Third in the trilogy is J-Live (the other two being Mr Complex and L-Fudge). Let him introduce himself with a quick look into his catalogue.

J-Live Aight, let me give you a quick discography: In 1995 I put out a "Longevity" on Raw Shack and "Braggin' Writes" was on the b-side of that. And that did pretty good and got me on 'Unsigned Hype'. It got played by Bobitto and got me a little fan base and a little buzz. In '96 we released "Can I Get It" with "Hush The Crowd" on the b-side. And in '97 we shopped around for a deal, and got one with London records. At the time they were Payday, but they separated. Payday is still in the background, but they are not helping me with my project. It's FFRR / Frequency / London Records, and London is now moving from Polygram to Warner Bros. In '98 I went through a lot of stuff with Raw Shack, shit just got outta hand, and I had to separate old ties with them. In '99 I started to record the album again.

Wasn't it supposed to be called "Timeless".

Yes, it was supposed to be called that. That was what I envisioned my album to be called, since like way way back in the days. But then there were a couple of albums already been called "Timeless", so in late '97, early '98 I changed the name of the album to "The Best Part". And that's what it's called to this day. So that's the short story.

How much does London tell you what you put out, what you have to do?

The beautiful thing with the staff that I am working with right now, even right up to the president, I haven't had much to worry about, in terms of creative control. I had actually more creative control problems with Raw Shack, than with London. What is surprising. But that dealt more with the money. Because the money got pretty much in the way between me and Raw Shack.

Wasn't the owner of Raw Shack also doing some of your beats?

He was. But it's actually a really long, long and ugly story. But suffice to say, I don't deal with them anymore on any level.
But in terms of London: the one thing they know about my project is, that I'm not going to be some one hit wonder. I'm not going to be that guy that puts out a record real quick and goes gold with the first album. They have already established that they are going to treat me as a developing work in progress over the span of three, four albums. So they gave me the freedom to pretty much do what I wanted to. And my management of 7 Heads, who also do a lot of promotion, with the help of them and working with a lot of different producers, I was able to put together an album, that isn't just eclectic, but it kinda accomplishes a lot of different styles I intended to dabble in. Just in terms of content, in terms of flow, in terms of choice of beat. And what that does, especially for my first album, it let's me throw it all out there, see what's being felt, what's the best part, and that can be a direction I will grow in for my second album. I definitely don't wanna fall in that pit, where I gots to put out a record, and get mad at the record sales, and then switch the whole style to sell records. And people who bought the first record are disappointed. So I try to stay true to what I do.
You know, the first single of the album is going to be called "True School Anthem". Because my music is like, a lot of people that heard the song, because there is so much bullshit out right now, they are like 'yo this reminds me of something old'. You gotta go back to the early '90s, to find a serious period, where there were consistency good records coming out. That's the mindset of a traditionalist. His state of what I call hip hop ethics. Those kind of people say, that it reminds them of something old. It takes them back to the early '90s. But in actuality, there's nothing old about the music, because the style is brand new. So when you combine the ethics of the old, with the styles of the new, I call it true school. I try to develop that as my genre. Like when people are saying 'what kinda music are you doing?', I just answer 'true school'. Because I'm true to the school that I grew up in, where you wrote your own rhymes, and you talked about what you stood for, and not just what you thought would sell. That's why I call it true school.
But with the label I'm working with, and getting back to the original question, they definitely backed off of me and let me do my album. I mean they gave me some problems with some loot, and with all the bullshit that went down with getting off of from Raw Shack. But now that I can sit back and look at the album, and listen to it for what is it, it's like my baby. And the strength of any nation is going to be the youth. So the youth are the best part. So this is my first baby, this is the best part that I've been through from '88 when I started rhyming up to '99 where I'm here now.

Do you think they are going to market you with a special image?

I think basically, the marketing scheme for my album is, that real hip hop is back. Not that it ever left, or that you couldn't find it before, but here we are, bringing it to you like this. We are not half stepping. We are coming with it full fledged. The should treat it like a real record. Promote it like a real record. Not just to a "underground", urban following. They are trying to put it in as many different mediums as they possibly can, and promote it the way a record should be promoted.
If you treat Complex and L-Fudge, Polyrhythm Addicts and Shabaam Sahdeeq, Pharoahe Monch and Common, Mos Def and Talib Kweli, and The Roots, if you treat us, like the records you think that sell, it will come like a self fulfilling prophecy. If everybody takes the money out the bank, because they think it will fail, the failure will happen. But if you put the money into the bank, because it's brand new and dope, what happens? The bank will blow up. So if these people that already spend x-amount of dollars on your budget to make the record, if they'd get their heads out their asses and would push it, like they know they could, it would be successful. You know 'scare money don't make money'. So that's really all that it takes.
I don't really think it's about underground and commercial. It's about thought provoking music and bullshit. And there's an old saying: 'checker sells better than chess'. That's just how it is, because if you got a large majority of the people, uneducated, not critical about what they are listening to, and you got a small amount of people, who actually think and put the same kinda thoughts into the record, that the artist put into it. And they are like 'I can appreciate this for what it is'. And then obviously when it comes down to record sales, you are not going to have the advantage. But it's really not worth it to sell out like that.
And I think London Records recognizes that with my career. It has yet to be seen, but I'm hoping it is what I think it is.

How do you prevent an album being a compilation of one artist? I mean, an album that is not a working unit that sticks together as a whole.

Ahhh, I know exactly what you mean. What you are talking about is, if I would have put "Can I Get It" and "Hush The Crowd", "Braggin' Writes" and "Longevity" on my album, and then made seven more songs, and that was it. And one of the new songs is the single, one of the others is the b-side, and by the time you buy the album, you already have heard six songs. And you are like 'man, there's only a few songs that I feel like they are brand new'. That happens a lot, and I think it's more due to the fact that, labels take so long to recognize talent. Cause like The Arsonists put a lot of the old shit on the album, but it took them mad long to make an album, despite they had all that dope shit back in the days. So they probably think: 'aight, the people that are going to buy the album, they wanna hear the old songs'. A lot of people are coming to me and ask 'yo, is "Hush The Crowds" going to be on the album?' and I be like 'no'. 'Why'? Because about a year from now, there's going to be another song that wasn't on the album, that you are going to ask to be on the second album. Let it be what it is.
"Braggin' Writes" is going to be on the album though. I did it over. I did it because that's like the record that broke me. And I had to do it over, because of the issue with the masters and all of that. But I did it my way again, and if you listen to both versions, you might still appreciate the first one, and it being original. But I can hear the growth in my voice. And it felt good to do it again. So I did like a cover of my own joint. But that's the only thing from '95 or '96, that's on the album.
But that's not even a fair saying, because so many songs on the album were written before "Braggin' Writes". But they were never heard. And that's a whole different story, that's my way of cheating, cause I got these songs that I wrote back in the days, that are still prevalent. That's why I wanted to call the album "Timeless" in the first place, because the issues that I address, are issues of today. I'm not just going to be like 'did you see the '99 Jaguar?'. 'How about those Bulls?', or something like that. I'ma address issues that are timeless. I'ma talk about things that will unfortunately or fortunately be true, twenty years down the line. Like a lot of times, people are listening to old Malcolm X or Martin Luther King Jr. tapes, Black Panther videos or we can even take it further back than that, and just be able to relate to that, because that's still how it is today. It's like that with all literature. The best literature, even if you talk about Carlisle or Keith and shit, it's going to be the stuff that deals more with universal law. And that's what I try to do on my album. I got songs that deal with, not just how hard it is in Brooklyn or Manhattan, but human rights in general. So everybody can relate to it. I got songs that deal with, not how many girls I banged, but three kinda girls that I get with, girls strictly physical, strictly mental, or both. I try to address the topics in a way that ten years from now you are not going to be like 'oh yeah, remember that?', but you are going to be like 'yo, that's still true'.

To me it's also like an album should be 'the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts'.

I think that's true in this case. Because what I like to do, like when I find a person that likes the album, I ask 'em: 'if you had to take one song off, which song would it be?'. And they sit there and they are scratching their heads like 'aaah, dunno'. And that makes me feel good. I got a lot more than twelve songs. It's 25 tracks, but there's a lot of skits and I made it so that you can skip pass the skits, and even can program the CD so that you don't have to hear the skits. Cause after a while you get tired of that stuff.
There's like fourteen real songs, and two bonus tracks. Usually when you get an album with more than twelve songs on it, you gonna find yourself skipping pass something. And people who have heard it so far, maybe it's because they are my peoples, maybe because they have been dying to hear the album, but they haven't been skipping pass anything, what makes me feel good about it.

continue to part 2...