When you’re an artist in the music game, you will always have hot and cold streaks. Ask anybody around you and they will tell you when you’re hot, everybody wants you. When you’re cold, everyone thinks you’re dead. Well, maybe not to that extreme, but it’s somewhere close. Atlanta rapper turned reality star Yung Joc never has had issues with being hot or cold because he’s continued to make money either way.
After releasing his second proper album in 2007 and a couple subsequent mixtapes, Joc fell away from the spotlight and got his executive on. As the head of Swagg Team Entertainment, he brought us Hot Stylz’ “Lookin Boy” and the ubiquitous dance craze “The Stanky Leg” by the GS Boyz. Yes, it is his fault we were all doing a dance that had us looking like we were dragging somebody’s peg leg.
Now that he’s handled business as an artist and executive, Yung Joc is tossing his fitted hat into the murky waters of reality television. Joc was announced as one of the new cast members for the third season of VH1′s hit “Love and Hip Hop Atlanta,” which premieres on Monday May 5th. On the show, we will get to see the highs and lows of his relationship with Benzino’s ex-almost-fiancee Karlie Redd. Along with his love life, we’ll see Yung Joc getting back in the studio to make new music.
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Check out what he had to say about people’s reactions to his new single “I Got B*tches,” if he’s ready for his life to change once “Love and Hip Hop Atlanta” premieres, and whether or not ego is destroying the art of Hip-Hop.
TUD: So tell me about your new single “I Got Bitches.” Why name he record that instead of something else?
YJ: Cuz I got bitches. I think I would try to be as truthful to the song as I possibly can. Just because I got bitches don’t mean I’m f**king them all. I got bitches on my team and in my corner. I know it comes with such a negative undertone to use the word ‘bitch’ to express the amount of women I have.
I mean, why can’t I say it if they’re out here calling themselves bitches. So don’t look at me as saying it bad because I got some very prominent business women who will say, “I’m a bad bitch. I’m an educated bitch.” And I’m just like, “Well, okay.”
So how do you feel about the word ‘bitch’ being put up there as the female equivalent to calling a man a ‘n*gga’?
It’s all in the connotation. Yes, the word is primarily used by men about women, but when I play this record, do you know how many women sing that part over the guys? Girls at the shows be like, “All my bitches is dimes!” Then you realize it’s not as bad as the world is going to try to make it seem in that moment. Am I gonna catch some flack over this record for the terminology? Hell yeah. I am an adult and this is the way I’m choosing to express myself. So I don’t want to say, “Fuck who don’t like it.” I just want to say, “Excuse me while I express what the fuck I do.” Don’t judge me off of one song.
Why take such a long break between albums? What’s it been, like four or five years?
You gotta understand, man, the transitions. When you come into a system doing one thing–I came in as Yung Joc, Mr. It’s Goin Down–but once I started seeing flack from the situation I was in, I had to immediately adjust how I was gonna to look at any situation. If I know that there are discrepancies that are gonna stop me from being able to put out my music, then I have to go to plan B which is find some other talent, mold it and send it out into the world. And I did that and I made a lot of money doing that. I’ve done a lot of stuff from then to now that I don’t get credit for because it kinda keeps me under the radar and I get to still live the same way I’ve been living when I got on.
Are you prepared for your anonymity to change now that you’re about to be on “Love and Hip Hop Atlanta”?
I’m definitely prepared for it to change. I know what I signed up for. I ain’t no spring chicken. I’ve been around the block. The name is Yung Joc and I have a youthful vibrance to myself, but at the end of the day, I’m a grown man. Hell, my son is 14 and I did not have him at a young age. With that being said, I ain’t gotta say too much more. [laughs]
What’s the vision and focus for the album you have coming out?
Just getting back to the basics of how I see life. Cuz you know, you can’t please everybody. That’s not even my aim. I like when people go against the shit that I do because it clarifies things for me. It lets me know that at the end of the day, everyone has a different outlook. I don’t care if everybody doesn’t understand where I’m going musically.
You have a title and release date?
No. I’m just trying to put it together. I don’t have a release date because I’m not sure if I’m really done with this album. I got a lot of music though, I got a lot of features, big features. I got a lot of production from big producers. But you know piecing together a body of work and making sure you deliver isn’t as easy as people think. But I have good problems because I got a lot of good records and some of them I love to the point I don’t want to complete this album without them and some of them will have to wait for another time.
Why do artists still try to make complete bodies of work when we are living in a singles-driven market?
Well, that’s why I don’t have a release date. You still want to be able to create a whole body of work because you’re still trying to cover a lot ground in your artistry. Some people don’t like to hear the single type record. They wanna hear the real because singles are created to attract a lot of people at one time. With that single, you have one shot to create something that’s appealing to the masses and it’s hard. I got homies that don’t want to hear the single that’s on the radio. They like, “Man, what the album gon sound like?”
How do you make that real music that people want to hear if you’re known as the “It’s Goin Down”/”Coffee Shop” guy?
I just do it because there are records that you hear and you say, “Oh, he got some sense. He ain’t just rhyming. He ain’t just saying some shit to make us do a dance. He’s just said some shut that made me think.” I think it’s really to each his own. I just do what’s on my heart at the time. I got some of those real records they were just never released. The substance and content of those records would definitely help people understand that I’m not just Mr. Its Goin Down.
Since the musical landscape had changed so much since your last album, where do you fit in?
I don’t fit in and that’s a great position to be in. I didn’t fit in when I first jumped out here. Fitting in to me means you have stuff that kinda feels like this and kinda feels like that. That’s fine for some, but that’s not me. As an artist, I’ve been able to take a hiatus as long as I have and still be confident enough to come back with some new music.
Before the world heard me, shit, nobody knew of me. I was just the cat with his own sound. And I was coming from a place like Atlanta. When I was coming in crunk was going out and snap was going out. At that point, I could’ve tried to fit in, but then I would’ve been out with crunk and snap. I did something totally different from that and was able to create my own lane. Do you think Kanye tries to fit in? Do you think Drake tried to fit in? The greatest artists of our time, as far as Hip-Hop is concerned, didn’t try to fit in. They created standards and other muthaf**kas fit in around them.
Who do you think will fit in around you when this album drops?
You gotta ask the fans about who will fit around me.
Like, look at Nicki Minaj doing “Looking Ass” when me and Hot Stylz had “Lookin Ass N*gga” first. Eminem and Nicki Minaj, within six months of each other, both released songs with “Lookin Ass” or “Lookin Ass N*gga.” These are iconic figures in the music industry.
If you look at a Juicy J right now. Juicy J got a lot of my flavor. He’s been around before me. I’m not saying he took my sound. He is just capitalizing off it. If you listen to the song he has with Miley Cyrus, he raps, “Js on my feet. Js on my feet. So get like me.” Who you think that came from? [begins rapping lyrics from “Patron”] “I just bought a zone/Js on my feet/I’m on that Patron/So get like me.”
I don’t sit around and try to take credit for that because, hell, I didn’t invent the wheel. I didn’t create Hip-Hop. So a lot of the shit I’ve done, I’ve had to pull from other sources that were before me.
Do you think people wanting the credit and their ego ruins the art of Hip-Hop?
Hell no! Hip-Hop is one of those types of sport. You got some people, like myself, who can sit back and have people come up to them and say, “Bruh, on the low, you know that muthaf**ka tried to come and take your sound?!” I say, “It’s cool because that’s what we do.” We recycle. That’s how we replenish by recycling the attributes that have already worked before.
Then you have those other artists who are like, “That’s all me! That’s my sound!” Because that’s a part of their whole thing. Every artist has their own perspective. When you hear an artist that’s boastful, some people like that. Then you have the humble and quiet fan who likes the boastful rapper because they wouldn’t normally talk like that. Or you have the normally boastful fan who really enjoys the humble rapper. That’s just life. So me, personally, I don’t have to fish for credit talking about I did this or that first. Who cares? Just keep making music. Keep being a trendsetter. When everybody thinks it’s time to go left, go right.
What do you want to be remembered for?
I just wanna be remembered for being a phenomenal person. When my time is over, I want people to say that I was a good person and that I loved life and he people around me. There was never a full moment around me and that the energy around me was real.
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