Posted on 09/19/2008
Has any other emerging artist in hip-hop had a rookie year as chockfull of material and schizophrenic artistic direction as Blu? While the LA-based rapper seemingly scored the most points with the underground hip-hop head demographic with his collaborative debut with producer Exile, Below the Heavens, he’s since been cranking out albums at an alarmingly rapid pace – his release with Ta'Raach as C.R.A.C., The Piece Talks hit stores months later, and now his latest project with producer Mainframe, known as Johnson&Jonson collectively, is set to be released. The self-titled Johnson&Jonson record drops on September 23, just a year and one month after the whole album cycle began.

“I was a month off from getting them all out within a year!” Blu blurts out with a sense of regret that seems surprisingly sincere, though you’d think dropping three albums in 13 months would be enough of an accomplishment. “All three of the albums were recorded during the same period. They were all done by the top of ’07 – we’ve been sitting on material for that long.”

While the plan was always there to hit listeners with an onslaught of material, Blu will be the first to admit that things took off much quicker than initially expected. “I thought that it was going to take all three records to get recognition, but pretty much everything that I asked for was met with Below the Heavens,” he explains. “Before that, nobody thought that people would like Blu’s records. But once that came out and got a good response, people trusted us enough to put out other material. I was like, ‘Please, man, put out this catalog!’ These are other pieces of my foundation and I want people to know about it.”

While his debut rode heavy on a vibe that was both introspective and insightful, and the C.R.A.C. project embraced a more care-free cross-genre sound, Johnson&Jonson is intended to be Blu’s ‘rap-swagger’ project. “This album is basically everything that Exile wouldn’t let me put on Below the Heavens,” he laughs, noting that the two projects do stylistically overlap at some points. “I still try to make every single record I do different from any other record I’ve done in the past, as far as complete albums go. Regardless of how similar the content might be throughout records, stylistically they stand on their own.”

The songs on Johnson&Jonson are soaked with Blu’s wit and unabashed love for hip-hop. Like the rest of his projects, it’s evident from one listen that the young talent is definitely a student of the game. “Johnson&Jonson was like waking up for six months straight in the lab, cutting joints every day at Mainframe’s studio in Long Beach. For this album, I was inspired by both Snoop and Posdnous, as well Planet Asia’s first EP; I still bang that to this day! This fool’s pocket is just so precise – I still throw that back on just to see how somebody should flow.”

Beyond rapping, Blu has also recently gotten into production. “I got into producing about a year and a half ago, so it’s still brand new. I’m not about to be competing with no ill producers – you won’t catch me in a rap battle…you might catch Flying Lotus standing next to you, fuck that,” he laughs. “I’m working on an album with an emcee from Brooklyn called Sene called A Day Late and A Dollar Short. He’s breaking down his life in an ill narrative form, and I’m producing the whole record, complimenting his story with my own production.”

Based on the track record he’s developed so far, it should come as no surprise that Blu has quite a few additional projects still coming down the pipeline as well. “I’m getting ready to drop this rock album with Mainframe…I don’t know if Okayplayer will be hitting me up about that, though,” he laughs. “It’s going to be pretty low-key. Fools probably won’t even know that I’m involved in it. We produced the entire record, wrote a lot of the songs, got a few singers to wrap up the songs we had left over, and there’s a lot of live instrumentation. It’s crazy.”

“I was just in Rotterdam and hooked up with these guys there. We just did five songs, and we’re going to put out an EP under the alias Fried Cotton,” he continues. “I was in D.C. for about four days and did five songs with the homie Apex – it’s our ‘no sleep till Brooklyn’ project. I’ve got crazy notebooks everywhere!”

It’s a scattered discography, for sure – and the fact that such a mixed catalog of music might not sit well with the average hip-hop fan is not lost on its creator. “Fools are tripping,” Blu acknowledges. “They want certain things over and over again, but I put it out there once. There’s nothing I can really say. I may get inspired by Heltah Skeltah one day and try to take it back to 1996 again, but I don’t think I’m going back to that timeframe for a while.”

With so many outlets to spread his message, it’s clear that this is one man whose voice will continue to be heard for all those who care to listen. “But I really don’t have a strategy in terms of what I do, outside of just making the music how I want to make it,” he insists. “It’s not like, ‘Ok, I knew everybody liked Below the Heavens, so now I’m gonna make something in C.R.A.C. that they just won’t like!’ I made all of that because I wanted to make it first.” With a vision that pure, it’s hard not to root for Blu. If all of this has been the result of his rookie year alone, it looks like he’s got quite a career ahead of him.

- Sean Kantrowitz


Watch this live video from the Johnson&Jonson album release party, below.