With a BA in business, Chingo Bling is no stranger to fine print. The multi-gimmick mogul, branding mastermind and Latin rapper knows a thing or two about signing deals. The bidding war between labels over his signature ended with a distribution deal with Asylum (part of Warner Music Group) which will supply his new album to retail outlets across the nation, but there will be a special place for it in flea market booths, without a doubt. The new record, They Can’t Deport Us All is more than Chingo’s debut album and it’s more than a political statement, according to Chingo. It’s a movement that includes his entire Big Chile camp (a record label founded by Chingo Bling in 2001) and the offering of the niche Latin rapper seeping through the floors of the south. We’ve followed Chingo since the online-underground days from a few years ago, and this is the follow-up.

What is the mission statement for the label and the Big Chile roster of artists?
Our main mission for the label is to represent a movement. My album is out now, but I don’t want it to be a movement of just one artist. How can we have our own lane? Right now they don’t have a box to put me in. When “they” talk about a Mexican rapper they think, “What’s this? He must be like Jin the Chinese rapper.” I might as well be a martian. If they only knew how many good rappers are out here then they’d know that we have our own lane. We just want to show the world that it’s a big demographic.

Who else is part of the Big Chile camp?
Stunta, Eddie Deville, Coast, Lucky Luciano and Jesufavio.

Is Jesufavio the corrido singer we’ve heard on a couple of your mix tapes?
We’ve performed with him and get a good reaction, from the Village-Voice crowd in Austin to the border-town crowd in Laredo. I think it’s genius, and it shows the duality of our culture. It shows that we can have braids or fades and be from big cities like Houston, Atlanta, Nashville, and even from the Carolinas and still jam corridos. We might speak Spanish and we might not. We can still be into rap music and we can have something to contribute to hip-hop.

Tell us about the new album.
It’s very homegrown, and I’m catering to my core audience. It’s a jammin’-ass Texas-type album. I’m not trying to be Michael Jackson overnight. Whether it’s five states or 50 states that have my back, I hope they are going to walk into the Wal-Mart or mom & pop shop and put in their vote. I don’t want the world. When the fans want to take me to that level, then cool, nos vamos juntos. I have a lot of Texas artists on there like Paul Wall, Stunta, Big Pokey, and Fat Pat, but I made sure it didn’t sound like a compilation either.

So, would you consider this your first major label release?
Major in the sense that it’s highly-anticipated and it’s going to be widely-distributed. I have Asylum’s backing, but I want to make it clear that I’m still calling my own shots. I still own all my s***. You’re going to hear gritos and corridos. I’m still going to call out who I want to call out. That for me was very important. That’s why I passed up a lot of deals.

We’re seeing all of these artists now going back to that old-school grassroots way of hustling, putting out the CD-burner mixtapes. So does “signing a major label deal” mean anything anymore?
Everyday that goes by it makes less sense to sign with a major label. You have the Internet that evens-out the playing field. You’ve got college radio and smaller independent publications like Ozone, Block 2 Block, Murder Dog, and all these regional magazines that really capture a large audience. You have to go back to the basics. You can’t depend on a major label to develop you because they don’t do artist development anymore. They all wear suits way up at the top of these tall buildings trying to tell you in North Carolina or New Orleans how to do what you do. It doesn’t make any sense. Hip-hop is something that’s very regional. You can’t possibly expect to please everybody, and when you do, you end up putting out some commercialized, mutated, Frankenstein, cardboard s***.

You see a lot of that happening from these big cities in terms of the majority Latino demo that lives in the heartland and goes overlooked and underrepresented on the major Latin TV networks coming out of Miami and New York. That’s where I come in. That’s my job, to say I’m a member of this demographic. I understand what I like, and I’m assuming other people in my culture like the same kind of stuff. So it’s my job to bring it to the light by not sacrificing what I do. That’s our policy; we are going to do what we want to do. If you pick up an album it’s going to be free of corporate bulls***. I’m not going to worry about Clear Channel, Viacom, NBC because they don’t pay my bills. The people at the flea market pay my bills.

You had some trouble with your music video for “Like This and Like That” because of the content. Tell us about that.
This is a true story. They said they can’t show people crossing the border. I said, “You are a Latin media company and the largest consumer group that you’re going after is Mexican-American in the heartland of Middle America. It ain’t just the Bronx. You’re going after these huge cities like Dallas and Houston. You have these big Mexican metropolises and you’re going to tell me we can’t show Mexicans crossing the border? Damn! You’re supposed to be Latin media? You are supposed to be catering to us?” This is what we’re up against. If I can’t get spins here then where the f*** can I get spins? I’m glad these people don’t get it. It makes my job easier to sell to the people who want it and can’t get it.

It seems like it’s the “people who want it and can’t get it” that are in the heartland majority that we’re talking about and they are the ones who get most targeted… All these big companies target us because they want us to buy their product. Empanadas and breakfast burritos at fast-food chains show that everyone wants our money. They recognize the fact that we contribute and we work in the fields and a lot of dangerous jobs. We’re in the military catching bullets. It’s like this. Are you ready?

Yes, let’s hear it.
America is an airplane, and we paid to get on this airplane because we pay taxes. A lot of us are citizens. We’re cooking the food for the people to eat on the airplane. We clean the airplane. We wash the airplane when it’s time to park it. We gas it up. We watch the pilot’s kids while he’s flying. All the while everyone on the plane is screaming, “Get the f*** off the plane!” [laugh]

Are you usually this opinionated? When I signed up to be a rapper it was because I wanted to say what I want to say, get paid and do something for my people. I don’t want a suit at the label telling me what to rap about. I don’t want a 50-year-old Jewish man telling me what a club banger is. I didn’t sign up for that. That’s why I love independent s***. They don’t want to have me up there as a clown like some people. “Make us laugh. Tell jokes, but don’t remind us of the real issues. We didn’t bring you on here to talk about that. We want to use you so that Mexicans tune in and we can make some more money off of Mexicans.”

Is the album very political?
The title would indicate that it is. I have a lot of lines on there. I’m not preaching. I don’t have a whole song where I’m angry and the whole thing is “F*** George Bush.” For example this line, “Can’t deport us all. That’s the mother**** slogan/I’m goin’ rep it real hard and put it on the billboard/Green paper, brown faces is what I’m in it for.” It’s just a little line here and there. It’s like medicine mixed with honey. I don’t want to scare people and say, “Here’s your medicine.” No. I don’t want to push people away. My job as an entertainer is to take people’s minds off stuff and make them feel something. I want to paint a picture as an artist too. I want them to put the CD on and the first thing they hear is a big grito. I’m definitely touching on the subject because I’m not going to name my album They Can’t Deport Us All and have a bunch of party songs. My fans would be pissed. It’s going to jam in your Cadillac, and it still has a message tucked in there. I think I pulled it off. I really do.