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7/3/2006 Interview with Ju1ce What's up? I'm doing real good. Real good, man. First off, who are the Replacementz? The Replacementz are comprised of two dudes, myself, Ju1ce, from Chicago, and Tec Beatz from Atlanta, Georgia. He does the majority of the tracks and I do the majority of the raps. How did you guys meet? We met in 2002 in college. I went down to Atlanta to go to Clark. What's funny is we didn't even know each other freshman year. Sophomore year, we were living in the same dorm. I was working on beats in my room and he was working on beats down the hall. Paris' boy was my roommate and knew the both of us. We kept messing with each other going back and forth and then we formed the Replacementz out of that. How did you first sound compared to now? When I met him, I was making beats on the computer and he already had the whole studio set up in his dorm room with the mic and beat machines and recording programs. We were recording in a little room and everything was coming out good compared to what everybody else was doing. It was a real premature sound, but we eventually developed that. How do you guys work together? We have real good chemistry. I understand where he's coming from. His variety of tracks sparks something different in me. When he comes up with a track, I'll come up with the song. We'll never knock each other's ideas. We'll try them out to see if they work. How important is it to have your production in-house in 2006? That's why we really are a treasure, because anybody can rap and do that, but we can actually make songs and produce our own beats. I only started making beats because I was rapping with my homeboy from back in Chicago. I always had an ear for wanting to do that and we didn't have the money to pay for beats. We didn't have the bread like that. It was a real advantage to be able to do our own songs, record them, and mix them ourselves. That's why I call Tec Beatz the man behind the scenes. He's doing the engineering and mixing and making sure the songs come out right. He's real good and we save a lot of money from not going to studios and paying $40 here and $40 there. At what point did you start taking hip-hop seriously? I want to say from the moment we first started working together. When we first started, we were just going to make beats together. I wasn't that serious about emceeing. Tec really put it in perspective and said we can really do this. The first song we recorded was a song called "Thoughts 3000." That song was just so raw. I wrote my verse and he already had a verse, and we let people hear it and they liked it. Then we had another song called "Smoke Session." That song just came out so crazy and the next day we let everybody hear it around campus and they were going crazy. After we finished that song, there was a little performance showcase later that week. We let everyone hear that song and they were going crazy. It just so happened that Warren G was there and he saw us and he said, "Y'all really did your thing." We were hyped. That was the first celebrity giving us good feedback. Since we had just recorded songs, we had wanted to give him a demo, but we didn't have any on us. We went to burn a CD, but by the time we came back, he was gone. How did your affiliation come about with the Apphiliates? Drama went to Clark, too. Drama was there before us, but Don Cannon was in school. I didn't know Cannon like that but Tec would stay in touch with him. We were still recording songs, but we were really going to be a beat-team. We finally realized we had to put a mixtape together and Cannon mixed it off love. We got good feedback and we did another one, Panic Room Volume Two. He did it again for no charge, he mixed it, and it came out real good. That's kind of how all that happened. How did your experience at Clark help your hip-hop career? Being at Clark and just being in Atlanta period, Atlanta is full of people not from Atlanta. You have people from all over and you get to see what kind of music they listen to and their slang and everything else. You get to be around a lot of people. I graduated this past May. I walked the stage for graduation, but I'm still finishing one class this summer. Congratulations. What's the current focus for the Replacementz? Right now, we're just trying to build this fan-base. The way the industry is, people are coming out with one song and the labels are picking up off that. We feel we have a lot of longevity and we haven't created that buzz yet. We're about to drop Panic Room Volume Three. We're getting ready to drop that as soon as possible. We've also been working "We So Fly." We haven't put a big push behind it yet, but it's been getting a lot of spins on MySpace, especially on DJ Drama's page. How big is DJ Drama's cosign? It adds extra ears, basically. Our first two mixtapes, we pretty much grinded it out ourselves. With him being known as one of the biggest DJ's down south, that just adds an extra ear. When he says our name, people want to know who the Replacementz are. We had our mixtapes on IAP-TV.com and our mixtapes were just sitting there, and now they're picking up. I'm pretty sure that's because of our affiliation. What have you learned working with the Apphiliates? We still have a lot of growing to do. This is just the beginning. There is still a lot of grinding to do. We're really finding out how much grinding it really takes. We've sold our CD's, passed out CD's, and gone to the radio stations. The real grind doesn't stop. We have more people checking for us and we have to make sure everything we put out is top-notch and represents us. Are you currently looking for a label? Recently, we haven't really talked to nobody like that. Sony flew us up to New York and we met with them. This was at the beginning of this year. We flew up there and we met with a representative from Atlantic too. You know how it is with buzz. They want to see the spins and we didn't really have that, so we really didn't hear too much back from them. We got real love and they liked our music. One of their guys was quoting my lyrics. That means he was really listening. We're just building the buzz up and seeing what kind of buzz we can build up. What's your next move? Dropping this Panic Room Volume Three. That's the immediate, short-term goal. How's your debut album coming? The way we feel, we have an album done. We were going to put all original music on our mixtape, but we decided to put some freestyles on there. We have an album done. It's really up to us. As soon as we get the call that someone needs an album, we have it all ready for them. What do you have to do to be successful in 2006? I think we just need to build a strong, strong team and foundation. We need to have a lot of people who are 100% behind us and we need to go hard at these shows and getting the music out there. Once the music gets out there, the music speaks for itself. I just got back from a couple of showcases and about ten people recognized us from other places, either from seeing us perform, hearing us on the radio, or an underground DVD we were on. I'm confident that once the music is out there, everybody will pretty much be behind us. You made college and hip-hop work for you at the same time. How important is it to you to balance college and hip-hop and do both successfully? You shouldn't go into life thinking you don't need college and the rap thing is going to work. This industry is real shaky and it's situational-based. You have guys like Kanye and they dropped out and he's doing it real big, but then you have a lot who never went and don't have a situation in hip-hop and they're back on the block. It's about how you feel and making a decision off of what you know. I felt that since I had been here, I might as well finish it up. Have you run into any problems with your name? I haven't run into any problems. The only thing is my nephew thinks it's me every time he hears Juice on the radio. I'm pretty sure there's going to be some confusion. Some people think I'm the freestyle battle king. I knew about the other Juice, but I've had this name since I was born. My family gave me this name and things started moving so fast, I was like, "I can't change it now." We'll see how everything plays out." Coming from Chicago as well, a lot of people are going to see this as being disrespectful. I gave him a shout out on the Panic Room Volume Two. I shouted out the other Juice from Chicago. A name is a name. It shouldn't go no further than that. Are you and Tec going to get into any solo work? We're really trying to make this group work first. People were trying to steer us away from what we were trying to do. Some execs think Tec needs to be a rapper and I need to do the beats. The beats are so different that in order to get the beats out there, we need to rap over them and show people what to do with them. We were shopping some beat-CD's before we did songs to them and they didn't sell, but then they heard what we did to them and then people want them. The music we make is way bigger than rap. We did a remix with the Pussycat Dolls. I don't know if it's going to get picked up, but we've been doing things of that nature. What do you want to say to everyone? If you're at it, stay with us. To all our fans, stick behind us and help us promote ourselves. We're trying to change this music game. People are saying there's no more music and rapping isn't rapping anymore. We're just trying to bring it back a little bit.

By Brian Kayser

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