- 4 weeks ago
Jermaine Dupri joins us at the Hard Rock Hotel New York for an Audacy Check In to talk about his new album, 'Magic City,' and more.
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00:00Is it any artist that you had that you said, you know what, I'll let that one get away?
00:05Ludacris. Ludacris should be a so-so-death artist.
00:08He should have been?
00:10100%.
00:10So what happened?
00:14Welcome again to Audis He Checkin'. My name is DJ Buck Big Reg. We got a superstar in the building.
00:19My man Jermaine Dupri, man. Been doing it for a long time right now. Countless awards.
00:24Number one producer of hip-hop, man. How you feeling, man?
00:27I'm good. How you?
00:28Still doing it, man?
00:29Yeah.
00:30I mean, well, I have more reason now than ever to keep doing it.
00:34Jermaine, how do you find the passion to keep doing this? You wake up every day and you're doing everything else.
00:39The nightlife is still alive. When you was in the strip club last night.
00:42My voice is still in court.
00:44Where's the passion come from?
00:46I mean, you know, to start in 92 and then be named the number one producer of hip-hop R&B of the 21st century in 2025,
00:57that's all the energy I need.
00:58Like, I know what my work has done.
01:02It got me to that spot.
01:03So it's like, I can't even think about stopping at this point.
01:07During this run, highs and the lows, man.
01:09It can take a lot on you physically and mentally.
01:11How do you deal with some of the life's problems mentally?
01:15How do you deal with those?
01:16And how do you cope with any kind of problems you have mentally?
01:19I really don't, like, bother with anything else besides making music, you know?
01:24And I make sure that that's the first thing.
01:27Like, I was just telling somebody about that.
01:29Like, my family even says that, like, he take music as music as first in his life, like, over everything.
01:37So, I mean, I don't really bring the problems into the music world.
01:42So, I step outside of the music world and then there's some problems there or whatever.
01:46But I don't even pay no, I run right back in there as soon as I start seeing problems.
01:50Is it safe to say that music can be your therapy?
01:54Yeah, music 100% is my therapy.
01:55That's why, in making this new album, that's what it was.
01:58It was almost like a therapy session with me working with different artists, talking to people,
02:02and just having a different conversation with different walks of people and young, old, mid, young, whatever.
02:09It's just, it was a therapy.
02:11That's why I enjoyed doing it so much.
02:13Now, what made you want to do it?
02:15Like you said, dealing with a lot of egos, you know, people who, sometimes they're not on time.
02:20Sometimes they don't show up.
02:22A lot of things.
02:22You don't have to make this album.
02:24You good with what you've done in your career.
02:27What made you say, you know what?
02:28I'm about to do this now.
02:29Because there was like a point in time in my career where I realized that I used to think a lot of things had been done.
02:40And when I got into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, I realized that this is probably a 40 to 50-year-old establishment.
02:50And before, and me entering in that Hall of Fame, I was the first of my type in 50 years, right?
03:03So I realized like what I thought prior hadn't exist.
03:09So a lot of this stuff is like, I'm just seeing it like it's never been done before.
03:14So even with this album, I chose to make an album with nothing but Atlanta artists.
03:22That hadn't been done before.
03:25Not from a producer, just solely.
03:28I did the whole album by my, you know what I mean?
03:29Not by myself, but I did the album basically.
03:31I'm the producer.
03:32It's not nobody else producing records.
03:34I didn't take songs from nobody else.
03:35I actually sat in the studio and crafted these songs with each other, you know, with each person that I work with.
03:41That hadn't been done, not from the East Coast or West Coast as far as producers.
03:45How important was it for you to just have Atlanta artists?
03:48Do you feel like Atlanta was going a different way?
03:52No, I just thought that like, you know, we have a city with a pool of artists that sometimes we overlook and be like,
04:01we only talk about three or four of these people, but we have like 20, 30, 40 artists in Atlanta that really have made a real contribution to hip-hop.
04:11And it just felt like, sometimes it felt like we just ignore that, right?
04:16And I feel like if I ignore that, they're going to ignore me.
04:22You know what I mean?
04:22You got to lead by example.
04:24How do you manage to keep your foot in one lane and another foot in the other lane?
04:28The Jagged Edge, that world, you know, the songs you produce by Ryan Carey, but also keep your foot in today's music.
04:35You got to get out.
04:36You got to get out.
04:37You got to put, you got to step in one world and you got to step out the other one.
04:42I'm definitely, when I go into R&B mode, I'm completely out of rap mode.
04:46I'm just listening to R&B records.
04:48I'm riding around listening to melodies.
04:50I'm thinking about melodies.
04:51I still feel like a rapper because that's just what I do.
04:57But for the most part, I know that if I'm going to make R&B music to be, to top the R&B records that I've made, I got to get into R&B mode.
05:06That's a lot because you got to top some big records.
05:08Yeah.
05:08You still got that passion to compete with yourself.
05:12Is that part of the keep it going?
05:14I mean, it's not even about competing with myself.
05:17It's just like if you're at the top of the food chain, which they claim I am at this point, how do you keep defending your title, I guess, right?
05:27I got a title now, so I'm trying to defend my title.
05:29I can walk around with the belt now.
05:31Somebody's going to come and try to knock you out.
05:32Of course.
05:33You don't got to say that you're the number one no more.
05:35They said it already, so now it's time for you to defend.
05:38But you still got to defend it, right?
05:40And like you said, it's going to be some young guy that see me talking, that see this, and he's going to be like, you know what?
05:47My overall goal in life is to remove Jermaine Dupri from that number one spot.
05:53I know it.
05:54The culture of hip-hop in Atlanta, strip club.
05:58For a while, you went there to break records.
06:00You didn't necessarily go to the radio.
06:02You went to the strip clubs.
06:03How did that happen, and why did that happen?
06:05It's a real, like, in real-time activity that happens in the strip club, and it's almost like an A&R meeting that you've probably never been to, right?
06:19If you're an independent artist or you're an artist that's just trying to make it, and you never went into these offices and had to actually endure an A&R meeting, right?
06:32Where you play a record, and the people in the room, they give you their feedback, or they look at you like, what the hell is that?
06:40Or whatever it is.
06:40It's a real-time thing that happens.
06:43This is an A&R meeting that you didn't even set up.
06:46You just play the music, and you look around the club to see if it's somebody that reacts.
06:50And you might find that one person, or you might not find that right person, and then from there, you got to take that data to yourself and say, okay, I played this song in the club.
07:00Didn't nobody even turn around and look like they want, I'm not putting this song out.
07:04Or somebody might Shazam and be like, they might try to Shazam the record, and the song ain't out.
07:10Or somebody might come up to the DJ booth, and you standing right there, and they might walk by and be like, yo, whose song was that?
07:16That's real-time data that people be talking about.
07:20That's what that is.
07:21These days, you put it into research.
07:22Yeah.
07:23Real research.
07:23Well, that was a form of research.
07:25Yeah, yeah, real research.
07:26But when did you realize that was a form of research?
07:29Because normally when people in a strip club, they're not really thinking about stuff.
07:33Oh, it happened to me.
07:33I had a guy named Manish Man who ran the game on me.
07:37Every time I went to the club, he paid a DJ to play his record.
07:42So every time I walked in the club or I was in the club, I heard this song.
07:47And after the first six times, I started saying, yo, damn, they play this song.
07:53Like, why is this song always on when I'm coming in this club?
07:56Only when you walk in.
07:57And I was looking around.
07:59And I'm like, so that one day, I decided to go to the DJ booth.
08:04I'm in the activity that I just told y'all about.
08:06The artist is sitting right there watching this.
08:09I'm going to the DJ booth and I say, yo, whose song is this you keep playing?
08:14And he's like, he right there.
08:16And I'm like, what?
08:17Wait a minute.
08:18Am I being like, am I inside the trick bag right now?
08:21What's happening?
08:23And I was in the trick bag.
08:25And it worked.
08:26It worked.
08:27Yeah, he saw that I recognized the song.
08:30I gave him a deal based on that song.
08:33Ooh.
08:35I still didn't realize I was in the trick bag before I gave him a deal.
08:40That's crazy.
08:41I actually was like, oh, this the artist.
08:42And I started talking to him like, yo, you dope, man.
08:45This song, they be playing it all the time.
08:46He probably was like, yeah.
08:47So I gave him a deal.
08:51And then once I started talking to him, he and I became cool.
08:55And he was like, man, J.D., I used to pay blah, blah, blah.
08:59Got you.
09:00Got you.
09:00Every time you was in the club.
09:01And he said the DJ would call him and tell him, like, J.D. just walked in.
09:05He said, yo, play the song.
09:07And they had a whole little scheme going.
09:09Wow.
09:09And I took that, like, I got caught up in it.
09:12Everybody going to get caught up in it.
09:13Everybody going to get caught up in it.
09:15That's the mindset.
09:16If I got caught in, everybody getting caught.
09:17Now, from that, the album, the album, the docu-savies, all from the strip clubs.
09:21You wanted to tell the story of the lifestyle.
09:24Well, at first, I didn't even want to have, I didn't have no music.
09:26I was just trying to be Jermaine Dupri, the entrepreneur, and make documentaries.
09:29Right.
09:30I did Freak Nick last year.
09:31Yeah.
09:32And then.
09:33You scared the hell out of a lot of people with Freak Nick, too.
09:35A lot of people like that.
09:36So during Freak Nick, we showed Freak Nick at South by Southwest.
09:41And then Cole Brown, who directed Magic City, he figured out a way for us to show Magic City
09:50the second day that I was at, South by Southwest.
09:53It wasn't sold yet, but he figured out how to put it on the bill.
09:56And I think that the excitement from me being able to show two documentaries, and I was promoting
10:04it like, yeah, I'm Spike Lee, nigga.
10:06You know what I mean?
10:08To be able to do that, I think that created this energy.
10:12And then once people saw it, and people were removed from just thinking it was about strippers,
10:19and they saw there was a story about Magic.
10:21And how compelling his story is, Stars picked it up.
10:27And once they picked it up, I was like, oh, we on Stars.
10:30And I was excited about that.
10:31And I ain't really had no space yet for SoSoDeaf, like the new home of SoSoDeaf.
10:36So I wasn't thinking about music.
10:38And then they kept pushing the date, pushing the date of when it was going to come on.
10:43And that just merged into when I started looking for a home for SoSoDeaf.
10:48And I signed my deal with Hybe.
10:50And the first thing I thought about was to do a soundtrack for this documentary.
10:55Now, soundtracks, they haven't been a big thing like they used to be back in the day.
11:01Yeah, word up.
11:01So when you made this one, did you say, I'm going to put that same energy into trying to
11:06make it like it used to be, like how it was?
11:08Because soundtracks sold bigger than some artists' albums back in the day.
11:12Well, the crazy part about it is I thought I was being a genius by saying this, but Stars
11:16came back and said, we don't want to do no soundtrack.
11:19We don't do soundtracks for documentaries.
11:21And that kind of broke my heart because I'm like, damn, I thought I was coming up with
11:25something cool.
11:26And they was like, nah, it's a documentary.
11:28You don't see nobody doing soundtracks for documentaries.
11:31And I was like, that's why I want to do it, right?
11:33And they went with it.
11:35And so at that point, I was like, well, if they saying they not going to promote it as
11:41the soundtrack for the documentary, what I'm going to do.
11:46So then that's how it turned into a Jermaine Dupri album.
11:48Like, listen, I'm just going to take this on my own and I'm going to say that this album
11:53is inspired by this Magic City documentary.
11:58Jermaine, tell me your, we're talking about soundtracks.
12:00Give me your top three soundtracks of all time.
12:03Wait and Take Sale, Immediately.
12:07Went to R&B.
12:08Right there, yeah.
12:09Murder Was The Case.
12:11That's the soundtrack, by the way.
12:13It was a movie.
12:13Just the soundtrack.
12:14Yeah, it was a movie.
12:15It was a movie.
12:15Not the movie.
12:17Men's To Society soundtrack was hard.
12:19It was hard.
12:20It had some good Tony, Tony, Tony.
12:22Yeah.
12:23No juice?
12:24No above the rim?
12:25Huh?
12:26Above the rim.
12:27Above the rim.
12:27Okay, I'll replace Above the Rim.
12:29I'll replace Murder Was The Case with Above the Rim.
12:32You're right.
12:33Jermaine, you tend to be on YouTube a lot showing people how you put music together.
12:37Yeah.
12:37What made you decide to do that to let people see how you work?
12:40I don't even know.
12:42You just turned the camera and went to YouTube.
12:43Yeah.
12:44I think that a lot of times, I think really what made me start doing that was like people
12:49questioning if I could do verses against people.
12:53But I've been doing that before verses was there.
12:55But I think that the more of it came from that because I kept saying like, y'all keep trying
13:01to pit me up against people that don't do what I do.
13:04Yeah.
13:04Right?
13:05And I kept just trying to like make sure people understand like, I'd be in here actually
13:10making beats.
13:12I don't know what other people would do, but I'm actually in here chopping beats, finding
13:16records.
13:17And I just realized like in that space, it wasn't nobody that my level that was even
13:23showing young people that that's what we be doing.
13:26Right.
13:26So they have a real kind of like a messy mindset of what a producer actually is.
13:32That's big.
13:33You did one on your Instagram that I watched about 50 times and you had a little rap to
13:39it and you just said, damn, and just walked off from it.
13:43I'm going to find it before you read it.
13:44Oh no, I know what it is.
13:44I know what it is.
13:45Actually, that was on the Me and Currency album.
13:48That was the first verse.
13:49I wrote that verse live on right there with the currency for the Currency album.
13:53Magic City, the album is on right now.
13:55You can go pick that up.
13:56A lot of All Atlanta artists.
13:58You went and found 2 Chainz, you found T.I., you found everybody.
14:01You got the veterans.
14:02Do they pick up the phone on the first ring?
14:03Yeah, of course.
14:04Easy.
14:05And I started with The King.
14:06You know what I mean?
14:07I had to start with T.I.
14:08I felt like it was important that if I started with The King, everybody else had to start running
14:14after that.
14:15And T.I. came and he brought Dro and we did like three songs the first night.
14:19And I felt like once I filmed that and I put it up and people saw that,
14:23that who else could tell me no after T.I. saying that.
14:27You know what I mean?
14:28So there's a lot of people I couldn't just get to because it was a lot of different schedules.
14:32But for the most part, I got everybody I wanted.
14:35Is it any artist that you had that you said, you know what, I'll let that one get away?
14:41Ludacris.
14:42Ludacris should be a so-so deaf artist.
14:43He should have been?
14:45100%.
14:45So what happened?
14:46One day went in the office and felt like I wasn't giving people that I had hired an
14:52opportunity to work.
14:54I was making all the decisions.
14:56I was choosing the artists.
14:58I was picking the singles.
15:00I'm doing everything as a CEO is supposed to do.
15:03But I also was looking at Def Jam and I'm watching all these other labels.
15:08They had A&R meetings and they had people that was the A&Rs and they was letting them
15:13really become stars, right?
15:14And I had Lil Jon as my A&R and people was in my company.
15:19They were stars too.
15:19But I wasn't really letting them spread their wings.
15:24And something one day on my way to the office, I was just like, you know, today I'm going
15:29to have an A&R meeting and I'm going to let these guys tell me what we should do.
15:33Okay.
15:34And I went in there and I said, I want to sign Ludacris.
15:38And everybody in the meeting was like, no, no, no, no, no, no.
15:42And I was like, what?
15:45And they was like, nah, JD, he'll seem like he going to, I don't know about that.
15:49That don't seem like that's going to last long.
15:51And I was like, all right, I'm going to listen to y'all guys.
15:56And that was the last time I listened to.
15:57The last time I said, you fired everybody after that.
15:59And then Move Bitch came on the radio.
16:01Move Bitch came on the radio.
16:02What's your fantasy drop there?
16:04You said, you know what?
16:04I just got to stick to what my gut feeling is.
16:08Yeah, I mean, I was just, but I mean, I feel like that's, like I said, that's an exercise
16:12that you have to do as a CEO.
16:15Because, you know, I feel like that's what people be talking about with Jerry Jones.
16:18They be like, he's trying to control the Cowboys too much himself.
16:24And he ain't allowing somebody else to do something that is a younger move, right?
16:29And, you know, in that same exercise, he let the best defensive tight end get away and go to Green Bay, right?
16:39Man, I'm a Cowboy fan, man.
16:40Boy, you got me going right now.
16:41I'm just saying, that's basically an example of what I thought I was hearing from me.
16:50I thought I heard people saying that in the whispers, like, J.D. don't be really letting us do what we got to do.
16:56And we got to thank you for checking in with us at Odyssey.
16:58One last question.
16:59All right.
17:00Is the culture of hip-hop and R&B in good hands with the next generation?
17:05If we make the right Division album, I think people are making, especially on R&B side, I feel like Mariah the Scientist got a good record.
17:19Kaylani got her first biggest record right now.
17:22Like I said, Division, me signing Division.
17:26In R&B, I think, yes.
17:27Hip-hop, we got to fight.
17:29We got to figure it out.
17:30What is the biggest fight in hip-hop right now?
17:35Putting that pressure on somebody and that person running that ball and believing that they are, you know, the same cockiness and swag that Biggie had.
17:47The same mentality that T.I. had.
17:51The same thing that Ludacris had.
17:53Like, you got to find an artist that's got that, that believes that that's them.
17:58A lot of these artists are not confident enough to even do one song, much less carry the whole genre of hip-hop.
18:07Odyssey check-in with Jermaine Dupri.
18:09I'll be out right now.
18:10Go pick that up, man.
18:11Magic City.
18:11Magic City.
18:12That's right.
18:12And the Wings at Magic City is magic, too.
18:17Yeah, we go there for the Wings.
18:19Thanks, guys.
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