This coming September marks a decade since Mack 10 released a solo album. The Inglewood, California veteran and Westside Connection co-founder made 2009’s Soft White, which involved Rick Ross, Anthony Hamilton, and former Cash Money Records label-mate. Since then, the founder of Hoo-Bangin’ Records self-released a joint-effort with Glasses Malone, 2011’s Money Music.

In recent years, Mack has maintained a relatively low profile in Rap. In the mid-2000s, Westside Connection disbanded, with Ice Cube and WC continuing to perform and record together. As for Mack, he tells The Soren Baker Show that he has been focused on the Southern California real estate market. Like the MC’s passion for building custom lowriders, he has enjoyed fixing up properties for profitable flips out in the same West Coast that he represented so hard during the 1990s.

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However, Mack 1-0 admits that he cannot leave music alone, simply based on enjoyment. At the close of the nearly one-hour interview, the artist tells host Soren Baker that he is releasing an album modeled after celebrated releases like 1995’s eponymous debut, 1997’s Based On A True Story, and that “Connect Gang” sound.

“My new album [is called] The Redprint,” the artist says at the 50:00 mark. “I’m just havin’ fun. I have a different approach to doing this record. I don’t need to do a record; I don’t have to turn my record in [to fulfill a label agreement]. It’s just, I’m just havin’ fun. I call it The Redprint because I just want to do it through Mack 10’s lens again. Since I’m havin’ fun, I want to make the kind of records that I miss. You don’t really hear those kind of records that we made then, now. So I’ma give you a couple of those, ’cause obviously, we was pretty good at those. Really, I’m just doin’ me…so anybody that ever liked Mack 10 is gonna be very pleased with this project, because sometimes you’ll get a dude’s record and be like, ‘I wish he was like the old [version of himself].’ All of that that you’re lookin’ for, that’s on The Redprint.” The title also nods to Mack’s longtime Inglewood ties to a street organization, which made Westside Connection history, juxtaposed with WC’s ties to another set entirely.

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All three of Mack’s first albums (also including 1998’s The Recipe) achieved gold certification. Westside Connection’s 1996 Bow Down debut went platinum, with 2003 follow-up Terrorist Threats scoring gold.

Elsewhere in the interview, Mack 10 reveals that Fat Joe’s part of “Lonzo Medina” in 1999’s Thicker Than Water was originally intended for another Rap star. The film featured Mack and Joe, Ice Cube, Big Pun, MC Eiht, Krayzie Bone, Flesh-N-Bone, Bad Azz, CJ Mac, and Tupac’s former girlfriend, Kidada Jones in its cast. In discussing how he and Joe Crack had a lot of commonalities in their coast-crossing film, Mack says, “A lot of people don’t know that Thicker Than Water, at first, was really gonna be me and Snoop.” He continues at the 27:30 mark, “It just didn’t work out right. Snoop was goin’ to No Limit [Records], and all that kinda stuff. I guess the timing just didn’t work out right. But at the end of the day, me and Crack made a classic.”

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“Bow Down went double-platinum on an independent. We had an answer for [the resistance from press and radio]. Over the years, I’ve met some real solid dudes from the East Coast [in] New York and around [it]. I feel like they more than made up [the love] on the second album.” Soren Baker also points out that in 1997, “Mack 10, Mack 10” played off of U.T.F.O.’s “Roxanne, Roxanne” single. U.T.F.O. were early Brooklyn, New York Rap stars. “U.T.F.O. was the sh*t; they was knockin’. But of course [‘All The Critics In New York’] was never about those kind of people. It was about the [music] critics and program directors and stuff like that. The only people we went at with Westside Connection was whoever went at us. But we didn’t put the record together aiming at artists…but I had a problem with who didn’t think we was fresh or who didn’t think we was deserving of spins or whatever. Because Soundscan didn’t say that; we sold a lot of records.” In the mid’90s, Westside Connection beefed with Common and Cypress Hill. Both issues were later squashed.

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Baker also recalls W.S.G. stating in an interview at the time that they never had a beef with Pete Rock, who produced Common’s diss track, “B*tch In Yoo.”

Soren Baker recently published The History of Gangster Rap: From Schoolly D to Kendrick Lamar. The book includes a Foreward by Xzibit.

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#BonusBeat: A look back at some trademark Mack 10: