“Don’t say cool, that’s a bad word” – Jeru The Damaja Interview (1996)
I received a request for a ’96 Jay-Z interview, which I have somewhere in around the house but I haven’t managed to work out where exactly. While searching for that tape, I came across a Westwood interview with Jeru The Damaja from the same year. This is back when he just dropped his second album with DJ Premier still in tow. Things were looking up for the Original Dirty Rotten, as between radio spots for Squeezer Orange Juice, pissing off the Bad Boy crew and a little back and forth with The FuGees, Jeru was all set for a healthy future in the rap game. Years later, having out-grown his weed habit and now self-producing his own music, Jeru is still doing his thing. Will he ever return to the level of quality displayed on “Brooklyn Took It” and “Come Clean”? And if so, will anyone be listening?
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O.C. Interview (1997)
The third and final classic interview from my tape box is thankfully not with Westwood, but taken from The Mixmaster Show (92.3 The Beat, LA). I don’t know who the host is, but he’s quite capable of delivering a few corny comments of his own. O.C. was doing press for his second album, Jewelz, which I found to be dissapointing at the time but listening to it now it’s got some really dope stuff on there. It could be argued that O dumbed-down his lyrics and comes accross as arrogant on this album, but you can’t lose with a production line-up of D.I.T.C., DJ Premier and the Beatminerz in 1997! I heard a song from his new Starchild project, which is the Japanese version of his new album, and O.C. was back in good form, which is very promising. Regardless of what the future holds for him, the song “O-Zone” remains as one of the finest tracks ever made, so I’m willing to cut him some slack for unleashing “Far From Yourz” on the world.
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Large Professor – Interview and Freestyle (1996)
Another one from the old tape box – Large Professor talking about his upcoming Geffen album, which as we all know, was never actually released. After the luke-warm reception his two singles received, Xtra P became another tax write-off. But when he chatted with Westwood in New York – late April of 1996 – things were still on track. As usual, Paul makes for an excitable and somewhat eccentric interview subject, sounding as “spacey” as ever. To round things off, Large and his boys from Flushing drop some (drunken/blunted) freestyle action and proceed to “have fun”. And giggle a lot.
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