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Here's Mike Jones' phone number: (281) 330-8004. Call him. "I'll pick up if I'm available," he says. "Sometimes people hang up because they can't believe it's me. They'll say, 'Prove it,' and I'll say [rapping], 'Still tippin' on 4-4's.' They'll be like, 'It is Mike Jones! I'm going to get the album now, and I'm going to call you back after I got it to tell you what I think.'"
Jones named his debut album Who Is Mike Jones?, but the Houston rapper won't need an introduction for long. The twenty-four-year-old is the breakout star of the Houston scene -- Jones sold 181,000 records in its first week, landing on the charts at Number Three on April 27th, and he's holding strong at Number Eight in his second week. The video for the first single, "Still Tippin'," which features fellow Houston heroes Slim Thug and Paul Wall, is in heavy rotation on MTV.
"It's been brewing for some time," says Naim Ali, vice president of urban A&R for Warner Bros., which is distributing Jones' CD through its Asylum imprint. "For years there were records selling in Houston, Dallas, Tyler and Corpus Christi that weren't selling everywhere else. Now you can go into Houston and make a record and come back and ship it national."
Jones grew up on the city's northwest side and tried to make it as a five-foot-nine basketball guard until his mother moved around so much that he was ineligible to play. He dropped out of high school and hustled drugs, making enough money to open his own label in 2001. By then, Houston hip-hop was starting to go national. Geto Boys, Lil' Flip and UGK had made hit records, and the half-speed, cough-syrup-fueled "screwed and chopped" style pioneered by DJ Screw (who died of a syrup overdose in 2000) was beginning to catch on at studios and radio stations. "Atlanta has all the crunk stuff -- we're more laid-back," says DJ Michael "5000" Watts, co-owner of SwishaHouse, the Houston label that is releasing Jones' record in partnership with Asylum.
Who Is Mike Jones?, which juxtaposes thick, down-tempo beats with Jones' Texas drawl and music-box melodies, hints at Houston hip-hop's future. Asylum has signed twenty more Houston rappers, and Slim Thug's debut, Already Platinum, is due from the Neptunes' Star Trak Records in late May. But in a personal way, Jones' success has come too late. His grandmother, Elsia Mae, who came up with his record's title, died two years ago. "A lot of people told me I was crazy, but she said, 'You better keep doing it,'" Jones says. "She passed away just before I blew up."