SameOldShawn: You briefly brought up Eminem in talking about Soundbombing II, and I know that he was of course on The High & Mighty's record, and so how did that come about? Did anyone know who he was at that time?

Brian Brater: Oh we knew who he was. Oh yeah. Em had a rep as being the new, something almost unprecedented. And this was pre Marshall Mathers; this was pre Slim Shady. He had dark hair, he always covered his face in a hood, he was really always kinda like more reserved and we were very friendly with his manager, Paul Rosenberg. We had an opportunity to sign him, and you know, just like we had an opportunity to sign Kanye, and you can't do anything you wanna do. It just doesn't work that way. At that time, we really had to like, strap ourselves in and focus on breaking one artist at a time. We were not a major label; we couldn't go all in on three artists. So it was almost impossible to make that work. But I'm still very proud of all the 12 inches, and if you listen to Any Man now, it's just as good as almost any record he put out after that