1/17/2024 0 Comments Jr writer bird call video![]() It looks bad from a distance, but it’s regular shit. ![]() You think from a distance that they don’t fuck with each other, they're not going to talk ever again, they aren’t going to do business. It’s like when you see family members fight. But you don’t really know too much about it. From the outside looking in, you look at it like, oh shit they don’t really fuck with each other. I think that’s pretty much every crew or family, period. What were the dynamics within the group? People see Cam'ron and Jim Jones as having sort of a love/hate thing. He be killing it.” So he would always call me to come up there. At that time, I would see Flex, and he would say people would tell him, “Let JR rap. The freestyle that you’re talking about, I went for nine minutes because I wanted to break that record for six minutes. I’m like, I’mma go in on the radio, watch. I had submitted a track with me, Cam, and McGruff and the sample didn’t get cleared, so I didn’t make the Diplomatic Immunity album. I already felt like I wanted to get revenge-that’s why I was so motivated to go in. The second time was when I rapped for like six minutes straight. My first time it was just Cam, Jim, and Juelz, and that was super crazy. You had that one famous Hot 97 freestyle that’s super long, where you just go on a capella for several minutes after they cut the beat off. I ended up on Juelz's album, got my first rap check, moved out the hood, and I been straight since. He heard me rap and just told me to stick around and I stuck around. It was early Dipset era: Cam just had signed to Roc-A-Fella, Juelz wasn’t signed, Jim wasn’t signed. You couldn’t just come out of nowhere with music, because people would be like, “Who the hell are you?” You had to have stripes. It got to the point where I started battling two people at a time, because in that era you had to create your neighborhood credibility and status. Matter of fact, I battled Smoke DZA too, on 125th St. I grew up in a circle with battle rappers like Jae Millz, T-Rex, Loaded Lux, Charlie Clips-before battling was on YouTube and the cameras were out. Before that I had a street buzz, a neighborhood buzz, because I was battling different battle rappers-battle rappers that people know now like Jae Millz. How did you first come into contact with the people in Dipset? My man connected me to somebody that knew Cam. So Big L, Big Pun, Jadakiss-they really influenced my style. Back then, I really liked the complex bars similes, metaphors, stuff like that. Big L played a big part in influencing me. ![]() I assumed that, because you have a punchline-heavy style, which I associate with Harlem and especially with Big L, and some of the DITC people in the Bronx. I would say who molded my style were a lot of the Harlem rappers like Mase and Big L. Which rappers were an inspiration for you style-wise? I was already a fan of hip-hop: 2Pac, Snoop and the Doggystyle album, Wu-Tang-Raekwon and them. It was like one in the morning, and they was talking about rapping and they laughed at me like, "You don’t know how to rap?" So that’s what sparked my interest, and I started to get the hang of it and started to perfect it. I snuck out the house with my big sister. I knew hip-hop music and was a fan of 2Pac and all of them back in those times, but I didn’t know how to rap. Even on the way to the party, my friends Sean and Jonathan were like, “Yo, we gon' rap at the end of the party.” I was like, “Rap? Y'all know how to rap? How you rap?” So at the end of the party, they started a cypher. It was some real hood project house party. They emptied out the bedroom and had turntables and DJ equipment playing the music. It was one of my first house parties, a real house party with the strobe light in the window. How did you first start rhyming? Who were the first people that made you say, I want to do this? I was about nine or 10. (This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.) I met up with JR the afternoon after the big Dipset reunion show in New York City to talk Cam'ron and company, why his radio freestyles were so long, and how he ended up with Lil Wayne's phone number.
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