Music

First things first, where did the name Baby J come from?

Well my family always called me Jay but the full name was given to me by some friends because I was younger than everyone else when we used to go out.

I'd be sneaking into clubs like the Blue Note and 21st Century and I was only about 14 - I was just desperate to hear the music.

Then I started doing pirate radio in Derby - Power FM - a few years ago and you had to have a nickname. It just kind of stuck.

How does pirate radio work?

It was just in someone's house. We'd have a transmitter upstairs and you'd go up there and play your records - everyone played for free.

But periodically the DTI would come round and take all the equipment so we'd have to start all over again. I'll always have a soft spot for pirate radio.

So what does a typical week in your life entail these days?

There are three things that consume my time. Firstly there's the music industry and when I say that, it can be sitting down producing the beats or on the phone sorting out situations for different products, chasing up DJs, doing mail-outs.

The production side is ideally late at night or when I'm on my own in the day - I can turn the phones off and take some time off with myself to get in the zone and do what I do.

I also do teaching work in Derby. Me and a friend of mine, Rukus, do classes for kids who've been excluded from school and young offenders.

We do it in conjunction with Derby Dance Centre. It takes time to set up the classes and we teach kids production and a little bit about the industry.

On top of that I'm a single parent so there's time spent doing the washing-up and all that unglamorous stuff!

So most of your time is spent doing other stuff than producing?

Yeah. There's a lot less time spent doing what I love, which is the music production side of things.

Back in the day I used to make beats all the time and I always had hundreds of them but was without the people to write over them

Now I've got four or five projects I'm working on and there are people waiting for beats! As soon as I produce a new one it's gone like that!

What have you been up to recently?

Well at Christmas time, everything slows down in the industry. It's a time for reflecting and getting ready for the next year.

Last year was a really good one. We had the Skinnyman stuff which got a lot of support on national radio and a lot of industry attention.

Then towards the end of the year we had the Yogi single which did really well. We got single of the week with Zane Lowe and Colin and Edith on daytime (Radio 1).

That took him from being someone who was just in one scene to a national level.

What's happening with Yogi now?

We had a bit of a sticky situation. Basically what happens when you're doing a lot of stuff independently is that not every sample gets cleared because you're not selling the sort of units that anyone cares about.

But when that record blew up and Radio 1 started championing it, we were looking at a chart record with it - and when we tried to sort it out, we couldn't get sample clearance.

So we had to ring Radio 1 and say 'we're really sorry but we couldn't get the record cleared'. They had to pull it and make sure it wasn't going out.

Is it rare to be denied sample clearance?

Usually they'll say yes and ask for a certain percentage of the profits but for whatever reason on this occasion the original writers of the track didn't want it coming out. They just blankly refused it even though there were several different offers.

Now what we're doing is getting the rest of Yogi's stuff sample-cleared and ready and then we're going to relaunch it. There are quite a lot of labels interested.

So does that track (Why Must U?) now get dropped?

Yes because you can't really do anything with it. We'll rework the track so it's different musically but as the song is right now, we can't do anything with it.

So how did you get started as a producer?

It was just through having a passion for music. I was one of those guys who'd go out and spend every penny I had on buying all the records and reading the credits to see who did what - just lusting to be part of the scene.

But the thing that really started the ball rolling was back in 94/95. We sent a demo of some tracks I'd done with Yogi to the Wu-Tang Clan which at the time was one of the biggest, freshest Hip Hop groups in New York.

We sent out about three demos to labels in the States and Wu-Tang were the ones who rang us and said 'we really like your stuff, come out and have a meeting'.

It was mad for us at the time because no-one really knew us in the UK scene, never mind internationally. So me and my partner flew out there and sat down for some meetings with them.

Then our contact there left Wu-Tang and set up his own label so we carried on working with him. Through that we met Gravediggaz, Dead Prez and people who were important in Hip Hop at that time.

In 1998 I dropped an album called Baby J presents The Birth, featuring East Coast and UK rappers over my beats. That was the first release we had.

Then Yogi had his first album out, 'Jamaica Child' and now he's onto his second so it's all built up slowly. Obviously the scene in this country has also grown.

What other big names did you meet in the States?

When we first went out there we met RZA, Onyx, Method Man, Puff Daddy, Ghostface, a lot of big names. For us, coming from where we were from, it was crazy!

Did being a white guy effect how you were treated?

Yes it did. Over here, it doesn't make too much difference - especially now - because one of the most beautiful things about the UK scene is that it's a meeting ground for young black and white kids where they can share some common ground.

A lot of the white kids are from affluent, middle-class backgrounds whilst a lot of the black kids aren't so it's sharing a common interest. In the States it isn't like that.

In this country you've got class divides but in the States you've got black and white. If you're of a different racial group other than white then the chances are you're going to be struggling financially.

So what comes from that is as a white guy, they think you're somehow connected with money - so you get treated with a certain amount of respect in the business arena.

On the other side, whilst out there I was living with a guy called Shabazz the Disciple who was part of the whole Wu-Tang, Gravediggaz family.

We were staying in the Red Hut projects which I think is the second biggest projects in the whole of America - it's literally miles and miles of tower blocks with black people living in them.

There are no businesses, no employers, no education - it's a breeding ground for trouble. So I'm out there and I'm the only white guy apart from the police!

So at first people would be looking at me like 'who's this crazy white kid from the Hamptons?' But then they'll call you over thinking 'this kid is dinner' and then they hear your accent and they're like 'why are you here?'

But it was really nice because I got shown so much love and I was almost like a mascot! I can still go back now and people are all like 'Hey Baby J!'

So you must have judged the situation right then?

Yeah. I think generally being a white guy going into black music, you've got to understand that you're a guest in someone's house. You don't dictate what goes on.

I don't think there's a problem with white people going into black music but there's a whole culture there with a set of rules.

This is why I have a problem nowadays with black being a dirty word and you have to use this phrase 'urban'. It's not though, it's black people who have affected this music and it's black culture with deep roots.

Given your creative use of samples, do you have an eclectic taste in music?

Yeah. When I was growing up I had this passion for black music which was quite unique amongst my social group. I'd be listening to Public Enemy, Sly and the Family Stone and Parliament. I was finding out about it.

Then in the same breath, a lot of my peers might be listening to Pink Floyd, Queen, Led Zeppelin so there was a lot of variety and I've had a broad range of influences.

On the way here I had a Coral track playing in the car which I really love. A lot of people might think 'oh Baby J, he does Skinnyman and Yogi' so The Coral is probably the last thing they'd expect me to be listening to.

Skinnyman

Are you going to carry on working with Skinnyman?

Yes I am. We're back in the studio at the moment and I imagine we'll have some new stuff out by the end of the year.

We've picked about five or six tracks which we're working towards at the moment and I think it's strong stuff. He's got a bright future.

Is it going to retain that commercial sound?

I don't really see it as commercial. It's the same kind of thing we've been doing for a long time.

The good thing about Skinny as an MC is you don't have to be into Hip Hop to understand what he's saying. So from that angle, he's accessible and people can latch onto it. There's a lot of anticipation for his new stuff.

His success must give you confidence that good stuff can still break through then?

I've always been a believer that if people get to hear good music, they'll appreciate it. That's the bottom line.

If the music is good, no matter if it's not in a genre they're used to, they can't resist nodding their heads and enjoying it.

Even the most hardened Hip Hop or Grime fans I daresay will listen to the Beatles. If it's a really beautiful track it'll make your hairs stand on end and that's across the board.

Whose idea were the Made in Britain samples on the Skinnyman album?

That was Skinny's idea. I think he just wanted to pull it together with something that related to him.

He got a bit of stick for it. Some people thought he might be racist because the main character in the film is, but what Skinny was getting at is that in the film, Tim Roth's playing a lost youth.

In the film, the character's like 'life's got nothing to offer me so I'm going out with a bang' and I think that was how Skinny felt for a long time.

Now he looks around and sees a lot of these youths, their social ills and the things they get up to and those things are there because they don't feel like society relates to them and cares for them.

Does Skinnyman have another concept in mind for this next album?

I don't want to say much but I think he does have another plan in mind to bring everything together.

Skinny's funny because he's a very practical person but in the same breath he's an artist all the way! So what he wants to do this week and what he'll end up doing can be two different things.

Does producing an album stop you from being able to enjoy it as a listener?

It definitely has an effect. If you listen to Yogi's album, which'll hopefully be relaunched soon, a lot of people will be hearing it for the first time but it probably got mixed and masterd more than six months ago. The lyrics were written a year and a half ago and the beats were probably made before that.

When I make a beat I'll probably listen to it for between five and ten hours over a period of time. It's like if you have a track you love and you put it on repeat - by the end of the day you won't love it quite so much.

So it's not that I don't like the tracks, it's just that I'm more interested in stuff that the rest of the world's not going to hear for another six months.

One of your trademarks is your use of speeded-up soul samples. Were you one of the first to do this?

Yeah as far as I know. I wasn't the first to get really popular with it because in the States you've got the Dip Set, Cam'ron and to some extent Kanye West.

They've got a lot of shine from it but obviously I'm a smaller artist so I'm less known for it. But people who've been following my career have heard me doing that a long time ago.

Everyone seems to be doing it these days!

Yeah. In the UK I think we've had an influence, production-wise especially. But with it being big in the States, I'm sure it's just coincidence.

But I like to keep evolving and now there's other stuff I'm trying to work into.

What music have you been listening to?

That Coral track! It's something like 'You Think You're The First' I think. I was having a conversation up at Sony and I mentioned that at some point I'd like to branch out.

So this guy said 'there are a couple of bands I'm sure would be interested in working with you because it'll be a different angle'. So he gave me this Coral CD and that's the track that's really stood out.

How much involvement do you have with the Derby scene these days?

Well Derby's quite a small community so most of the people who do stuff know each other. I try to be involved as much as I can. When I was growing up there wasn't much going on artistically in the city. Now there seems to be more of a scene.

Is the Derby scene recognised nationally?

It's funny at the moment because we've got Nottingham next door which has always had a reputation in the Hip Hop scene but now there are people coming out of Derby who are starting to get established.

I've done quite well in the past year, Yogi's doing phenomenonally well and you've got Steady who's one of the best breakdancers in the whole of Europe.

Then there are new artists like Rukus who's gota new single coming out and a girl called Laurissa who won a Trevor Nelson competition. I keep joking that Sony are going to have to move their offices up here!

Do you get recognised in the street?

I do in my own circle. If I go to Hip Hop events people come up to me but outside, no, I don't get mobbed in the street!

What's the next we're likely to hear from Yogi?

We're getting the sample clearance for the new single, Bigger Walls, so I'd imagine that'll be coming out soon with a big marketing push behind it.

Is he someone who's happy to do all the publicity stuff?

Yeah. He's quite reserved for someone who's meant to want to be famous! But he's good and I think we've both had a big learning curve. He's focussed on what we need to do and he has a lot of natural charisma.

What else have you got planned?

I've got a Baby J album coming out. I'll produce all the beats and we've got different MCs on it. We've got people from the States - Dead Prez and A-Alikes, and then they'll be Yogi and Skinnyman.

I think Estelle's going to do a track on it too and there's a guy from Polydor called Dirty Goods. It'll be a mix of UK and US.

What do you think about the Grime scene?

It's exciting because it's what the kids are into. The kids are the future - I'm old, I'm a has-been!

There might be kids out there into what I'm doing but it's some young kid in his bedroom who's the future of what Hip Hop and black music are going to sound like. Not me. I'm like Engelbert Humperdink!

What Hip Hop tracks have impressed you lately?

Hip Hop's a tricky one because I grew up listening to old soul and rare grooves and nowadays it's hard for me to listen to a track without listening for the samples. Without saying 'ooh I could use that, it's beautiful'!

It's hard to sit back and just listen to it and enjoy it. A lot of the time I'm dissecting it. If you saw the music in my car you'd find it's a lot of older albums.

Which ones would you mark out as classics?

Only Built for Cuban Links by Raekwon is a great one and The Infamous Mobb Deep is a classic. There were a lot of great albums in the mid-90s.

But I like a lot of new stuff as well. Some of the stuff by The Game is good. Kano is good. That whole camp with Mike Skinner, I feel like they've got their own vibe. His persona comes over in the tracks.

Do you plan to stay in Derby?

Yeah I want to. I've got a 13-year-old son but now I've got to the stage where I think maybe career-wise it'd be good to be in London. He's got his life here and his friends here though.

You must do a lot of travelling....

Yep. Me and the M1 are very good friends! I'm probably in London once a week - although sometimes it can be three times in a week. All the labels and magazines are there.

It's often said the music industry is a nasty, corrupt industry. What do you think of it?

Yeah I think that's fair comment! Ha ha! What people sometimes don't understand is that whilst most people have got involved because of their passion for their art, at the end of the day it is a business - and if you've got a product that you might think is beautiful, if it doesn't sell people aren't going to want to be involved with it.

You have to be as shrewd in business as you are gifted as an artist to get ahead. I've met so many artists who have been so talented that have just disappeared because from a business point of view they had no idea how to conduct themselves.