like mine medium, so I had to learn how to sear the outside but keep the temperature right on the inside. It took a lot of practice but I finally got it and that’s when I started cooking.”

What did you win an Academy Award in, and what was it like?

“We won an Academy Award in 2006 for the song ‘Hard Out Here for a Pimp’ off the movie Hustle and Flow, which I also had a very small part in. But it was great man. We were always friends with the director and the writer of the movie, and he wanted us to do a song for it because he grew up in Memphis listening to our music and he was a fan of ours, which was cool. So, we wrote the song to the script of the movie and it came out great, then we got nominated for an Oscar and I couldn’t believe it. So, when we won, we went crazy man, we couldn’t believe it. We didn’t think it was real. We partied all that night, but we didn’t party too hard, and woke up the next day to interviews everywhere and our lives just changed man.”

I heard there’s a small scratch on the award, how did that happen?

“That night we were at a party for a fashion magazine, and there were a lot of celebrities there and I was there with the award in my hand just dancing and waving it around and going crazy. I swung to the side to look somewhere and my Oscar bumped the head of someone else’s Oscar and put a scratch on mine. After that, I thought ‘Man, its time to put these up and go home because if we break one they won’t give us no more.'”

If you could work with any artist in the world, who would it be and why?

“Dr. Dre because I grew up on him. He produced for Eminem, NWA, you know he’s a legend. He’s been around forever so it would be Dr. Dre. I wouldn’t even have to work with him, I just want to talk to him, man. I talked to him once, but it was at a club for his wife’s birthday. He let me hang out with him which was cool, but I didn’t get a chance to actually talk to him like I want to.”

When will Da Mafia 6ix go on tour next?

“We just got off tour a few weeks ago, that started earlier in the year, in February. That went for three months, then we took a month break then started up another tour, that went for a month or so. Our next one started in September and went to Halloween, which is the one we just got done with. That tour was with Insane Clown Posse and that was one of my favorite tours, man it was crazy. It ended on Halloween with a big Halloween bash that we throw every year called Hallowicked.”

Who all will be on it?

“We don’t know. You know these things just kind of happen. Our next tour is supposed to be us in Europe next February. Other than that, I do these solo shows that I DJ and rap at by myself as DJ Paul, and we call it the Fireball Frat House Tour. I do those all the time in between Da Mafia 6ix shows, so I got some of those coming up.”

That brings us to the end of the interview. Is there anything you would like to add?

Follow me on Twitter and Instagram (@DJPAULKOM).

My website is www.DJPaulKOM.tv

My barbeque website is www.DJPaulBBQ.com

Da Mafia 6ix’s Twitter is @DaMafia6ix

Da Mafia 6ix’s Instagram is @DaMafia6ixIG