Phoenix Blog

By Niki D'Andrea

This week’s cover story on Phoenix hip-hop, “Raising Terrazona,” contains a scene where 5Fith Coast Records co-owner Roca Dolla and local artist Cinque exchanged words in the VIP room at The Door on Scottsdale Road. Since the story came out, I’ve received phone calls from both Roca Dolla and Cinque, who each want to clarify what really happened that night. The scene in question is below, followed by Roca Dolla and Cinque’s responses.

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From the story:
“Some of the people here at The Door tonight don't get along. Within minutes of arriving at the venue, Cinque, a member of a local hip-hop crew called the Man Up Squad, is confronted by Roca Dolla in the VIP area. "Cinque, what's the deal? I read some shit somewhere that you were going off about me trying to be your boss. What the hell is that?"

Jiggalo backs Cinque up. "That shit was a long time ago," he tells Roca Dolla. "That's old news. Let it go."

After a couple of minutes of back and forth between the 5Fith Coast crew, Cinque and Jiggalo, Roca Dolla storms out of the VIP area, telling his crew, "This is bullshit.””
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While I stand by what I heard and saw that night, both Roca Dolla and Cinque feel the issue’s been blown out of proportion and the full story hasn’t been told. They say there was further, more amicable interaction between the two MCs that night, which I did not witness, and they say the argument actually stemmed from an old diss track. The diss track is called “Rap Rock,” (posted on Cinque’s MySpace page, and also available for streaming at the bottom of this blog), and it features Cinque, Jiggalo, and Willy Northpole. In my conversations with them, neither Roca Dolla nor Cinque named the MC who got dissed, but the swipe seems to be aimed at 5Fith Coast Records artist Ocean, who was a former member of the Man Up Squad, and it comes in the form of one line from Jiggalo: “Please don’t mind the Ocean/See, I part that there like Moses.”

Roca Dolla

Cinque says the song is an old track, and it was posted to his MySpace page the night before the incident at The Door, simply because it was a good song and he wanted to mix up the tunes on his profile page. Roca Dolla says he just wanted to talk to Cinque that night about the track, and there wasn’t any hardcore conflict. “The story makes it seem like I just walked away,” Roca Dolla told me. “And I didn’t. I pulled Cinque to the side, and then I pulled Jiggalo to the side, and we talked through it. It didn’t have anything to do with me. It was a diss track against one of my artists. I’m one of the cats that’s been trying to unify this scene. And to me, that piece villified me. It made it seem like I was trying to start trouble, and it wasn’t anything like that.”

Cinque was equally unhappy with the connotations. “That kind of stuff creates tension in the group and cats get mad when there’s no problem,” he says. “Yeah, Roca Dolla and I exchanged words, but at the end of the day, he’s like my big brother. The story didn’t say anything about how we popped bottles and enjoyed each others’ company the rest of the night.”

Cinque

Cinque admits he has a “personal problem” with the artist who was dissed in the track, but that he has no problems with Roca Dolla or 5Fith Coast Records. “I have a ton of respect for Roca Dolla. My issue is with one particular guy, and it’s a small issue,” Cinque says. “But until I speak to him, I can’t have the respect. It’s something that we’ve got to talk through. But it’s a personal thing. It’s not my crew versus his crew -- nothing like that. Yeah, [Roca Dolla] and I were talking loud in the VIP area, but at no point did it escalate to where anybody was going to fight or anything like that. Roca Dolla and I have known each other for many years. He and I are solid. We grew up in the same neighborhood, and I look up to him.”

“Rap Rock” (Cinque, Jiggalo, and Willy Northpole):