By TJ Love

Hip-Hop is gauged by new metrics, which have displaced the scales of the past. Some would argue that the art of emceeing has fallen by the wayside; pushed overboard with no respect. But there are those who can still pay like they weigh no matter how the times have changed. Dewayne Battle, pka Young Zee, has left an indiscriminate trail of chewed up rappers and blazed mics since he was discovered by KRS-One in the 90s. Akin to a tradesman or smith from a different age, his surname matches his identity and occupation in a manner so fitting God must have scripted it.

Young Zee is Scottie Pippen, assisting in the careers of some of the greatest emcees of all time.  Yet despite possessing otherworldly talent, he’s never received his moment in the spotlight. Some of that is due to circumstance, timing, and the harsh reality of the music industry. Other parts are due to detours in his own journey that removed him from the scene. But upon further examination, even the mishaps have made him the man and artist that he is. Today, Young Zee is content and happy with the space he occupies in rap. This is his story, as told to Planet Ill.

Planet Ill:  I guess my first question for you is, what was your first Hip-Hop memory and what about it made you say, “This is for me. This is what I want to do with my life?”

Young Zee: When Rakim first came out, I think one of his videos made me be like, “Yo, I could do this shit!” And then, you know, hearing LL Cool J, then hearing Large Professor, you know what I mean? Snake Eyes and all that other shit, Looking at the Front Door. That’s what made me really be like, yo, I could do this shit and start doing it when I was like 14. Yeah. So that’s what really got me rocking.

Planet Ill: Who were your primary inspirations coming up?

Young Zee: Well, my inspirations are people with lyrics, because I’m from a lyrical era. People that I grew up with. Lyricists – like LL Cool J, KRS-One, Big Daddy Kane, you know what I mean? All the MCs that had lyrics was the MCs that I looked up to.

Planet Ill: On your first album, Musical Meltdown, you had some KRS-One features, was that pretty big for you?

 Young Zee: Yeah, so KRS did a few songs on my first album. He did most of ’em. KRS Executive Produced my first album.

Planet Ill: Wow.

Young Zee: Yep. So he did Milk. He did Crazy. He did all of my shit really.

Planet Ill: How’d you end up linking with him?

Young Zee: I met KRS when I was with Digga one time. She had a show with Smoothe Da Hustler and Trigger Da Gambler. And it was Digga and her partner. And she was pregnant, she was like seven months pregnant. So I’m in the show just watching them. They’re about to perform and I want to use the bathroom.

So when I went downstairs in the club to use the bathroom, there was a bunch of niggas in this room and they was rapping. So after I came out the bathroom, I went in the room. And you know, niggas was rhyming, I jumped in the cypher. So they started, after I rapped, they was like, “Yo, we all gonna battle you!” So I was like, “Yo?!” So they was like, “I’ma rap, I’ma rap, he gon’ rap, he gon’ rap, he gon’ rap, then you rap. Then I’ma rap, he gon’ rap, he gon’ rap, then you rap.” I was like, “Nah, it’s gonna be like me, you, me, you, me, you, me, you.”

So after the third rap, I kicked, the next dude was about to rap and KRS-One just popped up out of nowhere like, “No, let him go again.” And I went again and I just kept going. And long story short, I left that club, me and KRS-One with my crew. And that’s how we got going.

Planet Ill: I remember when The Rah Rah came out and I copped the Nightlife EP. What hooked me was you all have a unique rhyme style. It’s very distinctive. Did you all come up with that collectively, rhyming a certain way? Was it an organic decision, “this is gonna be our style as a group?”

Young Zee: I think we just…cause we wasn’t all a group in the beginning. We all met in battles. I met basically every, most of the Outsidaz in the battle. So, it wasn’t like we came up with a style together. It was all just like, ah.…

“You dope.”

“You dope.”

“You dope.”

So we started doing songs and you know, I guess influence rubs off on each other, but we just was trying to be like competition to each other. It wasn’t like we was trying to have a plain style. It was like competition. That’s what it was about with my group.

Planet Ill: One thing for me that kind of differentiates you all from other “lyrical” emcees or groups is you have these rhyme schemes and patterns where you’re rhyming so many syllables per line and from bar to bar. I don’t mean to break it down to a science but that’s just like my natural inclination. There’s rappers out there, past and present, who kind of do the same thing, technically speaking, but when you get down to it, it just doesn’t compute into anything intelligible content-wise. They’re just rhyming words together for the sake of rhyming words together with no kind of context. So when I hear you say things like “I got freaks calling me, I don’t need eHarmony” on that track you did with Danny Brown, Loosies, that shit makes some kind of sense and it’s witty and clever. It’s really funny.

Young Zee: *seemingly coughing his lungs out*

Planet Ill: You smoking right now?

Young Zee: Well, you know this mannnnnn. *laughs* You know, I’m a bar person, man. I don’t just write the first thing that comes down to my head and record it. I go over it and over it and over it until I get it where it needs to be. Or I’m not even gonna spit it. I’ll just go to a whole ‘nother kind of bar. It’s like a puzzle.

Planet Ill: I got a question for you about Jersey emcees. So for me coming up, when I think of Jersey rappers, I think relative to the rest of the population and Hip-Hop in general, per capita y’all are probably like the nicest dudes. I don’t know if that’s because the barrier for entry is harder. But off top, I think of you, Redman, Tame One, Treach, Joe Budden, Chino XL. Why do you think there’s so many dope dudes from there? Is there something in the water?

Young Zee: You said is there something in the water?

Planet Ill: Yeah, is there something in the water? Is that the reason Jersey emcees on the whole are nicer than average?

Young Zee: I think it might be something in the water, or something in the weed. Something in the weed. But nah, Jersey emcees, we just kind of like don’t…we just don’t put up with any type of…we battle rappers. So everything we say basically is in the form of ‘you.’ I write most of my rhymes and put ‘you’ in there. So ‘you’ could be anybody. That’s what Jersey MCs do.

We always talking about somebody in our rhymes, whether we talking about you or not.

That’s the difference between Jersey emcees and other emcees. We don’t really care about telling you about how ‘I’ve been in jail and didn’t get no mail’ and all this other cry and pain rap. All w want to do is bars. And so that’s what I think sets us apart. You will never hear Redman telling you a story about that’s gonna make you cry or upset or sad. It’s happy, fun music.

Planet Ill: When did you all formally become a crew, Outsidaz?

Young Zee: In like 1990, ’91. Yep. Because we all solo artists in the crew. Like, I was a solo artist. Pacewon was a solo artist. D.U. had him and another dude. Slang and Loon was a team. So it was a whole bunch of groups in the Outsidaz.

Planet Ill: Right, right. How did you all end up linking up with The Fugees?

Young Zee: They’re from our neighborhood and our managers at the time was Haitian. So, you know, and Clef and all of them is Haitian too. So it’s just, they heard about us. So they wanted us to come to the Booga basement. So me, Pace, and a few Outsidaz went over to the Booga basement, start rhyming with Clef. And next thing I know, I’m on tour with them.

Planet Ill: Oh damn.

Young Zee: So I started going on tour, opening up for the Fugees. And then after we came home from tour, we started working on The Score album.

Planet Ill: On that note, I’m kind of curious as to your thoughts on Miss Lauryn Hill. There’s been a lot of stuff over the years about her having ghostwriters and all sorts of other things. What do you think of those kind of themes going around about her being difficult to work with and everything else?

Young Zee: As far as her writing her own lines and stuff like that. Well, she’s a woman, So I mean, not saying that women…you know, it’s a pass for them. But you know, she sings, and if you do it…say I do a song with Lauryn, and I say, “Yo, you should use this line, you should use this line, you should use this line.” It’s okay. She’s the kind of person you really wanna make this song the best you can. I don’t think there’s really nothing wrong with that.

Like if I’m working on a song and I got a singing part and she’s like, “Yo, just sing it this way. You should sing these words or throw these words,” and I sing it the way she want to sing it and use her words, that’s all our part of making a song, working on a song together. Now, if I just show up at the studio, like “Here, I wrote this song here. Rap this part.” That’s a different story, y’all not working on a song together. You know, like back in the day when Smokey Robinson and Stevie Wonder and Diana Ross would make a song together. They wasn’t like, “I wrote this for this person. I wrote this.” You know what I mean? We wrote this song together. And you know, I mean, that’s just me. I’m still into that era like that. It’s okay.

But for guys, I don’t think we should be doing that. If you’re an artist, you should be…I can see if you could sing real good. if you can sing like Luther Vandross, but you can’t write a song, then you need writers. That’s okay. It’s just your voice that the world wants to hear. They don’t care if the words are coming from your heart.

But in Hip-Hop, what you talking about is supposed to be your version of the world. Your version is how you see things. My bars is my version of how I see every situation. Every bar I say, anyone can use eHarmony, but that’s the way I chose to use it. So if I used it the way somebody else wrote it for me, it wouldn’t be me. And that’s the difference in Hip-Hop. Nobody cares. I don’t care what you look like. I just want to hear what you have to say from your heart. And if it’s not from your heart then I really don’t wanna hear you saying it.

Planet Ill: On average how long does it take you to write a verse?

Young Zee: Like 15 to 20 minutes.

Planet Ill: Really? Wow.

Young Zee: Mhm. See, I write all the time. I have notebooks full of bars that I just can’t wait to say. But I just don’t really write 16. I don’t write verses. So I just write all bars. I have notebooks and notebooks full of bars. When we play the beat, when it’s time for me to rap on a beat, I just piece up the dopest bars that go to that beat. I don’t really have to think of new stuff to say. I’ve been thinking of new stuff all day, every day. That’s what I do. I’m an emcee. I write all day, every day, whether I have a studio session, whether I even have a song to work on. I could be watching a movie. They say something in a movie. I feel like that’s ill, I will write it. I’m a writer. That’s what I do all day long. So yeah, it takes me 15, 20 minutes to write a verse when I hear the beat.

Planet Ill: Okay. So you came up in the battle scene like you established earlier. There’s a line on “Number One Fan” you mentioned you “lost to bitch ass Shells.”

Who’s the hardest person that you ever had to battle?

Young Zee: Mentally the hardest for me to battle was Pace. They put me in a battle against my rap partner on a Blaze battle. So, I had to go, I had to go against Pacewon from the Outsidaz so that was literally fucked up for me. I didn’t really want to do it like that. But I did what I had to. Other than that, I battled a lot of motherfuckers. I battled Kurupt at the studio one time. Yo, I battled a lot of motherfuckers. I was just talking shit. Lotta industry motherfuckers.

Planet Ill: Speaking of Kurupt, on the Dogg Pound song New York, New York he says he “served 2,000 emcees” and according to legend there’s some truth to the story. He served all of them supposedly. But can you confirm or deny, he’s pretty nice, right?

Young Zee: Kurupt? Kurupt is nice, but Kurupt, he’s a freestyle emcee. No freestyle MC off the head could ever be better than me, better than the lyrics that I write. Never in the world. If we show up at the studio and I show up with my notebooks ready to write a verse and you show up with nothing, like give me a pen and a paper, and you start just thinking of stuff to say right there, I don’t care how good you freestyle, you’re not gonna be better than me.

Planet Ill: Right.

Young Zee: That would make me just an illiterate dummy. If you could think of something right now that would be better than the shit that I’ve been thinking of for the last two months…then I wouldn’t be Young Zee.

Planet Ill: Maybe you can help me clear up something that’s been debated and contentious over the years, and that is, what exactly is a freestyle. Is it rhyming off the top of the head, or is it just putting some rhymes that you haven’t used yet in a song or something?

Young Zee: A freestyle rhyme is just a rhyme basically that you wrote that’s not talking about nothing. You just spittin’ bars. Now off top, that’s called off the top. You talking about just making it up right now? That’s off the top freestyle. It’s a difference, it’s not just one definition for freestyle.

Planet Ill: I know that the Outsidaz have aliases, right?  What was the reason behind that idea?  Also could you elaborate on y’all’s influence in regard to Hip-Hop in Detroit? Because D12 is six dudes but they also have aliases. Do you think they kinda got that from you all via Eminem aka Slim Shady?

Young Zee: Ummmm, I don’t know I never thought about that. That’s just the expression of Hip-Hop. Everybody, you know, changing a name. Because my name is Skarecrow. My name is really Ounce, Young Ounce. A Z is an ounce of a one day.

Planet Ill: I got you.

Young Zee: My name is Ounce. One day I was spray painting all my boys’ names on a wall and I got to my name. Once I put Young, it wasn’t enough for me to put Ounce. So I put OZ. And then I just took off the O and just started putting Z. And that’s how I became Young Zee. I’m really Young Ounce.

Planet Ill: I know that you worked with Tame One and had a joint project together.

Young Zee: I’m releasing that on my label this year, Burnout.

Planet Ill: When he passed how did that hit you? And what does he mean to New Jersey Hip-Hop? Since you mentioned tagging, what was Tame’s impact as a graffiti artist in New Jersey?

Young Zee: Tame name is everywhere. Tame name is actually one of the first names that I’ve seen put “one” on it, the O-N-E. Ya nah mean? Tame One. But his name and his tags is everywhere in Jersey. He’s actually a Jersey legend for a few different things. But he just happened to be my drug friend, we used to do a lot of PCP together and hang out and battle emcees and he just never ever…when I quit, he just never quit. He never quit PCP. We did the whole Burnouts album on PCP. We was fucked uuuuuupp. Quelle Chris did all the beats, Digga booked all the sessions and executive produced the shit.

Planet Ill: You know Quelle Chris has got a really dope remix of “Macosa”, it’s called Q-Sides and it’s got y’all ripping on there on one of his beats. It’s a different take and it’s pretty cool.

Young Zee: That’s my boy, like I said he did all the beats on me and Tame’s project. Send it to me when we get off the phone.

Planet IllI:  There’s a number of cats, well I know of a few, who shall remain unnamed, that rhymed on PCP. It was maybe part of their lifestyle or whatever. Would you say it’s easier to write raps or make music on that kind of thing?

Young Zee: I think it’s easier to write raps because your mind is altered. So you’re thinking of the craziest shit in the world. But when it comes time to say it, you might kind of want to wait. You’ll be mumbling and thinking you’re hitting it smack in every syllable. You’ll be mumbling like a motherfucker. That might be where mumble rap started from. *laughs*

Planet Ill: This is kinda off topic but what do they call PCP out there? They call it “boat” out here in DC.

Young Zee: They call it “water.” “Gorilla Piss.” All type of shit. Yeah man, I don’t indulge in stuff like that no more, man. Niggas is getting too old to continuously throw our body against the wall like we playing craps with it.

**Keep it locked for Part II of the Young Zee interview later in the week**