Demrick moved to Los Angeles with the same hopes of any aspirational rapper. The Philly native packed his car and headed out West with big dreams, but was quickly confronted with the reality that there is no overnight success in the City of Angels.
“I remember telling all my people, all my friends that when I left Philly it was only going to be six months I was going to be home with a record deal,” he says during an episode of “Myths Exposed.” “I had an in. I knew Kurupt. I just thought as soon as I touched down, it was going to be gold.”
The Serial Killers member says that once he arrived in Los Angeles, he thought the work was going to be easy, especially working in the studio with big names and with so many celebrities around, he thought he could run into a record deal on the spot.
“You would go to get some food at Roscoe’s and you would see another famous rapper,” Demrick says. “I’m like, shit, you could go to the grocery store and see somebody that’s on in the game, so as long as I could go up to them, get a chance to kick my little verse, my little bars, that it was gonna pop off. Then I quickly see that it takes a lot of time, a lot of dedication and a lot of hard work to get your name known even in LA alone. They looking at you like, ‘So what? A thousand of you come in a day. Two thousand of you leave a day.'”
Demrick remembers one of his first sobering experiences was after a Kurupt co-sign didn’t automatically send him into superstardom.
“I just thought there’s no way if you’re working with a legendary artist that’s as amazing as Kurupt is, that as long as he puts a stamp of approval on you, especially out here in Los Angeles, everybody’s gonna fuck with the music,” he says. “I quickly learned that it’s a step by step process.”
Reflecting back on the almost decade that he’s been in California, the 35-year-old says he has learned the importance of hard work and understanding the industry. He detailed his personal journey on “Take Me to Cali,” a cut from his latest album, Collect Call.
“I realized that things that you do that feel special to you aren’t necessarily a big deal to anybody else,” he says. “For you, it’s just about connecting with your fans, working hard and grinding. It’s going to be more than a 16 that you spit in a studio to impress people to take you all the way. I’ve gotten the chance to rap for Dr. Dre and Snoop and everybody while they were in there and shut down a room and get the oohs and the ahhs and get this big praise of your skill and your talent, but there’s still a lot of business that goes into it, a lot of hard work.”