SameOldShawn: So he actually put a hit out on you guys, right?

MC Serch: Yes. He put a hit out on us with Mike Concepcion and the Rollin' Crips in LA. $50,000 bounty

SameOldShawn: How did you find out about that?

MC Serch: We were flying to LA on our way to our album release party. Louis Burell - one of the Burell brothers - called Def Jam's office to talk to a woman named Carmen Asher-Swanson, and was like "Are the 3rd Bass guys going to LA?" And they were like "Uh, yeah, they're on their way to their party." And he said, "Good; they're dead" and kinda hung up the phone. No one kinda understood what that meant, so Russell gets put in the mix with it. And basically has to find out what's going on. So they call Eric B, and Eric B says, "Let me make some calls." And sure enough, Eric B finds out through his connections that yeah, there's a hit out on us. So we're in the air, we're on our way to LA. They got to piecemeal all this together. Lyor had a guy that used to do security for Run DMC who worked at Rush. His name is Big D; he's from LA. They put him on a plane, like they sent him to JFk to get on a plane immediately. By hook or by crook, they find out that the guy who's in charge of the hit is this guy named Mike Concepcion, God bless the dead. Mike was already paralyzed from the waist down due to gang violence, but he was still that dude. They get Mike on the phone, and they said, "Listen, Mike, we're from Def Jam. We hear there's a hit out on 3rd Bass." And he's like "Yeah, yeah. My man paid me, it's on and poppin'." And they're like, "Can't happen. Gotta avoid that from happening. How do we avoid that from happening?" And Mike said, "Well, because you called we won't kill them but we'll break their legs from the waist down so they can still do television." And again it was like, "Well, we need them unscathed. How do we make this happen where they're unscathed? We can't have anything violent happen." So that night - the next night was the American Music Awards.

So Mike says, "Well, I'm working on this project called We're All In the Same Gang, trying to, you know, anti-violence thing for Capitol, I'm having a hard time getting distribution, maybe you can help me find a label for it. Eazy-E's on the project; Hammer's on the project; all these people are on the project. Maybe you can help me. Oh and I want to sit next to Michael Jackson tomorrow night at the AMAs." Um, so they're like, "We'll call you right back." So they call Donnie Einer, who at the time was the chairman of Columbia who was distributing our record, and they said to Donnie, "We need your tickets for the AMAs." And he was like, "No." And they were like, "No, no, no, you don't understand. We need your tickets so this guy can sit next to Michael Jackson..." Explains it to Donnie and Donnie says "Fine." So they call Mike Concepcion and they say "No problem, you got it, you're sitting next to Michael Jackson at the AMAs. But we gotta make sure that nothing bad happens to these guys, nothing at all."