Times is hard when kats damn near twenty leagues deep in the conundrum got less of a shot landing a deal than a high-school baller foregoing a free education to make it in the majors. In New York, where the competition is tighter than a pike’s pussy, the odds can be higher than a shot of crystal-meth unstrained to the membrane. How did that Hova hook go? “Ain’t no love in the heart of the city….” Picture that soundtrack to a flick that reads like a Sergio Leone epic entitled, Once Upon A Time In America. But instead of four longshots on the come-up divide by two, with one destined as king of the hill. Sound familiar? Peep DMX and Nas in Belly. There are elements of truth that ring so true to our collective existence the drama is nearly irresistible as it spills into the streets and up in the annals of hip hop. But out west in the land of milk’n honeys shit like this don’t even qualify as a run-of-the-mill, kitchen-sink after school special in a post-OJ landscape where taxin that esophagus don’t even guarantee you a bid. Nah, it ain’t happin, can’t even see it sons, so you might as well fuggedaboutit.
Jaz-O has…well, sort of. The clich still waters run deep takes on resonance with the Originator. “I don’t really care at this point,” he sighs, but pressed further, obliges. “I’ll never take away anything he’s done for me, but I look at the whole thing, it’s a crab move. If he needed me – many times he did – I dropped what I was doin’, and helped my friend – who I thought was my friend.” Such raw, heartbreaking sincerity is enough to make a grown man cry…so I move on to “One Magnitude,”- scheduled to drop next year second quarter – and his voice rises an octave. “If you know anything about astronomy, one magnitude is the maximum amount of light and energy emitted from a star in all directions. I been not really emitting a lot of energy. I kept to myself more like a black hole. I’m gonna reveal myself and the world’s gonna know, Damn, it was like that? Why didn’t he do this before? Why didn’t he say this before?” On cue I venture why he didn’t. “It’s not my style but certain things are necessary at a given time.” No argument here.
Granted, like all things on the surface, there is a confluence of elements that contribute to the complexity of any situation. Given his track-record in the business, age would seem to be the major factor of why he remains independent, but Jaz discounts that with his guerilla killa “Ova” creepin on the come up. “A lot of it has to do with the fact that I don’t work with too many people. The second is that I’m not much of an ass-kisser, and that’s never a good thing in the music business.” Another theory is of young Hova having something to do with it indirectly. Izzo is featured on one track of “Kingz Kounty.” “That’s a thing that I heard a lot of times: I never stepped to you because I thought you’d gone with Roc-A-Fella.” Obviously, that scenario stands as much chance as Jigga falling off in this lifetime. “Yeh, that’s out of the question. At this point we can safely say that.”
Without major backing, Jaz is proceeding independently, which is like working without a safety net. “I gotta be honest, I don’t like it because of the level I’m on right now. I don’t have the most to work with. I think if I had more to work with…” It’s the same sort of frustration that he says made “Kingz Kounty” a difficult project. “I was breakin my neck gettin a lot of stuff done and near the end I got a toothache. The pain was killin me. The day I had to get some sleep was the day of sequencing, so I counted on individuals to do a good job. You got M.O.P songs at the end of the album. You got major songs at the end of the album and individuals that wanted to get their shine on instead of making a good album. Teamwork is to promote the team and that’s not promotin the team when self-opinionated things are put in front of everybody. I heard so much stupid shit with this project.”
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He doesn’t bite his tongue on bullshit. As president and CEO of Kingz Kounty the production company, and soon-to-be label-provided “some prospective major situations on the table” go down-he can’t afford to bullshit; such ventures rely on vision to go along with outspokeness, but business savvy is not only a virtue it’s a prerequisite for long-term success. One look at Shawn Carter and that much becomes painfully evident.
