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Young Jeezy is hip hop’s self-appointed ultimate hustler of 2005. While on a promotional trip in London, The Situation caught up with the rapper/businessman as he discussed his childhood, music and even politics.
“I
don’t want to be a statistic. I don’t wanna be dead or in
jail without nothing,” declares Young
Jeezy. “It happens a lot where I’m from; people
get killed, people go to jail, and people forget about them. I won’t
let that happen to me.” Having already gone double platinum on the
underground market, the 26-year old Southern rapper has blown up big this
year. He’s quickly climbed the mainstream ranks, dealt with the
likes of Diddy and Hov,
and released two acclaimed albums.
Jeezy’s thriving career lies on two important factors – his undeniable desire and his interest in hip hop; the latter of which has been ever growing since childhood. “I got a Fatboy tape for Christmas like late 80s, early 90s. It was about all I got, but I listened to it front and back, just thinking about how if one day I could be heard like that,” he told.
Jeezy’s major-label debut, ‘Let’s Get It: Thug Motivation 101’, shows that despite going mainstream, he’s still resistant to commercialising his music, something initiated by his street upbringing. “It was hard coming up,” the Georgian native recalls. “I tried school, that didn’t work out. There were some things you wanted but couldn’t really just get them. I was living with my mum at the time and she didn’t have that type of money, so I started out hanging around with the older cats, seeing how they were surviving and picked up on it. Living like that made me what I am today. You go to school and college but they can’t teach you to be a man; the streets taught me how to be a man. I took what the streets gave me and I made something out of nothing; a lot out of a little.”
With a rapping career in mind, Jeezy, born Jay Jenkins, built a buzz on the underground level. “There’s some people who take the mixtape hustle and really take advantage of it,” he explains. “Like it’s the same with myself, 50 [Cent] and Slim [Thug]. That’s why I think we’re successful – we understand the hustle; we know how to get out there and get it, instead of waiting on it.”
After gaining underground recognition, Jenkins moved onto the label hustle. First came an album deal on Diddy’s Bad Boy label for Boyz N Da Hood, a group consisting of himself, Jody Breeze, Big Gee and Big Duke. The quartet were depicted as the modern-day NWA, in that they were set to bring back real gangsta rap. “When we were coming up, music was an everyday part of our life, but it’s not like that no more,” Jeezy told. “Nowadays you think music is cars, women and champagne – I’m trying to bring it back. The people we listened to were the people we felt were really part of our life, but now there’s so many cats rapping that you just don’t know who’s who anymore; people just listen to whatever sounds good. For me, to see the people, to motivate the people is enough. It don’t matter if I sell one thousand or one million, I’m good.”
More recently, Jeezy announced his departure from Boyz N Da Hood. “I’m a businessman, and it was a business venture,” he explains. “Me and Puff are two bosses, we sat down and negotiated a deal. I told him I could be in for one album but that was about it ‘cos I had a lot of other things going on. It was understood so it was never a problem.” When asked if he still talks to the rest of the group, he answers, “They cool. They artists, I’m a boss. Know what I mean?”
The 25-year-old then set about focusing on the promotion of his solo record with Def Jam. “I was selling too many mixtapes not to be signed; I had the streets on fire. Counting the bootlegs I moved, [it’s] probably 2 million!” he said. “Personally, I prefer the mixtape hustle, but the label hustle enables you to do other things. It’s like a stepping stone to push you out in front of a bigger audience. When Kevin [Liles] and L.A. [Reid] came in, we clicked from the word go.” The outcome? ‘Let's Get It: Thug Motivation 101’ – Young Jeezy’s gritty solo record. “I got such a different sound,” he says. “I understand what I’m doing now, I know what the song formula is. I know what I want to say; it’s like ghetto gospel, being a motivational speaker. If I was in front of a group of people, I would say the same thing, just now I put it into song form. I’m not a rap star, I’m a ‘Trap Star’, that’s the song that best describes me.” He continues, “When Jay-Z heard my album, he was like, ‘You got a classic.’ He’s definitely a visionary, like myself. He’s a boss and I watch him because I’ll be in those shoes one day; I wanna be the president of Def Jam,” Jeezy mulls. “I tell people my album’s like a good Friday, the next is going to be like a good Saturday. And you know Saturdays are better than Fridays.”
Since his step up on the fame platform, it’s not uncommon to see hip hop heads representing in T-shirts illustrating Young Jeezy’s snowman logo. “The snowman symbolises my hustler-related past. The snowman is the ultimate hustler, that’s what he does. No matter what, he gon’ speak it. He gon’ talk but he’s also going to get the money. I’m still the snowman, I’m selling records.”
However, the literal street meaning of ‘snow’ – cocaine – has sparked controversy. Schools across America have but a bar on students wearing the trademark T-shirts – a ban that Jeezy calls “crazy”. He says, “You can’t just look at the snowman and say that it glorifies one thing. It doesn’t glorify drug use, it glorifies the ultimate hustler, the struggle, the movement, the people who ain’t got it and are trying to get it. Society’s tryin’ to make everything drug-related or crime-related but it’s how you feel. The last shirt I wore was a Tupac shirt. I love that dude to death, so you know, anybody that’s walking round with a snowman shirt, I know they respect me the same. I don’t know what the big deal is.”
Jeezy goes on to further demonstrate his thoughts: “There’s a lot of wars and stuff going on that they need to worry about rather than a shirt for the hood. But [the ban] is only going to make it bigger. Seeing it, it looks like what they were trying to do to Tupac early, for me. It’s real political. Once you get that type of following where the people are listening to what you say, the government gets annoyed. They worried that you gon’ say something that makes sense to people. A lot of people might see it your way and it might cause some problems. It’s real political; they tryin’ to shut it down before it gets out of hand. But they can’t, not with the snowman, it’s not gonna happen.”
There’s been further negative press on Jeezy in recent weeks. A dispute over child support payments between the rapper and his ex-girlfriend ended up in court. “It’s been settled now,” he says. “I’ve always been a major part of my child’s life, that was never a problem. Everyone thought that this was a lady I was just with, and that I blew up and I weren’t with her no more, but it weren’t like that. We grew up in the same projects and we had a child when we were very young and we didn’t speak for a lot of years after that. So when the videos started coming on, I started getting phone calls. TV just does strange things to people. They see you on TV and they gotta check if the bankroll’s got bigger.”
Young Jeezy, however, is back concentrating on the music track. He’s already released the Mannie Fresh-laced ‘And Then What’, and the next single in the UK is ‘Soul Survivor’. “Akon was coming through the studio, and he passed me some beats,” he explains. “He gave me that ‘Soul Survivor’ one, and I was like ‘Yeah this is it’. He was saying we should do a club song but I said, ‘Nah, I got another idea for it’. We put it together; it was a little bit of both of us. It’s clubby, but at the same time I feel comfortable with it.”
And then what? “I probably got three or four more singles from this album. I just shot a video for ‘Trap Star’, about to do a video for ‘My Hood’ – it was too good an album to just do the normal thing and release three videos and that’s it,” Jeezy claims. “I’m still gonna bring my new album into play – that’s going to be bigger, better. It’s going to be what the people want to hear, but I’ll still keep it hood. You ain’t gon’ hear me crossing over or no shit, it’s still going to be me.”
Furthermore, Jeezy’s set to grow as a CEO. “I just got the label deal with Def Jam, it’s about to be big. U.S.D.A. is my clique; the group is Slick Pulla, Blood Raw and myself, Snowman, so we about to get that cracking. ‘06 is going to be a big year for us.”
‘Soul Survivor’ is out on January 23, 2006 here in the UK.
The album, ‘Let's Get It: Thug Motivation 101’ is in stores
now. For more information, check out www.youngjeezy.com.
