At home with Roy Jones, Jr.: the hard-knock life of a heavyweight boxing champ

Jet, August 4, 2003 by Melody K. Hoffman

When Jones isn't training for a fight, playing basketball or serving as an HBO boxing analyst, he puts his full energy behind his record label, Body Head Entertainment. Early last year BHE released his first CD, Round One: The Album. The signature song from that debut, Ya'll Must've Forgot, was the No. 1 rap song on the Billboard singles. However, Jones deals with the fact that the popular tune didn't sell the album.

"Ya'll didn't buy Mr. Nice Guy, so let's go ahead and be for real then. It wasn't enough negativity, enough dirt, griminess, so I guess people really weren't that interested. You could be nice all day, but that's not the hip-hop game.

"We're working on (the new CD) Round 2. We basically changed the script up you know. They want to hear the bad language and they want to hear some real stories. I hope people are not offended by it, because I am human, and I know the life like these hip-hop people do, as a matter of fact, I know it better than they do because I'm in it.

"I'm getting ready for the criticism because I know it's coming. But I have to do what I have to do because I'm not in nothing to be second best. My foot is way too deep in it to turn back now."