here's a cool article I came across....
TSS: What’s going on Jake?
Jake One: Shit, just been doing interviews all day.
TSS: Oh yeah, how’s that been?
Jake One: It’s been going cool.
TSS: Where you are you at right now?
Jake One: I’m back home in Seattle. Just got back from Minnesota on Tuesday.
TSS: Where at in Seattle? My folks just moved out to Kirkland.
Jake One: Oh really? I’m right by Broadway in Capitol Hill.
TSS: What’s the Hip-Hop scene like out there?
Jake One: There’s been a lot of stuff going on but for whatever reason it doesn’t get out of the city for the most part. I would say there’s a couple of guys worth listening to, there’s a kid D. Black who’s on my album, whose album is pretty good. Then the other kids Spaceman and Pinder, those are like two other artists I’m working with too, so I’m trying to get them going and get people to care about them.
TSS: What about Boom Bap Project, I know you’ve done some stuff with them.
Jake One: Man they don’t even live here anymore. Like Karim’s in San Francisco and Dom’s in Portland; they’re talking about working on a new record though.
TSS: The new album, White Van Music, what’s been the critical reception on that?
Jake One: Man it’s been really positive, from what I’ve heard. It’s cool because it’s putting a name to the music for a lot of people. ‘Cause a lot of people have heard stuff I’ve done but didn’t know I did it, so through this record my name’s getting out there, they get to hear what I’m doing right now with this record and they get aware of what I’ve done in the past.
TSS: Yeah and through the Great Beat Writer mixtape too.
Jake One: Yeah, exactly the biggest response I get is “wow I didn’t know you did all these songs”. But you know I guess that’s the internet age, no one buys a record anymore.
TSS: Who’s harder to work with, the underground cats or a mainstream artist like 50?
Jake One: It’s really a case by case situation, because I’ve worked with some underground guys who in their mind think they’re superstars and that’s even worse to deal with (Laughs). But you see some of that with the bigger artists. With the bigger artists you’ve got a lot more people you’re dealing with, just the magnitude of what they’re doing; everything just seems way more serious. So, there’s a lot of third party stuff that goes on when I work with bigger artists.
TSS: You don’t always get into the studio with them.
Jake One: Exactly, that can be difficult sometimes. I mean, like Buck….Buck’s really easy to work with, I’ve had a good time working with him every time I got the chance to. It really depends on the person I’d say.
TSS: The lead single is “The Truth” with Freeway and Brother Ali. As far as chemistry between two artists who seem like they’d be total opposites of the spectrum, what was that studio session like?
Jake One: It’s funny ‘cause that was a track that Free had done for Free At Last that he did a verse to and tried to get other people on. It’s just one of those beats that everyone seems to do a song to and for whatever reason they didn’t use it or things didn’t work out. I always thought the beat was really dope and it had such a strong hook, a lot of the stuff on my album wasn’t really based around hooks at all. So, I was thinking, I need to come up with something that needs to have a catchy hook. I thought of that record immediately and the whole part of the song being the truth and Ali’s last album being called The Undisputed Truth, it just seemed like the perfect fit, and talking to Ali and knowing him personally, I know that he’s a fan of Free, I just thought it would be cool to pair them together and it would be something unexpected.
TSS: What about M.O.P. are they still with G-Unit?
Jake One: I’m not sure what’s going on with that. I know we did that track for the G-Unit album in 2006. I talked to Billy Danze recently but I didn’t ask him about all that. But, I wish I could have been in that session cause I want to see how they lay them background vocals down (Laughs). Maybe I’ll get an opportunity in the future to check that out.
TSS: Yeah there’s really a certain time and place for an M.O.P. track.
Jake One: They just have a certain thing together that no one can really duplicate. It’s all theirs.
TSS: Do you think the producer is bigger than the MC nowadays?
Jake One: I think in a lot of situations, yeah definitely. Like if Kanye does your record it’s going to go, right now if T-Pain does your record it’s going to go. Timbaland obviously has been doing it for a long time. If Dre does something for you people are going to pay attention, whether they’re going to like you or not, that’s not a guarantee but you’re at least going to get that shot. It works that way on an underground scale too, like if I do something for somebody, more than likely some people are going to listen to it. It’s interesting because the producers are more out in the front, you know they’re in the videos; it’s definitely a different time. I’m not even sure when that exactly happened, I guess it was when Timbaland and Pharrell kind of came out, they definitely put a face on the guys making the music. Because a lot of times the music is more important that what they’re saying in a lot of these records (Laughs). It definitely flipped a lot. You know the DJ has always been the backbone of Hip-Hop but it’s almost like the producer has kind of filled that role.
TSS: Yeah, I mean Jermaine Dupri said the DJ is dead…
Jake One: Yeah, I think he’s totally wrong on that. To a certain degree the rapper is dead, it’s about characters and personalities, not even about being an MC, it’s more about the person they can convey themselves as being, and people buying into and it’s really about having some good music behind that.
TSS: Are there any artists you’re itching to work with?
Jake One: You know I’d love to do something with Jay-Z; I’ve just never gotten the chance to get nothing to him. He’s probably really one of the last guys I haven’t gotten to work with that I really grew up listening to.
TSS: I know you’ve pretty much covered all grounds, working with MF DOOM to 50 Cent and Lil’ Scrappy…
Jake One: ……(Laughs!!!) I can’t say Lil’ Scrappy was on my dream list!
TSS: Yeah! Looking through your discography I was kind of shocked when I came across Scrappy.
Jake One: You know that was a track that 50 wrote for him. So it sounds like Lil’ Scrappy doing a 50 song basically.
TSS: What’s the beat making process for you as far as records you dig? Are you into the Middle Eastern stuff, Madlib style?
Jake One: (Laughs) Man I have a wide, wide range of records in my collection. This past November I went out to Amsterdam for a record show. As far as when I sample I just get in a certain zone of stuff I’m into, a certain sound. The last couple years I’ve been doing a lot of records without samples, there are some songs on the album that don’t have samples. The joint “Trap Door” is not a sample.
TSS: I guess it’s kind of hard to bite a record that wasn’t sampled.
Jake One: (Laughs) Yeah! I mean there’s definitely no way of copying that, and if they do it’s just blatantly obvious of what they’re doing.
TSS: What’s your take on major labels vs. indie labels?
Jake One: The thing is this, if you have a more realistic approach of how you’re going to make a record and sell it, and you can get it done at a relative cost, it doesn’t really make sense to do it on a major label at this point. Unless you’re really doing it at that high, high, high scale, they can’t really do anything a capable indie label can’t do. I look at Rhymesayers as being probably the premier indie Hip-Hop label in the country. Their infrastructure is serious; it’s not a little nickel & dime operation. They know how to get the most out of what they do, and that’s why they’ve been successful, they’re consistent and they run it like a real business.
TSS: When an artist is hardly promoted is it a money issue or just that the people marketing the project dropped the ball?
Jake One: In a situation like that you have to look at what the label is doing for them. In the independent game you have to do all the work. You know? You have to go get the shows and all that kind of stuff. If you’re on a major they’re going to send you on a promo tour to all these markets. Once you get it going there’s more of a foundation and a realness to the base then there is with mainstream fans, because mainstream fans will turn so fast (Laughs). You know? They’ll be on board and then they’ll jump off in a heartbeat. But, if you can build the base the right way and have fans that believe in you personally and what you do then I think that you can survive. If you don’t, you’ll just be relying on what your last hit is and that’s not a way to build a career.
TSS: Yeah, it’s hard to be a writer and a fan at the same time as well.
Jake One: It’s funny because if I wasn’t doing beats I’d probably be trying to write about it or something. I just think in this age, the whole blogger age, you can make a way by just being totally over the top and people are more receptive to that than someone who’s actually speaking like how’d they’d talk to you in real life. You know? I’ve seen so many guys that I’ve seen in person and they’re not saying shit to nobody, they’re in the corner rattled because they’re not social people, but when they get behind the keyboard they’re on fire! The thing with the internet is that there’s too much information sometimes, everybody doesn’t need to know everything so fast. You don’t need to hear every record within a day because you’re almost in this consistent state of trying to listen to something new. With records that would come out in 90-whatever you only had the six records to listen to so you really had to soak those in. You weren’t waiting for the next freestyle come in 10 minutes. Like guys are dropping freestyles every day, I mean I don’t think I want to hear anybody do a rap every day.
TSS: I don’t think I’d be okay with hearing a new “A Millie” freestyle every day.
Jake One: (Laughs) Yeah it’s definitely a gift and a curse.
TSS: Any closing arguments?
Jake One: I can’t stress enough, if you like something you’ve got to buy it. If you want people to keep making this music that’s the only way it’s going to happen, especially on the indie side. If you don’t buy a Lil’ Wayne album, it’s probably not really going to mean too much. But, with artists working at a different scale it’s going to mean a lot more, and if you want them to keep putting records out like that then that’s how you’ve got to get it to keep going. Because the way it’s looking people are just going to stop doing these records.
