UGO Interview

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DJ Jazzy Jeff Interview

By Daniel Robert Epstein

"My whole thing was to pretty much create a 2007 version of my mom's basement."

DJ Jazzy Jeff is best known for his collaborations with Will Smith, aka The Fresh Prince, on songs like "Parents Just Don't Understand" and "Summertime." After they ended that duo, Jeff has produced for a number of hip-hop artists and done a number of solo records. His latest is The Return of the Magnificent, with guest artists like Rhymefest, Big Daddy Kane and Method Man.

UGO: What are you up to today?

DJ: Jazzy Jeff: Just taking care of my dog and getting my interviews done.

UGO: Where are you today?

DJ: Pretty much the suburbs of Philadelphia.

UGO: I read that you bought a house and a studio. When did you do all that?

DJ: I'm going to say about two years ago.

UGO: What made you do that?

DJ: I think a lot of it had to do with me waiting to change my creative environment. I started listening to a lot of old Jazzy Jeff and Fresh Prince stuff and I started just thinking about where I was creatively when I was making a lot of that stuff. It was almost like everything went back to my environment when I didn't have bills. It was an environment that was very conducive to being creatively free. I started saying, "How can I get that environment back?" My whole thing was to pretty much create a 2007 version of my mom's basement.

UGO: That's interesting, because most people don't get really get creative until they leave their mom's basement

DJ: I realized that life is what steps in the way of creativity. I think people who are married aren't as a creative as they were when they weren't married. It's not to say that you don't progress in these areas in your life, but I think a lot of those things got in my way. When I was in my mom's basement, I would go to the corner store and buy me a sandwich and some chips and a soda and just bury myself in making beats and that was it. I know I can't get rid of my responsibilities, but I wanted to take my surroundings back to where it was just about me being creative.

UGO: Have you found that it's made a big difference even between The Magnificent and this new album?

DJ: Absolutely. I didn't feel any pressure in making this new record. I probably had more fun in making this record than I had in a long time. This record came in its own time. There were days I would go into the studio and make five tracks. I didn't have that pressure of not feeling it but having stay until something comes. If I didn't feel creative, I just left and did something else until the creativity came back.

UGO: Is any of that pressure due to this new age in which we are living, when records aren't selling very well?

DJ: I think it might be a little bit of everything. I don't think that you can help but to somehow get caught up in that aspect of it. When we made our first record, it wasn't about selling records. It wasn't about being famous. Now it's completely changed. When I started DJing, I got a nine to five job to make money to put turntables on layaway, which people don't do now. I wasn't trying to be famous or rich. It was a passion of mine. Today, I meet so many kids that are like, "Yeah, I'm trying to get paid," and you can't help but to get caught up in that some way. After The Magnificent, I started going on the road and I think that's what changed my whole perspective. There were so many times that I looked up and was just confused, like, "Yo, I can't believe I'm in South Africa. What am I doing in Brazil? What am I doing in Singapore?" There are thousands and thousands of people that are just loving your music and it just shifted my brain back to how it was. Maybe it's about music and music lovers and people who love what you do.

UGO: You have two kids. Do they think you don't understand?

DJ: Of course. I think that's a natural progression. I thought that my mom did not know anything that was hip and that I could pull the wool over my mom's eyes with anything that I was doing. My son tries to do that to me today. My son thinks I was born yesterday and that the stuff that he does goes right over my head. So it's funny how life imitates art.

UGO: Talk about bringing together these great guests that you have on The Return of The Magnificent.

DJ: With this record, this is me saying, "Let me write down a list of a bunch of people that I've always wanted to work with and call them. The only thing people can tell me is no. Fortunately, no one told me no. Everybody's like, "Yeah, that'd be great. I would love to do it".

UGO: Do you feel the industry gives you the respect you deserve?

DJ: I don't think I ever look at it as what I deserve. I am not one of those guys that was, like, "Well I've done this, therefore you need to pay me homage or pay respect." I expect the respect that I give.

UGO: Do you still scratch, or is the stuff on this record from a computer?

DJ: No, I will never stop scratching. I pretty much do close to 200 dates a year that are all based around what I've always done, so everything that you hear is live.

UGO: Where else can scratching go?

DJ: 20 years ago, I thought that we've touched every genre and every area of DJing. But the advancements that we've had over the last 20 years are incredible. I don't think you can put a limit on what someone can do. I believe that DJing, and especially turntablism and scratching, is like a jazz art form. It comes down to the person's creativity. You can't reach the ultimate level of jazz. You can only reach different levels. I think that scratching is the same thing. What Qbert does and what I do is different. It's like listening to John Coltrane, listening to Miles Davis and listening to Count Basie. They're three jazz artists but they all have their own flavor, style and they all reached their own peaks at different times.

UGO: They sent me the clean version of the album, so I don't know if there are certain words on this but what do you think of certain people trying to eliminate certain words from hip-hop music?

DJ: I think the problem is a lot deeper than hip-hop music. I think my issue or concern is how all of a sudden it has become an issue of hip-hop. I don't believe anyone is coming at Martin Scorsese. I don't believe that anyone is coming at Quentin Tarantino. I think it's a bigger issue that you can't narrow down to hip-hop. So many people are complaining about the leaves on the tree that nobody is looking at the roots. There's a lot of it that I agree with, but you can't ask people to change their lyrics in hip-hop if you're not going to do that in the motion pictures.

I don't know any hip-hop artist that owns a radio station. I don't know a hip-hop artist that owns the FCC. Twenty-five years ago, someone saying bitch on the radio was outlawed. But now it's OK. Who lifted that ban? Who made it okay? Imus must have felt that what he said was cool to say. Somebody bigger than us made it acceptable. Now when everyone starts complaining, they point the finger at hip-hop, or music in general.

UGO: You gave me a couple of examples with Quentin Tarantino and Scorsese. Those are two white guys and hip-hop is mostly associated with African-Americans and other minorities. Is it a white/black thing?

DJ: Yeah, it definitely has some racial undertones but, at the end of the day, I'm just looking at it from a common sense point of view. I don't agree with a lot of the stuff these guys say and I don't agree with a lot of the stuff that's on the radio. There's a lot of stuff on television that I don't agree with, but I don't know an actor or a producer who has the ability to set it right. The questions that we need to be asking shouldn't be geared towards a black or white hip-hop artist or an executive. There's someone bigger that no one is pointing the finger at.

UGO: I know that Will [smith] has a very big movie that's he's probably got to go all over the world to promote this year. But he also said you guys might do something by the end of the year. Can that really happen?

DJ: Yeah. We've been talking about when he goes out to promote the movie in the fall, putting together a world tour. It's more of a scheduling thing.

UGO: Would it be a similar dynamic to how you guys performed in the past?

DJ: We always perform as Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, so it won't be any different. My role will always be the exact same as it's always been.

UGO: Here's a good stupid question. When you kept getting thrown out of the house on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, how was that done?

DJ: I would have to jump and angle my body sideways and land on a mat. After doing that 12 times the energy level starts to go down and you start to get black and blue.

UGO: How many times you think you did that the whole seven seasons?

DJ: To get one good take, it probably took me about 30 times and I did it a lot. It got to the point that one of the reasons why they kept using the same take was that I couldn't do it anymore because it became too painful.

UGO: That's crazy.

DJ: I was like "I'm not doing this anymore" because one time I did it in about four different outfits and I might have jumped about 120 times. I literally couldn't come in the next day.

UGO: Wow, I didn't know it was such a big deal.

DJ: Yeah, since they have set the lights, you've got to do it about six times before they say, "OK, let's start taping" and I'm sitting there going "You didn't tape those?"

http://www.ugo.com/ugo/html/article/?id=17...amp;sectionId=2

[analogue]

Good interview

Mmm first it was a new album, then it was a tour and now there's talk about a world tour

Just what are they gonna do? lol

[ant1]

Awesome interview, Yeah now it's a world tour i just think they really don't know what they want to do right now...but i hope it happens.. and am i missing something or did that inteviewer say 7 seasons of Fresh Prince?

[analogue]

Yeah the interviewer did say 7 seasons

The important thing is though that Will and Jeff obviously want to do something. So we should hopefully see something in the near future

[KevTastic]

Well the World Tour kinda rolls with the promo for I Am Legend. So wherever that goes, so do they i hope.