We Got Next

That "crunk" raises the question: How the hell did this guy from Iowa—named Cletus, for God's sake—end up vice president of a fledgling hip-hop label?

Call it a Majestic fate. Two years ago, Freiburger lived on Rawlins Street, just a block away from Deborah's liquor store. "I met Deborah there," Freiburger explains. "They had a 'help wanted' sign, and I needed some extra cash, a part-time job to supplement my income, and I talked to her about it, and she said 'Yeah, just fill out this application, and you've got a job.'"

Despite their very different backgrounds, the two developed a fast friendship. "Deborah is a wonderful woman," Freiburger says. "Whatever her boys wanted to do, that's what she would be into. She's a great boss at the liquor store; she's very fair with people. She says to everybody, 'You're a part of this team—everybody does everything, we don't have these specialized jobs.' She does the same thing in her personal life."

After about a year of working with Freiburger, Deborah mentioned her sons were starting Steady Ballin' and initially wondered if Freiburger—who worked for 15 years in the graphic design industry and 17 in the printing industry—could help source the best CD reproduction deal. But Freiburger, who has opened his own business before, soon got curious. "I asked her from purely a business standpoint, have they set up a corporation? Have they registered the business? Do they have a tax ID? Is any of that business infrastructure set up?" Freiburger ended up setting up an accounting program with Junior and Boddie and helped them through the process of starting their own corporation. "And it's just kind of grown from there," Freiburger says. "They asked me to just kind of help them manage and organize."

Freiburger says he spends up to 20 hours a week working on Steady Ballin' business, depending on what needs to be done, in addition to his liquor store gig, two other jobs and working on his sculpture business. But, he says, the time spent is worth it. "[Junior and Cord] recognize I have things I bring to the party they have no experience in, and so they appreciate that I do that for them, and I get the chance to see it blossom in front of me, so that's the symbiotic relationship."

It's pleasantly strange to watch Freiburger interact with the Steady Ballin' crew, seeing two universes of race and background struggle to figure out how to make it in the music world.

"It's not a race thing for me," Freiburger says. "It's not about any of that. It's exciting to see what [Cord and Junior] are doing and that they're so committed to it and really trying to make a difference in their lives, and I like being involved in that. The cultures, sure they're very different, and I'm not one who's been shy about embracing other cultures. I'm not changing myself to fit in, but at the same time, I don't think that's necessary."

Having been around the money almost from the get-go, Freiburger knows Steady Ballin's main problem right now is cash flow. "More is going out than is coming in," he says. But, as he points out, "in the absence of cash, there are other ways to get exposure." That's where O.C. comes in.

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Ossie Boddie III is a hustler.

Yet another vice president of the company, Boddie heads the marketing department. In fact, he is the marketing department. While Cordeezy and Junior stay tucked inside the studio, Boddie is Steady Ballin's man on the street, someone with the enthusiasm and know-how to strafe Dallas with a guerilla style of cheap marketing and ceaseless energy.

The 25-year-old is fairly new to the game, but he has a precocious ability to analyze trends, facts and figures. "The Dallas music scene is different, and it's about to pop," he says. "We got a saying, 'We got next,' and it's true. There's more than just Houston out there. They say Dallas is the No. 5 place [in the nation] where the hits get played or made, so there's no reason why Dallas should not pop. We're supporting everybody else's music, but we don't support ourselves. That's crazy."

Boddie got his start as a member of the street team for Dallas-based Clout Records, which led to a stint with Def Jam's Dallas office. Unlike other forms of music, hip-hop labels rely heavily on street teams as a primary method of street-level advertising; for a genre such as, say, indie rock, street teams are often an afterthought. For hip-hop, they are essential.