Juelz Santana: A!
By James Oyedijo


You can walk down the street in any part of NYC and hear a youngster (or little dun, depending on who you ask) holler out “Santana, A!” Two months ago, I got the chance to talk to Human Crack in The Flesh about his new album, Avril Lavigne, hipsters, and Hurricane Katrina.

When Santana's asked about how he put his new album What the Game's Been Missing together, he said “I thought, where do I want this to go?” He answered his question by taking $100,000 out of his bank account building his own studio in New Jersey and recorded over 160 songs. Santana may be on a major label, but he has an independent spirit. He feels that, “too a certain extent major labels are irrelevant, you can sell 50,000-60,000 with an independent or on your own, the role of a major is to take you over the top”. Of all the songs on his new album, the song Juelz is most excited about is Shottas. It features Cam'ron and Sizzla and the song is defintely a heater. The movie Shottas, starring Ky-mani Marley and Spragga Benz, deals with global issues by depicting the struggles of two young men that run hustles and drugs in both Kingston and Washington D.C. He believes in the song so much that he's put his own money up to get a video made for it.

I couldn't resist asking Juelz about the hipsters' fascination with him. My boy Geez, a hipster connoisseur, proposed this series of questions: “A) Does he know what a hipster is? B) If he's aware of his overwhelming popularity in the hipster community, and C) How he feels about that?” Juelz believes everything is everything, “I feel everybody can relate to everyone's experiences, every place is different with different styles and cultures, yet everything is universal... It's the same sh*t, just in a different way." He is “in tune to everything” and is inspired by artists in other genres (he likes Green Day and Avril Lavigne). Damn, why didn't I ask him if he skateboards?

[next page]