As a member of the legendary Brownsville group, M.O.P. alongside Lil Fame, Billy knows all about what it takes to produce at a high level. Since their emergence in 1994 with To the Death, the group has firmed up their legacy with each project released, including in 2000, when they dropped one of the greatest rap anthems of all time “Ante Up.” 

But these days, Billy’s feeling inspired on an entirely different level. 

“I’m enjoying it,” he says, adding that he’s heading to the studio. “I don’t know where I’m getting all this new energy from but it’s feeling good. People are receiving the music well.” 

So far, he’s put out five solo projects —The Six Pack, The Baker’s Dozen, The Listening Session, The Re-Listening Session, and The Top 5— and is readying the next two, which he says still have the M.O.P. feel but are more representative of who he is as an artist and a man. 

“I feel like people didn’t know me,” he emphasizes. “They knew me as Billy Danze from M.O.P., and I’m always M.O.P. regardless of if I’m making music or not, but to do it my own way and give you my own vision of it people are really receiving it well, so I’m really happy about that.”

His two forthcoming projects, produced by Switzerland-based producer Too Busy, will serve to both feed the creative energy bursts he’s experienced as of late, and also allow him to work with younger artists, including previous collaborators like his son La Boogie and Money Mark. “We kind of blend the sound. We kind of meet in the middle.” 

Billy’s other upcoming effort will feature him working with longtime peers, though he was tight-lipped about the appearances. He acknowledges that the features are different than what M.O.P. fans are used to.

“As you know, that didn’t happen throughout M.O.P’s career, we didn’t do a lot of features,” he says. “Not that we didn’t like other artists or didn’t think they were good enough, it’s just that everybody was doing their own thing.” 

While M.O.P.’s core fanbase was established long before the monster success of 2000’s “Ante Up (Robbin-Hoodz Theory),” the song opened up a wave of attention for the group. Remember the time when actress Anna Kendricks went on Ellen a few years ago and rapped the first verse, word for word? 

“I'm gonna tell you the truth — sometimes when we’re on stage, we fumble those same lyrics,” Billy admits, laughing.  “Something that you put out 20 years ago, somebody is actually on daytime TV singing right now… somebody that's really out of place, right? You go, ‘What is happening here?’ It gives you more inspiration.” 

At the time they were making the classic track, he didn’t necessarily immediately ping it as a hit. “To be honest, I was drowning in Hennessey,” he remembers with a small chuckle. “I was swimming in Hennessey so I didn’t know that was gonna turn out to be the way it is. But that’s how we always made records. We made records, just to make them for our people; for that part of society that people try to forget about. And [as] long as they enjoy it, it’s good.” 

More than two decades later, he’s excited about the creativity his new work is allowing him to explore. “I feel like I'm finding spaces that my core audience wouldn't allow me to go,” he says. “And I'm doing it comfortably.”

These days, Billy is glad he can just relax into his art, no pressure. “I don't have the pressure at all, there's no pressure to get these records done,” he says. “And I'm able to do it in a way that I want to,” he says, adding that he still likes to run them by his M.O.P. crew to get their take. “So that's what's actually keeping me going.” 

He's also inspired by the way that Hip-Hop has opened up in recent years, making space for mature rap. He says it’s a “beautiful thing” to witness the success of veteran artists who continue to make great music —from Busta Rhymes to The Lox. As he's matured, so has the way that he approaches music.

“When I first came into the game, I was fresh off the block in Brownsville, Brooklyn,” he recalls. “So, my thoughts weren’t broad. All I could talk about was what I knew at the time. I will always have a fan base because of those records. Sadly, there’s these kinds of areas and pockets around the world where people are dealing with these challenges that we had to deal with every day, whether it’s fighting to stay alive or fighting to get a meal. So, I will always have a fan base because of that, and that’s sad. Now, 30 years into the business, sure I could tell you about what’s going on in Brownsville but I’m not first-hand like I was. So, I was never really a rapper. I was just a person that represented that side of society that people try to forget about.” 

It’s about a month after the tragic killing of Migos’ rapper, Takeoff, a loss that rocked Hip-Hop, across demographics. As a grown man who’s wiser, with a deeper perspective to share, the topic weighs on him heavily. “As a 40-plus-year-old man, why would you be having so much reckless conversation on a record?” he posits. “It doesn’t make sense. It means you haven’t grown as a man. What kind of guidance could you give the ones that's coming up? I think that the saddest thing that I've seen in Hip-Hop, what's clear to everyone, is how many senseless killings there.” 

He says the killings aren’t about Hip-Hop, but rather “young men not knowing how to be men and not knowing how to have a conversation with each other.” 

“My time in the business, it was more about friendly competition,” he says. “We had little beefs and all of that, but nobody was dying.” 

He says there should be a spirit of protection around Hip-Hop as a culture and art form. “We should try to protect it a little more, and come and come together a little more to keep it going.” 

As for new M.O.P. music, he and Fame record new music all the time— whether or not they’ll see the light of day is another story that begins and ends with support. When he feels like the support is there (and goes beyond a fire emoji in the comments on social media), he’ll consider it. Until then, he’s content to record whenever he's feeling it, and capitalize on the burst of creativity he’s experienced in recent years.

“We're delivering heat to the people,” he says. “We make music like this because that's how we want to hear it. And we appreciate everybody that supports us.”