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Columns Warp + Weft Warp + Weft: A Jay-Z Discussion with Lazerbeak
Columns Warp + Weft Warp + Weft: A Jay-Z Discussion with Lazerbeak | Warp + Weft: A Jay-Z Discussion with Lazerbeak |
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| Written by Steve McPherson | ||||
| Wednesday, November 28, 2007 at 12:04 PM | ||||
Page 1 of 2 Doomtree beatmaker extraordinaire Lazerbeak has always been, I believe, the biggest Jay-Z fan I know. Back when I interviewed him as part of a Pulse cover story in 2006, he said, "I want every beat to sound like Jay-Z," and you can hear it in the brash, big-screen beats he's crafted for rappers like P.O.S., Sims, Cecil Otter, Mac Lethal, Toki Wright, and many more.  Doomtree: Lazerbeak is indicated by The Roc I, however, resisted it for a long time. Back when I worked for an independent hip-hop label in New York called 3-2-1 Records, I resented not only his commercial success, but Jay's open acknowledgment that he dumbed down his rapping to sell more records. But when I moved back to the Twin Cities in 2004, Jay-Z's supposed swan song, The Black Album, was remixed by DJ Danger Mouse with backing tracks from The Beatles' White Album to make The Grey Album, and thus did my slow infatuation with Hovah begin. Lazerbeak (or simply 'Beak, or simply Aaron Mader—he also sings and plays guitar for The Plastic Constellations) has been promising me a throwdown session over the genius of Jay-Z for a while now, and the release of American Gangster provided a perfect excuse to knock heads in 'Beak's basement studio. It can be tough to put a finger precisely on what makes Jay-Z such a great rapper. He's not the most dexterous, he's not the most topical, but I think my brother (Sean McPherson of Heiruspecs) said it best when he said that Atmosphere rapper Slug and Jay-Z share a distinctive quality: when they're rapping, you have to listen to them. Reveille Magazine: I don't really have questions for this because it's not really an interview, but I guess the way that I wanted to start is to find out how you got into Jay-Z in the first place. Lazerbeak: I started way late. I listened to a lot of indie rock coming up through high school. I still had my Public Enemy records and shit, but I got way into indie rock, and I guess The Roots got me back into hip-hop a little bit and then that "Give It to Me" song ["I Just Wanna Love U (Give It to Me)"] came out on the Dynasty record [in 2000] and it was like the ultimate party song and so I got that record and backtracked and started to realize how insane his shit was. Ever since then ... by the time The Blueprint came out, it was the height of my love for Jay-Z and then that shit was an instant classic, and then he dropped The Blueprint 2, which sucked, and then he put out The Black Album, which ruled, and the he put out Kingdom Come, which didn't rule so much, and now he's back. It seems like there's a stinkbomb every once in a while. But even on those there's good stuff to hear. RM: If you got into it late, I got into it way late, because I didn't really pay any attention to Jay-Z until The Grey Album came out. Then I started to get into some of The Black Album because I had just moved back here and my brother was into Jay-Z and I had been sort of separated from hip-hop. I had listened to backpacker stuff, but as far as mainstream stuff, I had maintained my party lines since '97. But I got into The Black Album and went back, but I only have The Blueprint and The Blueprint 2 and then tracks from a lot of different things. And that's the thing that's really impressive to me about American Gangster, is that it feels so much more like an album than just about anything I've heard from him.  LB: It's less a collection of songs, that's for sure, which they've been very careful marketing-wise to make sure you know, too. I feel like I've been so fed all the shit that it is that even though I believe it ... like, it's a concept record. It's not really a concept record, because rap records embody a persona, and so a lot of rap records could be concept records. But it's a great record and the shit musically [hangs together]. You don't get that a lot because everyone has a different producer on every song in mainstream rap. And here he's got like six beats from Diddy's guys and a couple from J.D. [Jermaine Dupri] and the soundscape is there.RM: So the stuff with Diddy, is that just a platoon of guys who work on that stuff? LB: Yeah, it goes back to Biggie records and Diddy calls them "The Hitmen." Like on [Notorious B.I.G.'s] Life After Death, where he brought together this production team, he [Puff Daddy] broke them all off handsomely and then he was kind of the final say. It'll say he produced it, but it's really just, "Turn that snare up," or "Let's add an ambulance siren in the third verse," or something like that. So he assembled this crew, and then after Biggie died and they were putting some major records out, those guys were all making this cinematic soundscape stuff and that hasn't really happened in a long time. He hasn't gone back to them since, but I think he assembled a new version of them. I think a couple of the dudes at least. And one of the guys, I think his name is LV, actually worked on Reasonable Doubt and is now back on the shit. It's a weird full circle thing. So it's these two main dudes that did most of the six beats on American Gangster and they're good. I was horrified when I first read the press releases about how the producers he was working with were Jermaine Dupri, who sucks usually— RM: Which one did he do? LB: He did that "Fallin'" song. And then that "Success" song with Nas, this dude No I.D. who was Kanye's mentor— RM: He did a lot of Common's early stuff, right? LB: Yeah, exactly. All of Resurrection. But J.D. signed him and they made those beats together. And even The Neptunes' beats aren't terrible, which I'm usually offended by. RM: Yeah, I feel like The Neptunes' beats, especially "Blue Magic," in the context of the album, I'm like, why isn't this on the Clipse record? It just totally has that super-simple Neptunes thing and I don't know. The stuff that really sticks out to me is "American Dreamin'" and things like that where it has this nice lushness to it. The thing about The Black Album and Kingdom Come to me—just subject matter-wise—he was just talking about himself in the present tense constantly. The Black Album was just, "I'm the greatest, you're gonna miss me, I'm leaving, aren't you gonna be sorry" and it was good, then Kingdom Come was like, "I'm back, I'm 30," and it wasn't good. But I felt like the last couple albums, he was just telling rather than showing. That old writing in elementary school thing. But now the songs have actual stories. LB: Well, he's hungry because he knows that he fell off. That has to be it. You eventually get so comfortable in your role, and Kingdom Come was just that: "What else could I do? I'm untouchable and I can't write the same raps because I have 20 homes and all this shit and here's the new champagne that I drink." It was such a business-minded record. Like he had Budweiser make a music video for him and that was a commercial for Budweiser. He was just getting paid left and right. And there's moments on there, but he just didn't bring it, and I think he knew immediately once the reaction to it was so bad. He had to redeem himself. RM: And it's impressive, especially for someone who was very upfront about saying, "I dumbed my shit down to make money" and with no pretense about that, to then get to the point where, instead of trying to get bigger, he kind of went smaller on this. It's got that distance to it, how he talks about coming up. So many guys you hear rapping, if they're talking about coming up through drugs or through the streets, they're in it and they're looking towards the future, or they've made it, but this is him years and years down the line looking back on it and there's that tinge of regret. Which is interesting because it was also present on the Clipse record [Hell Hath No Fury]. I wasn't a huge fan, but it had that aspect of that mixed feeling about it. There's this one part on there where one of the guys is saying he hopes his kids never have to sell drugs and that's why he sold drugs, so his kids wouldn't have to go through that. LB: Less of a glorification. And that is why I think people have been drawn to Jay-Z from the beginning. On Reasonable Doubt, he has a song called "Regrets," and it's all about learning how to live with regrets from the game and all that. There's occasionally songs where he might glorify shit, but it's always from a, not a mature point of view, but you can tell he puts a thought into it. Not just spouting off shit. And with this record, yeah, exactly, from someone who's lived both sides of the fence and imparting this wisdom to you. RM: Most of what I thought about mainstream rap, up until about 2004, was that it was just money, bitches, drugs, etc. And it seems like recently, and I don't know if this is just my perception of it, but with stuff like Ghostface's last couple albums, which again have that street-level, this-is-some-fucked-up-shit feel to them, it's not glorifying what happens there; it's kind of horrific. It just seems like rap is really getting a sense of history, of perspective, of cultural place, and I think that the whole thing about the persona, like you were talking about with the concept record idea, there is this thing about rap where there is this very distinct divide between the idea of the rapper in the song versus who the person actually is. It's really hard to split those things from each other, but there is a definite sense that how much Jay-Z actually slung is up in the air. Like, who really knows? I read an interview with someone regarding, I think, the show "The Wire," but interviewing drug dealers in prison talking about rappers and saying they probably were on a corner, but they're not running the game. LB: No way. Because if they were, there's no way they would ever try to be a rapper. There are certain people you hear about where people are like, that guy was really doing shit. You even hear about T.I. and obviously that guy has not let go of everything because he's probably going to go to jail for a long time for gun stuff, but in that "Ignorant Shit" song [from American Gangster] that samples the best part from the Isley Brothers song that no one has done yet ["Between the Sheets"], he says somewhere in there, "Believe half of what you see / and none of what you hear / even if it's spit by me / and with that said I will kill people dead." You know what I mean? Believe half of what you hear, and I will kill people. So don't believe it. And some of the stuff he puts together from just a straight, lyrical MC perspective. I know everyone's talking about that "Blue Magic" line where he's like, "Blame Oliver North for Iran-Contra," and then he says, "I ran contraband that they sponsored," or whatever. That string and all that is some next-level shit. RM: And he's got that swagger. It seems like with this record he's experimenting more with imagery, like the way you line things up. And it's interesting to see those things clashing because you rarely ever get independent dudes who have that level of confidence and self-possession, but they often have more artsy things going on, and to see Jay doing certain things like that is great. Like the one I was listening to in the car was "No Hook" where he's talking about being skinny where he says, "Toothpick / But I do lift weight like I'm using / 'roids—" LB: "Rolls Royce keep my movements smooth / while maneuvering..." That stream of consciousness. RM: It shifts through him driving through manure in the sewers where he grew up. The way it takes you through that reminds me even of people like MF DOOM in a way. The way that DOOM doesn't always have a straight narrative going, but he's just skipping along from these points, and you realize that in three lines he's covered so much. LB: It's almost the way that rock or other music is written with fewer words, because rap music has a million words in every song and you know any type of music besides rap music has fewer words in it. And he does a good job with that. RM: Yeah, like the thing about "I off your on switch / You're not too bright, goodnight / long kiss, bye-bye, my reply / blah-blah ..." LB: "Blast burner then pass burner to Ty-Ty," which is his dog [Tyran "Ty-Ty" Smith ]. Certain people can just say anything and it will sound cool. Jay commands your attention like that. |
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| Last Updated: Tuesday, December 11, 2007 at 10:51 PM | ||||
