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GRAMMYs

DJ JP

Photo: DJ JP Instagram

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DJ JP On Surviving Losing Pop Smoke & The Pandemic dj-jp-lost-pop-smoke-entered-pandemic-surviving-both-through-reinvention

DJ JP Lost Pop Smoke, Entered A Pandemic & Is Surviving Both Through Reinvention

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The official DJ of late rapper Pop Smoke talks representing his legacy and adapting creatively in the COVID-19 era: "The pandemic gave me a push to do certain things”
Keith Nelson Jr
GRAMMYs
Aug 13, 2020 - 3:19 pm

Prescience is a luxury; acceptance is a necessity; progress is the goal. Stunned disbelief was the immediate aftershock of the Feb. 19 news of Brooklyn shooting star Pop Smoke’s untimely passing. Next, the sting of him turning into a memory may have weighed down people’s tear ducts into bursting. Then, the realizations: His woo growl will never escape the digital realm; the last time you saw him live was the last time you’d see him live

For those closest to him, the mourning is compounded by the knowledge of the future the supernova rapper envisioned.

“He kept saying, ‘Bro, we’re stars. I’m about to be a superstar.' He kept saying it. The last three shows we did, he kept saying It. He said it to me personally and then he said it out loud a couple of times. He kept saying, ‘This is it for us. I’m telling you, this is it,’” DJ JP, Pop Smoke’s official DJ, told GRAMMY.com.

If you ever saw Pop Smoke in the flesh, Jeffrey “DJ JP” Archer had his back. When Pop Smoke emerged from the ethers of online virality with his 2019 banger “Welcome to the Party” record for his first-ever show in his home of New York City back in June 2019, JP brought him to the stage and deejayed for the rookie MC. When the newly 20-year-old Pop Smoke, born and raised in the impoverished Canarsie neighborhood of Brooklyn as Bashar Barakah Jackson, went overseas for the first time in his life as part of Skepta’s Ignorance Is Bliss Tour, a month after his first-ever performance, JP was a brotherly figure helping him navigate the road and giving him a reminder of home. And when Pop Smoke passed, a week before his first headlining tour – Meet The Woo Tour – JP knew just how close the young star came to reaching the launchpad for the next level.

“We had rehearsals [scheduled] from 12 in the morning until 4 A.M. That was about to be rehearsal week and at the end of the week rehearsal the tour would’ve started.”

JP and the rest of the world hardly had a month to mourn the fallen star before they had to mourn the world they once knew when the COVID-19 pandemic crushed the old normal with a lethal grip. In a matter of weeks, JP was a DJ without the artist he made his living with in a world that now deems his living non-essential and a threat to the public safety. DJ JP spoke with GRAMMY.com about his last conversation with Pop Smoke, how he’s adapted during a pandemic and what the future holds for a man forced to reinvent.

“Last year, I thought we’d be on tour, or at a crazy show, or a crazy concert by now. Now, there’s COVID and all these things going on.”

This time last year, Pop Smoke’s 2020 ubiquity was a safer bet than a Tesla stock. Pop went from not doing a single show for the vast majority of 2019 to JP recalling three-show performance nights being a regular by the end of the year. That sort of increase in demand changes everyone’s life around the star.  In a May interview on Instagram Live show Candid COVID Convos, JP admitted his financial situation changed considerably due to deejaying for Pop, explaining how the money he got from three Pop Smoke shows alone could pay his car note, rent, and still leave him with extra money to go shopping.

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Pop’s passing took JP off the tour, but for a while, COVID-19 took JP off everything. Stay-At-Home orders swept across the nation blanketing the nightlife scene in a proverbial Do Not Enter tarp. JP estimates to GRAMMY.com that he had 150 events postponed due to COVID-19 from late March until July resulting in over $80,000 of deferred potential revenue. “When this pandemic started, I was thinking, ‘Alright, now you really have to do this. Now, you have to get this done because that just cut off one stream of income.’”

To financially survive the pandemic, JP pivoted from being behind the artist to being behind the music. He put together and opened his own recording studio in Canarsie, Brooklyn in July where artists, mixers, and engineers can rent it out if they don’t have access to a recording studio, which the pandemic has limited. The facility also doubles as a DJ lab, leveraging the pandemic-inspired rise in live-streamed DJ sets by giving DJs a place to host their streams and/or practice their craft. As millions have been thrust into unemployment during the pandemic, JP is using cataclysm as a catalyst.

“This pandemic gave me a boost and put me back in check. I got to a certain place where I got comfortable. When this pandemic started I was like, ‘Alright, I got to get the studio going. I have to get this going. I really have to make this happen. The pandemic gave me a push to do certain things.”

Helping provide his community with studio access falls directly in line with JP’s history of altruism. He held his men’s sneaker giveaway “Just Kicking It” at the Armory Men’s Shelter in, Brooklyn, NY. Before he made a single dollar from deejaying during the pandemic, JP was helping give away more than 300 pairs of sneakers to kids who have had their summer stolen by COVID-19. “I want to put on for my community. I want to keep it going. I want people to know where Canarsie is and what Canarsie is. I want to show them that we’re young Black kids from Brooklyn, NY, putting on for the community the right way musically and giving back.”

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COVID-19 stole the summer but didn’t stop the parties for long. JP has been deejaying at private and corporate events sporadically throughout New York since July, which is no surprise to him. “A lot of promoters were hitting me up months before saying, ‘Be ready for this date.’” Quarantining from the pandemic hasn’t fully been lifted, with police shutting down the same type of parties JP has been deejaying. Luckily, no event JP has deejayed at has been shut down and it could be due to a shift in how these shows operate.

“Most of the promoters are doing outdoor events. As people walk in, they’re sanitizing them and taking temperatures. So, they’re making sure the event is safe and people are safe. There is more caution now than before.”

Before the pandemic, JP was already dealing with another external force precluding live shows: the New York Police Department. Rolling Loud organizers removed Pop Smoke and four other rappers from its New York City festival’s lineup on the same day (Oct. 12) Pop was set to perform due to the NYPD informing organizers that those performances would be risks of violence. Four months later, Pop alleged on Instagram that his Feb. 16 headlining performance at Kings Theatre, mere miles from where he grew up, was also blocked by the NYPD. Pop died without ever truly having his coronation on stage as the new king of New York.

For many, the Kings Theatre show will forever be remembered as the last time they had a chance to see the young legend. For JP, he remembers it as the last time he had a conversation with the man who changed his life. The show was a day before Pop would take the fateful trip to L.A. where he was murdered. JP showed up to the show to represent the team. It was there he’d have a conversation he may never forget as long as he lives.

“Polo G comes up to me and says, ‘I want to do a song with Pop.’ I texted Pop, ‘I’m at the concert, Polo here. He said he wants to do a song with you,” JP recollects. “He said, ‘Tell Polo to come to the studio right now.’ He went to the city and they recorded a song. That was really our last convo.”

On July 7, Pop’s memory lived on through the 18 new tracks that formed his posthumously crafted debut album Shoot For The Stars, Aim For The Moon. Two weeks later, the world got 15 more songs. The songs are both timestamps of superstar’s rise and a map for its trajectory. “The album dropped and the deluxe dropped, yet we still have literally hundreds of songs that are coming. Off of this album and the deluxe, they see what he was getting into,” JP says excitedly. “They see how versatile he was. So, those songs I want to drop, they’re REALLLLY going to see, ‘Wow, he really had stuff up his sleeve.’”

JP doesn’t speak of Pop Smoke as a former employer whose death is painful more for the way it complicated life than for the person lost. He doesn’t even speak of Pop Smoke as if his life was his concern only when music was involved. He speaks of the slain 20-year-old word-wielder as a brother. When asked how he feels whenever he hears Pop Smoke’s music now, JP pauses, and his booming voices deflates a bit when he repeats the question.

“It makes me want to turn up more now. The way I get when Pop Smoke come on is like I’m Pop now. I have to represent. I turn into him and I get his energy.”

Pop Smoke Forever.

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Read More: Baby Rose On Making Music Amid Protests

GRAMMYs

Evan LaRay Brunson

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Evan LaRay Brunson On Engineering For Cardi B engineer-evan-laray-brunson-goes-inside-cardi-b%E2%80%99s-pandemic-recording-routine-wap

Engineer Evan LaRay Brunson Goes Inside Cardi B’s Pandemic Recording Routine, The "WAP" Backstory & More

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The GRAMMY-winning rapper's longtime studio collaborator reveals his go-to audio gear, and how "WAP" might not have happened if it weren't for the pandemic
Keith Nelson Jr
GRAMMYs
Aug 18, 2020 - 3:53 pm

“If anything comes out of this quarantine, we’re going to have an album. We’re going to have a hit. Something is going to come out of it,” Evan LaRay Brunson, Cardi B’s longtime engineer, told GRAMMY.com.

Four years ago, Cardi B was a long way from being taken seriously by the music world, and her engineer Evan LaRay Brunson helped turned those scoffs into cheers. By the time Cardi’s music video for her song “Wash Poppin” came out in March 2016, the name “Cardi B” elicited thoughts of "Love & Hip Hop" antics and Instagram virality before the brain ever registered it as the name of an artist, if it did at all. 

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Brunson engineered that song and nearly every piece of music Cardi B has breathed on during her unprecedented four-year run that has included a Best Rap Album GRAMMY Award, $28 million of revenue in 2019 alone, and the most No. 1 records on the Billboard Hot 100 by a rapper who is a woman in history.

“She treats music sort of like a work shift. She’ll be like, ‘Alright, I’m waking up, coming to the studio at this time, and I’m going to make sure I’m going to get a song or idea done so I can go home and see my kid,'” Brunson remembers. “Quarantine actually helped her with that. Since there’s no shows or anything, all she’s been doing is spending time with her family.”

So, it’s no surprise that for the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic, Cardi physically saw a mic more than she physically saw her own daughter. For the first three months of the pandemic, up until mid-June, Cardi B, Brunson, and members of her team rented out a house at an undisclosed location in California, outfitted it with the studio equipment that has helped make Cardi a star, and went to work. Brunson remembers Cardi’s daughter Kulture being in New York City with her grandparents during the beginning of the pandemic as “Cardi was afraid to even see her because she wasn’t risking flying.” Outside of going home to see her husband Offset, Brunson doesn’t remember Cardi being outside of the studio house much over the three-month recording period.

“We were in the studio every day. Even if we weren’t recording, we were just in the studio. We weren’t risking traveling back and forth and getting corona. We were like, ‘Yo, we’re going to buckle down. Get all the food, snacks, and clothes, bring it over to the house.’ We’ve been locking in there,” he said.

Brunson spoke with GRAMMY.com about the sacrifices he and Cardi made to record during the pandemic, how Cardi and Megan Thee Stallion’s “WAP” came about, and how personal Cardi is getting on her next album.

To record as Cardi did over the pandemic, all you’d need would be Neumann U87 and Sony C800 microphones, Vintage Neve 1073 preamp, Tube-Tech CL1B compressor, Apollo X6 interface, and a MacBook Pro. Antares Auto-tune, Universal Audio plugins, Fab Filter plugins, and Waves plug-in, which Brunson calls “essential tools to use an engineer,” are also in the mix. But, to really do what Cardi has done during this pandemic, you’d also need an engineer like Brunson who is able to technologically adapt to unprecedented times.

“As far as the recording process, it’s sort of the same," Brunson said. "The only thing different is the artists weren’t in the studio together. But, now, people send verses over. We’ll be on FaceTime coming up with ideas. We can do Zoom recording. That’s what we’ve been doing. We’ve been at the house recording.”

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Each piece of equipment has a purpose that helps build the star that is Cardi. Brunson uses the Sony C800 mic is for when Cardi gets into pop and needs that “high-end crispiness.” The Antares Autotune gives her that pitch perfect sound when she needs to cut through a beat. Even still, the equipment is secondary, the ears are the core of the music-making because if you’ve spent just 30 seconds watching a video for Cardi B, you know she can spout off song-ready phrases at a lightning-fast speed. Creating music with Cardi is like trying to capture lightning in a booth.

“I’ll just pick her brain about her emotions; what mood she’s in. She’s always in drama, so I try to write things down whenever she says some crazy, spontaneous thing. Then, I’ll go through beats and go, ‘This fit that and fits that.’ Then I’ll start it, send the pack over to her and she’ll immediately listen to the ones I started and go through the whole pack.”

Before “WAP” satiated a summer thirsting for an anthem, it was an afterthought. Brunson remembers Cardi recording the first verse to “WAP” a year ago and moving onto the next idea as was common inside of Cardi’s hit factory. If there wasn’t a pandemic, there would be no “WAP” “We had that song since last year. Since COVID-19 happened, we were going over songs, and she was like, ‘I like this.’ She caught the vibe again and laid the second verse down.”

Evan first heard Megan thee Stallion would be on the track around late April/mid-May after Cardi B’s stylist suggested putting Megan on the track and connected the Bronx chart-topper with the Houston hottie through Megan’s own stylist. Revisiting a year-old song, deciding to add another artist to it, and taking months to plan it, all without the intention of creating the defining single for Cardi’s as-of-yet-untitled sophomore album, would have never happened if she was recording the song for her debut album Invasion of Privacy two years ago.

The album that would solidify Cardi’s superstardom was recorded on a strict deadline to be finished before Cardi gave birth to Kulture. Brunson feels they had to rush to complete the album, previously noting Invasion of Privacy was mostly recorded in the two months after he learned she was pregnant in January 2018. As an artist, you are supposed to spend your whole life writing your debut album, as your introduction to the music world is often predicated on your life before music. Cardi had two months and, outside of the tearful “Be Careful,” Invasion of Privacy doesn’t dig deeper than the surface of Belcalis Marlenis Almánzarv we’ve all spent summers dancing on. 

But, this time, they have more time to explore. Cardi has already hinted at her album having “my Lemonade moments” referencing Beyoncé’s confessional album. “We have two personal ones right now. One is a real R&B one and one is a little more uptempo,” Brunson revealed. “Both the songs are really her experience as far as motherhood, being on the shows, wanting to come back, marriage, media pressure on her family, she makes it really personal.”

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During those three months, Brunson estimates Cardi has cut 15 complete songs including one undeniable smash hit that was done before W.A.P came out. “She was like, ‘We’re going to save that until we feel we’re ready for the album to come out.’” Ever since the middle of June, Cardi’s been out of the studio home and spending more time with her family, including flying Kulture, her aunties, and everyone to her place in L.A. Cardi might be insulated in wealth that affords her the ability to turn a house into a studio for three months and then fly her family out to her multi-million-dollar palatial estate, but she never fortified her heart from the world.

“[The protests] affected us a lot because, throughout the whole George Floyd situation, she was sad. She wanted to protest,” Brunson remembered. “She was like, ‘I don’t want to promote happy, club music and everyone is feeling down, going through it, losing jobs and family members.'” 

As for Brunson, he couldn’t spend time with his family in South Carolina for his 29th birthday last month due to being cautious with their health as he’s spent extensive time in a state that reported a record number of COVID-19 deaths in a day just weeks ago. Still, he’s seen how the music industry has been decimated by the pandemic and devastated artists’ incomes and can find gratitude in a country still searching for a way forward. 

“I’m happy I’m out here working. I’m happy recording didn’t stop and it’s not a nine to five, and I thank God for that.” 

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DJ JP Lost Pop Smoke, Entered A Pandemic & Is Surviving Both Through Reinvention

Big Boi in 2010

Big Boi in 2010

 

Photo: Don Arnold/Getty Images

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Big Boi's 'Sir Lucious Left Foot' At 10 big-boi-sir-lucious-left-foot-son-chico-dusty-10-year-anniversary

'Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son Of Chico Dusty' At 10: The Story Behind The Missing Tracks From Big Boi's Solo Debut Album

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Partly thanks to label disputes and delays, the former Outkast MC left four singles off his classic debut album; deep cuts of the digital era, they collectively showcase Big Boi's evolution as a solo artist
Jack Riedy
GRAMMYs
Dec 30, 2020 - 9:47 am

Big Boi's solo debut was mired in label drama. Despite being half of one of the most commercially and critically successful rap groups of all time, the Outkast MC dealt with numerous label disputes and delays of 2010's Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son oO Chico Dusty. "[Jive Records] said, 'This is a piece of art, and we don't know what to do with it,'" the six-time-GRAMMY-winning, 18-time-nominated rapper born Antwan André Patton told The New York Times in 2010. "[T]here were a lot of Jedi mind tricks going on… [t]hey almost tried to kill my career with that waiting."

At the time, many fans believed a full Outkast album—their first since 2006's Idlewild—was imminent. "OK, Big Boi's got Sir Lucious out. They're messing with us, André's going to come next, and then all will be well!" Atlanta journalist Gavin Godfrey tells GRAMMY.com about his mentality at the time, breathlessly imitating an over-hyped hip-hop head. Big Boi himself contributed to the hype, telling Vibe in 2007 that a new Outkast project was due after he and bandmate André 3000 had dropped their solo albums. At press time, a follow-up to Idlewild still hasn't transpired. "It's me, standing alone," Big Boi told the Times of Sir Lucious. "Outkast is a part of who I am. But this album is just me."

Big Boi released Sir Lucious Left Foot, which contains just under an hour of irresistible funk-rap, just over a decade ago, on July 5, 2010. This month, the record club Vinyl Me, Please reissued the album on exclusive purple and silver galaxy vinyl. Due partly to disagreements between Big Boi and Jive Records—where Outkast had moved in 2004 from its RCA-owned sister label, Arista Records—several of its singles didn't make the original release; they don't appear on the VMP reissue either. These four songs—"Royal Flush," "Sumthin's Gotta Give," "Lookin' 4 Ya," and "Ringtone"—are deep cuts of the digital era that showcase Big Boi's evolution as a solo artist.

"Royal Flush," which features Raekwon and Big Boi's Outkast partner André "3000" Benjamin, was Big Boi's first solo single. The spare hip-hop track consists of three verses split up by a sampled hook from the Isley Brothers' Go For Your Guns jam "Voyage to Atlantis." Big Boi boasts about his studio filled with potions of emotion; Raekwon describes soaring past police on the way home to his castle. But on a verse triple the length of the others, André warns against turning to crime. "Unfortunate that if you come up fortunate, the streets consider you lame," he raps. "I thought the name of the game was to have a better life / I guess it ain't; what a shame."

Watch: OutKast's 'Speakerboxxx/The Love Below': For The Record

A spiritual sequel of sorts to "Skew It on the Bar-B," a 1998 Outkast track which also featured the Wu-Tang Clan rapper, the track shows off the MCs' skill as rappers and writers. Furthermore, it shows that Big Boi's meant his solo work to be an extension of his work with Outkast, not a break from it. "It had the same feeling as I did when I was in high school, and "Rosa Parks" came out," Godfrey, who recently revisited the duo's 2000 album Stankonia for NPR, remarks. "It was so cool and different in a way that only could have been created by Outkast."

On "Lookin' 4 Ya," Big Boi teams up with André and frequent collaborator Sleepy Brown for a song about delicious anticipation for sex. André wants to test every piece of furniture for stability. Big says he and his partner have been digging each other for so long they're like archaeologists. Instead of trading verses over silky-smooth funk courtesy of the Dungeon Family collective, the trio raps over a pounding beat produced by a then-upcoming Boi-1da. "Lookin' 4 Ya" is another impactful reunion with André, combining harsh textures with an R&B hook for a quasi-industrial vibe.

Watch: OutKast's "The Way You Move" ReImagined By Big Boi

Big envisioned "Royal Flush" and "Lookin' 4 Ya" on the Sir Lucious tracklist from the beginning. He even told East Village Radio that "Lookin' 4 Ya" was to follow "Hustle Blood," and "Royal Flush" was to end the album because he wanted his friend André to have the last word. So why did neither song make it on the album?

"I don't think Jive looked at Big Boi as a top-caliber artist without his partner," David Lighty, the former senior director of A&R at Jive, told the Times. "They wanted an Outkast album so bad that when it didn't happen, they were more disappointed than anything." Frustrated with delays, Big Boi left Jive Records for Def Jam. In return, Jive blocked any collaborations between the two from release on another label on the grounds of them being Outkast tracks—a group still signed to Jive's roster. 

André's only contribution to Sir Lucious Left Foot is producing the beat for "Ain't No DJ." "[T]hey can't stop us, man. [I've] been knowing Dre half my life," Big Boi told GQ in 2010. "And for these people that we don't even know, that haven't even had a hand in our career at all, that's f**king blasphemy."

"Royal Flush" leaked to the Internet, was officially released as a single in spring 2008 and was eventually nominated for Best Rap Performance By a Duo or Group at the 51st GRAMMY Awards. "Lookin 4 Ya" never received an official release but leaked a month before Sir Lucious Left Foot's release, with additional verses. In the same GQ interview, Big Boi implied he leaked them himself. "You know, I'm no stranger to that Internet, baby," he said. The thirst of the fans will be quenched."

"Sumthin's Gotta Give," also from 2008, was a departure from his usual approach. On this topical song, the ATLien raps about economic struggle and laments there are "no more messages in music." Mary J. Blige joins him for the chorus, lamenting lost jobs and hoping "Maybe in November, I'll be cheering for Obama." Big had rapped politically before — on "War," from 2003's Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, he name-checked Osama bin Laden, the slain journalist Daniel Pearl, and the Black Panther activist Fred Hampton. But he had never been so overt.

Read: OutKast Examine Their Southern Experience On 'Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik'

Big Boi working with a superstar vocalist like Blige was an exciting prospect. "After Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, these dudes have gone diamond, they've won Album of the Year at the GRAMMYs, so they were officially certified superstars," Godfrey says. "People see him on a track with Mary J. Blige and think it's some kind of label pairing, but I feel like Big Boi isn't one of those dudes to pair up with people just to say he did. He's such a musical dude that he's like 'There is something in this song that I can create that can't be enhanced unless I have Mary J. Blige on it.'"

The slap-bass-heavy beat of "Sumthin's Gotta Give" sounds like it's trying to split the difference between New York swing and Atlanta funk, and Big Boi possibly prioritized the track's motivational message over its music. "That was basically to get people out to the polls to vote." Big Boi told HipHopDX in 2010, explaining why "Somthin's Gotta Give" wouldn't make the Sir Lucious tracklist.

Big Boi's upbeat 2009 single "Ringtone," a come-on to a girl who's got her ringtone in Big's phone even though they barely know each other. From its talkbox vocals to its synth bleeps. one could hear "Ringtone" as a brief history of Black soul music, leading up to the hollowed-out, autotuned sound of Lil Wayne's 2008 hit "Lollipop." Godfrey points to Big Boi's now-adult children as enabling him to stay current. "He knows what the kids like, so to speak," he says. "He's always tapped in; he's not one of these old hip-hop heads."

"Ringtone" was officially released as a bonus track to Sir Lucious Left Foot's deluxe edition under the alternate title "Theme Song," possibly to avoid the negative connotations of the 2000s ringtone-rap trend. While the track wasn't a hit, it sounds like it could have been—in a universe just slightly funkier than our own. Of the four left off the album, only "Royal Flush" and "Ringtone"/"Theme Song" survive in the streaming era. The other two are only available through dead links on rap blogs and unofficial YouTube uploads of dubious quality.

Big Boi has now been a solo artist almost as long as he's been part of Outkast. Since Sir Lucious Left Foot, he's continued making hip-hop steeped in the funk and soul traditions—even bringing his unique approach to the Super Bowl LIII Halftime Show. After the haze of delays and disputes has cleared, Sir Lucious and its leftovers remain highlights in an impressive catalog. "I am content with the knowledge that there probably will never be another Outkast album," Godfrey says. "But if there are more Big Boi albums, I'm fine with that."

Deep 10: OutKast's Speakerboxxx/The Love Below

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King Von

Photo: Prince Williams/Wireimage

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King Von Reigns On 'Welcome To O Block' practice-makes-perfect-king-von%E2%80%99s-new-album-welcome-o-block

Practice Makes Perfect On King Von’s New Album 'Welcome To O Block'

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Ahead of his new album, the Chicago rapper talks relentless work ethic, how prison shaped his writing process and what matters to him most during his rise to rap fame
Jack Riedy
GRAMMYs
Oct 29, 2020 - 2:21 pm

Drill rapper King Von’s new album welcomes the listener to O Block, the South Side housing project he grew up in that the Chicago Sun-Times called “the most dangerous block in Chicago” in 2014. Like Von’s various music videos filmed on the block, the title is a succinct introduction to his perspective, but according to Von it was less an artistic choice than a practical one. “I ain’t really over-think it,” Von says on the phone from his new home in Atlanta. “You just come up with a name, and it fit perfectly.”

To Von, rapping is more sport than art, a skill that can only improve through practice. The 26-year-old born Dayvon Bennett first broke out with “Crazy Story,” a gleeful tale of a robbery released through friend Lil Durk’s label Only The Family. Von’s trademark storytelling style was inspired by his childhood in Englewood and novels he read while incarcerated, and he refined it further on mixtapes Grandson, Vol. 1 and Levon James.

Welcome To O Block feels like Von’s major league debut. Though the album was produced almost entirely by Chopsquad DJ, its sound expands beyond drill to include G-funk and sleek pop-rap. Von’s pen is sharper than ever, whether he’s flexing alongside Fivio Foreign on “I Am What I Am” or discussing relationships with Dreezy on “Mad At You.” As drill continues to proliferate and mutate in other cities, Von’s album is a potent reminder of Chicago’s influence on hip-hop.

I talked to Von over the phone from Atlanta about his work ethic, his writing process and the only rapper he’s waiting on a feature from.

Do you like performing? Were you waiting to get back out there and do shows?

I f**k with it now, at first I didn’t. Especially with a decent crowd, and people really f**k with you, they perform your s**t for you, so you just have to vibe and kick it with the people. They sing the whole s**t, so you just gotta t up with ‘em. That s**t fun as hell.

Do you meet fans who know your songs word for word?

There’s crazy fans. “I know your songs better than you, n**ga!” You don’t know man, slow the f**k down. [laughs] People be coming like that.

How did you get more comfortable doing shows?

It’s like with everything else, after you doing it a few times, you get better at it. So I got comfortable and I saw myself getting better. It’s practice.

Do you have a favorite track to play live?

Lately it’s been “All These N**gas,” that s**t with me and Durk go crazy. But I can’t even say just that, depends on where you at. Some nights it’s “Took Her To The O,” some night it’s “2 AM,” somewhere else they just love “Crazy Story.” I got options now, a variety of songs with good energy. It used to be hard when “Crazy Story” was the only one people f**k with, so I do four, five songs, they won’t even f**k with ‘em, they be vibing just waiting on “Crazy Story.” I be mad as hell! [laughs] I got a catalog now, it’s decent, getting better and better.

What makes Welcome To O Block different than Levon James? 

Like I told you, it’s practice. If you’re doing something and keep doing it, you’re gonna get better results. Everything better. It is the one for real, I’ve been working hard. The songs that are already released been doing great. “All These N**gas” got 24 million [YouTube views] in two months, that s**t crazy.

How did you link up with Fivio Foreign for “I Am What I Am”?

I just DM’d him. I got the beat, I did the song, I said “I need Fivio on this, this the type of s**t he be on.” He hit me back “Yeah, for sure, I f**k with you.”

The track with Polo is great too.

I f**k with Polo, you know he from the city. He’s from a different area than I am in the city, so I met Polo when my career got to be taking off.

Talking about relationships on the Dreezy track is a new style for you. How did that come together?

I be trying to do s**t for the females. They be steady on me about that. I know about the females [rappers], but I don’t know their music. They get to be talking about us on they songs, so I don’t really be in tune with female s**t like that. So I asked around, they like “Dreezy, she good,” so I said “Let’s see how she do.” She came back and that s**t hard as hell.

I see you retweet a lot of women posting about you, and I saw that you were a model for Givenchy this past weekend. How does it feel to be known for your looks and your music?

That s**t be feeling decent. I been big on ladies, but now I got options and choices, s**t’s crazy. That s**t was Givenchy was big as hell, that shit decent, came out alright. I be talking to females but nothing serious, just entertaining everybody.

What are you doing now that this album’s done? Are you back in the studio?

It ain’t really like that. The way my work ethic is, we just working making songs and videos, then we put up lists to see how many [we got], then we just keep going. We already on the next one even before the first one’s finished. Ain’t no point in stopping or slowing down. Ain’t like no “A’ight, I’m done with this, now take a break,” you just keep going.

Have you been able to travel outside the country at all before everything got locked down?

Naw, I ain’t never been out the country. I been a felon for a minute, so there’s all types of restrictions on my movement, where I can go. I ain’t even looking for everything out here [in this country]. Wherever the money at, I’ll be. [laughs] Objects, buildings, or monuments don’t really attract me like that. I want to make sure I’m doing the right thing, taking care of the people with me, there isn’t too much that excite me no more like that.

So what do you like spending your money on?

I love cars and I love clothes, but I don’t really be going too crazy. I buy clothes a lot just because I gotta shoot videos and look nice for the shows, but it ain’t no “Ooh, I’m waking up shopping today,” I don’t give a f**k about it at all. I got a cousin that go through everything when it comes to clothes. And I love cars, I just started f**king with cars heavy, but I got other s**t to take care of before I get to just going crazy. I’m trying to make sure everybody else got at least one car before I start buying thirty of them bitches. I got my eyes on a Rolls truck and the Wraith, so those will probably be the next two cars I get.

Do you ever give any input to producers, like “I want a beat that sounds like this”?

I really only got that type of relationship with Chopsquad DJ. We looking straight for my sound. Say I write some s**t, come up with the flow and everything, and I rap it to him, and he come back with a whole beat for it. I’m just creating from scratch, and he’s amazing on that type of shit.

It’s impressive you can write a song without a beat, since so many people do the opposite and write to a certain beat.

That’s just a strategy I developed when I was in jail, because you know there ain’t no beats in jail. So I just had to go off top, start with the words, come up with a flow, then figure the beat out later. It’s time-consuming for sure. Lately it ain’t been no time, so I just hear a beat and figure it out from there.

So you’ve been freestyling more?

We call it punching in, but yeah, because I ain’t really having enough time to sit and write. It’s different but it just depends on how much effort you put into it. Writing, you got more time to sit over one word, one sentence, really perfect it. The stories can get more detailed, have more depth. If you got time, you see what I’m saying? Nobody got time nowadays. Punching in, you only got XYZ amount of hours in the studio, so you don’t wanna be in this bitch all day with one song. You gotta be a fast thinker, a fast puncher.

Is there anyone you still wanna work with?

There ain’t nobody I’m dying to get a feature with or none of that s**t. I’ll work with whoever decent, but I ain’t pressured, I ain’t dreaming about it. Lil Wayne, that’s the only motherf**ker that’s over GOATed in my eyes, since a motherf**ker grew up so hard to this s**t. But other than that, we’ll get around to it if we get around to it, if we don’t, I never care.

You’ve talked about how you’re rapping in order to make money and provide for a lot of people. Does putting out the album feel like a step up, in terms of getting paid?

Once your catalog get bigger and you come with more hits, the prices go up. You just gotta work. Once you down for the work, shit keep going up. Checks get bigger, features get bigger, the shows, everything gets bigger.

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Lin-Manuel Miranda (L) and host/creator Hrishikesh Hirway (R) in "Song Exploder"

Lin-Manuel Miranda (L) and host/creator Hrishikesh Hirway (R) in "Song Exploder"

Photo: Eric Veras/Netflix

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How "Song Exploder" Unlocks The Intimacy Of Music song-exploder-netflix-hrishikesh-hirway-interview

Beat By Beat: How "Song Exploder" Unlocks The Intimacy Of Music And Creativity

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Based on the popular podcast, the newly launched Netflix series dissects classics and current hits one layer at a time, while host and creator Hrishikesh Hirway finds the human connection behind it all
John Ochoa
GRAMMYs
Oct 20, 2020 - 4:54 pm

Most people know "Song Exploder" as the popular podcast giving die-hard music fans a deep, inside look into the sonic mechanics behind their favorite tracks. A whole new class of music-heads now knows "Song Exploder" as the new Netflix series bringing the creativity behind music to the digital screen.

Originally launched as a podcast in 2014, "Song Exploder" dissects classic and current fan-favorite songs, with guest artists breaking down each individual track and element in detail to paint an intimate audio portrait of their art. The podcast, which has accumulated more than 60 million streams and downloads over the years and has hosted guests like U2, Selena Gomez, Björk, Fleetwood Mac, Solange and many others, now breathes new life as a Netflix docuseries. 

Introduced on the streaming platform at the beginning of October, "Song Exploder" adds an even deeper layer of storytelling and personal insight to the songs being deconstructed beat by beat. The show's inaugural four-episode run features Alicia Keys ("3 Hour Drive"), Lin-Manuel Miranda ("Wait For It" from "Hamilton"), R.E.M. ("Losing My Religion") and Ty Dolla $ign ("LA"). (Last week [Oct. 15], Netflix unveiled its next slate of guests for the show's second season, set to debut Dec. 15: Dua Lipa, The Killers, Nine Inch Nails and Natalia Lafourcade.

Whether in visual or podcast format, the core of "Song Exploder" remains the same: "an intimate portrait of an artist telling the story of how their artistic mind worked through creating one of their songs," host and creator Hrishikesh Hirway tells GRAMMY.com.

GRAMMY.com chatted with Hrishikesh Hirway about the human connection behind his new "Song Exploder" Netflix series and how he hopes the show will inspire others to create their own art.

You have an endless supply of songs from which to choose for any given "Song Exploder" episode, podcast and show. What needs to stand out in a song in order for you to develop it for "Song Exploder"?

The first step in the process is really identifying the artists before even getting to the song, because, frankly, I don't know necessarily which songs might have the best stories. The most famous songs don't necessarily have the most interesting stories, and the people who know that better than anyone are the people who made the songs.

But what I can try and determine is which artists seem really interesting and thoughtful, good storytellers, and who are also beloved by a lot of people. That's kind of where I start. And once I can get an artist onboard to talk about a song in this way, then I start the process of trying to narrow down which song it's going to be with them.

I feel like I don't know what the story [of the song] is all the time. There are a lot of songs that haven't necessarily been delved into, and frankly, I'm always interested in something like that ... where the backstory [of a song] hasn't been canonized and "Song Exploder" can be a place to tell it for the first time. So I really am relying on input from the artists ... The question that I ask them, frankly, is: Which of your songs do you feel the most emotional attachment to?

Ultimately, the most interesting stories, I think, when it comes to making songs or really making any kind of art, are about people and their feelings and the things that inspire them to make something at all. Even though the show is about music, it's also a portrait of each of these artists. In order to tell you something insightful, especially for it to be something that could be interesting to people who aren't people who make music themselves and also aren't necessarily even familiar with the artist or the song, it has to be something that connects to something in the human experience that feels significant.

I always try to make "Song Exploder" a show that reflected a broad range of genres and artists and backgrounds. So there's kind of almost a guarantee that you couldn't just get people hooked on the show based on who the artists were and what the songs were; I want everybody to watch every episode and listen to every episode of the podcast because I think that it's a worthwhile conversation to have. I think the creative process is something that's really fascinating in and of itself. It's an example of how people react to their own experience, to actually decide to make something based on their ideas, what they lived through, what they love ... The thing that I'm actually most interested in is that kind of emotional experience: the emotional attachment to the act of creating a piece of music.

Michael Stipe of R.E.M. in "Song Exploder"

Michael Stipe of R.E.M. in "Song Exploder" | Photo: Courtesy of Netflix/Netflix

There's a moment in the R.E.M. episode where frontman Michael Stipe gets almost emotional listening to his own voice on the band's classic, "Losing My Religion," and hearing the song elements broken down and presented to him in such an intimate manner, even after so many years since the song's release. How do you go about getting artists to open up to you and dive into their art so deeply?

I think one thing that helps is that I'm not really approaching [the interview process] head-on, certainly not right away. The questions don't start off front and center in like an emotionally investigative way. I think I have to earn their trust first, and part of that is from talking about the mechanics of the process first. That's the entry point in all these conversations. One of the reasons why having the [song's] stems is important, not just in terms of letting the listeners know what's going on in the song, but in terms of being able to facilitate that conversation with the artist.

Of all of the questions, the hardest one to answer is probably, "Why?" "Why did you decide to make the song this way? Why did you write this lyric? Why did you choose this chord progression?" That's the hardest [question], but it's also the one that I'm most interested in. But it's a little easier to start off with, first of all, "What?" "What are we listening to?" And then to ask them, "OK, how did you make it? And when did you make it?" All those basic factual questions are a way to just let them and me submerge ourselves into the memories of making that song.

Once they're there and able to relive some of the experience of it by hearing the actual evidence of the stuff that they did on that day—hearing their voice, hearing the instrument, hearing the actual track that they recorded around that time—it's a lot easier to ask them to then dig a few layers deeper and ask what was going on in their lives and how that might've fed into some of those creative decisions.

Read: Rhyme & Punishment: How NPR's "Louder Than A Riot" Podcast Traces The Interconnected Rise Of Hip-Hop And Mass Incarceration

You're now juggling the show and the podcast. How do you decide what songs go on the podcast format and what goes in video format?

Well, the podcast is a lot of work for a podcast, but that means that I'm still able to turn around an episode in a few weeks, whereas the TV show takes a much longer time to put together. There are just so many more components to it, and it's so much more work.

Part of the pitch for doing the television show is that I was trying to ask these artists to take a leap of faith, [like,] "This is something that's going to take a while to make, so you can't tie it to your promotional calendar, necessarily. I can't guarantee that it'll come out on such and such date to coincide with your single release or something like that." It was really more like, "Would you like to participate in this thing where there'll be this really meticulously crafted mini-documentary about this work that you did, and it's sort of evergreen."

That's a different pitch than with the podcast. Although with the podcast, I say all those things, too. I say it's evergreen and it's always better when it's not necessarily tied to your release schedule and more like when people have had a chance to live with the song a little bit. But one of the advantages of the podcast is it can be a little more nimble because it's a little easier to put together.

So this is a long way of saying that a lot of times that question is answered by the artists themselves or their publicists or managers, who are looking for a very specific outcome or timing, or they have something in mind, and that could be a matter of scale. It really depends on the circumstances of the artist and what works for them.

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Fans who've been following the podcast for a while will find a totally different experience when they come to the show. There are two types of storytelling when I hear "Song Exploder," the podcast, and when I watch "Song Exploder," the docuseries. The podcast is very audio-heavy: You get to really hear all of the isolated bits and pieces of the song. The show has a lot more historical and cultural context, sort of like a mini-documentary for a song, and you also hear from a lot more voices beyond just the recording artist. Beyond the visual element, what do you gain in terms of storytelling through the show?

I think one of the things that you mentioned is absolutely key to the TV show, which is that often on the podcast, it's just a single voice or maybe two voices together … But with the TV show, because the timeline was so different, there was a chance to stop and say, "OK, who do we really want? Who are all the voices that are involved in the creation of the song?" Maybe not just the artist, but also the collaborators that were essential to making the song. 

Having that kind of breadth and depth, it isn't always afforded to the shorter turnaround time and the scale of the podcast. But here, to really immerse the audience and give a really full picture of what the song was, having those other voices in there was really important. For [the] Alicia Keys episode [about the song "3 Hour Drive,"] we traveled to London to film with [the song's guest vocalist and co-writer/co-producer] Sampha and the [song's] co-writer/co-producer Jimmy Napes because we knew that they were going to only expand and flesh out the story.

I think a part of it is also a matter of craft, too. When you're working in audio, you're kind of only working in one dimension, which is time. You're just relying on one sense, hearing, and you're just basing everything on how long things take; the rhythm comes from just that one sense. But with TV, you have to also give a rhythm and complexity visually, too. You can't just transliterate the podcast into a TV format, where it's just one person talking, mixed with the isolated stems, because it wouldn't work; it would get very boring very quickly. So in order to have that kind of texture and nuance, we wanted to involve all those different people and try and give a little bit bigger of a picture than maybe what comes out in the podcast.

Do you see the podcast and the show as separate entities or related in the same family? Do you need to engage with both formats to fully appreciate or understand what "Song Exploder" is trying to do?

Oh, I don't think you have to engage with both. Of course, I would love it if people did, just because they're both things that I've put a lot of work into, and you want people to enjoy the stuff that you've worked on. This is not a great analogy, but I think it's sort of like reading a book or watching a movie that's been adapted of that book. I don't think you need to read the book to enjoy the movie, and vice versa, you don't need to have seen the movie to have full enjoyment of the book. But maybe you'll get something out of the experience of taking both in. Maybe it changes the way you feel about both.

This is, of course, a little bit different, because it's not even the same story that's being told. It's really just taking the core concept, which is an intimate portrait of an artist telling the story of how their artistic mind worked through creating one of their songs, and taking that concept and expressing it in these two different media. So it's much looser even than something like an adaptation of a book to a movie.

What artist or what song is your holy grail for the podcast or the show or both?

I don't have one holy grail—I think I probably have about a thousand. Anytime I start listening to music, I start wondering about it. That's not new since I started "Song Exploder"; it's the other way around. That's always been the way I listen to music. When I fall in love with a song, I want to hear it from the inside out. I want to hear what the individual tracks, what the individual stems sound like. I want to know what the ideas were that inspired all of these things that I'm falling in love with. "Song Exploder" was just a way of me being able to actually make that happen for myself. So anytime I'm listening to music and I hear something great, you could put it on the list.

Ty Dolla $ign in "Song Exploder"

Ty Dolla $ign in "Song Exploder" | Photo: Courtesy of Netflix/Netflix

What is your ultimate goal with "Song Exploder"?

I wish people would either watch the show or listen to the podcast and come away with a feeling that they want to make something themselves. Part of my aim with the show is to democratize the act of creation a little bit. I think it's easy to look at very successful artists or very successful songs or any kind of art in any format, where it has reached a certain level of success, and think that there's some uncrossable boundary for everyday people that keeps them from making something as great as those songs …

I think the best feeling that I always get from finishing working on an episode is something akin to that. That like, I just want to go make something, and it doesn't just have to be music. I think that anybody who is interested in making anything at all, to get something from the show, just the idea of going from nothing but an idea and following that all the way through to a finished piece of art, I hope that might be inspiring to everyone.

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