Jay Electronica

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

He is here finally. We got him, in the flesh. The man, the legend. You are here for shows, obviously, and it is very exciting for you, right? Are you alright? Don’t be nervous.

Jay Electronica

I am a generally nervous person, though.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Well, why be nervous? Everybody’s friendly here. Jay just walked into the building and he knows really nothing about this whole thing or what we’re doing. I’m trying to explain to him that it is a project where we have folks from all over the world working on music, like-minded, and they’re basically here for two weeks to be creative and think about only creative things.

Jay Electronica

I asked him if I could apply, but he said I couldn’t. But I really like the feel of what’s going here, I was walking around thinking this is the shit. I wanted to come for two weeks, but he told me I couldn’t.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

You’re overqualified at this point. That’s not my decision to make. But anyway, this gentleman is probably the most talked about hip-hop artist to emerge in the last few years. Would you say that is accurate or not? I’ll say that that’s accurate. Ironically enough, he has many songs but only a couple of official songs. “Official” being a kind of weird term these days, but we thought that we might play something just to get things started, and this is by request from Jay Electronica himself. OK, by request from me. Let’s hear something from Jay.

(music: Jay Electronica – “Exhibit A (Transformations)” / applause)

Jay Electronica

That’s a song called “Exhibit A: Transformations.”

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

And who produced that song?

Jay Electronica

Just Blaze.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Tell us a little bit about the process of making this particular record, how long it took you to write. Let’s get a window into your creative process of how you go about doing things.

Jay Electronica

This one, we actually stumbled on this, we actually made this one in 15 minutes. So it wasn’t like we set out to do music. We were in the studio in Detroit with my brother DJ TJ the King and he started laying the foundation. He was playing the synth chords and I didn’t like it at first. At that moment I wanted to do something that I felt was more aggressive and he was like, “No, trust me, trust me, trust me,” so I wrote the song before the drums and stuff were laid and we just did it. And all of the piano and everything he added later.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Now, “Exhibit A,” tell me a little bit about the concept because you have “Exhibit A.” t5hen you have another song called “Exhibit C,” very popular right now. wo can you just speak on the meaning behind this “Exhibit A” and then “Exhibit C”? And also, where is “Exhibit B” exactly right now?

Jay Electronica

“Exhibit B” is on a hard drive, it’s not yet heard. We had “Exhibit B,” it was initially a song that was “Exhibit A” remixed with Mos Def, but it is more of an “Exhibit A remix” because it’s the same music and it is just a different version with a Mos Def feature, so we decided to keep that as an “Exhibit A” remix and “Exhibit B” is something totally different. “Exhibit C” came out before “Exhibit B” because Just played it on a radio station one night in a DJ set and it just grew legs and walked on its own, so “Exhibit C” came next.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Can you explain the concepts behind what is going on? In the beginning of “Exhibit C,” Just Blaze says, “The case of the state of hip-hop versus Jay Electronica,” on it. Can you speak about that a little bit?

Jay Electronica

The “Exhibit” process is a project that we are doing. These songs are part of an album that we’re working on right now, but we have also discussed a project of “Exhibits” and it kind of happened after the fact. When we did that song it wasn’t named Exhibit A, we didn’t go in with the title. Guitar Center, when you go in the store they have promo CDs and they needed a title for it and Just called it “Exhibit A.” That’s where “Exhibit” came from, there was no deeper meaning. But now, as a result, it is happening. We are learning as it goes so we are learning the meaning of it ourselves but that was basically it. It didn’t initially start out as an intended thing. Did I answer the question?

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

At the beginning of “Exhibit C,” which is the song getting all the attention right now and has gotten all this acclaim — and deservedly so, I would say, he does say in the case of...

Jay Electronica

That is afterwards now.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao:

So now, that idea has a life of its own. I wonder could you just get into that little bit?

Jay Electronica

“Exhibit” in a court case is evidence, right? But also an exhibit is just like an exhibit of who we are, a viewing or a gallery. “Exhibit C,” each exhibit will be something different in terms of theme but that one was more like a court case on the state of hip-hop. Did I answer the question?

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

You’re doing great, don’t worry. If you could just go back a little bit as far as your personal history, you are from which city in America?

Jay Electronica

I am from New Orleans, Louisiana, born and raised.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao:

Magnolia Projects, is that correct?

Jay Electronica

Magnolia Projects, yeah.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Obviously you represent New Orleans but you had a well-chronicled history of moving quite around. Can you talk a little bit about your travels and this sort of thing? I guess, why did you leave New Orleans originally and what sort of places did your journey take you?

Jay Electronica

I love home. I left home after high school. Like anybody who does music or art or something, if you feel like the environment you are isn’t conducive to what you are trying to achieve or create, you leave. You search. You bounce around. I left home, at that time, in ’96. Rap music in particular in the States, you only had music coming from certain regions. And there was no such thing as a South movement or nothing like that. That particular type of music would be just only those areas. It wasn’t a multi-platform type of thing. I left home with the intention of, “I’m going to New York because New York is where hip-hop is from!” I ended up staying out in Atlanta first and different places, but that’s why I left. In the pursuit of my goals and dreams, like everybody in here.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

But New Orleans does have some hip-hop heritage. I know you have said that LL [Cool J] was one of your first heroes, but the sound of New Orleans has become extremely popular over the years.

Jay Electronica

One particular sound, though.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

One particular sound. So when you heard that particular sound, being from there, I suppose, it is being proud of your whole heritage but it was nothing that spoke to you?

Jay Electronica

It speaks to me. When I hear it I appreciate it and it moves a certain way. I get it and I understand it, but my expression just wasn’t that. My expression was something else. And I’m not like some anomaly. There are a lot of people at home who do things outside of that box, but if you come from New Orleans then it’s such a structured thing. Well, not anymore, that shit has fallen apart. The way the music business industry, that shit is a shambles. But at that particular time, and even now, if you was coming from New Orleans or you was coming from Memphis or anywhere, then you had to have that to be considered for a record label or that type of a thing to even accept you. You had to be coming from that box. A lot of times, when you hear music coming from a certain place it is usually one type of thing you are hearing that is the accepted norm on a large scale, but there’s all kinds of things going on in that environment. Really, New Orleans is a jazz-based city. It’s jazz, it’s Afro rhythm, beat, it’s that type of a place. There’s more of a communal check. The reason why the hip-hop that comes out of New Orleans that people know of, in the South in general, is because it’s call-and-response. It’s not one person saying a poem or saying something like that, it’s more of energy and the communal type of thing and we calling and responding. There is more of that type of thing than as opposed to, “Hey, I got something that I want to share with you, these words that I want you to hear.” It’s like, “Let’s skip the words and get right to the energy.”

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So was it frustrating at all for you then at the time? The stereotype is that rappers from the South don’t have lyrics.

Jay Electronica

It did bother me for a long time. For a long time, it also made me as a rapper – in America, they say, oh, in the South they’re slow and this and that. So now, as I get older, I can admit that I even had a portion of my life where I was ashamed of being from New Orleans as an artist because of me listening to other things and hearing other people. The stereotypical shit that they put on you, that shit fucks with your psyche. So I strived for a long time to go as hard away from that as I could and I’m slowly, gradually coming back. My little sister is the one. Maybe about eight years ago, my sister was like, “You seem like you just ashamed to be from home.” It was like somebody shot me in the head or hit me in the head with a bat. Like, damn. Pardon me. [cellphone rings]

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

That’s a New Orleans record on your cellphone too.

Jay Electronica

Allen Toussaint, yeah! Primo sampled this for “D’Evils” for Jay.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

But now you’ve come to terms with your roots.

Jay Electronica

Yeah, I was making a point that it had gotten to the point where I didn’t even recognize it. I didn’t even recognise that that’s what I was doing. I recognized it initially that it is what caused me to start going in a certain way, but then it just becomes your natural self at a point. You don’t even realize that sometimes you need somebody to tell it to you. Somebody else could tell it to you. Somebody could tell you something, but then a certain person could tell it to you in a way and at a time in your life where you actually take it in. I don’t know if I’m straying from the question.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

No. It’s very laid back here, go ahead and speak your mind. Well, one of your inspirations is Nas. You have actually been very favorably compared to him with some of your songs and stuff like that. But before we get to that, I guess, if you could talk a little bit more about your physical journey, the places you’ve been and the sort of things you’ve experienced. Anybody who is familiar with your music, they know you have spoken extensively about your experiences, where you have traveled, how you have lived in a number of different cities and you have been described as being nomadic. And you were actually homeless at one point?

Jay Electronica

I was homeless at a few points. [laughs] I’m sure there is a lot of people in this room that have been homeless. I was homeless on the streets as well, but I have also been homeless where you’re just staying on somebody’s couch and eating their food and shit like that, that is homeless. You don’t have a home of your own and somebody has offered you their home. But I have been homeless that way and homeless, out-of-doors homeless.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So what are those experiences, how did that shape your music? How did they affect you and how did you channel that energy and refocus?

Jay Electronica

I don’t know how to answer that question. You do what you do. Whatever you’re going through at that time, if I’m taking ecstasy all day long and wildin’ out, then if I’m writing about something, then I’ll be writing about that. It affected me in that way where it is in my music and in the narrative. It affected my music in a way where, I come from New Orleans, which is a very communal place, a lot of people don’t leave. If you were in the States, pre-Katrina, you’d be hard-pressed to run into somebody from New Orleans in another city. It’s that type of place. It opened me up to different types of thinking, different types of people, different types of energy, as opposed to just doing it in your brain. If you’re at home and just watch something on television, then you create this world in your head. But this is what you created in your head. But actually going out and experiencing it. So it affected me in that way.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

One of the places that you wound up in was Detroit, right? And you got to meet a very important musical figure.

Jay Electronica:

Are you speaking about Dilla? OK, yessir. I met a lot of important musical figures in Detroit. DJ TJ the King. [laughs] But Dilla, actually, he is a student of Dilla. He is a DJ from under Dilla’s wing. But I met Dilla through Mr. Porter from D-12. He is probably most known as that, but he’s a producer and he has worked with a lot of people. But anyway, he and two brothers of mine, Johnny and Mike, they introduced me to him and they were building his studio at the time. MCA had given him $200 thousand to build a studio and he was building it in Detroit because he didn’t want to leave. So I met him in that period when he was building a studio and I started doing some stuff on his music. We never actually had a chance to work together because I left Detroit and then, at the time when I was supposed to start working with him, he got ill and he passed away. But that’s how I met him.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

But you have tracks?

Jay Electronica

I got like a thousand Dilla beats. Are you all familiar with J Dilla?

Audience Member

Yeah!

Jay Electronica

OK, OK. Dilla is amazing. I was saying this last night at the show too, we ended up having this conversation like damn, especially Donuts. Donuts to me is not his best body of work in terms of the production. It’s amazing, but it’s not his best. I am biased. Some of the best stuff I heard, it was just beats on his hard drive. But what makes Donuts so amazing is that he made that on his deathbed. Not sick, no. Literally in the hospital hooked to an IV, with doctors telling you that you are supposed to be dead next week and your mom crying. And you hooked to that machine with an IV there with an MPC and a turntable. That is a hell of a thing. I don’t even know why I’ve said that, what is the question?

Jeff “Chairman” Mao:

You kind of touched on this, but there is so much mystique around Dilla after he passed away and, I guess, some people complain that a lot of people jumped on the bandwagon.

Jay Electronica

There’s nothing wrong with bandwagons. We all live on the earth and we all bandwagoning on something. We are riding a wagon around the sun called earth.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

What in his music doesn’t get mentioned that you think is really important? You hear so many people talk about him.

Jay Electronica

I think I keep going back to the one thing about him, about Donuts and him doing that in the hospital on his deathbed because that speaks volumes into him doing music ten years before that. That music, this was a person doing music for the sake of doing music. I tried to think of myself if I was dying. If I knew I was supposed to die tomorrow but I don’t die tomorrow but I know it’s coming. I’m dealing with all the stress of my mom, feeling sad about how she’s going to feel. The shit I never got a chance to do, all of this type of shit, right? I wouldn’t be doing music. I feel like if I was at that point, I wouldn’t be doing music. But the fact that that’s what he wanted to do and what he did when you hear it, I think it speaks volumes not into that circumstance but in the way he expresses himself via music. And whatever that is, I don’t know what it is, but that is what makes his music special. When you hear it, that’s what releases that shit in your brain that flows down and gives you a tingle. He’s magic, man.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

I’d like to post something that you did over one of his tracks if that’s cool.

(music: Jay Electronica – “Dimethyltryptamine”)

Jay Electronica

I feel like I have got to say something after that one too. I know, when I listen now... The name is “Dimethyltryptamine.” DMT, some people take it as a drug but our brains produce it naturally from our pineal gland. It is what our brain secretes that takes us into a dream-like state. The song is kind of all over the place, with a theme though, because it was based on the dream that I had. It was a dream that I had because I was watching something about the Kennedy assassination and I got high and went to sleep. But the dream was so crazy. I wanted to write it like it was in the dream, you know what I’m saying? And that is why this song is named “Dimethyltryptamine.” So yeah, I know when I listen to it that sounds kind of crazy, just rambling. But yeah, it’s from a dream. [laughter]

Jeff “Chairman” Mao:

You played this at the show last night, and so obviously this is something that people have really admired and latched onto. And I think it is because of the imagery and the elements that went into it, the composition and stuff like that. That’s a track where you spit over a Dilla track. You mentioned Just Blaze, another one of your collaborators. I guess, for those who don’t know your story, can you tell us when you got to the point where you started to meet folks like Just Blaze and working with them?

Jay Electronica

I didn’t start working with them until well after I met these people. I have been always on the outer ring of the quote-unquote “music industry circle” after a certain point. Once you know where to go and who are the people, then you kind of know how to be around it. It’s difficult to get in but it was a natural progression over time. Once I stopped having that on my head that I am out here trying to get there and do it, and missing all of the, like, “Damn! My man is a nice dude. Oh, shit you do such and such? Let’s connect...” Once I started making those kind of connections, the more human connections, the more genuine connections, then I started opening people up to saying, “Let me hear what you’ve got again,” and then they will hear it in the context of me and then we’ll work. I met Just through a friend of mine, “Ringo” Rashad Smith / Tumblin’ Dice, an excellent producer, he produced a lot of classics. Biggie’s “One More Chance.” How did I meet him? [thinking] OK, OK. I met him through another friend of mine. I’m just blessed, man. And we all blessed, but I think that things started opening up for me because I tried to do it every way. I tried to do me at first, but I was trying to do me in a way that, this the way that people want to hear it. And not necessarily people in general, but the people who pull the strings in music. I was trying to make something for them to try and get accepted into that thing. It doesn’t work like that. Once you fashion yourself that way then that’s what be and that’s what you making. I got frustrated and a little jaded at a point. Once I had reached that level I kind of got like, “You know what? Fuck this. I am stopping this verse right here, I want to hear Willy Wonka talking right here on this record.” When I started just doing it that way and being that way in my behavior, too. You know, “Fuck it, if that thing never happens for me that type of a way, I’m going to be pleased with what I do. And the people that do hear it will connect with it, and we will connect, then I’m cool with that.” Once I got into that kind of mind, that’s when all the lucky coins from the sky started happening.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

I think that, as much as people admire the music, the thing that has been as much a part of your story is going against the grain in terms of communication, as far as the industry communication. You had your songs on the MySpace page and then you took the MySpace page down just when it was starting to go crazy. Like I said, there’s probably 50 or 60 songs of yours in your catalog, yet there is two official songs, “Exhibit A” and “Exhibit C.” But this has all added to some mystique that surrounds you and I wonder what you make of this mystique that exists and has existed because of this buzz from the last couple of years?

Jay Electronica

People say that but I don’t get it. I don’t get why people say that. I be on Twitter, I be on Facebook. The people that know me, I’m open with them. I don’t know where the mystique thing is coming from. I’m a pretty open person. If I’m experiencing a person, I’m open. Normally I like to be by myself, inside. I could stay in the house two weeks. In the room. Excuse me ladies, I could piss in a Gatorade bottle and just store it to the side and not leave. Not doing nothing, not thinking, not working. So I am closed in that regard, but if I am interacting, I am open. If I’m interacting on the computer, I am open. I would like to ask you, why do people think that? I do get that a lot. But what mysteriousness? I don’t get it.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

OK, maybe my take on it would be that, because, like you said, everybody to always seems to try so hard to make it, when somebody is counted to that behavior, combined with obviously some talent as well, then that creates something different. It’s a different sort of thing…

Jay Electronica

Not to cut you. I think that what people are like, I don’t know this has anything to do with the mysteriousness, but I think the magnetic of it doesn’t have anything to do with me necessarily. I think that the magnetic of it is just the time. Again, this is a blessing that we are in this time. Because five years ago it wouldn’t have happened. It wouldn’t have worked. But we are just in a time now where you can get on your computer and you can speak to a 13-year-old kid in Oslo about Fight Night or a 52-year-old woman in Spain about a recipe. Where before that didn’t even exist in your brain. It didn’t even exist, but now it’s right there. And the music industry is in a collapse. A lot of things are in a collapse because of new things coming, but I think that it’s more the time. I think we all kind of share the same feeling, whether you’re a multi-billionaire or whether if you beg for change on the corner for cigarettes. I think that a large group of people all over the world are dissatisfied in general. Dissatisfied with their environment, dissatisfied on a subconscious level. Who am I? What is it for? And people have lost faith in organized religion and politics and government and health, all the way across the board. There is a desire right now for growth. It’s almost like we realize we are all under a tarp, so we have to get up and get this tarp off our back. I feel people are just being magnetized right now, “He trying to get the tarp off his back, I’m gonna get that tarp off my back too.” I think that’s what it is.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

As it relates to hip-hop, there is always a perpetual state of hip-hop debate between purists and commercial and whatnot. And a lot of people are pinning fairly or unfairly their hopes on you.

Jay Electronica

I don’t think so. I don’t think that’s it. Say for instance Barack Obama, right? People could give a shit that Barack Obama was the president. And it wasn’t that he’s the most handsome or the most qualified or the smartest or because he went to Harvard. It was because people recognize, “See, that’s somebody that’s trying to be genuine.” Now, whether or not Illuminati, whether or not he eats billy goats and children for breakfast, that don’t matter. What he represented, it wasn’t Barack Obama, it was the people feeling a certain way. Then, what was dangerous about that too is that after he became the president, you had a decrease in that energy because it started being attached to a person. It didn’t start with a person to begin with, because what that person was doing was tapping into something that’s already present. But then when you attach it to a person, and if that person has a goal and the goal is accomplished, then we go home and have breakfast and go back to normal shit, you know what I’m saying?

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

But the goal is really never ending, though.

Jay Electronica

I’m talking about it in the specific instance of Barack Obama and his campaign. The goal was to become the president, but to become the president for a reason. Whatever his personal reasons, we don’t know. We only go on what he says. Anyway. I think that is kind of it. I don’t think that people are putting it on me, I think that it’s kinda happening naturally. It’s a lot of people who do what I do. There are a lot of people that rhyme, that’s dope, that rhyme about the type of shit that I rhyme, that got Just Blaze beats, all of these things. All these things that I have got that you could say these are the reasons why. There are many people with those reasons. It’s just the time. I don’t know. I’m talking too much.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Well, I think people to some degree also want to relate to your story too. And I think also with some of the lyrics, it’s evident that there is some self-awareness and some awareness, some aspiration of trying to improve yourself. We all try to improve ourselves to some degree. Which, you know, hip-hop, you don’t always get that.

Jay Electronica

Maybe not in words. In energy you do. Like Soulja Boy, say, he had a big huge record in the States recently [sings], “Hopped up out the bed, turn my swag on.” I wish I could play that, that’s a track that hip-hop purists or somebody listening for poetry would dismiss, “This is just bullshit, talking about clothes and money.” No, he’s talking about self improvement, but not in words. Maybe he hasn’t had the experiences or the intake of the proper things to communicate it in a way that I want to hear it, but in the energy of it he is saying it. It’s present. I don’t know, am I answering the question?

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

I want to play one other thing and this is something you also played last night, the “My World” record, if that’s cool. This is “My World”. Just get into it real quick.

(music: Jay Electronica – “My World (Nas Salute)” / applause)

So the reason I want to play that, there are other examples I could have played, but just in terms of the writing, this is a Nas tribute, obviously. But what is your mindset when you’re going in? You are obviously paying homage to somebody that inspired you. How do you make that your own, though? I can see the similarities in terms of this being directly inspired by Nas, you know whatever. “Kidnap the President’s Wife Without a Plan.” You have certain sorts of places that you go lyrically that I could see a kind of connection thematically. But how do you make something like that your own?

Jay Electronica

Anything that you do. If you see a Michael Jackson impersonator, you’re like, “Oh, that’s Michael Jackson!” But then, if you get close, you say, “Oh, that’s not Michael Jackson,” because you can’t not be yourself. Even if you try to physically alter yourself to be somebody else. I really wanted to kind of adapt Nas’ style on this record because the “My World” record was a record that had a great effect on me at the time that I heard it and where I was in my life. We have got certain people that have come along now and then in rap, like Nas ain’t a rapper. He is as much a rapper as Muhammad Ali is a boxer. He is one of the greatest writers of our time, I think. I look at Nas and his writing and whatever he’s talking about, the way that it is coming out of his mind, there are so many different tastes to the food. You put it in your mouth and there is this and this and the way that feels when I chew. You can tell that he is not trying to do it. It’s something special and I think he has affected people in such a way, I feel I wanted to pay tribute. That is something in rap music that you don’t necessarily see a lot. People might do a tribute to Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel or something, but that was 20 years ago. And, I guess, not even rap music, in general. You have to wait for a person to be dead before you really stand up on a podium and say what a great affect this person had on your life. You don’t just go over to that person and tell them on a daily basis. I just wanted to do that and I want to do that not only to show my appreciation for Nas, but also just to show in rap specifically, like, “Look, we have got to start paying homage and honoring people while they are right here.” I don’t want to wait til Pac is dead or Big is dead, we should have been saying that shit while they were right here doing it. Which we were, but not in the type of way that people do after they have gone.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

If I could just real briefly quote some of the imagery from that record. “Me and my girl is like JFK and Jackie / they can’t wait to catch me in Dallas, top down on the grassy knoll and clap me / kidnap my body and fuck up the autopsy.”

Jay Electronica

I am a conspiracy theorist. I believe that Red Bull is controlled by the government. [laughter] I am a conspiracy theorist all the way. You work for the Illuminati. Me too, though. I am a conspiracy theorist to the point where we all working for them. It’s a lot of that in there too. Like, with a line like that, if you go anywhere right now and you have a conversation about the assassination of John F. Kennedy, a lot of people have been assassinated. If you’re going to have that conversation, a lot of huge leaders of countries and leaders of movements have been assassinated. But if you have that conversation about Kennedy with certain different people, there’s a certain energy surrounding that. It gravitates or makes you want to investigate it with your magnifying glass. And if you naturally feel that way, then that means that there is something going on there, in my opinion. I go back to that a lot because I think that is almost, like, “Ey, don’t forget about this because whatever that is, that’s still present.” It’s not a good thing to just toss it under the rug of your brain. And not necessarily the incident, but why? The why. I don’t even mean in terms of what he was doing in the government, just in human behavior and human relations. Anyway.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Can you talk a little bit about the spiritual component to your lyrics? There’s a lot of religious imagery and stuff like that.

Jay Electronica

I’m from New Orleans and I was raised in a Baptist church. I went to church almost every Sunday until I was old enough to say, “I’m not going today.” Other than that, I was at church. I was in the choir for at least since I was five years old until at least nine or ten. But going to choir practice. It was more traditional, it was more ritual. My grandmother said, “This is what we do, this is what we do.” So it was that kind of thing. And then my mom, when we first moved out of my grandmother’s house, my mom always only worked and she was sad a lot because she was only working. Every moment she was alive, she was working. It’s almost like that now. Not so much now, but for a long time. But anyway. She sought refuge. She used to pray a lot. I would hear my mom in the night and be like, “Is she in there crying?” And I’d go through there and see her in the bathroom crying. So as a kid, that had an effect on me, like, “Wow. OK, my momma, when nothing else, she’s going to this.” I also saw how it gave her comfort and any time that something good happened, or at any time she could do something good for somebody, she was always thankful. It was always like, “Thank you God. Thank you Jesus. Thank you.” It’s on me.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao:

Do you think that, well, I mean, I think a lot of people who if you’re a conspiracy theorist, does religion fuel that? Do you think because a lot of people reject that later in life however they are raised?

Jay Electronica

I rejected it too at a point, but as I get older I try not to become a rejecter. Like I say, I’m a conspiracy theorist and I say that seriously but jokingly at the same time, because what’s a conspiracy? A conspiracy is people getting together to do something. The Illuminati is not a thing that falls out of the sky. It’s not an unknown thing from the universe, it’s people. If there is a Illuminati, or a control group that is doing it, it could be us. “OK, today we’re going to agree that we going to do this and we’re going to take this Red Bull thing,” it’s just people. [laughter] What? This is Red Bull, right? I went through a rejection phase, “I will reject that. Jesus did not die on the cross and float up into the sky.” It doesn’t matter if I believe that or not – well, I’m not going to say that either, because I don’t know. Everything that I’m saying is just my thesis. If I’m in school, then I’m writing my thesis. This is my thesis. I have learned that as a rejecter, when I had got to the point where I was rejecting things, a lot of it is anger too. You get mad when you find out somebody told you there ain’t no such thing as Santa Claus. Firstly you get hurt, then you be mad that somebody is telling you that, then you can’t believe that your momma lied to you all that time. You go through all that, it is the same type of thing because we’re really children, we’re young. Turtles and trees live hundreds of years but we get out of here quick.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

I’m going to play one more thing here. It’s a shorter one.

(music: Jay Electronica – “Eternal Sunshine (The Pledge)” / applause)

Now that song, “Eternal Sunshine,” was one of the things that really, really caught fire when you put it up on your MySpace page. But I think that is a great example of the sort of thing that you have been talking about just now, which is some element of rejection, some element of rejecting. Do you want to elaborate on that at all?

Jay Electronica

I don’t see it as rejecting. If I am talking about Christianity or Islam or Judaism, I’m saying that these titles and these things that we hold true, and sometimes we use as brick walls that we put up in front of each other. It’s actually, let’s tear down a brick wall. It’s not the rejection, it’s the acceptance. The more you are open to accept a thing... you can’t learn and grow being closed to a thing. It’s acceptance, really. At least that’s what I feel about it but that’s the beautiful thing about music too, you’re going to take what you can get from it.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

What sort of stuff were people saying when they were messaging you back once you put this up?

Jay Electronica

A lot of different things. Once I put it up, it never was meant to even be heard like that by itself.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

It’s part of a suite, to be fair.

Jay Electronica

There was a lot of things. I had people tell me, “This is garbage. This is trash.” Then people saying it’s amazing. That was a weird time. That was when I first started getting weird messages, like some woman saying, “Can you talk to my son? I came across your MySpace page because you are friends with such and such and I heard this song and I wanted to know if you can speak to my son, he’s 14 years old.” I don’t know, different things, that was kind of weird. Not weird.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Unexpected.

Jay Electronica

For some particular reason, that body of music produced a lot of that. It wasn’t just one instance, it was a lot of it.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

It’s the form of the music too. This whole suite of music has no drums. A hip-hop record with no drums, that is something I don’t think people were going to expect. Maybe the form of it had something to do with it, maybe they could pay attention to what you’re saying a little more closely. Anyways, I’m just trying to stay conscious of time because I know you have to get out of here soon. I guess we can go into... [laughs] I’m sorry, I’m losing my train of thought for a moment guys. Let’s turn to the song, the song that many people know you from. Let’s go into this and we can talk about it because it is worth discussing for sure.

(music: Jay Electronica – “Exhibit C” / applause)

So this is the song that has obviously caught fire. How do you rate it amongst the stuff you’ve done? You have a bunch of stuff, not everybody has heard it.

Jay Electronica

It is what it is. I see the response that it is getting but I think it is because of the time. I like “Exhibit A” better than “Exhibit C,” but I think that the time that “Exhibit C” got heard is why “Exhibit C” is doing what it’s doing. It’s a personal record. Of course, there is an element in there, I am a rapper so I am going to always... If I’m a boxer, I am always going to feel like I can knock anybody out and I’m the best. So, as a rapper it’s just in me. There’s braggadocio shit in there, but there’s a lot of my history in there too in a condensed way. It’s a personal record, but I feel like I have other records that go into more detail of my story than that. I like “Exhibit C,” it’s a good record.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Is it weird to have something that personal be something that people really latch onto?

Jay Electronica

Not really. The only time I’ve ever experienced awkwardness, and I don’t mean awkward in a negative way, I just mean awkward, literally awkward, in reference to what you are asking is like... Let’s just say I am standing outside having a cigarette or something and then my man walks up to me and is like, “Hey, man. How is your sister Fallon doing? I heard she was sick.” That kind of thing. And it’s not a negative thing, it’s like when you stand up and you get dizzy, when you stand up too fast. But I don’t mind it because I feel like the more you know about me and the more I can know about you, then we can get somewhere.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Actually it brings up another point. I heard stories that you recently gave out your AIM address to a bunch of people, to the public. You’ve given out your phone number. You’re completely open to communication from anybody who might step up and say what’s up to you.

Jay Electronica

I have been a person who says I’ll give you my e-mail, but even when you do that, I don’t know if it’s my grandmother raised me a certain way, but even when you do that there’s a little thing in your brain telling you, “That’s fucked up. That’s wrong.” It’s the right way. That’s what you are supposed to be doing. If you can do something [like that] and you don’t have anything inside of your brain swimming around that’s like, “Ooh, I don’t know if you’re a good human in that instance.” If that comes up, then myself I like to try and chip away at that. At the same time, I don’t answer it every time that it rings. I might not necessarily answer every AIM message that comes up. But I do. If it rings, I will answer it sometimes. If I’m giving out my number, just the action itself, not necessarily that you are going to contact me. If you do, peace. But the interaction of...

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

As a gesture of goodwill.

Jay Electronica

“Here, this is my telephone number. Not the business number; this is the number that my grandmother is going to call me on, the name number.” Like the Soulja Boy thing, it ain’t the words, it ain’t the action, it’s the energy that’s being exchanged that makes it a real thing. That one exchange is the conversation. Then I notice too that when I do that, say, if I go somewhere and somebody asks me for my telephone number and I give it to them, I might know his name or her name, but I know that person when I see them again. In that exchange you are giving something away of yours.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

I can’t let you go without getting you to as quickly as possible, or as much as you feel comfortable, dissecting this last verse of the song a little bit. I really don’t want to have to read it myself but the lines that everybody quotes is, “They call me Jay Electronica / Fuck that / Call me Jay ElecHannukah / Jay ElecYarmulke / Jay ElecRamadaan Muhammad Asalaamica / RasoulAllah Supana Watallah through your monitor.”

Jay Electronica

It’s the same thing, acceptance. It’s like it doesn’t matter what you call me. We are all of these things, we are all Jews, Christians, Muslims, we are all those things. Muhammad wasn’t the last messenger; we all messengers. And I know that might be offensive. Because I consider myself a Muslim so I can understand how somebody who was a Muslim might say Muhammad was the last messenger. But we all messengers. In fact, we are all Allah. In that line, I think people connect to the energy of that. Not necessarily, oh, that it’s some good wordplay, but just the fact that he is saying Arabic and he’s mixing Judaism with Islam. I think that it’s the energy of it. The energy of it is, man, fuck all these titles! Let’s throw these titles in the trash can and come out of this box and sit down and eat a nice meal together and see how we’re going to work this shit out.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

The funny thing is these are all plays off rhyming with your name. And the thing is, when people who aren’t familiar with you hear your name, they are thrown off, even that you’re a hip-hop artist. I wonder what your view of that is. Someone might have a perception that electronica… if you go back into the science of how you came up with that as your ID?

Jay Electronica

That’s a weird thing too. I believe in certain types of shit. I will tell you this: I have always been a superhero fan. From when I was a kid, I was always tying robes around my neck, “I am Superman!” I remember one time I jumped off of a high porch. I had a dream I could fly and I went outside the next day with my robe on and tried to do it and I scraped up a line down my stomach. I remember my mom, she gave me a beating, like, “Don’t you ever!” I remember feeling like, “Well, I just ain’t learned how to do it yet.” I still feel like that now, I just don’t know how to fly. I saw those dudes with the squirrel suits, flying suits? I’m like, “See? We’re getting close! I knew it!” So Jay Electronica, my name is Je’Ri, so that’s where the Jay is from. And Electronica is like, if I was a superhero then that would be my superhero name. I didn’t choose electronica based on music, based on the genre of music. I was playing around with electricity. I’m a big fan of Nikola Tesla. Everything is energy and electricity so I was trying to make a play on that. But I wanted it to be feminine, too, because I feel like rap is such a [grunts], “Urgh, caveman.” I wanted to have the feminine side. Otherwise it would have been an “O” at the end, so I put the “A” there because I was raised by women. I was raised by my mother, my grandmother, when I grew up I only had a sister. All my cousins were female. I had one male cousin and I recognize in my own life, neglecting my feminist side also causes me to deal with females in a certain way and it’s the time when I am most unproductive in my life. So, that’s why Jay Electronica.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

I’ll ask you one last question before you open it up for questions from participants. How has parenthood changed things for you?

Jay Electronica

Oddly enough, when my friends had children, my people have been having children since I was in high school. I am late on children. But my daughter, she’s one, she just made one on February first. I was always expecting that this thing was going to hit me, or I was going to open up like a flower, or have some type of experience. And I haven’t felt that yet. I can’t explain it. I guess it did happen, because it did shift the way that I think in a certain way. Not necessarily in my behavior, you can see it. But just in the way where I’m taking it in and processing and, eventually, it is going to translate into the behavior. Just the experience of having a child is a wonderful thing. It’s amazing. I look at her and it’s like, “Damn, you look like my momma. You look like me!” Then she smiles or something, it’s an amazing thing. Right now, it’s still new and I am still learning and I’m still becoming accustomed to it. She breastfeeds so she’s completely latched to momma right now, nobody else exists. So she is just knowing me and we are just beginning. We had a home birth, I delivered her my own self, cut the cord, pulled her out, cleaned her off, everything.