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Page 1
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An afterparty is foiled and a stage set is (almost) destroyed. ...
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Page 2
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Clowning with Lil' Wayne, Baby takes on Nelly in PS2 and a meeting with 'the Old
Tymers'? ...
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Page 3
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"Baby's biggest pleasure, endless nights and Cash Money survive a near-miss. ...
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Photo Galleries
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Cash Money: On Stage & Behind The Scenes
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 Bands Main
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With a 6 a.m. rollout time scheduled for the next morning, you would have thought the end of Philly's show spelled the beginning of the end to the night. On the contrary, it was the beginning of the beginning.
Baby, who has elevated to become the biggest star on his own label, maintained an eagle-eyed focus on his album, The Birdman. He had already shot video scenes with Queen Latifah and Eve before the Philly concert, and after his final curtain, he would head back to the north side of town to go in front of the camera with Ruff Ryders' first lady again. An afterparty held in Cash Money's honor on the other side of town would follow.
"It's hard," said Baby, who has guest appearances coming up on albums by the likes of Toni Braxton, Timbaland, Brian McKnight, DJ Kay Slay, Swizz Beatz and Monica. "I'm about to vacation from this sh-- for a minute at the top of the year, for sure. I just wanna get away, but I ain't trippin'. If I can't get one, I don't give a f---. This is pleasure for me. This whole situation right here for me is pleasure."
Back in his tour bus, Mannie gave insight as to why Baby is so at ease with putting Cash Money on his back.
"One day, there was a meeting," Mannie recalled. "This been happening the past 12 years — we get us a crew, we get right where we want to be and the crew split off, everybody just breaking off for personal reasons or whatever. So we got to that point [and] we had a meeting. Cleared our house of who we wanted to clear out and said, 'Man, look. We gotta focus. It's all on us if we wanna be around as a business. We gotta do it ourselves.'
"Dude [Baby] really got focused with it," he continued. "He did his thing, went out, did some features. Last year, you couldn't get no one from Cash Money to do a feature on nobody — it was all in-house. But some people left, so it was time for us to do some new things. Got some new producers, all that kind of stuff.
"In order to be around, sometimes you gotta make them decisions. It don't hurt me at all," Fresh concluded. "I'm glad he did it."
"He don't stop," assessed former R. Kelly protege Boo, who recently signed with CMR along with partner Gotti. The duo are looking to drop their debut early next year as are newcomers Mikkey, his sister Christina and Philly's longtime underground champ Gillie the Kid.
"He's chasing it man," Boo continued of Baby. "That's just showing us [how to do it]. He's not just doing it for the paper, that's love. That's the drive I want right there. Watching that and being in the situation that we're in, I feel all of us are going to get that work ethic."
The tour's New York stop-off is exactly the kind of day Baby doesn't like — a whole bunch of sitting around, idle. Cash Money rolled into Harlem at about 8 a.m. for a rehearsal for "Showtime at the Apollo" which would be taped later that day. As the day grew longer, harsh reality set in. The guys had to make a show in Hartford, Connecticut — a two-and-a-half-hour drive away — and they were in jeopardy of being late.
"We gotta get out of here, dog," Baby said aloud, frustrated.
After a fight with traffic, Cash Money arrived at Hartford's Meadows Music Centre around 8 p.m. — their nightly onstage time — and were greeted by a nervous stagehand. "We've gotta get them onstage now," he insisted. "The house lights are down, and they've already been announced."
Baby and company fled. Even though they started their performance a little late and had a few miscues, the results were still the same. The fans loved them.
Afterward, Baby pondered how the Nellyville tour was exposing Cash Money to a more mainstream audience than they're used to.
"It's kind of strange, you know, 'cause I ain't never ..." Baby trailed off and paused to collect his thoughts.
"All our sh-- that we ever did was straight ghetto," he said. "It's a beautiful thing, though. It all comes from God, in my perspective. I ain't complaining about it. It's just a beautiful thing. I'm happy as a muthaf---er. I'm gonna take my blessings in stride and thank God every day. I ain't ever saw people showing this much love."
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Photo: Jeff Moore
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