Conspirocy: Behind The Music
I Hustle - Produced by: Japiro
"I Hustle" originally was a concept that was thrown to me around the time the movie American Gangster came out. I was on a beat making spree and back in 2007 I probably would make like 2-3 beats per day so I was recording and making songs almost everyday at that time. I finally had my own home studio. It was more like a "starter kit" but it got the job done.
Basically, the original concept was to talk a lot reckless sh*t. i.e. dope, cars, money, women etc. Since I have a conscious and I am aware and conscious of what music can do to the minds of our youth. I stuck with the classic format of using "Hustle" as to whatever your way of making your ends meet. Though, it was not original nor a breath of fresh air content wise, I understood that I could make this song stand out if I really gave it that Reasonable Doubt/American Gangster feel. So, I went to may parents basement and hit up my Father's record collection. If I'm going to make something with a "soulful" feel. I'm definitely borrowing some records from my Father. It's a tradition. I've been sampling from my Father's record collection since I was about 16 years old. I probably haven't even used the same record twice from his collection. My arsenal is sick. I know he doesn't really like me borrowing his records but he can never say no when he hears what I do with them. Sometimes he even suggests music for me to sample or musicians for me to get in tune with.
The record I sampled comes from 5th Dimension - Love, Lines, Angles & Rhymes I remember camping out at my parent's crib for like 2 days and I just made beats over there on like a Saturday & Sunday. I tend to go to my parents house when I get into making albums and finding the right samples and making the right beats. It takes me back to a time where I studied other rappers growing up by reading the Source & XXL from front to back and even studying album liner notes. Being at my parents house reminds me of a time period when I just wanted people I grew up with to hear me rap/rhyme. All the memories of my childhood, staying out late, getting up early, writing songs in my room or at the kitchen table, sitting on the porch with my radio, or just out in the alley's. In the early 90's I found my hustle...Music! I began with selling my own tapes in the 8th grade. I would do my homework and then spend countless hours in my basement rapping into a bullish*t Panasonic radio that was my Mother's. I would later start going to a professional studio and hustled tapes in High School in my Junior and Senior years. Making beats was a plus back then. It was unheard of to make your own beats and rap on them for the exception of Q-Tip, Havoc, The RZA, Large Professor or Dr Dre. Even Dr. Dre doesn't write lyrics, he's more of producer/orchestrator. He knows how to build and create a song as well as recite it.
By the time I sat down to write "I Hustle" I realized it would boring to format another song into three 16 bar verses. I originally sequenced the song with two 12 bar verses and a 8 bar verse to finish the song because at the time artist like Soldier Boy were smashing radio with three 8 bar verses. Little did listeners realize that was done so that the entire song could be played from start to finish for radio without any interruptions. Plus, shorter verses aid to help the listener with remember the hook. I did the first version and put it on MySpace and I got like 3 or 4 phone calls to take the song down and hold it until my next project was out. One of my homeboys who produces kept saying this is some Jay-Z type sh*t. In my opinion the drums were really f*cked up at the time but I didn't realize it until I performed it at the 5 Seasons about 5 months later in 2008. The kick was distorting because it was EQ'd on the low end too heavy...LOL! In 2010 I did a show with Smash and the snare was cracking perfectly but the kick still wasn't in tact. It took me another year to figure out how to get the beat right. In October of 2007 I made the original version and my last album came out 5 months prior to that. I actually began creating Conspirocy 5 years ago. Not until 2011, did I figure out that I just needed to make the beat from scratch again and try some new drums. That's exactly how it ended up coming together.
It took me about 25-30 minutes but I put the entire beat together better than it sounded the first two times. Also, the previous versions were made in FL Studio 7 and the final version was made with the Maschine. I only had the Maschine for about 6 months when I made "I Hustle 3.0" so they were a lot of things I didn't know about on that particular piece of equipment especially manipulating samples. It was only right this would become a single from "Conspirocy" I wrote the treatment in 2010 and my brother added a cinematic feel to the treatment and put together one of the best videos in 2012 along with his nephew and cousin. Ironically, my barber happened to like when I said "From the Es, to the GS, to the LS, to the SC/The kid uncut, straight Coke and Ya'll Pepsi!" and he was hooked on my cd ever since. Maybe all those listens to Reasonable Doubt paid off. Who knew watching the movie "King of New York" when I was younger could birth such a New York inspired theme. I never sounded like a typical Baltimore rapper and I never want anyone to classify me as being one-dimensional.
Bonus: Recording I Hustle x Towson Hotel x Detroit Michigan
Video Directed/Edited by Ryan Watson for BmoreFLA Entertainment, Shot by Live Free Films
