DJ Jazzy Jeff
How did you convince the people who came to you wanting a Jill sound that it isn’t exactly for them and maybe something else would be better?
You don’t say anything. You take them to the studio and custom make something that’s specifically for them. I would never acknowledge it. You just kinda go come on in the studio we’ll make you something hot. We’re gonna hear who you are, what you do, what’s your range and then tailor make something for you. To me that’s what a producer is supposed to do. I also am able to read between the lines that a lot of times people can’t convey to you that they want you to make them either a hit record or a good record. It was subtleties that I don’t think people understood. Jill Scott had no hits on her album. Jill had all good songs. Jill Scott didn’t have a runaway smash hit, she had twelve good songs not the three good ones and all the rest album fillers because there were no album fillers. A good album will go a lot longer than a great song. I got tired of people of buying records and you hear one or two songs and then you’re not feeling the rest. Its kinda like let’s try to make something where if you don’t like it its not a bad song. So it got hard when you had people who were like we want to give you the first single because we weren’t in the single making business. We were in the good record making business. I wasn’t trying to compete with Rodney or Timbaland or any of those guys they got that. They have that ability to go and make that one song that’s going to drive this record, I felt more comfortable making that record you just loved. I don’t want to make the popular song I want to make your favorite. You go back in the day your favorite Luther Vandross song wasn’t the popular one.
People are just looking for that money making thing.
And that’s what I’m talking about the music industry has absolutely nothing to do with music now. The music industry is the stock market and 50 Cent is the hottest stock right now. That’s no diss to 50 because I think he is doing what he should be doing. He’s like I got the hottest stock and I’m gonna charge you as much as I can for my stock and I’m going to throw it around because my stock ain’t gonna be hot forever.
There is a certain thing about being prophetic in your music and then it’s a point where you start talking about marking niggas for no reason whatsoever. It just gets to the point where it’s like ok that’s enough. Besides the news that’s just filling peoples heads up with stereotypes. What do you think about the violence in music?
I ain’t down with censoring. I’m for being free, but I have a sixteen year old son where now the tables have turned. Its kinda like this is some crazy shit because you buy albums now and all you got is dude done killed fourteen people on his record and sold twenty pounds of coke and this one done killed twelve and its kinda like I don’t know too many murderers that are making records. I don’t know too many kingpin drug dealers making records and its like ok you have this level of storytelling but now not everybody understands that its storytelling. I’m trying to get it through my kids head that if you want that car you have to work for it. Its crazy because everybody aspires to be Puffy, but don’t realize what Puff did to get where he is at. Puff was the intern and took out the trash and worked his way up. That’s where it throws me off. It’s a lot of different kinds of hiphop and what the media pushes and what makes money is anything with any level of controversy. Its just as many niggas talking good shit as the ones talking bad shit, but you don’t hear the good shit record because that don’t sell. What sells is 50 getting shot, beef and drama. The crazy thing is that’s the last step before they spit you out. They gonna milk it for all the money they can until something really bad happens and then they shut this shit down and move on.
Just like Ice Cube said, ‘They’ll have a new nigga next year.’
You know what I’ll tell you another thing I’ve been telling a lot of people. People don’t realize that we are the first generation that are growing old with hiphop. At your fiftieth birthday party think about what you’re gonna have them play. Think about your mom and pops, they are still grooving off of their oldies. Our oldies are gonna be Run DMC, Tribe Called Quest, Biggie, Tupac, all the rest of that shit. That tells me we still love hiphop, we will still buy hiphop, but there is nobody that makes hiphop for us. Ain’t nobody making 30+ hiphop records. It ain’t like we won’t buy that shit. Let me tell you something like I said my son is sixteen he wasn’t mad when Tribe Called Quest broke up we were. My son wasn’t happy when Pete Rock and CL said they were gonna do another album I was. What I’m learning to respect is that when we were growing up we had hiphop our parents had R&B, right now we got our hiphop and they got theirs. So its dope because when you sit and think about it my kid don’t like the Roots, the Roots are some adult shit. Nobody thought about that. I talk to cats in their thirties and they are trying to figure out how do they like hiphop at thirty. There is a side of you like is it still cool to like hiphop and I’m like yea it’s cool? I was on the radio here one morning and I did an old school set and I had a party that night. I went on the radio that morning and did that old school set and it was ridiculous how many people came through that night that were thirty plus. They were like oh my god you played ‘Nobody Beats the Biz,’ you played ‘Nice & Smooth’ etc. because that’s what we grew up off of. It’s not like we can’t have the club that plays just that or the shows. Its not like if Doug E. Fresh, Big Daddy Kane, Whodini and KRS went on tour we won’t go to see it. But what I’ve been looking at is what is marketed to an upper twenties to mid thirty year old cat. We ain’t even got clothes. What kinda clothes is a thirty-six year old man supposed to wear. Either you go old school and wear some Floresheim shit or you wearing jeans.
