TheWolvesDen

Interview with non other than CJ The Genesis.

TheWolvesDen:It’s been almost a year since the release of Feng Shui; how do you look back at that project?

CJ the Genesis: I have been working on Impulse since last January. However with the hard drive situation, I had to restart. Feng Shui was a lot of stuff that I had for Impulse originally. A lot of stuff was going to be on Impulse, like Over Love, two verses were gonna be on Impulse. However the hard drive stuff happened and I just wanted to get on Nujabes beats. Actually that whole project the Nujabes project was made on impulse. This made me want to choose the title Impulse more. At first it didn’t have a title I just wanted to work on music. I was ustream chilling and one of my friends was like “You should rap on a Nuajbes beat, I think it will sound sick”. I got Battle Cry, and I was like just freestyling to it on camera and I was like you are right, I should do that. I was going through I-tunes and was like ‘I should make a whole project on Nujabes beats that would be really tight’. I did that really quickly in two or three weeks since the lyrics were already done. It was really easy for me, plus it was stuff I was going through right then, it was really quick. Look at me just getting to the question. I look back on it, I think it was really cool that I got more listeners. With every tape I try to reach out for more listeners. A lot of people say I rap on more synthy beats, not enough of the smooth organic stuff, so when I did that project I think I reached out to a lot of them . I know one friend of mine was like “I didn’t even know you could rap on beats like that but you did a good job you know.” I think it was a success it made me grow as an artist and do stuff I don’t usually do. I liked that project.

TWD: You described Feng Shui to be originated around the Impulse era, what do you intend take from Feng Shui into Impulse?

CJ: Well like I was saying on KTT, Impulse is going to be more personal. A lot of my stuff is usually personal but mixed in with braggadocio songs. This is going to be really personal, but there will be some braggadocio songs on there. There will be little bits for the people who like punchlines to be like ‘yeah’. It’s a lot easier to write about the stuff as it’s going on. Usually I keep the feelings in my head a write about it then go back to it later. Feng Shui taught me that I should write it right then and there , even if the lyrics are bad even if I am rambling, or free verse I can go back and get the feeling from it. I took that into Impulse; take my time trying to find that feeling. Some songs are dark and some are happy like Exceed Your Expectations and I am trying to get that feeling. So when people hear it they get the feeling. They know what I am feeling when I making that song, they can understand what I am saying, which goes along with the beats. With Feng Shui I wanted to work on my rapping and convey feeling with Nujabes beats, whic already have feeling in them. So I wanted to make my beats so that they have certain feelings and bring out certain emotions . Looking online, studying , see how people react to certain words and certain statements. Making sure my lyrics can match up to that, so when people listen to Impulse they will be like ‘shit, that’s real’ you know. That’s how I integrated Feng Shui into Impulse.

TWD: On Exceed Your Expectations you worked with Khari Malik, very refreshing voice, what other type of collaborations can we expect on Impulse?




CJ: I have about 6 collabs. It’s not overloaded like a Rick Ross album. The intro will have a singer on it, its gonna be really tight. That’s all I can say about it. I wrote the stuff too, I just made them sing it. It will be really cool. I have more rappers on it, two songs such as Beginning to Forever. I have my friends Niccofeem$ta , The Rezon and Brandyn Jaye, those are the people I did Hopping Over Fences with. Everyone loved it. It did great in our area. I took that team and we came up with another track and we are recording it this Easter weekend since everyone will be home. You know I got M-Trey on there. You know when M-Trey and I do tracks it’s just a wrap.

TWD: You have a bit of a cult following from Arizona track you did with M-Trey

CJ: [laughs] I am drinking tea right now. This is awesome. You know the Arizona thing, me and M-Trey made drinking Arizona cool. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe I am just gassing myself but who cares its funny to me. No BS features. I kept it all in house, made music with who I knew personally. A lot of people were saying “you should save up some money and get a big name artist on it so they will listen to it.” I am like that’s true and cool but I don’t want to force a song just to get an artist on there, I wanna keep my friends on there. If something happens with this project, which I believe it will, then we can all succeed. I don’t wanna ride off someone else’s success. That has never been me. I don’t like asking for anything. My features are just in house friends who I know will do the damn thing.

TWD: What exactly is your goal with Impulse?

CJ: Good question. [laughs] I feel with school and all this stuff, I am not saying it’s gonna get me out of school or get me signed. I just want to get to the point where I am known, where I could be signed and I can do shows on the weekend. So people will be like wow and this is really good. Listen to my old stuff and say that this kid is really good. I just want respect from everybody. I feel like Impulse is everything I learned from over the years. I was talking about this with my friend yesterday about this. I was saying that in high school people always gave me shit for being in the house all the time working on music. Sometimes I regret I didn’t get to do want I wanted to do. I didn’t mess with girls and go out to parties, be social the teenage movie high school life. I sit now and think if I didn’t stay up all night and work, all those nights made me as good as I am now. All that hard work is about to pay off. I feel like I got good enough, I didn’t touch the drugs and stuff. I feel like everything leads up to now. I feel with school and stuff, I just can’t deal with that anymore. This is going to change it. I wouldn’t mind doing school so much if I could do my own thing. I don’t have time to both at the same time all the time, I gotta rush. I gotta skip class in the morning to work on beats. I don’t like doing that, especially with my parent’s money on the line. The goal of this is to put me on the level, where people know me, where people are willing to see more. So when I put out my next thing they will be waiting for more. To be like “can he top impulse”. I want people to see me as their best friend music, to feel better about themselves. I just want that respect, take me to the next level and push me further.





TWD: Ever since your BMF video we haven’t seen much of your visual presence. Can we expect to we see more videos of you.

CJ: Ahh, man it’s funny you ask that. I am not sure if you saw me on twitter yesterday. But I was really pissed off. There is gonna be more visual presence from me in the near future. It’s gonna be cool and awesome. So yesterday, me and Khari, we were about to do the video for Exceed for Expectations yesterday. That video is long over do. I wanna do the video for Who Knows, the idea is gonna need a lot of stuff, that won’t come until I get a lot of money. I am just gonna spoil the Exceed Your Expectations video. It was gonna be on the roof of this building of a parking lot, it had an awesome view of around the area. Really cool, we were up there taking shots, making sure everything was cool. I swear to you, we start and we are filming, Khari is signing and I am doing the verse. Mid verse, all of a sudden a freaking white pickup truck is driving up there and on the side is the police badge. It was security; they came and said ‘you guys can’t do this up here.’ They were telling us to get off. I have been taken off there by security 2 times before when I was scouting for that place. It’s not that I didn’t expect it but we didn’t expect it so soon, right as we were getting into it. It was only gonna be an hour or two. The sun was perfect, everything was perfect. It pissed me off, I wanted to fight the lady. I look back at the shots, it was perfect. If you look on twitter, you will see some screen shots of it. I look at it today and shake my head and become upset. As far as the third single, I am doing a video to that, just release that as a video and put a mp3 to the youtube video of that. So people can download that and be like “ wow what is this”. It is a short song. The next vid will be a teaser video, revealing a little more about what Impulse has to offer. The third single is braggadocios, the best punchline song I have ever written. In that teaser video, I will announce the date of Impulse. It will be out soon. As for Exceed your Expectation video we can’t shoot for another two weeks. Be on the look out for the videos. Watch for my video tantrums on twitter.

TWD: Ever since Yea I Am A Nerd. You haven’t said any more game references or beats. Is it that have you become les nerdy.

CJ: [laughs] It’s not that I am less nerdy. When Yea I Am A Nerd came out, my 4th project, I hated the whole “CJ is a video game rapper.” However I had 3 projects that sounded completely different than that. I am not saying that I don’t like sampling video games, I still do. Yea I Am A Nerd 2 is definitely possible. I know on Impulse there is not thing that stands out. There will be anime samples on there , if you catch those you will be like that “this is tight too”. Yea I am a Nerd 2 would be both videogames and anime. I thought about making a videogame production album. I made videogame beats. I just don’t want to be categorized as the video game rapper. I just want to be CJ. Rap on Preemo beats, Nujabes beats and video game beats I made myself. I just wanna be tight. I strayed so I can grow. I know people like the video game beats. I know I got a lot of fans from Yea I Am A Nerd but those fans enjoyed Feng Shui. I hope those fans are sticking with me. I been studying, Masado Nakamura, Koji Kondo and Nobou Uematsu. I have been listening to the Zelda OST, the Super Mario OST and all the Final Fantasy stuff in my free time when I am doing home work. Just listening to how they did it, I am trying to play the songs on my key board to understand the chord progression. To understand the theory of it all, just to see how they did this. I do this with a lot of songs whether it is Koji Kong or Pharell, I play the keys on my keyboard tryna understand how did they get that key to that key and how did you come up with this chord and that cord. And it came out so good. I want to figure out how to make music like that. I don’t like sampling all the time. I use to hate sampling. Now I do it because it is fun. I wanna be able to create on my own. Impulse is a good mixture of original beats and samples, but I wanna be able to do this all on my own. I just been studying the theory of all this stuff. If you really look into it, all the instruments, the panning, the voluming, the live sounds, how are you doing this? This is insane. It makes me want to progress even more. I listen to a bunch of stuff to see if I can make stuff like that. I tried to remake NERD and Pharrel songs, just for fun. Remake videogame music so I can see the theory behind it . Cause even when I was dong Yea I Am A Ned, the song One More Chance when I played the keys [sings] I had to learn it and see what he did, I loved learning the progression. It was awesome man. I am trying to create my own type of anthems. Everyone talks about what they have to say about Nintendo, Microsoft, Everyone knows the [sings Mario theme]. You all know that, regardless if you played it. The music is gonna remain whether you like the game or not. Whether or not you like Impulse, the music will stay in your head. Cause the music is pretty cool and catchy. I guess I am trying to progress.

TWD:The KTT fan site would like to know how do you feel about the death of the CJ shrug?

CJ:Oh my God. Don’t even get me started on that.[laughs] Shawn everyone on KTT, I’mma keep it clean. DIE okay. That’s messed up, you all did me wrong. I was there on KTT from the start. The CJ shrug made me wanna stay more. I was already at the point where I shouldn’t be on the site too much anymore. But when KTT came out with the CJ shrug I was like I have to stay now. They officially paid homage to me. Jesus man, I was really upset with that tweet saying that the CJ shrug is gone. The sonic shrug came up, and I like you guys serious? Really? Some were like bring the CJ shrug back. Others were like “I didn’t use the CJ shrug”. You don’t even know the meaning of the CJ shrug, why or when I do it. It’s funny when I do it in real life, when some don’t know about it and others are like “hahah he just did the CJ shrug”. It’s annoying but it is whatever. I still love KTT, Christian and all of them. They all know I love them. It’s all love.

TWD: Where can people learn more about CJ?

CJ: Follow me at twitter. That’s where the stuff outside the music comes out, I curse, do ignorant stuff and funny stuff. You see my twitpics, it’s just me living life. The goofy stuff we do on a regular basis. There is also tinyurl , which will take you to my like page. My myspace…. Naa. Bandcamp and tell them to like my fb page so I can look cool to all of my high school friends.


TWD: Last words for your fans?


CJ: I love chicken. [laughs] Impulse is tight. I appreciate the …, I wouldn’t say few, well I will cause it makes you seem more special, the few who have been there since day one. I can’t even explain on how good that makes me feel about myself. If you saw that rant on tumblr, I eff up on my luck with women and school. Music is the only thing that makes me feel alive, it makes me feel like I am not a failure. People actually like it. People will say that “this changed my life.” I am like really, are you serious? Little old me who can’t understand this accounting equation means, I dropped statistics here. I go through; you know all this other BS and feel so discouraged. But when I open up my computer, open that recording program and I play those beats and people really like it. It makes me feel better about myself. I really appreciate you guys. If I ever get famous, you are gonna get backstage passes we are all gonna meet. I wanna meet all you guys. We will take a picture. I want to make your day. I love you all so much, for real. Keep holding me down. Impulse will give you more of a reason to brag about me.


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