The Beatnuts are one of those groups that are all about hip-hop. The New York City duo JuJu and Psycho Les are back with Milk Me, an album that stays true to what they started 10 years ago – creating pure, good hip-hop. The album’s first single for the streets, “Hot” featuring Greg Nice, is proof with a sick head-nodding horn beat that will give ‘Nuts fans exactly what they’ve been waiting for. ChartAttack recently spoke with producer/MC JuJu while at a gig in Toronto about staying true to his game and the current state of hip-hop.
ChartAttack: You guys have a lot of humour in your music. Is that important or do you not even think about it?
JuJu: Well, man to be in this business you have to have a fuckin’ sense of humour. If not you’re gonna be smashin’ everybody’s fuckin’ face in.
Well, it seems like a lot of the bigger hip-hop artists out there nowadays don’t have any sense of humour in their music at all.
It’s real life you know what I’m saying? You don’t walk around acting like you’re gonna kick everybody’s ass all day. But it’s like, you get humour you get all kinds of feelings ‘n’ shit. We’re always clowning though, me and Les are always clowning with each other and shit, so of course it’s gonna come out in the music. We both have a good sense of humour and we try to find humour in everything so I guess that comes out in the music.
Is there any type of message that you’re trying to bring across though?
Uhhh, yeah, that I’ll fuck you up [laughs]. And I’m not a nice guy. Nah, we’re not that kind of a group. We’re like a party group. We on some hardcore shit, party, drinkin’, bitches, niggas that’s cool show love to niggas, niggas that act up and disrespect, we’ll smash you. It’s just some real street shit, kid. We’re just reppin’ where we’re from and how we put it down, basically. Not no toughguy shit, nothing like that, just some shit for you to listen to and have a good time. Some real hip-hop, because as far as hip-hop right now I’m not feeling none of that shit because the essence of hip-hop is sampling and a lot of people don’t sample anymore. You got these kids that are really talented writers, but their music is redundant. You got niggas like Lil’ Jon, the Petey Pablo shit, the Usher, it’s all the same fuckin’ beat. And the niggas are getting’ hundreds of thousands of dollars for that? You’re not uplifting the movement, you’re encouraging little kids that want to make that kind of money to conform to that formula. It’s hip-hop, kid. Hip-hop’s style is originality and creativity, not about producing the same beat five times over and selling it for a hundred thousand dollars every time.
From being in the hip-hop scene for a while now and staying true to what you’ve always done, what do you think about hip-hop now? Like, how big it is, basically.
I mean, right now it’s just a big machine. It’s pretty much out of control right now. That’s how I feel about it. You know, you’ve got a few guys that are still dealing with the essence of it and all of the elements involved but there’s just other people who, for commercial reasons, just exploit it and exploit other people’s styles. Like, right now there’s a lot of biting going on. You got this nigga Guerilla Black out there who sounds like Biggie, rhymes like Biggie and has the nerve to say in his record that he doesn’t sound like anybody. I’m just saying, that shit ain’t hip-hop, nigga.
