By Malice Intended

Even those who don’t necessarily covet the spotlight still want their contributions to be recognized.  Unfortunately, the Hip-Hop intelligentsia can be fickle and self-serving when doling out props.  They are quick to bestow honors on the chosen few, while others are relegated to honorable mentions or written out of history completely.  In such situations it becomes necessary for those who are overlooked to shout themselves out to ensure that their legacy is acknowledged.

Just-Ice has no problem reminding people of who he is and what he has accomplished, and with good reason.  Aside from being one of Hip-Hop’s most notoriously intimidating personalities during the 1980’s, he was also a stylistic innovator.  With his 1986 debut Back to the Old School, Just presented a harder-edged sound and attitude than any of his contemporaries.  He also experimented with a grittier form of Hip-Hop/Reggae fusion than had been previously attempted. 

Throughout the 1990’s, Just-Ice slipped under the radar but continued releasing new material.  Earlier this year, he collaborated with none other than KRS-1 for the long overdue The Just-Ice and KRS-ONE EP Volume 1.  Though older and wiser, his uncompromising approach to the music has not changed.  The same can be said for his candid and straightforward demeanor.  He recently sat down with Planet Ill for a relatively short but highly entertaining Q&A.  Rest assured that the desolate one is as irrepressible as ever.

Planet Ill: The world already knows you, but just as a refresher why don’t you tell everybody who you are?

Just-Ice: Just-Ice.  The original, original gangster of Hip-Hop!

Planet Ill: You were something of a trendsetter and a pioneer when you started out in the 1980’s.  You were one of the first to incorporate Reggae, five percent teachings, and gangster/criminal themes into your work.  You were also one of the first to have really explicit lyrics.  Were you trying to be an innovator or were you just being yourself.

Just-Ice: Nah, that was just being me.  I wasn’t trying to do nothing.  Even though I should’ve been trying to be a trendsetter or to try to stand out, that wasn’t my goal or my purpose when I set out to make records so no.  I didn’t do that on purpose, no.

Planet Ill: Many of your contemporaries, the rappers you came up with and started out with, changed their sound and styles over the years.  You never did.  Do you feel as though they sold out, or simply adapted to the times?

Just-Ice: I’m not gonna say they sold out.  Im’a say they did what they felt they had to do.  I’m not gonna sit here and disrespect somebody else because they changed they style or they changed their format or whatever.  I’m just saying for that particular person, I’m sure they had to do what they had to do.  Just like me, I felt that I didn’t have to change my style because for one, no one sounds like me or no one has my style.  Even though people nowadays, they still try to bite in 2010, nobody can sound like me or do it how I do it.  So I felt I didn’t have to change my style just like the other people felt that they had to.

Planet Ill: During the mid to late 1980’s you were very visible.  From the 1990’s on you kept releasing albums but you were keeping a lower profile.  What was the reasoning behind that?  Label drama?

Just-Ice: Well, for one, I was never an out there kind of person.  I don’t like signing autographs, I don’t like people going “ooh ooh there go Just-Ice!”  I don’t like that kind of shit.  It wasn’t done on purpose; it’s just that I just got tired of the limelight.  I mean, even now I try to stay out of the limelight.  But it seems like the more you stay out of the limelight, the more people want to see you.  You know?  So it’s not like I did it intentionally, that’s just me.  I just don’t like all the major, major attention.

Planet Ill: You had really explicit lyrics at a time when rappers shied away from that.  What made you so much more daring than them?  Were you not concerned about radio play?

Just-Ice: I didn’t give a fuck about no radio play!  I don’t give a fuck if people…I just didn’t care!  Like I said, I wasn’t doing this to set a trend or to set a standard.  I was just being me.  I talk, I curse.  I curse, I talk big shit.  That’s just how the shit come out.  If it comes out explicit, it comes out explicit.  I can tell you the most intelligent thing in the most rawest form and vice versa.  I mean, that’s just me!

Planet Ill: Of all the beefs you have ever had in Hip-Hop, which one stands and do any of them still linger?

Just-Ice: I ain’t never had no problems with nobody!  Niggas didn’t fuck with me!  I ain’t have no problems with nobody.  From day one up until now I can go anywhere, see anybody, do anything in this world, Hip-Hop history, Hip-Hop…nobody ever had a problem.  Only one cat made a mistake and said my name in his record, and I went out looking for him.  But to this day right now, me and Black Poet are real good friends.  So I don’t consider that even beef because beef is when a nigga shoot at you and you gotta go back and look for the nigga.  We wasn’t on it like that.  So Nah, I ain’t got no beefs with nobody and nobody ain’t got no beefs with me.

Planet Ill: How does it feel to be a master of records, and where does your love for hip-hop and music in general come from?

Just-Ice: From “Yard Music” because if you understand the history of Hip-Hop that shit came from Jamaican music.  That’s how Herc first started playing it.  He was playing the beats out of the parts of the Jamaican records; his toasters at that time would just sit there and say the little catch phrases.  That’s how the Hip-Hop shit started with Hip-Hop; it came from Jamaican music.  My mother is from Jamaica, she’s from Mandeville.  I’m born here in America, so I was brought up on shit like listening to the radio and WBLS and there’s Michael Jackson, James Brown.  That kind of shit.

But when my mother played records at home, she would play shit like Bob Marley, Jackie Mittoo, Olajuwan Mtumbe, a lot of African and Jamaican records.  When I grew up, when she would play her music, I would get mad, like “I don’t want to hear that Jamaican shit!  I wanna hear some Michael Jackson!  I wanna hear some Jackson 5!”  You know?  But as I got older, I shied away from the American music.  I mean I still like American music, don’t get me wrong.  I love American music because some of it makes a lot of sense, some of it doesn’t.  But my whole influence of Hip-Hop came through Jamaican records.

[pro-player width=’425′ height=’344′ type=’video’]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBjrMNER9gQ[/pro-player]

Planet Ill: What was it like working with Kurtis Mantronik back in the day?

Just Ice: Well, Kurtis was too far ahead of his time.  It would frustrate him because he knew the stuff that he was making wouldn’t be appreciated for another twenty, thirty years.  And it’s so damn true because right now, it’s like the stuff that Kurtis was making back in the days, people are still playing it now and still sampling from it.

Planet Ill: It sounds exactly the same as what he used to do.

Just-Ice: Yeah.  Kurtis would sit there and make up a funky ass beat and get mad after he makes it because he was like “Yo, they not gonna be ready for this.”  And he was right.  They weren’t.  So the beats I love the most coming out of a machine, that was Kurtis Mantronik.

Planet Ill: KRS-1, he produced Kool & Deadly and The Desolate One, right?

Just-Ice: Right.  He did that.

Planet Ill: Now you are working with him again on The Just-Ice and Krs-1 EP Volume 1.

Just-Ice: Yeah, we just got finished doing that.

Planet Ill: Why has it taken you two such a long time to work together again?

Just-Ice: Business.  I mean, everybody got to do what they do.  That man lives in California, he lives in New Jersey; he lives all over.  I’m moving around.  If it’s not supposed to happen it’s not supposed to happen.  If it’s supposed to happen it would happen.  I mean, I guess it was time for it to happen again because we met up at the 2008 or 2009 Rock The Bells.  Me and him discussed it.  We solidified it and we followed through with it.  I guess it was just the time for us to do it again.

Planet Ill: A lot of rappers from generations past still put out new material but it ends up sounding dated.  You can hear their age.  You still have an edge and you still sound hungry.  How have you maintained that?

Just-Ice: Like I said, I love this.  I mean, of course I came into this business for money.  I gotta pay bills and shit.  I love Hip-Hop.  I love real Hip-Hop, not that bullshit that’s out now, these little punk ass niggas.  I love real Hip-Hop, you know?  I think if a motherfucker got Hip-Hop in his heart, if you gonna rhyme, your ass supposed to sound the same as you did when you first started.  Granted, your voice is going to change a little bit, but the intensity should still be there.  The hunger in it should still be there.  I don’t see that out of a lot of mother fuckers.

Planet Ill: Having worked with both Kurtis Mantronik and DJ Premier, what is the biggest difference between the two and who do you prefer working with the most?

Just-Ice: Well I prefer Kurtis because for one, Kurtis would take shit from scratch.  Now, (I) don’t take nothing away from my man Lumpy Lump, and that’s Premiere.  I don’t call him Premier, the nigga name Lumpy.  I don’t take nothing from Lump, alright, because you see what Lump does and what Kurtis does is two different things.  So you really can’t compare them together.

Premier could take six different records and find a part in each six different records and nobody would even suspect, and make a fat ass track out of it.  On the other hand, Kurtis will take something from nothing.  I mean absolutely nothing.  He will start off with a Hi-Hat at one in the afternoon and by three or four in the afternoon he has a record.  I mean not just a track, it’s in record form.  He has a hook, bridge and everything.  From nothing.  That’s the difference between Kurtis and Premier.  Premier will work with something that’s already there.  Kurtis will invent it.

Interview Audio–Planet Ill Interviews Just-Ice

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