“Bandz” might make her dance, but this week’s “Renaissance Man” is where legendary rapper Juicy J shares his “Chronicles.”
A founding member of Three 6 Mafia — who has gone on to have an excellent profession in music, turn out to be an entrepreneur and creator, and take home an Academy Award together with his rap group — Juicy reminisced about his rise to fame from humble beginnings out of Memphis, Tennessee, within the early Nineties.
Even when that iconic rap trio began making it big, none of it felt real for J, he told me.
“Back within the day, we used to do radio promo shows with Destiny’s Child. I remember Kelly Rowland was telling me, she was like, ‘I really like your music! I really like your music!’” Juicy said.
“I used to be just shocked. I didn’t think everybody listened to Three 6 Mafia.”
The feeling only grew, and Juicy soon noticed that entire audiences in foreign nations would start singing along at shows — all in English.
“They knew all of the words,” Juicy recalled of an early show in Japan that’s been stuck in his mind ever since.
Next, he and the Mafia struck Oscar gold, winning Best Original Song for “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp,” featured within the 2005 film “Hustle & Flow.”
“We were the primary people they reached out to to do music within the movie,” Juicy told me. “And man, I knew something was going to be special concerning the movie. And we did our thing on it.”
But winning took second place to what got here right after the Academy Awards.
“We had one in every of the longest Oscar parties of all time … on the Playboy Mansion,” he said, offering a few of his preferred gentlemen’s clubs across the US.
Though he also spoke concerning the emotional resonance of his vulnerable memoir, “Chronicles of the Juice Man,” which hit shelves earlier this month.
“You understand, [I’m] letting all the pieces out, man,” he said. “If I could help anyone … Because there’s plenty of those who have these issues, inside music, outside of music — drug abuse and just all the pieces, mental health, all that.”
“So if I could just touch some lives, man,” he said. “I feel like we’re all here for a purpose, and our purpose is to assist people and just attempt to get people closer to God if we will. In order that’s the mission I’m on at once.”
But that’s not the one objective on Juicy J’s mind. He desires to see an excellent future for hip-hop — and that’s going to require some changes for contemporary artists.
“I hear plenty of people attempting to be like one another … Just do whatever involves mind,” he advised.
“I feel like lately, plenty of people, plenty of music, don’t sound too different. Lots of it sounds the identical, which is cool, I still like it, but I’m waiting to listen to what anyone else goes to bring [that’s] different to the table. Then I’m willing to listen,” he promised.
Detroit native Jalen Rose is a member of the University of Michigan’s iconoclastic Fab Five, who shook up the school hoops world within the early ’90s. He played 13 seasons within the NBA before transitioning right into a media personality. Rose executive-produced “The Fab Five” for ESPN’s “30 for 30” series, is the creator of the best-selling book “Got To Give the People What They Want,” a fashion tastemaker and co-founded the Jalen Rose Leadership Academy, a public charter school in his hometown.
