If you ask Chase N. Cashe if he feels that he’s blown up, he’ll tell you that the first step has been accomplished. In the eyes of others, he’s really at that level. He’s always been around in the game since the age of 18 but one of the production credits that took him and his partner Hit-Boy to the next level was Lil Wayne’s “Drop The World.” From there, things just sort of fell into place slowly. He produced Drake’s “Look What You’ve Done” off Take Care and plenty of other records from the likes of Trouble, Alley Boy, L.E.P. Bogus Boys and more.

It’s not enough for him to hold down the production side, he raps too. Great I might add. That seems to be a bigger focus with a ton of producers, including Tha Bizness, Jake One, AraabMuzik and Cardiak, working with him. He dropped Gumbeaux in early 2011 to some moderate success. It birthed a few records that has helped him but the last stretch of the year up until now is where it really helped. He took a different approach with his DJ Drama-hosted The Heir Up There project, dropping Friday. Releasing several songs one at a time to keep his name circulating proved to work.

Sermon’s Domain recently got on the phone with the New Orleans native in a pretty lengthy but interesting interview. We talk about the upcoming Club Paradise tour and how important that’s going to be for him. He shares why he loves Static Major’s music so much. Then, the talks about The Heir Up There pertaining to the title, how important it was for Drama to host and the approach he took. All this and more awaits.

SD: What’s going on, Chase? How you feeling?

Chase: Man, I’m feeling great. It’s a Thursday night, I’m in the hood in L.A. chilling, studio with my people my nigga and just relaxing.

What you doing out in L.A?

Ah man, right now rehearsing for the Club Paradise Tour coming up next month. Also at the same time, you know, recording new music, making beats and working with some people.

You were on the initial Club Paradise tour with Drake a couple months ago. How was your first tour experience?

Kinda sorta [my first tour experience] but not kinda sorta. I was on Drake’s first tour too, the Thank Me Later tour. I just wasn’t on every set and every show. That was my first tour experience. I been touring with Drake now since the beginning of his career.

It’s great, I’ma keep it real with you, the first Club Paradise tour shows were very great, because, I mean, we basically share fans. A lot of Drake fans know who I am, and are getting to know who I am. It’s always a good experience and this time it’s been a more college crowd, a young crowd and a bunch of excited kids. That’s also always fun.

Being that you were on the tour last year and getting ready for this go-around, is there any things that you are focusing on improving on stage?

Yeah, man, just performing. I got new songs now, so I’m not performing the Gumbo songs anymore. It’s just performing the new material with the same familiarity of the first set of songs. You know, “I Don’t Want Nothing” actually became a pretty big song for me, and it allowed me to get a lot of shows I didn’t think I would get because it was a catchy ass song. I got some new shit I gotta put out that people haven’t heard yet, and they probably won’t hear it until a week or two before when the tour starts. It’s really just performing; Having that personality and charisma on stage and gain new fans every night. That’s a big opportunity ‘cause it’s a sold out show every night. You just gotta get out there and rock that shit.

When you and Hit-Boy blew up off producing “Drop The World,” you two ended up taking two different directions for your careers. Was it always your goal to go the artist route more than the production side of things?

I can’t even say that ‘cause we’re young, man, we started at 17 years old and we paid a lot of dues on the production side that was out on a major level and did major things, I was on gold projects and platinum projects at 18 with him. This was the pop side of things, fucking with the Pussycat Dolls, Mary J. Blige and the Interscope system when we were signed with Zone 4.

We didn’t really know, we were just hard workers. You saying “blow up” and to me, I don’t feel like we’ve blown up. I feel like the first ticking point is “Niggas In Paris” for everybody on the [Surf Club] brand. Our whole thing with me and Hit-Boy was whoever was going to break through or get first. We were pushing Chili Chil first and things changed, and they just happened to go our way to where we evolved.

As much as [Hit-Boy and I] still produce together, we met as individuals. That’s what a lot of people don’t know. We made our names together. He started producing with someone else that he stopped producing with, and I was producing with someone that I fell out with. Then we met each other and we were individually doing things, and we were smart enough to get up with each other because we had a liking of each other’s music, a liking for each other’s passion, which we still have to this day.

So, as much as it looks like we’re going in separate directions, it’s just one direction — a group of people repping a brand a la Timbaland, Missy Elliott, Magoo, Aalitah, Ginuwine. It’s not like a division, it just looks like that because we take our own paths. This is what we should do because if we lane ourselves and just try and do one thing, who’s gonna diversify us? We don’t have a major attached to us. We’re our own independent backing. From the time we were 17 and making money, we’ve been putting money into Surf Club. Like, wasn’t nobody else putting that shit in there and ain’t nobody putting that shit in now but us. It was a necessity for us to do what we did, and it’s a necessity to do what we feel.

When I met him, I was always rapping and was always an artist. He [Hit-Boy] had rap songs too that he was doing as an artist. Us being smart young individuals and also being mentored by the likes of the Polow’s, the Jimmy Iovine’s and the Pharrell’s, they told us to pay our dues. So,we produced and we paid our dues. It led us to this point to where we could get a “Niggas In Paris” and I could get a Drake “Look What You’ve Done”, and he could be on G.O.O.D. Music and I could be on my own. We’re still repping the Surf Club because that’s the only thing we ever set out to do. There was really no definement. You can’t define yourself with music, you gotta define yourself with time. We gonna be making music for the next 10-15 years. We’d be foolish to sit here and say this is all we’re gonna do.

So let me ask you. As an artist and a producer, you’ve encountered a lot of artists. Guest appearances on your records have been kept to a very minimum, though. Why is that?

I’ma keep it real with you, I’m a real nigga. I’m only gonna give you real answers. You can’t get with people sometimes. That’s just part of the game. With me being independent and funding myself, and me and my niggas putting my money into everything we do, I gotta move accordingly. It’s not that I don’t want to have features, it’s just sometimes it’s not feasible at this point in my career. I gotta just do what’s right for me because at the same time I’m performing. I have to make songs that will get popular for me and I can perform them. If I get a song that’s popular with a feature, and that person can’t show up at the show, I can’t put on a show. I just focus on what I got in my control right now. Everything out of my control, I just let it come with time, man.

I got a lot of shit in the stash, features and shit. It’s kind of like, there’s a time to everything. It look like I just drop shit when I want, but everything is timed and planned. I feel like in time I’ll have features and people wanting to fuck with me to where it’s a mutual decision on the creativity and the collab instead of me having to seek out a person and play them a specific record that I think they could get on. That shit to me is tiring and it’s not creative. I want to be able to go in from scratch with people and make some definitive shit. It’s the producer in me.

In your interview with XXL, you mention that Drake feels the way about Aaliyah that you do with Static Major (obviously, in a musical sense). Can you explain that further and why you have that sort of connection/love to Static’s music?

Yes, keeping it 100 percent. Just to extend on that, the way I feel about Static Major, I feel the same way about Timbaland, Missy Elliott and everyone involved with the creativity behind that blackground sound. That’s the shit that influenced me in, my, what I feel was the prime of music to me, from ‘97 to 2002 like that. Static Major played a huge part in the writing a lot of them songs that Timbaland did for Ginuwine, and like, Missy, and a bunch of shit.

When I started getting more into the Timbaland and I had every Timbaland beat, I started getting more into the production side, I wanted to know who was this person singing these harmonies in the background, who wrote the hook and it would end up being Static Major on a lot of that shit. It wasn’t Missy Elliott. Those were my favorite songs, the shit I always gravitated to. It’s just an affinity for that era that just influenced me to get into music.

The tape is called The Heir Up There. What inspired the title and how important was it to have DJ Drama host it?

Aw man, it was important to have DJ Drama host it because of our bond and how he actually feels about what I stand for. I want everybody to know that I don’t do anything with nobody for some money or paying anybody to do some shit. It’s all mutual decisions. Drama fucks with me, he fucks with my music and he heard the mixtape, and he’s been knowing me since I was like 18, 19 years old living in Atlanta fucking around with Don Cannon and shit like that. A lot of people have seen me make my own way and he just wanted to support me. I gotta fuck with people who fuck with me.

As far as The Heir Up There, to keep it real with you, that actually came from the movie Basketball Comedy, The Air Up There. I’m a sports fanatic and I remember this shit as a kid and I just decided to flip it on some serious shit. The Heir up There, I feel that’s me. I feel like one of the youngsters who is doing big things but still got a whole lot of shit to prove. That’s the whole thing to me. I’m not a King yet, but I’m worthy of being that and willing to pay my dues.

You’ve been putting out song after song after song with no release date. So far, it’s worked since you’ve been delivering quality music. It feels like we’ve already gotten the entire mixtape, though. Is it hard to ensure that you provide good leaked material but make sure you have better songs for the actual mixtape?

Not really because every song I released, I released it for a reason. I released it knowing I’m going to finish up the rest of the year performing these records, pushing the music and pushing it as a whole, a body of work. When you hear these songs all back to back, then you’ll understand, and you’ll understand me as a whole. I gotta use what I gotta use to my advantage, and dope music and the internet is my advantage. People been fucking with me and people been asking.

Just to take a different approach, I didn’t want to set a date to where I felt I couldn’t dictate things. I like have control and like to do things differently right now because I feel that’s what’s going to make me stand out. If I do typical things, I get a typical response for it, and I don’t want to. I would rather be slept on and people get on to my gradually than not care for me because they wanna care for me on their own time. I like being interesting and I feel like people are interested in me right now. So, I want to take an interesting approach, point blank period.

I have records, not just songs, records. There’s not a day that goes by that I’m not working, and I just had to drop some shit, man. It is what it is. You know I’m attached to a lot of things and names. Drake, ASAP Rocky and I’d be foolish to have my name come up in the media and Internet every day and I don’t have any music to go with it. So, it was my approach to sprinkle this shit over time and not get lost in the sauce when everybody else was dropping music. I find ways to keep relevant.

So, is there an actual date for the tape yet?

Nah, man. You my dog, but like I just told I gotta take an interesting approach. One thing that I can say, and I’ma keep it real with you, this shit is coming sooner than people think [editor's note: the date is actually now set for February 10]. It’s easy to look back on the Internet and say, “damn, he needs to drop this shit”, but I’m putting this out in the real world. Niggas don’t understand, I got records playing on the radio in the mid-west and in my hometown. It’s a different thing, like my niggas don’t even get my music from the Internet. I gotta go send that shit to ‘em or I have to be down there and give it to them in their hands. Them niggas out there is listening to 2 Chainz, so if I don’t get out there and grind like him, they ain’t gonna get my shit.

It’s a dual sided coin; as much as I love the Internet fucking with me and I got that Twitter fame, I understand both sides. I’m not tryna be a ghost out here in these streets to where everybody on the Internet know my songs and I got 3,000 downloads, but I go in the club and play my song and don’t nobody move to it. That’s the patience in me, man. And I wish everybody can know that. This shit going in the streets and to the people too.

Once we get The Heir Up There, and you’re going on tour soon, what’s next for you?

I got some videos I’ma drop. I got more songs that I’m going to do videos for in the stash. And I got production coming that I can’t really speak on because I don’t know the release dates on that. I’ve worked with Wiz Khalifa from last year that could be coming and who knows, I’ll probably work with him this year. Um, I’m possibly working with Big Sean. I’m working with L.E.P. on they next shit all the time. I’m working with Trouble on his next shit. I’m working with Alley Boy on his album, he just dropped Nigganati. I’m working with.. a whole lot of people. It’s just letting time unfold, like I don’t want to go around barking all these names and the people get anticipation from it and also become impatient. We need special right now to where we drop and the people go “oh!” There’s only a few camps that provide that shit, OVO and G.O.O.D. Music. I’m dealing with both camps, so I gotta have the Surf Club side of the shocker. And that’s all I’m working on, man. Me and Hit-Boy got some more shit coming. Kent Money got some shit coming. We got Chili Chil coming again. It’s just time, man. It’s 2012.