What are the skits about, cause like nine skits seem to be an awful lot?

They are not like, you are going to hear someone driving, or anything like that. What I did was, I took my minidisc, and my little stereo mic, and I went out on the street and I asked perfect strangers, what it takes to be a great emcee. And I got so many different answers, and I put them together for the people that don't know. So it doesn't even feel like a skit, more like you hear little things in between on a mix tape. But after a while, when you heard these things, like on the KRS-One album, when he had shout outs by all these DJs and emcees, and you can't skip pass 'em, and after a while you are like 'okay, here comes Teddy Ted, here comes Red Alert", and you have to fast forward, you can't skip it. But you can do it on my album. It's not like there are twenty two skits. I just stuck things in between songs, so that it would flow tighter.

So what's the J-Live definition of a good emcee?

I think right next to my picture you will see the words: 'true to oneself, able to master any crowd'. You gotta say that, when you say an emcee, that's a master of ceremonies. I kinda make that ambiguous, cause a ceremony could be many things. It could be a crowd like this, where they sit or just stand there and appreciate your music, and don't really make a lot of noise. Or when they are jumping all over the place. That's kinda why I did "Hush The Crowd". Because I found that especially in New York, a crowd will just look at you and you wonder 'do they feel you or are they waiting for you to get off the stage'. And half of them will be like 'I wanna listen to the lyrics, I'm not making a lot of noise, because I wanna hear what he's saying'. And sometimes they are just not feeling you. But you gotta master that kind of ceremony. When people sit at home and listen to your album, that's a ceremony in itself. When I pick a CD, there's something I call 'subway music', for when I go to work. Like when "Things Fall Apart" first came out, that's when I first started to teach in seventh grade, and everyday on the train, for like the first two months, I was listening to that album. I literally didn't take that CD out my discman for about a good month.
And that's a ceremony in itself, because you are celebrating good hip hop. So whether it's that or just a street corner cipher, you gotta be able to master whatever it is, that relates to what you do lyrically.
And that's what it takes to be a great emcee. You got some cant's that can flow off their head, but that can't write. But if that's what they do, as long as their off their head flowing leaves you wanting them to write something, then they aight. And vice versa.
So that's my definition of a good emcee. Just make sure that whatever you do man, you try to be the best at it, and not to be the best in general. There's too much stuff out there, that makes it impossible for you to be the jack of all trades master.

You mentioned teaching: you do that besides recording?

"Braggin' Writes" came out in my sophomore year in college, cause I went to University in Albany in upstate New York. I was trying to major in Business, but I ended up majoring in English. I graduated in '98. Because I thought that the album is coming out then. I set it up so that all I had my last year was independent study. Six credits. Three credits was a research paper on hip hop, three more credits were my complete works. The 'anthology of J-Live'. Every rhyme I've ever written since seventh grade, with a little abstract next to it and a little autobiography information. That's all I had to do, I didn't have any classes, so during that period, I was able to go on tour in January for a record ["Timeless"] that was supposed to come out in November. But when all the Raw Shack stuff went down and that didn't happen in November, and January turning into June, June the graduation. Being back home in the summer. But that was why I went to school in the first place: to have something to fall back on. Cause hip hop is my love. And it's always a good thing to get paid off of something that you love, but you gotta have something to fall back on.
And it just so happens, that my other love is teaching children. Because you got so many kids out there. And hip hop and teaching relate, because if the kids are not literate, if they are not critical thinkers, when it comes down to their choice of music, the music is not going to reflect that. If all they know is materialism, criminology and things of that nature, misogamy, that's all they hear in the music. Music sparks revolution. You can look at history. So bad music, or ignorant music, is going to spark ignorance. Ignorance is bliss. There's people who are feeling that. So it's like, if you can't get through to these kids, on that level, you are going to lose 'em.
And so last year they had a seventh grade teacher, who was up in the class room, teaching English, and when a kid tries to come at me, with the 'Carlito's Way' introduction on Ja˙-Z's album, saying 'oh, this is my poem that you asked me to write', I gotta pull his card: 'aight, I give you half credit for it, if you can tell me what movie Ja˙-Z got it from'. And he's looking at me 'huh?'. It feels good, even if I can't do hip hop, I still got something that I love to do. Because now that I'm not teaching, I'm not able to teach, because if I was teaching, I would be late for class by a few weeks (laugh), since I'm on this tour. It would not be fair to those kids. You can't be absence that much. Just recording the record last year, I was absent too much. So putting out and promoting that album, I had to fight with London to hit me, like they needed to hit me, or I had to be like 'yo, if I can't live off of this, I'ma go live off of that'. That's how it went down.

You think you will from now on work half of the time teaching and half emceeing?

Naw, this music here is going to be my profession. Because the beauty of it is, I can teach through my music, and whatever neighborhood I live in, the kids on the block are my students. Because I try to live by example and I am always there for 'em. So, this is my career, when this dies down, I retire from emceeing and teach, and when that dies down I'm retiring from teaching and retire for real. Those are my two professions, but right now emceeing comes first, cause I kinda have a responsibility to my fans, and to myself to try to accomplish and to establish who I want to be. The first single wasn't called 'Longevity' for nothing.

In what way is it important for you to put messages in your songs?

You have to. Because that's a questions I ask everybody, up in my cipher: 'what do you stand for?'. Because if you don't stand for nothing, I don't want a sucker in my midst. We are coming up to the millennium that has a lot of people scared. Nobody really knows what's going to happen. Not just for the predictions and whatnot, but some of those predictions are going to turn themselves into reality because of how people see them. Like if you think it's going to be the end of the world, and you think, 'what do I want to do at the end of the world?', and you go out and do it, it's going to be some crazy shit. So it's like you got all that stuff going on, and when the smoke clears and the album drops, the questions are still going to remain. Aight, here we are in the new millennium, with the same problems. We are not that far from the 1900 hundreds. And what do we do now. How do we approach it? And if you got songs, that are just happy, happy, joy, joy, get on the floor and dance, shoot your brother, fuck your sister, all kinds of shit, it's not really gonna get any better.
And you are going to be surprised me saying this, but there's room for all of that. My problem isn't that people that are making records, from an ignorant mind state. I don't have problem with that by any means. Sometimes, when you watch a movie, that's what you wanna see. My problem is with the lack of contrasts, in the overall picture of what the masses are able to hear. It's not that you hear Mase on the radio and you hear Mr Complex on the radio, and you say 'fuck Complex, I'ma go get the Mase record'. You don't hear Complex on the radio. You don't have that choice, because of the lack of contrasts, because it's an industry, and because every time you sacrifice art for business, they are going to do what they can to pigeonhole things, and mainstream, and tunnel vision things, so if this is what sells, why should we change it. And that's the exact opposite mindset you need to have when you are dealing with art.

So where do yo restrain yourself while you are creating music?

If it's wack, I throw it away. And that's really the only thing. Man, I got songs that are like, mad different. There's one song, where the beat slows down and speeds up. Until I had the beat I had no idea that I was gonna do it. But Grap Luva gave me the beat like that. It's slow and then speeds up. So I'm rhyming fast, and I keep it moving like that throughout the whole song, and level it off when the beat drops. It's not like nobody has ever rhymed fast, but no one has ever done it that way. I got songs that have meanings within meanings within meanings. I got songs where you can really sit down, write it out and break it down line for line and teach a class on it.
So in terms of how I restrain myself, if it's not dope, I'm not gonna do it.

Who do you envision yourself rapping for?

Right now as it stands, all the heads that went out and copped "Longevity" in '95 and "Can I Get It" in '96. And all the people that, despite that I'm under the underground, and I had nothing out, despite that, they still remember. And they are still waiting. It's kinda rare to have your last single come out in '96 and three years later, people are still waiting for your album. So first and foremost, I'm rhyming for them. Secondly I'm rhyming for the youth that needs the education and the emcees that are right at the crossroads of where they wanna go with their careers. Because I try to show 'em, that you don't have to have that one bullshit record, to make your album sell. You don't have to be like 'aight, this is going to be my single, that will mix in with all the bullshit, I do the rest of the album for me'. You don't have to do that. Let the label worry about that, after you turned in your album. You don't have to try to appeal to a market you have nothing to do with. And third I'm rapping for everybody that hasn't heard me yet. My following, which grows, the kids that need to hear this music, because they don't really get a chance to. And then everybody else, who's not really up to it, like they should be.

Now, with Europe and Japan being two of the biggest hip hop markets, and the people that are buying your records, some are likely not able to understand what you are saying, can this affect what you are doing?

No. First of all because there are many people in Europe that are bilingual, compared to America. So they might have different original languages, they will still understand the basic core, the root, at least enough to get the content, and the message. And secondly no, because, like I went to Tokyo and there were emcees out there, and I didn't know what the hell they were saying, but the flow is tight, and you can see that they put a lot of effort into the phonetics of their rhymes. And that's all that it takes, that when you hear that and you put that with something on the stage, that's live. And the people that really hear what they are saying are like 'word', then it doesn't matter. I go and ask somebody that is bilingual what he's talking about, and just see if I like his flow and if the beat is dope.
Obviously I wanna be more successful in my own town, where they are able to understand. But not only understand but also relate to the specifics. But wherever it's accepted, it's open arms. No, I don't really see that as distracting at all.

What do you consider yourself and entertainer or an artist?

That's a real good question. Because a lot of times you split it down the middle and you go and say an entertainer does whatever he has to do to get the masses. And as we said: if the masses are ignorant, then the entertainer gets ignorant too. And usually for most good artists, that's the last thing that you wanna do. But I would have to say: yes. Like I got this song called "Yes", and it's like 'what you got, heads or tails? yes! street props or record sales? yes!'. Like if you ask me: am I Black or am I a man, am I an entertainer, or am I an emcee or an artist? The hardest job is to entertain. But a good artist is entertaining in a thought provoking way. So the answer to your question is yes. You can't really look at it in a fragmented way like that, you gotta be holistic about it. Some entertainers, who are artists in their own right, are ignorant. You can't knock them from being an artist, because they are drawing, like production: you could see sampling as a collage, right? So, if I'm working on a collage, and I'ma be like: 'aight, I'ma get that outta this magazine' and I open up the magazine and I cut out one picture, and I stick it to my canvas, and call my piece finished, I'm an artist. Am I a good artist? You know what I'm saying? There's a difference.
I really don't split it down in the middle, like a lot of people say, rap vs. hip hop. Fuck that. Nobody was rappin' until hip hop started. We are not giving you all of that. So basically, that's how I feel about it.

back to part 1...