RS: I saw you at the WMC Defected in the House Party at Nicky
Beach, and your set was amazing.
Jay-J: Oh, thank you.
RS: I loved the way you brought on Latrice to sing over the
records. Is that something you do often, or was that just special for
the one night?
Jay-J: No, we actually do that quite a bit. We tour around a lot
doing that all over the world. We'll be doing it again in Australia
and we've been all over Europe. In fact, we just did a Friday night
show in LA. She's a great performer and it's really great to add that
live element with her singing to the DJ gigs, so it's fun.
RS: One thing I thought was really cool is that with her album,
it was a Latrice album rather than a Jay-J featuring Latrice album.
Was that the plan to begin with, to make it as an artist album
produced by you, or how did that project come about?
Jay-J: Yes, that was the plan to begin with. Kaskade and I had
talked about how to work together and the idea of putting together an
album. It kind of started with him with saying I want to use Latrice
on a track and do it in your studio, so they came down and they
recorded Latrice over their song in my studio and then it just kind of
went from there. The ideas sort of when from there and us talking
about more than just one single and doing a whole artist album for
Latrice that was co-produced by Kaskade and myself. She's the artist
and the focus and I'm really happy with the way it came out. It was
fun to make and I think we made some good music.
RS: You mentioned Australia earlier and I heard that after Miami
you jetted off to Australia for a big MTV Video Music Awards party.
How did you hook up with MTV and what was the VMA party like?
Jay-J: The hook up with MTV came through a friend of mine out there
who had put my name forward to the producer of the Video Music Awards
as a potential DJ. She knew that I was going to be back there because
I already had a couple of gigs booked. There was the hour-long
pre-show and the red carpet. They were interviewing everybody and the
soundtrack underneath all the interviews is the music I was playing so
it was basically house music background to the interviews with all of
these music superstars from Australia and beyond and Europe and the
US. All the artists were there - Snoop Dogg, James Blunt, Ashlee
Simpson, Russell Crowe and his band, celebrities and Pop Idol
Australian winners, and all these people were being interviewed
throughout the course of that hour with the music I was playing
underneath it all. Then during the show itself, during the
performances I had a special DJ booth up where the winners were
seated. A bunch of times during the show I was playing music going to
commercial and coming back from commercial. I was mainly there to
play for the crowd for the commercial breaks and then coming back from
commercials they would show what I was doing and all that. Ultimately
it was great, they ran the show twice a week for twice a day for like
two/three weeks in Australia and they did a special pre-show once a
day where they talked about me and they showed one of my music videos
of one of the songs on Defected. It's just been a great momentum in
that region. They've since started to show it in some Asian
countries, Latin American countries, some countries in Europe, so yes,
it's been cool.
RS: Were you a DJ first or a producer first?
Jay-J: Well it's hard to say, because technically I was a musician
first. I started playing saxophone as my first instrument for about a
year, and then I picked up the guitar and played that for about six
years with bands, and in the middle of that I started to DJ and just
kind of continued to DJ from there. Through the latter part of high
school and college, I DJed in clubs. I was performing and recording
and putting together little productions as a musician before I started
DJing, but ultimately I think when it comes to house music, I was a DJ
first and then a producer. I had been DJing for about two or three
years in the clubs in San Francisco before I started producing and
making house music.
