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Big Pimpin'

J-Zone on Old Maids, lyrical lyricists and Fat Beats dickriders.

by Douglas Passion | 2003.07.09

With A Bottle of Whup Ass and Music For Tu Madre under his belt, J-Zone is raising the stakes with his next album, $ick of Bein' Rich. Guests include King-T, J-Ro, Masta Ace and Copywrite. Zone is also a huge Keith Van Horn fan and plans to make a tribute album in the near future entitled Keith So Horny. Loosie and Zone chew the fat:

Did growing up in Westchester have a positive influence on your music career?

Definitely. I think it was good because it kept me out of trouble ‘cause there wasn’t shit to do. When you bored all you can do is make rap records. Really that was it. If I wasn’t in Westchester, I probably wouldn’t be making no records right now. I’d probably be out there with some hoes or doing something stupid. I’d probably have like 25 kids now if I grew up in the city.

Although you’re considered an underground artist, your subject matter isn’t necessarily consistent with that genre of music.

A lot of those underground kids – the Internet type of kids – will buy my stuff. I also have that fan-base in the mid-ground ‘cause some of the underground kids don’t like my subject matter. I talk about stuff that the average joe blow can relate to – being short on money, having a fucked up car, getting played out by hoes, getting backed up, being cheap on dates. This is shit that the average Joe who might listen to 50 [Cent] or The Beatnuts can relate to so they feel that. And the production, the older stuff was definitely more geared toward the underground. The newer stuff is kind of halfway between. On the beat tip, I stepped it up a notch and I started trying some new stuff that maybe some kids who buy regular mainstream records might like.

Will making more accessible music alienate your current fans?

I just make music. I just wake up every day and make music. I make what I’m feeling. I make what’s honest to me. People put it in a box. People have a tendency to group me with people who have the same sales or whatever’s on the shelf next to me. I’ll do shows and people next to me are rapping about the cosmos and the orbits of the planets around the world and I’m rapping about ‘fuck you, bitch, I’m not paying for dinner’. People come show up and are like ‘who the hell is this clown’. The lyrical lyricists – Mc Infinite and the Super-Cosmic Emcees. ‘My metaphors and punchlines are so astronomically lyrically insane’. Then I come out on stage like ‘fuck you, I don’t freestyle, I fee-style -- get the fuck away from me, cut a check or suck a dick’. I’m not talking about shooting people, so I’m not a gangster and they can’t clump me with 50 Cent; I’m not on the Afrocentric tip so they can’t clump me with Common; I’m not doing records for the club so that can’t stick me with Nelly.

If you could share a stage with anyone, who would it be?

I’d love to tour with Eazy-E – I just loved his personality. He was the best.

What type of success do you envision for yourself?

I see myself being around for a long period of time. I think I’ll be one of those guys that never really blows through the roof in terms of sales. I might never even have a video. I might never even get on a major label. But I think I’ll always have a core fan-base. I think ten years from now I’ll still be going to Europe to do shows. Kind of like that Alkoholiks-Beatnuts thing. They never quite blew off the lid, but they kept that fan-base. I’m the type of cat – I go to the games out here, I go to the Rucker, I like to go into Pathmark and do my grocery shopping. I’m a real low-key cat, and I think if I blew up big-time I wouldn’t be able to take it. I like to be out in the street. I might even go into the city and get noticed by kids who are into that type of stuff out there, but in my neighborhood, all they listen to is 50 Cent. They don’t know who I am and I’m happy with that. My neighborhood, if it ain’t 50, then it ain’t playing. If it ain’t on Hot97, it ain’t playing. I can go right out to the corner store to get a soda and nobody’s gonna run up and try me. If I’m in the mood to get some dick-riding, I’ll do a show or I’m go visit my partner who runs the Fat Beats store in the city. If I need a little ego brushing, I’ll go on over to Sixth Ave and buy a couple of records and CD’s, talk to some people, sign a couple autographs and go home like ‘aight, I got my ego stroked’.

You say some pretty outlandish things on your records -- how much of what you talk about is real?

I’d say half of it. All rap is part fiction, part truth – and that’s what makes it great. If you meet me, I’m nothing like I am on record, but I have that in me. Some people who have rubbed me the wrong way or when I get drunk have experienced that. I’m a clown cat; I snap on people, I crack jokes, I trip out, I get drunk off of like two drinks and start whyling out. That’s really part of my personality, and anyone who knows me knows that. But some days you wake up and you don’t want to be joking around. Some days you really just don’t feel like fucking with nobody – and that’s part of it too. With chicks, yeah, I’m real cool. But I had chicks that tried to get over…so I’m like ‘aight, fine, I’m a take her out, get her drunk and dip before the bill comes’. There’s two sides to everybody. If you showcase one side more than the other, you’re not being fake. I still have records about feeling like I ain’t shit. I have records where I talk about ‘fuck it, I’m a take Prozac, I feel like shit, I ain’t shit’. Self-depreciating shit. Then I have records where I talk about ‘fuck you, I’m the man, pay me/ bitch get my money, get a job, get the fuck out my face’. I have records that do both. It’s therapeutic. J-Zone is a character; J is the person. Depending on who I’m dealing with or what day of the week it is, I might be J or I might be J-Zone. It really depends – I think that every rapper is a character, and not everybody is in character all the time. I think that’s what a lot of fans don’t see – they call you ‘fake’ or whatever when you’re not in character all the time. That’s the beauty of rap: that you can let it come out or you can let it slip away. I have a mother; I have a grandmother. But because I’m rapping about a certain girl in particular, a lot of girls are shocked. If you’re not a bitch you’re not going to get mad.

You’ve managed to be successful while staying independent. But what were you doing before you starting making a living off of music?

I was fortunate; I started hustling my music stuff when I was still in college. My first album was my senior project for college. The buzz took off so fast that I started pressing the records and selling the cassettes when I was still in school. When I finally graduated, I worked at AAA that summer. It was the type of shit where you’re sitting in an office with twenty other people answering phones and call dispatching and you had to get dressed in a shirt and tie. I’m thinking ‘why the fuck is everybody in a shirt and tie and ain’t nobody gonna see us?” Fortunately, somebody licensed my first album off me overseas and the advance was decent. I lived off my grandmother’s cooking, soup, crackers and water for the next few months until shit [took] off. When I came into the game, I didn’t know nothing about business. All I knew was that I finished my senior project and that people wanted it. Bobbito was like ‘press the vinyl, I’ll play it, I’ll sell it in my store’. Sound Library, a popular record store in New York City, was like ‘we’ll take 100 if you press 1,000’. I was like ‘I don’t want to press this shit, I want to take this money and get a new car’. I got a crash course in the business by making mistakes. I just put the record out; I had no distribution, I was just going hand-to-hand from my car selling it. I didn’t have any promo, I didn’t have press, I didn’t have no of that shit.

How did you come up with the name “Old Maid”?

When I was going to press my first record on vinyl, they said ‘what’s the record label’? I said ‘I ain’t got no record label’. The cover of the album was my grandmother with a 40 oz. bottle smoking a joint. Someone said she looked like an “Old Maid.”

Creatively, what are your plans for the future?

In a year or two’s time, I wanna be doing beats for Tha Alkaholiks…B-Legit…Suga Free…a lot of the West Coast and Southern cats. My dream is to do a beat for E-40 or Suga Free. Those guys are incredible. I want this album to open up a lot of doors for me as a producer. To me, Big Tymers’ “I Got That Work” was the best album of 2001, hands down. I think that’s the most entertaining 65 minutes of my life. I say this shit in interviews and people think I’m kidding—‘cause I’m known as being a joker—but I’m dead ass serious. I was really trying to get Baby for my album, but realistically, I can’t afford that guy.

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