Reserved and taciturn, C-Murder is the least public of the Miller brothers triad, running roughshod over the world as No Limit Soldiers. His delivery, which many say is reminiscent of some dead guy named Shakur, is passionate, emphasizing syllables late in lines and painting vivid verbal portraits of the grittier sections of N'Awlins. As well, he owns TRU Records, an imprint distributed through No Limit, and makes moves much like his elder brother Percy, tryin' to do all those big thangs. Recently, C-Murder phoned in from one of his Dirty Southern hideouts to share some of the details from the scene of the crime with Rap Pages.

RAP PAGES: Tell the world who C-Murder is and what he's about.

C-MURDER: Well, you know me, I'm just about tryin' to be real with my fans, with people listenin' to my music. I'm not tryin' to change my style like a lot of artists, who wanna be that mainstream and change their style, adapt to the society. I'm just basically trying to give the picture that I'm gonna be myself through my whole career. I'm gon keep it my same pace and keep it street. And at the same time adapt to a lot of different qualities. I been through a lot, I done seen a lot, and I just wanna give everybody out there a picture of everything that I been through. A perspective of rap on a real side.

RP: You haven't appeared as widely as your brothers, or as other artists in the No Limit camp, with guest appearances on every album. Is that intentional?

C-M: I get in where I fit in, I don't try to over do things and get out there too much. I just try to show my face every now and then on a few projects. Keep a low profile till it's my time to come out. So I can hit 'em hard, you know what I mean? I basically won't wear myself out. I just try to keep bangin, and I be runnin' a lot of my business. Takin' care of a lot of business things and keepin' my skills up in the studio in the same time.

RP: Talk about TRU Records and your plans with that label.

C-M: With this label I'm lookin' to take it everywhere No Limit has been and gone as far as economic wise and popularity wise, business wise. Tryin' to venture off into a lot of other things at the same time. I don't wanna overdo myself with TRU Records right now, as far as put out too many artists and too many acts. What I'ma do is I'm focusin' on Magic, make him into a real popular platinum artist before I go out there and start mixin' with other people. I'm sittin' down, I learned from P, he made himself before he made No Limit. Then he worked on No Limit, then he made each artist individually. That's one thing I like about him, that I learned from him, to make a successful company without a downfall, that's gonna rise every year sales wise and popularity wise. I'm just tryin' to make TRU Records lay low for a minute, then just boom, hit 'em.

RP: What was it like to go from being underrated to now most anticipated in such a short period of time? How does the new lifestyle affect you?

C-M: Success, I never really let it get to my head. We just try to be the same people that we are. We gon sell more records, and basically if we keep on doin' what we doin' we can always go to the charts. If you start losin' the challenge, and start losin' focus on what you doin' and what you tryin' to achieve ... a lot of artists do that. They just fall off. Success ain't nothin' when you losin.' The main thing is you gotta stay successful. You gotta work even harder. Back in the days we worked hard, but right now we workin' real hard. We gotta keep focused, gotta keep coming creative, stay on our toes. Success could be a good thing or a bad thing, but we take it as a good thing because we like the hard work. It shows in our music. We look at it as a job. Every year we gotta keep workin' harder and harder, keep makin' it better and better.

RP: The new album, Bossalini, sounds much more musically complex than your prior work. Tell us about that.

C-M: It's like what I say, you gotta keep goin' harder every year. It's up to that certain artist to be creative, so folks can see what he wants on that album. Every year, hip hop keeps getting better and better, so you gotta get better and better. I kept my street, my same tempo. I put it into that crossover mode, I made a few radio friendly songs, so I can have a lotta more songs on the radio. I felt I grew in the game a lot more. Your second album, you're more confident in what you're doing, accepted more. I said to myself I'm gonna make a stress free album.

RP: What's the next movie we can expect to see you in, with the many No Limit film ventures?

C-M: We just finished filming a movie called Hot Boys, with me, Silkk, Snoop and Mystikal. Gonna be a nice movie. About inner city boys tryin' to do right, get turned the wrong path. It's about survivin.'

RP: What do you see as the next big thing in hip hop?

C-M: What always seems to come out in the end is the street music, that's what I'm looking forward to. I think that's gonna always be around. At one time that's just gonna be back on top, like when NWA and Tupac, stuff like that. It's just like a circle to me. Then when it comes back to the top, bam, it's always there. That's something that never dies, that street music. That's the thing I focus on.

RP: There were rumors that you had killed 13 people, and that's how you got your name.

C-M: (laughing) Wasn't me. You hear all kind of shit on the streets. I let that go in one ear and out the other. I plead the fifth.