J-Live Takes Another Trip Around the Sun

The problem with nostalgic “golden era” hip-hop is that it so much of it seems designed to guilt trip the listener into paying attention. Rappers harken back to the ever-shifting “golden era,” as if mentioning that 90’s New York hip-hop existed automatically makes their lyrics as interesting and relevant as Big L was in 1994. But a two decade old style is still two decades old and reminding the listener that it sounded good two decades ago doesn’t fix that. It the rap equivalent of saying “I’m not racist, but…” before making a racist statement.

J-Live is this exception to this phenomenon because is he legitimately one of the great rappers of 90’s New York and this still evident today. Around The Sun, his latest album, is full of all the ease of expression, effortless wordplay and dynamic charisma on which he built his name. Tracks like “Worlds Apart” and “Equinox” would be boring and pedantic coming from anyone else, but J makes high-concept rap fun. And on “Money Matters” and “Not Listening,” he sermonizes without condescension. J-Live never needs a moral imperative to draw in listeners with off-trend music: he’s just so good at making golden era rap music that its appeal is self-evident.

But J-Live also has one of the most ridiculous label fuckery stories of all time. His debut, The Best Part was slated for a 1998 release and featured beats DJ Premier, Pete Rock, and Prince Paul in an era when those names still impacted radio, as well as Grap Luva (Pete Rock’s very talented brother), future Kanye collaborator 88 Keys, and Brooklyn legend DJ Spinna. The lead single “Them That’s Not” was a jaw-dropping underground classic, a tale of industry hubris whose tempo rose and fall with the career of the protagonist.

But The Best Part got hung up first in transition from indie to major labels, then was continually shelved as the majors consolidated and reconfigured their release schedules. But press copies got sent out along the way, and amid rave reviews, the hype grew. The album sat in limbo for years, available only through bootlegs and, for a lucky few in 1999, the internet. With a rap career on hold, J ended up teaching English in Brooklyn.

I caught up with J-Live, now living in Atlanta, by phone this week. We talked about his new album, his balanced approach to all rap, how The Best Part shaped his life, and public schools.

Noisey: How different is the Atlanta hip-hop scene from the New York hip-hop scene you came up in?
J-Live:It’s not really that different. There’s a burgeoning independent scene, a lot of independent artists, there’s several venues where independent artists frequent and support each other. The thing about New York is that those artists were most likely from New York at the time … whether it was me, Natural Resource, Jigmastas, Company Flow, The Arsonists, those are the artists I came up with. Now in Atlanta, you’re talking about Clan Destined, Boog Brown, myself, Marq Spekt … a lot of us are transplants. So when you say Atlanta hip-hop, you’re thinking more along the lines of Rich Homie Quan or Outkast. But if you want to go back as far back as Mass Influence and Micronots and even Y’all So Stupid to the present day, the scene has been consistent as far as – and I wish I could come up with a better term – that “golden era” type of sound, the scene’s been pretty consistant. Now as far as what Atlanta’s known for worldwide, that’s a bit outside of my wheelhouse. But I do appreciate what’s going on.

From where I’m sitting in Brooklyn, I see a lot of independent rappers in Atlanta that aren’t making the same kind of rap you are.
Look at Killer Mike for example. Quintessential Atlanta hip-hop paired up with El-P, quintessential historically New York indie hip-hop. And that’s a beautiful pairing. To me that just typifies how you can strip away all the labels and at the end of the day, hip-hop is hip-hop. And people are people. There’s a group down here called Civil Writes and they’re dope as hell and they’re SO Atlanta. But lyrically you can really appreciate where they’re coming from … there’s no shortage of artists like that from Atlanta. But at the asme time, I been down here 7 years and I’m still unmistakably New York.

Being from New York and being from the era you’re from, I could see how you probably would feel a certain way or be disposed to be a little bit against what the world sees as Atlanta hip-hop. So has living there softened that stance?
I don’t know if there’s a stance to be softened. Put it like this … if there’s a clash between art and industry, I am pro art. So that means pushing the envelope, being as creative as possible and being true to yourself. The industry side would be developing that kind of methodical assembly line or fitting into a certain style and going with the flow of whatever’s hot and relevant for the sake of being hot and relevant.

But that’s true wherever you’re from … there’s no shortage of industry in New York and there’s no shortage of art in Atlanta. But to the degree that the industry caters to the sound that is more indicative of Atlanta, in that way you kind of get rubbed the wrong way. If everybody is trying to sound like they’re from the south whether they’re from the south or not, if everybody has stripped down the craftsmanship of their beats to the point where basically it’s just one or two drum kits and three or four tracks, that rubs me the wrong way. But at the same time, you can pull that off in a genuine, homegrown manner that I have to respect because it’s where you’re coming from.

I judge it on a case by case basis … does this seem authentic to me or does this seem like some bullshit. And that’s universal across the board whether you’re from New York, LA, Houston, Atlanta, Chicago, wherever.

I definitely hear that open-mindedness in your music, especially at the end of “Not Listening.” Artists in your lane of golden era, New York hip-hop tend to focus on ideas of the right way and wrong way to do things, but you make it clear you are more interested in starting a conversation about art than telling anyone what to do.
Exactly. I don’t claim to have all the answers as far as the objective is concerned, but I know where I stand as far as the subjective is concerned. At the end of the day, we all want a lot of the same things. we want to feel good to the music we listen to whether it’s escapism or the state of the union.

Talk about what happened to The Best Part.
Well the story in a nutshell is it was J-Live, Raw Shack, Payday, London, Polygram. Raw Shack was trippin over creative control and then bounced with a portion of the budget. So I ended up having to re-do the record. Then it became J-Live, Payday, London, Polygram. and then London let Payday go so it became J-Live, London, Polygram. And then Polygram dissolved, so it became J-Live somewhere in the Universal Music Group because London had basically gone to Warner.

The record was supposed to come out when I graduated from college [in 1998]. A bunch of producers were paid but the record never came out. The record was released to press in a certain manner and fashion, and people were going crazy about it only to find out it wasn’t gonna drop. When you have this record that the press has, and this was before the internet was what it is today, this was like 1999, when press has a record that’s not coming out …. people were coming back from England telling me they got an EP with 6 of my songs on it and it had nothing to do with me! There’s all these bootlegs floating around. So I put out a version in 1999 that was my own bootleg, then I put out a version in 2001 that was the official version.

The thing about it was 1999 was the year after I graduated. With The Best Part planning to drop officially in 1998 in my graduating year, I had taken summer classes the semester before so that in the spring all I had was an independent study so that I could tour off putting the record out! So when it didn’t happen I was like, I guess I’m not touring the record but I’m still gonna graduate. And that’s how I ended up teaching in Brownsville.

So how did you decide to become a teacher?
One of my brothers in the Five Percent Nation was teaching in Brownsville [Brooklyn] and told me and my roommate in college they had spots for both of us if we want it. We were like hell yeah. I was an English Major so I was teaching Language Arts.

How long did you end up teaching for?
That’s the thing, I only taught from 1998 to 2002. I taught in Brownsville for a year, that school was already failing and that’s what my song “Brooklyn Public” [from his 2005 album The Hear After] was about, then I taught in Bushwick a year later, then toured for a year off The Best Part, then taught in Bushwick after that.

When [2002 album] All of the Above came out it was time to go back to doing music full time and that’s what I’ve been doing ever since. But because the story around All was “rapper turned teacher”—this guy with a record out happens to teach in Brooklyn—that’s been with me to this day. People still ask me if I’m teaching and I haven’t taught since ’02. But if you ask me a couple years from now, I could be like “yeah” as if I never stopped.

What’s more fucked up, Atlanta public schools or New York public schools?
I got a song called “Yes” on The Best Part… hahaha … they both face the same problems in different ways. It’s really about resources and attention, but it’s deeper that the resources and attention of the school; it’s about the resources and attention of the community. A lot of it has to do with the parent involvement, and parent involvement has a lot to do with what you can do with your income, how involved you can be and just where you are in your life. It’s the segregation that takes place on a class level, on a tax bracket level … the fact that it coincides with race is beside the point. It coincides with race because of the history of racial discrimination in this country. But it’s not the overt factor … if you gonna base how much a school gets on the property value in that neighborhood then that’s class segregation in and of itself. They don’t do that in sports leagues.

How do you mean?
The NFL shares their revenue, right? Green Bay, New York, there’s a salary cap, Green Bay’s gonna get the money that New York’s gonna get regardless if New York made that money for Green Bay or not. But if I’m in a rich neighborhood, I’m gonna keep all the money in the community. If I’m in a poor neighborhood, I’m gonna keep all that … lack of money in the community.

I don’t know how they’re doing it in Brooklyn now, but I can imagine charter schools are impacting things. I can tell you charter schools pretty much shaped where I chose to live in Atlanta. We used to jump through all kinds of hoops to get into a charter school, it’s like a lottery and it’s a crap shoot. You have so many parents trying to put their kids in the best school possible. If that’s a charter school that allows them to leave their neighborhood school and go there, they’re gonna clamor to do that. For me it was like, forget all this, I’m just gonna go to the neighborhood with the best school and skip all that rigamarole.

Listen and buy Around the Sun on J-Live's Bandcamp.

Skinny Friedman is so real hip-hop he lives in a gigantic cargo pocket. He's on Twitter - @skinny412

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