DJ Jazzy Jeff
Hahaha! On the whole clothes thing why do you think once people do something in hiphop like wear a jersey or put on a doorag it becomes associated with something negative. I was on campus and this French girl came to me like why do black guys wear shit on their head?
Have you seen Bowling for Columbine?
Nah
You need to go watch that and that what will answer the question you were about to ask. It’s all media. That movie fucked my head up so much. Think about it the United States lives off of us being in fear. There is a snowstorm coming and what do you do you run to the store spend all your money because you think you are gonna be in the house forever. That’s the set up. You want to know why people in France are looking like why do they wear shit on their head it’s because that’s all the media shows. I went to South Africa twice last year it’s the most beautiful country I ever been in my life. Its almost like if they only showed the worst section of Compton on TV that’s what you think it is. You think everybody in Africa is dark skin, but that’s what they show you. All of this shit is media. They very conveniently will show you some dude they pulled over, the cops handcuffing him and make sure [the camera] shoots him with a throwback jersey on and an eight ball hat backwards because he represents bad. That’s the scam. They can make you think and believe anything they want.
I read a lot of your interviews and you spoke a lot on your DJ history doing house parties and shows in Philly was their any specific party you did where you like damn I’m the man now?
Nah not for me and I consciously didn’t want that to happen because I never wanted to be on my own jock because that’s the first way you can lose everything. I always want to be the underdog and show what I can do and get that kind of respect. I loved what I did. I wasn’t a battle dj, I ain’t want to try and be the best dj in the world. I knew I was good and I knew other cats who were good and it was kinda like hey let’s rock the party. I think keeping that mentality was what kinda helped throughout the years. Philly has always been a DJ town where the emcees hyped up the DJ and we would come up with routines and I think it was something different that everybody else was doing so when we kinda got a chance to go out and show people it was like them cats in Philly is doing something a little bit different.
I read somewhere you guys had the original script to House Party and you turned it down in order to not get sued or something. I wasn’t quite sure about that whole thing can you explain that again.
When we did ‘Nightmare On My Street’ New Line Cinema sued the daylights out of us, but they liked the record and they thought Will and I were talented from ‘Parents Just Don’t Understand.’ So part of the settlement was that we had to pay them some money, but they offered us two scripts to do two movies and if we didn’t want to do them then that was the end of the deal. Back then we were like all we gotta do is say no to the two scripts and we out. The first script was House Party because if you think about the premise of House Party one dude was a Dj and the other was a rapper so House Party was set up for Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. We weren’t thinking about doing movies back then. They were like what do you think about this and we were like oh we don’t like it and what about this oh we don’t like it ha we out. Then we were like oh shit Kid N Play blew up off of that. That was the whole situation it was part of a settlement with New Line. It was one of those things where they were like you guys took our concept and we’re mad, but we ain’t stupid enough to not know you guys aren’t talented. So we’re mad but we want to try and make this relationship work. It was cool because Will ended up doing some stuff with New Line later on and everything kinda worked out.
I’ve heard you tell the story a couple times about how you and Will met at a party and he got on the mic because your mc didn’t show up and the rest is history. Here’s the part I’m wondering about how did you break it to the dude that missed the gig that he was done?
I took both of them on a couple of shows and Will was just so much better than the other dude that it wasn’t a thing that I had to tell him that he wasn’t there no more he just stopped coming.
