Jae Scott

Coming up in Atlanta Ga I have always been a little different when it came to music. At an early age it was no mystery what was my first love. When my mother was pregnant with me she used to put headphones over her belly and play music for me. She said I used to move when she she did that. It got to where she would put certain songs on and I would move more than I did to others. I guess I was picky with music even then. As a child my earliest memories of music were groups like the B52’s, The Jets, Luther Vandros, Sade, Whitney Houston, 70’s Motown, Gino venelli,James Brown,Curtis Mayfield, along with countless others. My mother and father were avid music collectors. So I was exposed to all types of music. My father was former lead man for a band back in Chicago called “Black Snow”. He moved to Atlanta to attend Morehouse College while my mom went to Georgia State. I first fell in love with hip hop at the age of 4. The first song I can remember being drawn to was basketball by Curtis Blow. I was a little kid at the time but something about the cadence of his lyrics intrigued me. It was after I heard Bam’s Planet Rock and Melle Mel and Grandmaster Flash’s The Messege I was totally hooked. It was something beautiful in the way they described their environment and what was going on. Although I was all but 5 I felt I understood. At this young age I looked outside a lot of the things that they spoke on was going on right in front of me. I didn’t fully grasp everything in detail but I understood. It wasn’t until age 11 I really got the urge to write rhymes.Me and my cuz used to play all day and I can remember we both wrote raps just to see if we could do it. I cant remember the rhymes but im sure it was trash. I didn’t care though I felt like it was something I could do. So I just used to dabble every blue moon just keeping them to myself. I liked writing poetry more although I would find its all the same later. Around 92,93 I really started to get a bug to rhyme big time. I was into all types of music still but Hip Hop was what I was into the hardest. The first tape I bought on my own was Black Sheep Flavor Of The Month maxi single(hey we were broke) I got like 10 dollars for part of my Christmas present. I went straight to turtles and copped that and A Tribe Called Qwest’s Check The Rhyme single. By that time I was into EPMD, Public Enemy, Ice Cube, KSolo, Masta Ace, Mc. Eiht, Dj. Quick, Del, BDP, Eric B & Rakim, Gangstarr, Spice 1, Naughty By Nature, Onyx were a couple that come to mind. By 94 I was writing for real. We used to freestyle at lunch and before school in the gym and anytime me and my people were together. We used to call ourselves the Hit Squad. I can remember being a shorty like “yeah im gonna be in the Hit Squad with Das, EPMD, Redman, & K solo. So it was only right we call ourselves the hit squad. We were deep but it was mainly me (they used to joke and call me Jamison J lol), GC(Gordon), Armond(Advocate), Mike J(The Specialist), Erron(The Professional). Since I was the best Beatboxer I had to handle the beatmaking even back then. We would rhyme all the time being in the streets hoping on the Marta. We remained cool throughout high school. I played Football and ran track in school so I wasn’t around the hood as much during the summers. GC played too so we were kind of MIA most of the time. After high school GC went to GT(Georgia Tech) on a football scholarship and I went to Perimeter to improve my GPA and transfer to Georgia State. Although I was a College prospect and could have played in college it wasn’t my path. Around 01 was when I started pursuing music seriously. I along with Still Ill( Erron) founded Asylum, which was basically the same click of individuals rhyming from high school. It was myself, Still Ill, Wonder, Geometrix, and Cinstar. We recorded our 1st full length titled “Penocide”.I did not make beats when we recorded our first LP but I always had beats in my head and ideas for samples. I payed attention when we were in the studio. I asked questions and just watched what they were doing. The first influence on my beats was Godzeala. He was a dude we linked with around this time. He used to work with Still Ill and he was always raving about how dope his beats were. He finally hit him with a beat tape and Ill let us hear it. He used an SP1200 and he as sick with it. I knew then that this is what I wanted to do. The beat tapes were not the best quality most of the beats played out of one speaker and were low. We had like 4 tapes of beats but we couldn’t ever get up with my man. We had rhymes for days and had a spot to record finally. Up until this point we used to make mixtapes on Geometrix’s boombox by hooking headphones into the mic jack in his stereo. A friend of ours Amin had a homeboy who had a studio and he knew we rhymed and had talent so he introduced us to his homeboy Ralph Clark. He wanted to see what we were working with so he wanted to have a session. So we went to the lab but couldn’t get in touch with zeala so we couldn’t track the beat from the SP so we recorded from the tape that played out of 1 speaker. The first song recorded was a song called “Multi Censored”. Stll ill held it down with the rhyme while Cinstar sung the hook. It turned out dope. We ended up recording 15 songs and it was cool but we were paying for beats Zeala held down the production for the most part but Ralph contributed some tracks also. I thought about it and was like “ we could have used that money for other things.”I officially started making beats in 02. My little brother actually was always a computer wiz and he always was into different things. He came across a copy of Fruity Loops 2.5. We had no idea how to import samples or anything so at first we were just trying to figure it out, using presets and wack sounds it came with. We eventually found that you could import samples into the program if you converted them into .wav files. I was hooked. My brother and I just stayed up all night making beats daily. The early beats weren’t exactly bangers. You could’nt tell us that though. We were sampling with a bootleg MP3 program called MP3 trim. I had to write down the start and the end of the part we were sampling and used another program to convert the file to a .wav. It was hallarious but we were just experimenting and after a while they started sounding decent. It could not have come at a better time because the group was going slow and we lost contact with Zeala and Ralph was moving the lab so we were once again back to square one. I just kept working and working until finally I was able to come with something quality that we could spit over. It was very important to me to be self sufficient when it came to music. I knew I was on to something.The first production I did was for a solo track I did called “Real Life”. I used this Luther Vandross sample I chopped a long time prior. Its was the main part of the loop and I built it around that. I had sampled this Spanish jazz singer also and threw a reverb on it. I was pleased on how it came out. Back then I knew little about mixing so I had doubled the drums up, I might have tripled them. The snares and kicks were wayyy too loud. I guess you live and learn. After that I started to see how it could turn out. I didn’t record again for a minute so I just kept making beats and experimenting. I eventually got back up with my group mates and had some beats I was running by them. So we are up in Wonder’s crib and i’m playing beats seeing if they like them and Wonder starts spitting a verse then my brother from another Jae Yale starts spitting a verse, and it was a chain effect. We must have spit like 2000 bars that night. By nights end we pretty much were in agreement that we could make something pretty dope. We went on to record 18 tracks for the next album. I decided to call it “The Antigen”. I ran the idea by the crew and they liked the concept. I exclusively produced The Antigen in its entirty. It will be available in March. Stay tuned.Since recording The Antigen I have just been getting my chops up, learning my craft and doing a lot of crate digging. My biggest influences are Jay Dilla(RIP),RZA, Pete Rock, Priemo, GodZeala, Prince Paul, Organized Noize, Dj Paul & Juicy J, Just Blaze, Kanye West, Rick Rubin , Dre, The Bomb Squad and many others. I have done tracks with Shred(Trial & Terra) , The District, Elz(Umbrella Gang/Corrupt Money), D R&B(Playtown950),Illastrate(Akir, Arophat, Dynas, Lords of the Underground), Ralph Clark(Swatcom) and Mike Turna(Umbrella) to name a few. I have been getting nothing but love so far and the movement is gaining momentum. A brief description of myself and what I do is a Producer/Mc. My aim is to make dope music with some kind of substience. Period. I want to just bring a different perspective than what you are used to. I am from Atlanta and currently am based in Atl.-one-Jae Scott