The beauty of this group, Doughboyz Cashout, is that they were just having fun and doing what comes naturally, when the tide suddenly changed and they found that they were in demand and on the brink of being the next big thing. The Dougboyz Cashout story is the real African American dream — from streets to stardom. And while it may appear on the surface that they are the quintessential overnight success story, in truth, they are anything but. These are the boys next door, a mother’s dream, a father’s dilemma and a daughter’s delight. Rolling out spoke with the Detroit-bred crew recently, and what we found is that their tenacity is the stuff that legends are made of. –roz edward
What has been the Doughboyz’s impact on the rap music landscape?
Dre: We changed the whole sound of rap in Detroit. Our beats are more up-tempo and we’re on some flossed out stuff, but we really have that street edge. We talk about real stuff that’s going on. And I think that’s really going to impact the world, because the story really ain’t never [sic] been told about Detroit, not the real Detroit and not like we are telling it. Our fans are loving it.
Who inspired you to make music?
Quis: All my boys that are in [this interview] right now is what inspired me to start rapping.
Payroll: We were really just playing around in the studio bragging about stuff we was [sic] doing, and the whole city just caught onto it … We been [sic] popular in the city for a long time. So when we started rapping, people caught onto it because they wanted to hear what we was [sic] talking about.
Were there days that you thought it might not happen for you?
Payroll: Yeah. We really didn’t start taking it seriously until about a year ago. We was [sic] just scrapping and playing around and everybody else around us was [sic] kicking CDs and on our head to drop more projects — so we just kept it going.
What’s the story?
Quis: [There are] a lot of stories in Detroit, but the culture ain’t represented right. … We got stories about everything from the young dudes that be running around to old Gs.
Current projects …
Chaz: We working [sic] on a new album coming out in the springtime and we got a lot of upcoming shows around the country over the next couple of months and we dropped a new CD called Free Rock. We canceled the movie we were working on — it wasn’t ‘hood enough.
