HHDX: You’ve appeared in movies like Brown Sugar, Something’s Gotta Give, Natural Born Killers, The Pink Panther and the cult classic – Original Gangstas. But you never really mentioned that side of your hustle when you were on the show. Why?
KW: I bought cars and started my businesses from royalties from my work. I have been in commercials with KFC and Sprite. Freddie Rodriguez and I were break dancers when we were kids, so I knew that what I wanted to do since I was a shorty. The Sprite commercial was directed by Marcus Nispel and it had featured A Tribe Called Quest and Darrin Dewitt Henson. By that time I was in my early twenties, I had made so much loot off of commercials and movies that I had learned what it’s like to be on both sides of the camera. But that wasn’t my true hustle. To me, that was such young revenue; that’s old money to me. I have been so involved in the corporate world that that wasn’t anything that I wanted to pursue. I have never studied acting. My main focus has been something that merges entertainment with science. At a company called Attik, a design firm, I was the youngest exec in Silicone Valley. I had a salary of a $180,000. I basically set up their multimedia division. My teammates and I worked with, basically, a whole bunch of companies. We set up shop in San Francisco on Bush Street and I developed my company MP3NY.com. I had already been at a point to where people made money off of me, so I wanted to switch seats and make all the revenue for myself.

HHDX: There’s a lot of criticism associated with your name. You claimed to be worth $100 million dollars, yet the show had your background check and said that you were nowhere close to that. Who’s right… you or the show?
KW: The thing about it is that I’m not here to debate anything. There a lot of people who do wonderful things that aren’t noticed. Right now, I’m in a situation where I have done something that I am proud of. I am representing what’s real.

HHDX: I guess from reading your resumé and the other links that you provided, you have been a part of things that would warrant your claims. But some would think that you’re maybe embellishing on your credits.
KW: You know what’s funny… I can send you the initial pitch with Musicmatch. When you’re developing a brand, they hire you. Musicmatch hired the company, Attik, based on our creative design. Every stage of development was a part of the company, with people who worked under me. I flew to San Diego to work on that product. So, when you deal with branding, you deliver it to the technical guy and move on. They solely hired our division to help brand them. They paid X-amount of dollars. [Laughs] The first year The Sopranos won their Emmy, we built their website… that was a pretty significant. We helped developed Avril Lavigne’s enhanced CD. It credits MP3NY.com. In business, the consumer is always going to know who’s going to create the stuff. I never cared about communicating that I did all this work. I never had press releases. We were the guerillas in the bushes, so to speak. If you looked at the amount of dollars that I’ve made from commercials, you can see that I have worked my ass off to get where I’m at. I am not a sports person or an entertainer, but I have done billboards for Coors Beer. So, you have companies that are making revenue off of me. Continued on page 3 »