Juelz - He Be What The Game's Been Missing

Originally uploaded by hattie collins.

Had the fortune to get a little advance airing of this when interviewing the Dipset Soldier at his New Jersey home this September. Santana is bringing New York back, standard. 'Mic Check', 'The Whistle Song', 'I'm Crack' and the Young Jeez/ Lil Wayne assisted 'Make It Work For U' are all fire. This holds so much heat, you won't be needing ya winter coat when playing this baby on your iPod, get me.

Here's my RWD interview in case you missed it...

Born To Do It: Juelz Santana

Sell: So his first album flopped harder than a pre-Viagra orange-bus-pass-owning Chelsea pensioner, but the Harlem hustler dusted himself down and is currently the hottest thing in hip hop right now. Ya boy Santana’s back like cooked…. well, you know the rest. Ai!

There are a few things you might expect a famous rap star to be doing on his day off; discussing colour swathes and types of timber with his builder aren’t the first that might come to mind. “I’m gonna marble this whole floor and ceiling and put a glass balcony on the stairs,” Juelz Santana tells RWD as he guides us round his recently acquired New Jersey home. “I just moved in a couple of weeks ago, but I’m planning on finishing it in like 10 days,” he says, surveying the concrete mixers, bare walls and dusty floors. “I’m really impatient. Once I start something, I go at it. I’m not happy until it’s finished right.”

The DIY Dipsetter ain’t lying; this is a man for whom impossible looking goals are a breeze. After his initial deal with Def Jam looked shaky following poor sales of debut , the young Dip-Setter self-financed the mixtape series and put 20G’s into shooting his own video for street smash . The result? He’s miles ahead of the rest of the rap pack as anticipation for new album reaches fever-pitch Stateside. “I feel like you get what you put in and I knew I put in a lot of hard work,” he states, pausing to show off the personal elevator that takes him from loft to garage in but three seconds. “I formatted everything different and strategically planned it out; I knew what I wanted to do this time around.”

As with Joe Budden’s Def Jam debut, Santana suffered when not enough concentration or cash was put into his project. So rather than waiting for his label to create the hype, he did the damn thing himself. “This time around I paid for my mixtapes, put ‘em out myself, went to 3rd Avenue to make sure they were in stores, paid for my video… You know was on the Billboard charts?” he says proudly of his self-starting ethos. “It means I got the Def Jam machine behind me; everybody’s ready to roll now. There’s a lot of people there, so I had to get the focus off everybody else and onto me.”

Many wondered whether the young Harlem-ite would stay at Def Jam; particularly considering his Co’D Cam’Ron’s shaky relationship with the now President Sean Carter. “It’s cool cos it’s not like me and Jay are enemies,” he insists. “Cam gave everybody the decision to do what they wanted to do, so I know what I had to do.” Things are similarly cool with Dame Dash, the man that initially bought Cam and co to the Roc. “Everybody went their separate ways, but me and Dame is cool,” Santana insists. “I just seen Dame this weekend and it was crazy, real nice.”


With the set-up all in place and any potential beefs avoided, the man born LaRon James is confident he’s about to bring back to the game what it’s been lacking for so long. “I don’t feel like I sound like nobody else, I’m bringing that originality,” he says of his second set that boasts features from Lil Wayne, Young Jeezy and the Game. “I understand my movement. That’s why I try not to cross over and do a female song, cos my niggas like me. I represent the average nigga that’s out there in the street right now.”

Having taken that hungry hustler mentality from the streets of Harlem to his latest home in New Jersey, it looks like the 22 year old father of one is set for success. “I’ll stop when I hit my grave. That’s when it’s all over. I feel like I’m never gonna be satisfied; when my crib is done I’m not gonna be satisfied,” he enthuses. “I know what it is not to have sh*t, to now have sh*t. To come from nothing, and make it something. The sky’s the limit; I want it all,” he decides. “I’m one of them niggas, I might pause right here for a minute, get my breath, but I’m a keep going and I ain’t about to stop. I’m trying to take my situation worldwide.”


Santana on S.A.S
“They my niggas. They wouldn’t be signed to us if I ain’t know ‘em. I met them out here and we went to London one time and was hanging out wit’ them and it was like ‘Damn, I ain’t know y’all spit like that.’ So we just got with them cos we always wanted to expand. It just that they so far away, it’s hard to really get a lot of stuff accomplished, cos they in the UK. To even go to the studio is hard cos they gotta fly out here. Plus both of them have issues; one of them have an issue in New York to where they have to come here and clarify it and the other one has a legal issue in London so they can’t fly now. Once they get it straightened out, we can get them into the studio properly and do the thing, you know?”