What's up, y'all, this is J. Cole, and you're watching O5 TV.
What do I expect from a beatmaker?
That's hard for me to answer because I make so many of my beats.
I try to do all the things that I like.
So I find the first sound that I like, do the first drum pattern I like, and look for
the first sample or the first keys that I've learned as I got older to just go with my
heart.
The feeling, when you start overthinking it, that's when you know you're on the wrong
path.
It should be a very thoughtless process, a very fun process, and I only do the turn-up
motion.
It doesn't have to be a turn-up song, but it should definitely get you excited.
You can win anywhere, you can win here, when you ain't been nowhere, you ain't been here,
we're so hard, you ain't really in the game, man, same place, different face on the train,
man.
When you're from New York, you kind of take it for granted.
It is a hustle.
New York is fast-paced, fast-moving.
The people that are from New York usually, just like he said, they're trying to hustle.
Whatever it is that your hustle is, it's all about tomorrow's dollar and not much further.
Not next week, not next month, not next year, it's just about tomorrow's dollar.
And New York is like that.
It's fast-paced, but I think when you come from out of town, especially from a city that
I came from, which is much smaller than New York, no opportunity in comparison in New
York, and I'm coming up there with a goal and with a dream, when I get to New York,
I'm thinking long-term, like, how do I start at the ground floor and then make it all the
way to the top of the skyscraper, as opposed to the person from New York is just like,
hell, how do I get in the building?
I'm like, no, how do I infiltrate and make my way up to the top?
You're pretty much always championing a cause.
You know, everyone's not going to be Kanye and be like, George Bush don't like black people,
which was dope.
I thought that was a dope moment.
I mean, making that statement that a lot of people were thinking, but no one's going
to go on TV and say it, you know, Kanye's good for those, which is cool.
But there's a lot of people that have a lot of political messages in their music.
I don't have one cause.
The bottom class in America, which is poor and more specifically black poor, I'm interested
in their awareness level of what's happening around them and how it's not really set up
for us to make it to these levels, unless you're somehow a rapper, basketball player,
but it's not set up for you to go be a doctor, go be a lawyer.
Like you have to break through so many walls to get there.
Like you got to be so strong mentally to be the kid from the projects that makes it to
Harvard, as opposed to the kid from Connecticut that makes it to Harvard.
One of my causes is like to constantly speak to those kids somehow if I can reach them
and just let them know, like, look, this is possible.
So if they're listening to me, they can start to look around a little bit.
And maybe I should just go to school real quick.
Like I, I know this might not be maybe what I want to do, but it's how what I need to
do to make it in this world, the way this world is set up.
Or maybe I do need to educate myself more about where we really come from or whatever.
Not that I'm about that every song, but I do try to slip in things.
I like that people just finally appreciate rapping again, like the art and the skill and
the craft.
People that really rap are getting recognition again in the mid 2000s.
It wasn't like that.
It was in dark times and it was music that we like.
We all was in the club snapping.
We respected the soldier boy movement and Lil John.
Like those were those were fun party songs for, for like, I was in college at the time.
It was fun.
But at the end of the day, there was no balance.
There was no other side where, you know, you always had a Nas, JZ's, Tupac's, you always
had this other side and that was missing for a while.
Now you have options.
You can grab me.
You can grab Boss.
Your favorite rapper could be Drake, it could be Kendrick, it could be Joey Badass, it
could be Chance the Rapper.
So many options of people who really have skill and talent and I like that about today.
