RS: "Blackout", that's the one with you versus someone else and there's a video to it?
Mario: Yes, MC Mario vs Barrucco, you've got it.
RS: OK, so let's go into, how did you start Tycoon Records?
Mario: Oh my gosh, this was a funny story again because I did it in reverse also. I with another company called KLM and I learned the ropes with them. After a year, they decided to focus on the one artist and I wasn't really going for that. I wanted to license music from outside and bring it here in North America. produce different DJs and produce myself. We didn't see eye-to-eye, so I learned the basics and started my own label with the owner of the club where I was working at that time.
RS: How were you able to affiliate with Sony?
Mario: My distribution went from Quality to PolyGram to Sony in a matter of like four years. I was with a company called Quality, I don't know if you remember, back in the Euro days…
RS: Like Radikal and Critique were part of that also.
Mario: You've got it, like early 90s. Quality, at one point, was selling brooms and stuff on TV, so I looked at the situation and I said 'oh my God, we're talking about something else here.' I decided to move on with a more mature company and we went with PolyGram, and then we had the offer from Sony. Because MC Mario is under a license, exclusive to Sony here in Canada, they wanted the label also because they didn't want me to release anything outside of the contract. So I said 'OK, no problem, we'll include it and that's how it's worked since the beginning.' I believe we have been with Sony for eight or nine years already.
RS: That's great. So how did you react when you were inducted to the Canadian dance hall of fame?
Mario: I honestly I thought I was too young for something like this, but it's cool to be recognized by your peers. I've been nominated for a Juno two years in a row and that recognition is always good. It's really hard to maintain dance music and I think that's the first part of the job right now, maintain dance and to keep dance music on the radio, to keep dance alive in clubs, to give a presence to dance music and to fight, if you want to call it a fight, the urban situation. Keeping dance music alive is my main goal. So everything around it, I don't really have time to look at it and say 'oh cool,' since I'm so busy keeping this type of music alive. It's very hard up here.
RS: That doesn't sound too different than it is in the US, I was going to ask how was dance music differs in Canada versus the US.
Mario: I think it's pretty much the same situation, that's what I hear from friends that are in the States. The only way to survive is to explore your sounds and get deals overseas. I guess it was easier in the early 80s for people like Lime and Gino Soccio because they would make it to a certain level on Billboard, and then the fever was so big that they would get deals from all over after making it on the top ten on Billboard. Now, I see it as the opposite. You've got to get the attention of overseas and then maybe North America will take a chance on you.
RS: Going back to you and your productions, how did you meet Joe Barrucco?
Mario: Joe was working at the club where I was working when we started the label and he was bringing me demos left and right. At one point I heard one of his demos and I said to him, this is it, we have to polish this and we'll make it a hit, and we created "Raise The Roof". The song did amazingly well, it became an arena anthem, Don Cherry used it in his concerts, labels used the track for the World Cup of soccer, the game EA Sports used it in Korea and it got licensed everywhere. That was the first hit we did together, and since then we haven't stopped.
