INTERVIEW WITH GERALD JACOBS (@geejaytweets)

After the release of his recent video Astro­nomy, I am Hip-hop Magazine got an exclus­ive inter­view with altern­at­ive rap­per Ger­ald Jac­obs.

Q. Who is Ger­ald Jac­obs? Where are you from and what inspired you into becom­ing an artist?

I am a pro­du­cer, ori­gin­ally from South East Lon­don. I had to make a pit­stop in Kent for a few years lol and I now reside in Ports­mouth for Uni­ver­sity. I was inspired by my own exper­i­ences, oth­er peoples exper­i­ences around me and dif­fer­ent vibes, wheth­er good or bad. In com­bin­a­tion with my life-long love for music and my fath­er who was a DJ and a pas­sion­ate vinyl collector.

Q. What does your music mean to you?

Its a job, its a life­style and its what I study. Its a form of com­mu­nic­a­tion as well as an art to people I feel can relate to my story.

Q. Which music­al albums/projects have influ­enced you as artist?

Good Kid Maad City- Kendrick Lamar

Priscilla E.P- JMSN

Mobb Deep- The Infamous

Nas – illmatic

Fly­ing Lotus – Until the quiet comes

Q. You don’t class your­self as “just a rap­per”, why is that? What makes you dif­fer­ent to oth­er artist?

 Lol. I feel like when people ask you what you do, and you say your a rap­per; they already have a expect­a­tion of me being like any ran­dom rap­per that you would find liv­ing two doors away from you in Lon­don and the UK in gen­er­al. I do not like to make things hard for myself so I will always reply and say that I am just a pro­du­cer or a musi­cian. I believe that most artists who can pro­duce or know how to pro­duce usu­ally turn out to be more exper­i­ment­al. I also think that they know them­selves as musi­cians more and have a much more of an under­stand­ing of their poten­tial as artists. The more you say, the more I think people have an expect­a­tion for you to per­form and you put your­self under pres­sure to per­form and live up to your hype. If you are not about your talk in their eyes, you’re dig­ging your­self a hole.

Q. Now you’ve just released the visu­als for Astro­nomy. It was so cre­at­ive and artist­ic, how long did that pro­ject take and tell us about the concept of the video.

The video took a whole day to film and or three weeks to edit. Lloyd Anar­fi (ANAR­FI­FILMS) who was behind the video sat down with me and we gathered a num­ber of ideas from a film called ‘Enter the void’, 80/90’s music video, and of course Kanye’s ‘All of the lights’.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7WMLZlpbvU[/youtube]

Q. You don’t see many videos as aes­thet­ic­ally pleas­ing as the Astro­nomy video, espe­cially from the UK scene. Does that say a lot about the UK music scene? Does it need to be shaken up to reach new levels?

Dur­ing the writ­ing and pro­duc­tion of the track and the music video; I believe every­one in the box thought out the box. I think that some­times you have to step out your box before you are able to think out your box as your art gets a lot of its influ­ence from its sur­round­ings. I feel like a lot of rap­pers and pro­du­cers in the UK sub­con­sciously blend in and con­form with the norm of brit­ish rap with a basic flow, basic con­tent and a cliché pro­duc­tion.  That is not me lol. But yeah!. I think a wake up and shake up will be good for the UK music industry as a whole.

Q. What pro­jects do you have com­ing up? EP? Live per­form­ances? Features?

 I have a forth­com­ing mix­tape on the way which is called; The Loudest Quiet. I also have per­form­ances lined up for when my mix­tape is released. As for fea­tures; I have a few new tracks en route from myself, Galarga , Yng Pla­to and more mem­bers of my col­lect­ive I am from; ‘THE HOUSE OF SUEDE’.

Q. Which 5 artist dead or alive would you love to work with and why?

 Kendrick

Isai­ah Rashad

School­boy Q

Fly­ing Lotus

Nas

These are the first musi­cians that come into my head when I think of real storyteller musi­cians in the game, wheth­er its by pro­duc­tion or vocals. I am all about paint­ing my can­vas and telling my story. I believe my videos also add to that as I class myself as a visu­al artist also in a sense.

Q. What does 2014 look like for Ger­ald Jacobs?

SUEDE’s. 2014 looks like it’s Suedes!

Fol­low Ger­ald via Twit­ter @geejaytweets and keep an eye out for his future pro­jects via POW PR

@Aaron3000_

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Aaron3000

Digit­al Mar­ket­ing and You­Tube chan­nel man­ager who loves that good hip-hop.

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Digital Marketing and YouTube channel manager who loves that good hip-hop.

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