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THAFORMULA.COM - First off, what exactly was the Blackwatch Movement and what happened to it?

Brother J - Blackwatch Movement was a Hip-Hop generation blending with Black Nationalist movement. It was a pro Black movement, and when I say pro-Black understand that we are people that are trying to improve indigenous people, indigenous descendents. If we improve from there then the world will be a better place in our vision. If you walk around all the time and say, "Africa is the cradle of civilization," and so on then you gotta invest in the people that are descendents from the land. So the movement was based on killing the stereotype. When people think about Black folks in this day and age you know they start talkin' with a swaggered tongue. They start making funny gestures and stuff like that. It's like when you talk about White people your voice gets high pitched. They stereotype Black folks as well, and we wanna kind of erase a ignorant stereotype and that's what the movement is for. That's what any Black Nationalist movement has been about. Stop labeling cultured people as being ignorant or animal like or just angry. Just because we say revolution doesn't me we're angry. We are outraged and disappointed in a way that we can maintain discipline but we're not fools.

THAFORMULA.COM - How many people were down with the Blackwatch Movement at the time?

Brother J - It was a nationwide movement man. We had movements in several different places and people had attached themselves to us and started to begin their own chapters because it wasn't a movement set with rules. It was something where we shared a state of mind. I mean we weren't as large as the Zulu Nation was and is, but we did reach far and we did have a lot of power in our grasp, and when I say 'did' I mean its just a time when movements are supported by the era of the people. Movements don't really continue to exist without support of the people. Like you see how conscious music is more underground then it is in the forefront. You used to have a variety of things on the air where you had a little Public Enemy here, you had a little bit of NWA there and a little bit of this. But now it's just straight one-dimensional and that's where the problems lie. That's where people have to realize they support how consciousness and conscious movements will exist in this day and era. It's not up to the people that are the nucleus of the leadership and so on.

THAFORMULA.COM - X-Clan was how many members J?

Brother J - X-Clan was 4 members. We started as 2 members and we expanded when we invited Professor X and Architect. It wasn't formed as if it was Professor X and then we formed X-Clan, he didn't found X-Clan. This is why as I'm coming out now once again with a new album I'll be making sense of the history. Myself and Professor are still involved but Professor X founded the Blackwatch, he didn't found X-Clan. 

THAFORMULA.COM - Now let's talk about Sugar Shaft. What was his contribution to X-Clan and what exactly happened to Shaft?

Brother J - Well if it hadn't been for him none of this would have happened because he was basically the bridge. He was basically the one that would come and take me out and see the clubs and take me to see Cash Money to DJ and DJ Scratch when they were first coming in the game. He'd take me to Union Square and all these other clubs and stuff like that just to open my eyes to the other side. See I'm from Brooklyn man, I'm a block party MC. I wasn't worried about clubs in Manhattan and the Bronx and so on. That wasn't my cup of tea. Shaft introduced me to that side and Architect did too, so Shaft was basically the reason why the group got to the next level. Us battling in different little community centers and basements and stuff like that on the mic, you know how block parties are, everybody gathers around the turntables and you get down and you hold your own and you get your name out. He helped me step from that level to a place where I can go to present myself in front of a manager and take myself to get a demo. I did my demo at Ultramagnetic's house up in the Bronx when they were first coming out with their music and shit. I look at how history is now, it's so deep. Everybody is now like a pioneer in the game and everybody was just at a regular stage grinding and trying to make it at the time. Shaft was my best of people and I miss him to this day and especially when I'm recording like now. His sense of production and spirit added on so much. But uh, he had complications with the AIDS virus so he passed from that and that was like 1996 and it's been a while. It's a heavy thing man. It touches all of us in one way or another. I mean this is genocide man. None of us are safe.

THAFORMULA.COM - Did the first X Clan album do really well sales wise 'cause it seemed like it was huge everywhere?

Brother J - Yeah, I mean. We went gold on our first project and this is where a lot of controversy was because we were nominated for a NAACP award with platinum artists. We were nominated with MC Hammer, Moe Dee, and Monie Love who were all platinum at the time. We were the only group that was said not to be platinum and we had a problem with that because we knew good and well everywhere we went we were at least in the top five throughout the country. So for us to be on the short end of the stick and not even achieve platinum status, it didn't make sense to us. But we had to understand black ball, we had to understand how bootleg had cut a lot of our sales. Bootleg was a genocide of labels you know cutting our sales. They get their money once they get theirs back and the bootleg sucks up the rest of the money, and they even get a piece of that. So this was when it was early in the game before Internet and all that when it was straight on the street bootleg cutting our sales.

THAFORMULA.COM - It's funny you bring this up cause I always see a lot of groups from back in the days and their record sales, and it doesn't make any sense to me 'cause they were a lot bigger then the sales showed?

 Brother J - Exactly and that's what my thing was. If you're playing heavy on those commercial rotation type of stations and were a classic Hip-Hop group, uh they never gave us our gold plaques, they never gave us our platinum plaques or any of that and its been so embarrassing. I've never put it out to the mainstream to say "well we never got ours like you did," now I'm dying for some kind of plaque, but its good to be appreciated even on those industry levels to say "well the people love you, we wanna give you your trophy or medal for what you did." These things were never addressed but will be addressed. You know my project is gonna come and we're gonna use that magnetizing force to kind of get some things accomplished. Call in some different powers that really can't get in. I've been trying to get artists out here to perform like Wise Intelligent, Jungle Brothers, and just different artists of caliber that have generational background, solid background as legends because the promoters won't bring them because the young heads don't know who they are.

THAFORMULA.COM - You know you being from Brooklyn, I noticed your production wasn't the typical East Coast production. It seemed more like what the West Coast was doing at the time. Why was that?

Brother J - Well the thing was I played a lot of funk in my house. My father especially, he played a lot of "More Bounce to the Ounce." You know Shaft was always cutting up "Uncle Jam's." So I took music from around my environment. I didn't take it because it was gonna be a hit in Cali. I had never been to California 'till I got on tour, so I didn't know what you guys were playing out here or anywhere else. So when we came out with the music I chose "More Bounce" 'cause I liked the way the track was. I sampled it like EPMD did as a matter of fact, and then 45 King came in and produced what y'all heard as "Heed the Word" now. That wasn't samples, 45 King made that. He's the master man. They always big up these producers and all that but ain't too many cats that can deal with 45 King. They don't give him no respect man. They give Dre and all these cats respect man but 45 King was basically one of our strongest producers in the East before Primo and all that other shit.

THAFORMULA.COM - Was that the only thing you guys did together?

Brother J - That was it man. We really didn't have too much guest production 'cause we were taking care of it ourselves because at that time we could sample freely. The sample laws weren't in effect yet. So before all that stuff got real big and controversial we had got away with some of the greatest samples in the world. Shit I had 4 or 5 Parliament joints on one album. "More Bounce," "Uncle Jam," "Atomic Dog," come on, that's unheard of.

THAFORMULA.COM - So with the album doing good and everything looking good, was everything cool within the group, meaning was there any money problems at all or anything coming up?

Brother J - The only money problems was that we had to support ourselves on the road a lot of times because we did a lot of community based shows and a lot of the community don't really have money to put you on board to perform. When we're in a town and we wanna stay an extra 2 days to throw an event, we had to pay for it our selves. So when people say "well you did you spend all the money? Did you smoke up all the money? What did you spend the money on, hoes?" No, most of the time we spent it in the community. When you're traveling like 20 people thick that's a lot of money.

THAFORMULA.COM - I'm glad you brought that up cause I always wondered since you guys were a movement and not a music group how hard was it to get paid since like you said the community rarely has money and it is sometimes about money also…

Brother J - We have to eat man. Say we come out to New Mexico somewhere and we do a program and they pay us for 1 show and we wanna stay and hit the community, ('cause you know artists don't usually come from the arena to go perform at a small club or community center) we have to say to ourselves "what are we here for?" and at the same time we have to say "you know if we extend ourselves too far then we're stuck in a town and we don't want to be stuck in a town like a bump group." We were up and rising and we were a new genre, a niche in the game so people didn't really know if we were gonna go and blow up and be like a 5-10 year type of thing or if we were just gonna be a fad. So you know it's very hard for a group that's molding to really know what direction we wanna take. We know we don't wanna lose the love of the people, but at the same time we don't wanna be played by the people man, 'cause people will play you. The community will play you man. If you offer it for free, they will take you. At the same time we can't say "well you know let's charge them an arm and a leg." A lot of groups right now lose because they don't bend their prices to perform in certain places. I'm not gonna call no names but a lot of L.A. based groups that are very powerful are like "we are 10,000 a show and if you can't do that then we won't show up." You can't be like that. Any of these festivals or any of these things that people come out to, you gotta make a special appearance to make a special effect and that doesn't exist.

THAFORMULA.COM - You know I look at a group like Dead Prez and think "man they must get a lot of activist groups or whatever hitting them up for shows even though they don't have the money?" Did you guys face a lot of that?

Brother J - All the time bro, and it's a thing where we had to offer people solutions, at least to say "we'll take care of our hotel rooms and take care of our air fare, and we'll take a small amount of money, we will make sure we pack your gymnasium, we will make sure we will go to the park and speak at your demonstration rally and stuff, but give us something." I tell that to community centers all the time. Don't always play people because you know you got this cause and everybody is supposed to care and all these other things man. But still, my art is something that cost me time and money. I have to feed my family from my artwork. If I meet 20 people like you in a month, I'm not gonna be around to continue my music. So when I die out who wins? The gangster music wins, the thuggery wins. Everybody else wins but the conscious artists because we are caring about certain problems that they don't. You walk up to Snoop Dogg and talk about "give me a free show," man please! These cats are getting paid ridiculous amounts of money. I mean they will come out every once in a while because they have enough chips now, but when they first achieved that number one status man, you talk about calling them talkin' about "uh Snoop, could you come by and say what's up to the kids? Just do it for free?" Man you wouldn't do that with them.

THAFORMULA.COM - No doubt 'cause they will laugh in your face.

Brother J - But as soon as you hear somebody that says, "you know we care about the community, we care about the kids." They say "rush them," you know, "check them on that and if they don't give us no love then were gonna blast them." Don't blast us, blast the people that got your kids wearing Mini-skirts and shaking their ass all funky like they are strippers. Don't blast us.

THAFORMULA.COM - Now you were saying a lot of these groups won't bend on their price, it is something that I have noticed when I speak to promoters too about why they don't get certain artists...

Brother J - Well they got to learn to. They haven't learned how to yet. When you choose management and this is a professional question as well. When you choose management, your manager has to be an intelligent hustler. That means when they come into a town and uh…say I went to a small hick town in California. Now check my math on this, you got a place like L.A., say the Knitting Factory. Knitting Factory has the whole Hollywood tourist vibe. They have everybody coming through and people will come through to see a good show. Now you go to a hick town, the economy is different. They don't know about paying $5,000 for one group to perform for a night for 30 minutes or 45 minutes, so your manager has to go and try to see exactly what the economy is before they go in there and say "we are $5,000 a show, you can't afford us, we gotta keep moving." When your venue is small, adjust your price, if your venue is big adjust your price. These artists have not learned how to do that yet. So they stick to one price and the phone don't ring because nobody wants to pay that astronomical amount. They may have a theatre like the El Rey. They might wanna just have a person come through and make a special appearance to say people love you. Why don't you come through and we will pay for your hotel and just come and give our Hip-Hop institution some feel. I go through places man and people be like "yo, what are you doing here?" I'm like, "what do you mean what am I doing here? I was born in places like this, I was born in grimier environments then what y'all hole in the walls are!" 'Cause that's where Hip-Hop is. THE RAW ESSENCE MAN!! These artists that are out right now are all bitter because they are trying to find out how Dre made $250,000,000? How did Snoop now become the master and got all the playas and the diamond cuffs? I wanna get my rims and my pimp juice on! They wanna know that, but everybody's destiny is different man and they have not accepted that yet.

THAFORMULA.COM - Do you really feel that is what it is?

Brother J - All day and night! They want that money. They wanna rush a label and say "pay for me for the rest of my life" man. I know all these independent artists talk about how they hate on these labels and all that but when they walk up to them and say "we got $400,000 for you to record," you think they're not gonna drop that independent shit in a hot minute? Man stop bullshittin' and listen to them run that bullshit to me man. Ain't no way in the world somebody offer you $400,000 for what you know costs you $20,000 to $30,000 to do. It's like a film. You know that film costs you only a small amount of money to do and you go and do it for 3 or 4 million dollars and shit. But you gotta realize when someone pays you that kind of money, you gotta come out with the top-notch quality or you only got 15 minutes in the light homeboy. If you don't produce a $400,000 type of project, you're a one hit wonder. YOU'RE A TAX WRITE OFF!! They got to start doing the real side of the business. Stop fucking with the scientific equations of the game and reading all these little books and shit. You gotta play the game for real. You got to play the game like these independent artists. If they are out here selling $10 a record and they are getting a limited amount of exposure, cut down what your getting and make a deal with someone and say, "well I'll give you 2 of my dollars that I make if you can expand my region and start expanding my market." Stop sticking to one slate and being greedy because the dollar is gonna be spent anyway. That's Real!!

THAFORMULA.COM - It's amazing what artists are doing for the money now man. I really can't believe at times what people will do for a check. Do you think things will get worse or better J?

Brother J - I think first we have to change our goals man. Our goals with Hip-Hop have changed as far as we get into it to say, "I can pay off my families bills, I can get me some nice things and I can get some people running up to get an autograph." That's not a goal.

THAFORMULA.COM - It's funny 'cause it seems like all these independent artists coming up now are all focused on getting paid first and everything else second. The music no longer comes first and I'm just thinking to myself "why are you depending on Hip-Hop to get you paid?"

Brother J - Don't depend on Hip-Hop to pay your bills man. Don't do it, it's the wackest shit in the world bro. You don't wanna do it like that because you're sitting around waiting for that deal and bills accumulate and soon you're gonna be assed out. You ain't gonna have shit, you gonna be struggling triple times harder than you ever have. You got to really create realistic goals man. All these people (at the labels) that got fired from within the 3 or 4 years even before the trade towers fell, none of these people have united to form a label. None of them, and its embarrassing. It's like they are waiting to find a new master. I'm saying like this, some of these people have been in the game so long and they been fired like they were a new jack, why wouldn't you go call several other people to form your own shit? There are enough artists out here and especially while the independent market is so wide open, why wouldn't they take advantage of that?

THAFORMULA.COM - I notice also man how you got so many artists out there with names that are not really doing nothing while you got a lot of these new up and coming artists hustling and starting up their own labels. A lot of these white dudes out there are really hustling to get their independent label jumpin' while many Black and Latino artists with names seem to be just watchin'?

Brother J - Yeah, you know why. Let's think about this together. You think about the money behind a project. Most white kids and I say MOST, not all white kids. Anyway most of them have a little money behind them from their family to say, "hey take this money and go start a business."

THAFORMULA.COM - Yeah, I don't doubt that J but what I'm talkin' about is established artists that have a little dough that have moved a good amount of units. Why aren't more trying to get distribution deals and shit like that?

Brother J - 'Cause it's still who you know man. But that's what the overall point is. Even these white kids with their money from their parents, or even if they got together and put some chips in the bag, it's who they know. Most of the raves and most of the shows that are thrown on this coast are sponsored by white kids or white investors. So when you talk about "let's start a label," its more realistic for you to start a label with someone that can get a hundred thousand people in a week into some tents for $40 a head rather then an artist that sells a hundred thousand records on a question mark, meaning if people feel like picking up that CD or not. A label will say, "we'll go with the person who has a following rather then the person that has some sells."

THAFORMULA.COM - But then you got some artists like say a J-Zone who started with nothing and built it into his own label and distribution deal showing that with hard work it can happen…

Brother J - Yeah, but it goes with what we're saying. He built a following.

THAFORMULA.COM - But that's what I mean. Why don't more try to do that, 'cause most of the ones I talk to make the music, and then they just wanna sit there...

Brother J - Yeah cause they don't wanna do the groundwork man and because of EGO man. The biggest thing that kills the Black population is EGO. If I'm a big ass artist with a record deal, I'm the number one guy in the world and then all of a sudden I've got to go independent? That's a ego blow man. So to go ahead and do groundwork and print up your own CD's and be runnin' in spots talkin' about "how many did I sell?" and so on, that's ego hittin' man. That's a serious blow man. Can you imagine somebody like one of these white artists like Led Zeppelin or some shit, classic as they are, having to go independent and put the bag on their back and print up their own CD's? A lot of these Hip-Hop artists have been burnt where their money was not there to invest, so they have a studio to sit on or you know some backlog money so they can go and print up 1,000 to 5,000 CD's to flip. You know, they got to go and really get down like J-Zone did. My biggest debate has been do I wanna fuck with this independent shit, or do I wanna go ahead and step to where I know my name can pull some money out of these majors? Yo, that's been the biggest debate for me as a solo artist cause I know what X-Clan did, but myself as a solo artist I never stepped out on my own. I'm coming into the market of where KRS is, and where Chuck D started to mold, and where Rakim was. I'm doing a solo thing, I'm not doing a group thing anymore. So this is a heavy thing for me. So I can go and say I don't have any ego and put a bag on my back and sell CD's and build a strong following, or I can knock on some doors and say, "yo, here is some bangers, ya'll find me a deal." See the game is over saturated man. There is too many people in the game right now.

THAFORMULA.COM - But how much is quality?

Brother J - It's true, but what is quality? Is it what the people want or is it what we judge? That's the biggest question.

THAFORMULA.COM - Right, 'cause there is 2 different markets, commercial and underground, and it all depends on who you are trying to reach...

Brother J - Yeah, but there is also a weirdo market. Say we are in the house man and we go drink a bottle of Henney and go touch the keyboards and make the wackest beat in the world. We can go on the Internet and say, "yo, this is the dope shit!" We can go and sell a hundred records man. That's some weirdo shit bro.

THAFORMULA.COM - But I mean you can still move 10,000 copies on good shit though? But I do understand what your saying…

Brother J - People don't balance the market man. Look at people who sell 10,000 to 20,000 independent records like say a Aceyalone or Abstract Rude. They got a good market out here, but when you sit back and you really think about "well damn, how many 10 to 20 thousand am I gonna keep selling? When am I gonna reach the hundred thousand mark?"

THAFORMULA.COM - No doubt and this is a problem that all of these good selling indie artists seem to have, how do you pay $10,000 for a full page add in The Source to try to expand?

Brother J - Exactly. The game costs money man. What they thought it was gonna be like? You're popular in your region and the Source is gonna call you talkin' about grace our cover? No, the label pays for that. What do they think these labels are man? These labels are loan factories. They put money out to say "well we believe your project can sell 500,000, maybe 300,000 copies, so to us that translates to this amount of money, so take this advance, well get you a cover if you blow up on your first single or 2 and then we will continue to market your shit and as the money trickles back we will see if it was worth keeping you in our pocket." That's it, point blank simple as that. So when these artists say "I'm nicer the 50 Cent and this," they don't give a fuck about being nice, they don't give a fuck about being dope, they don't give a fuck about being nice at this stage. You talk about making hits, making every kid at a birthday party sing your record, making everybody at the fucking club shake their ass and do your dance. That's what they are worried about man. THIS IS THE MANTAN ERA MAN!!!

THAFORMULA.COM - Just Added For This Friday December 12th's Defari Midnight In-Store Signing & Performance For His New Album Odds & Evens. A Special Guest Performance By Brother J of X-Clan.  Open Mic at 10pm with Beats provided by DJ Lord Ron. Featuring In-Store Signing & Exclusive Midnight Performance by Defari. Special Guests The Pharcyde, 2nd 2 None, Willmatic, DJ Lord Ron, AC The PD, Spit Fiya, and more to be announced.  And YES, IT'S FREE...

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