Shooting On A Budget

Hip Hop is all about making a dollar out of 15 cents. The culture is an outlet for the the marginlized and oppressed masses to express their vision of art and life to the public with the very little resources at their disposal. Those resources are never more evident than when it comes to music videos. The cost of shooting a video can go from extravagant numbers to zero these days. So it's dissapointing when multi-platinum artists continue to push out crews with sub-par rhymes and videos, when they could be showing the people the freedom of creativity that a few million in guarded Swiss banks gives you. It's the equivalent of pushing the people visual soap. Which is what these two videos from, Boyz N Da Hood and USDA are.


The shit makes you ask. "Damn, whatever happened to coming dope?" Lucky there are still a few out there holding it down. Here's one.
And another one.

THE JACKA: BLUE COLLAR DOLLARS

The Jacka: Blue Collar Dollars.
Words: ILLERCLIP
Photos By: JJC


The Jacka is completely at ease with his independent blue-collar hustle. Debuting eight years ago with super-crew Mob Figaz hailing out of Pittsburg, the Jacka and group members Fed-X, Husalah, Rydah, and Ap-9 independently sold over 100,000 copies of their freshman offering C-Bo’s Mob Figaz. After getting a taste of the money the independent hustle brings, Jacka never felt the desire to sign with the majors who give mere pennies on each album sold.
Instead, his modus operandi include a tour and studio schedule that sees him hitting shows and networking in back door markets like Eureka, CA one day, and dropping verses in Queens Bridge, NY the next. His national breakout hit, an ode to the illegal life and Mary Jane called “Barney (More Crime)” off his sophomore release The Jack Artist features East Coast compatriot Cormega and; a prime example of his far-reaching work ethic. But it doesn’t stop there.
He’s just finished an album titled The Devil’s Rejects with Akron, OH heavy weight Amp Pachino that he completely recorded while out in the Buckeye State. It supplements his latest solo offering Tear Gas, a title he straightforwardly describes as, “Just something to make suckas cry.”
With two albums on the way in 2007 and his own label called The Artist Records to contend with, Jacka has his plate piled high with food on his own dime.

ILLERCLIP: You are very introspective with your rhymes, despite the creative limitations of your genre of hip hop (gangsta sh*t). What inspires you to spit in that contemplative way?

Jacka: I listen to hella different music. You got to have an open mind and understand where mothafuckas are coming from. I hit the people with something they feel. I may be saying something everybody in the world says, I just say it in a certain way. It’s in a way where you have to think about it to get it or I say it in a way where you get it off top, and feel it so much that you love it.

IC:What’s the best part about rapping for you?

Jacka: The responses from the people. They tell me to keep it up. So I’m like boom! I’ll step it up at the same time. A lot of the time, I drop albums and do shit that I been having for a while. It’s just that when it comes out, people think it’s my new shit. But it ain’t. But this new album Devil’s Rejects that I got with Amp Pachino and my new shit Tear Gas that’s the real shit there. That’s the shit I’m doing everyday.

IC: Have you ever thought of relocating temporarily to another city to make music like you did on The Devil’s Rejects where you recorded in Akron?

Jacka: Naw, the whole reason I had went out there was to prove something. The mentality I had was straight Bay street mentality mixed with punch lines and metaphors. I looked at it as competition because they don’t know about hella mothafuckas from out here.

IC: Tear Gas is your next solo?

Jacka: Yeah…

IC: Who’s on the album?

Jacka: I got Gucci Mane, Freeway, Sean Paul from the Young Bloods, Keak Da Sneak, and Feddie (Fed-X from Mob Figaz), Rydah, and Husalah on there.

IC: What do you have to say about the rumor that says you’re a transplant from New York and you got your style from Cormega?

Jacka: Shit, man, I been rapping before I even knew who Cormega was, and I’ve always been in these streets getting love. So I don’t even know what the fuck niggas is talking about. I never heard that before.

IC: You’re involved in a lot of community events to stop the violence. If you could give a solution to end the violence in the streets and ghetto what would it be?

Jacka: That’s a serious question there. I’d probably get all the crooked police and all the people who actually get the weapons and the drugs in to the states and the hood, period.

IC: So eliminate the access to weapons in the hood and it would be a lot better?

Jacka: All this shit is…there are government officials getting guns and drugs in the country. Not us in the streets, man. We ain’t got access to importing that shit. So them is the people we should go after instead of focusing on giving this dude 25 to life over some bullshit. Give those people some time. Let them think about what they doing wrong and the lives their guns and drugs are taking.

IC: But what if you can’t stop them?

Jacka: You got to have self-restraint. You got to know when to control yourself after awhile because these mothafuckas want you to kill yourself.

IC: When did you first decide that rapping was the way out for you?

Jacka: I always said that, bruh. I been rhyming and shit since I was 9 years old. I used to tell my mom when she would ask, “So what you going to do?” that rapping is what I would do. I was about figuring out how to make a few dollars without going to school. Proving everybody fucking wrong, because she was borrowing money from me. She telling me to go to school, but she asking me for money from time to time.

IC: How was your childhood growing up?

Jacka: Shit, it was cool when I was a little kid. My pops used to hit banks and other little shit …to get serious dough. So when he was around, it was cool. But it got to a time when I was six or seven and it went down and I ain’t seen him, so that’s when the shit got rough. My mom was hella young when I was born. They was in they early teens and shit. So it was kind of fucked up. We were in Oakland when crack was big and everybody smoking crack and I’m seeing the shit trying to get out of it. Trying to get away from it all.

IC: You have a daughter yourself. How do you juggle being a father and a full time MC?

Jacka: I just make sure my way of life, which is Islam, and my culture, which is hip hop, is apart of my house hold. I make sure everyone in my life is apart of it so they understand when I’m handling my business. If I’m gone, its because I’m on the road handling business. A lot of mothafuckas gone because they in the streets just fucking off. I never come back hurting, trying to get back on my feet. Every time I come back home, it’s with more. So they understand.

IC: How do you feel about C-Bo getting signed to Cashville?

Jacka: I think it’s a good thing for him and whatever he trying to bring to the table. That’s like a big move for somebody. Shit, if I had hella bread I would put him on too.


IC: How do feel about the mentality of not wanting to be under another grown ass man?

Jacka: Either way, you go you going to get put on by a grown ass man. But if you talking about dudes not signing to other dudes out here in the Bay Area, that’s different. Because, you really got to have the type of rep that mothafuckas want to be under. Real street niggas want to be under another street type of nigga. They don’t want to be around a mothafucka who going to be acting all funny, pulling fake ass shit. So sometimes a mothafucka don’t even want to do it. They just want to stick to what they know. You know I fuck with a lot of these niggas out here, but there’s some niggas I wouldn’t fuck with out here. Because mothafuckas is cats, man. All the rappers from the Bay ain’t hard. Not all of them are real. A lot of these niggas is suckas man, everyone know that. There ain’t too many hard real niggas that rap out here. There’s a bunch a lames. That’s how come it ain’t really on like that out here. Motha fuckas scared to go places. Go to K.C, go to different cities and do it. You got to be real for mothafuckas across the world to respect you. You don’t do that, then you don’t know shit but what’s around here and what’s in your face, that’s it.

IC: You’re not hella flashy. In fact, you have an incognito persona on and off the mic. Do you feel like it holds you back from seeing mainstream recognition?

Jacka: Keep it real, I do got chains and cars, it’s just not important until I’m at a point where I really got to show off turf work and show them how it really is in the Bay. But I don’t need to do that shit around here. Niggas is starving! I ain’t pulling up to the block in a Phantom.

IC: Do you feel there is a certain amount of “selling out” you have to do to be able to reach commercial success?

Jacka: Hell yeah you do! You got to kiss some ass! You got to do a lot of shit that you normally wouldn’t do, because it’s business. So you got to be a certain way or mothafuckas going to be scared to fuck with you. They going be like, “Aww, he’s a liability.”

I fuck with the people that I should fuck with for real, and be cool with them. Fuck all these artists and these other mutha fuckas man. Because at the end of the day they going to get smacked in the face around you or something.

IC: When you coined the phrase, “ILLERCLIP” what did it mean to you?

Jacka: A bigger magazine for a gun.
(laughs)

www.myspace.com/thejackamobfigaz