Hip-hop flip-flop - interview with record producer Jermaine Dupri - Interview

Interview, March, 1999 by Dimitri Ehrlich

As a record producer and label head, Jermaine Dupri has been breaking new artists since he was fifteen. Last year, he turned the tables

Jermaine Dupri got an early start in the music business: He began attending recording sessions when he was three (his dad managed '70s funk band Brick) and was a competent drummer by the age of five. While still a teen he helped Kris Kross sell eight million albums, and he was granted full control over his own Sony Music subsidiary before he turned twenty, long before the world ever heard of Puff Daddy.

Today, with his baggy jeans weighed down by beepers, date keepers, and a cell phone with headset, Dupri is a one-man mobile communications center. At twenty-six, the Atlanta-based founder and CEO of So So Def Recordings gets a lot of phone calls - from singers he's produced, like Usher, Mariah Carey, and Aretha Franklin, and from rappers like Slick Rick, Jay-Z, and Lil' Kim, all of whom are guests on Dupri's first album as an artist, the double-platinum, Grammy-nominated Life in 1472.

With a growing roster of new artists slated for release on his label this year, JD is in the top ranks of a new breed of black music impresarios. And like Puff Daddy and Master P, his secret is this: He's a player who never stops working.

DIMITRI EHRLICH: How did you get started in the music business?

JERMAINE DUPRI: I'd go dance at talent shows, and because I was young I had the upper hand on a lot of other crews. People thought it was cute. I used that to my advantage. My father was a promoter of Fresh Fest [the 1984 concert tour with Run-DMC] and they needed an opening act. He got me a slot as a dancer. We tried it out the first time in Atlanta and the crowd went crazy. I was the opening clown.

BE: Since you got your start as a dancer rather than a musician, you probably began thinking about records in terms of what makes people dance.

JB: Right. I visualize music from a DJ's point of view, and I bring that to being a producer. All the records I've made have pretty much been big club turntable records. You need to feel the rhythm. I go to clubs and if I notice the DJs are playing the records faster, then I'll push the beats a little on the next record I make. And a lot of people don't know how to watch out for things like that.

DE: So you make records from a DJ's point of view rather than that of a traditional songwriter who might be thinking of lyrics and melodies first?

JB: That's why I tell people that I'm really the definition of a full-fledged B-boy - I've taken in every aspect of hip-hop culture. I've done the graffiti, the dancing, and the music.

DE: When most people think of Jermaine Dupri, I don't believe they think "hip-hop." Your biggest successes have been in the R&B realm.

JD: But I also produced Kris Kross.

DE: Kris Kross aren't exactly the epitome of major street cred.

JD: Well, they did have major street cred in the beginning. It was just that they were kids, so it got to a point where they couldn't say the things they needed to say to keep it on the street level. But Puff Daddy and Ma$e were basically [the equivalent of] Kris Kross in '92.

DE: How do you think being based in Atlanta rather than New York or L.A. has affected your career?

JD: It gave me a slower start. When I came out rapping on my record, a lot of people said, "Oh, you just want to be like Puff." I could be mad and say that people aren't paying attention because Da Brat's first single, "Funkdafied," was platinum and it was a duet between me and her that came out three years before Puff Daddy made a record. But because I was in Atlanta, people didn't realize I'm one of the real forefathers in the game. I'm one of those guys a lot of people watch, imitate, and then make it seem like they were the ones who did it first.