Juicy J on the Music of His Life
The 43-year-old rapper, producer, DJ, and label exec talks about the songs and artists that have meant the most to him—Dionne Warwick, Sha Na Na, Gucci Mane—five years at a time.
Three 6 Mafia’s haunting sound will never die. Led by Juicy J, the Memphis crew began solidifying their signature approach in the early 1990s, combining pianos inspired by horror film scores, dirty Southern drums, and menacing deliveries. Their influence has never stumbled out of relevance ever since.
At the start of this decade, SpaceGhostPurrp embraced Three 6’s dark melodies and sinister lyrics, becoming an underground sensation. More recently, Denzel Curry used the Three 6 aesthetic as the foundation of his artistic identity, from his rapid-fire triplet flow to his wicked cover art. The group has also inspired hip-hop superstars like 21 Savage, whose latest album, I Am > I Was, drips with some of their terrorizing style, and Drake, who paid homage to Juicy J’s older brother—and frequent Three 6 collaborator—Project Pat on last year’s “Look Alive.”
Juicy reinvented himself after Three 6 Mafia became the first rap group to win an Oscar, for their Hustle and Flow track “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp,” in 2006. He amplified his larger-than-life persona as he transitioned to a solo career, notching collaborations with everyone from Travis Scott to Fall Out Boy to Katy Perry. In person, though, the man born Jordan Houston is far from the loose cannon he seems to be on record. He carries himself like the businessman he’s become. He’s a partner in Wiz Khalifa’s Taylor Gang Entertainment, and he also has his own music publishing company. It’s difficult to imagine that this is the same guy whose most-recited line of the decade is, arguably, “You say no to ratchet pussy, Juicy J can’t.”
On a chilly weekday afternoon in New York City, he’s bundled up in a cozy black peacoat, a hoodie, and a neck-choking scarf. Though his shades are pitch dark, the North Memphis native wears his experience on his face, with a relaxed demeanor. He talks about some of his favorite songs of all-time, including the type of vintage soul he and Three 6 Mafia’s DJ Paul once sampled in their productions for UGK and OutKast’s “International Players Anthem” and Three 6’s own “Sippin’ on Some Syrup.” He’s aware of the extraordinary circumstances of his life so far—that it’s rare for a broke teenager from Memphis to become a hip-hop staple, Oscar winner, and burgeoning industry kingpin. “Real shit, my story will be told in movies one day,” Juicy says proudly. “I already DM’d that nigga Michael B. Jordan about playing me.”
Sha Na Na
Growing up it was me, my mom, my dad, my brother, and my two sisters. I stayed in the church, because my dad was a preacher. Me and my brother would watch this group called Sha Na Na on NBC. They had this TV show where they would be on there dancing and singing. It was rock’n’roll, kind of like Grease. They had that ’50s sound, and they would just harmonize with their mouth. They had this one dude, Bowser, who would just go, “bah bah bah.” I loved it. That’s how I fell in love with music.
DJ Jazzy Jeff & the Fresh Prince: “Girls Ain’t Nothing But Trouble”
Around then I came across Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, who are one of my favorite groups of all time. Everything they put out was a hit. “Girls Ain’t Nothing But Trouble” grabbed me. When I heard Jazzy Jeff’s scratches I remember saying to myself, “I gotta be a DJ.” So I got a Fisher-Price turntable and used a metal bread wrapper with the plastic pulled off of it for a needle, because I couldn’t afford a real one. I would go in my room and just scratch. It was hard as hell to do, but later on, somebody sold me a piece-of-trash turntable: super old, it came in a case, you could flip the case, turn it on, and it had a speaker on the side of it.
My dad was a preacher so he used to have a lot of tape recorders around the house. He would record speeches of him preaching gospel and sell them or give them away. So I took one of his cassette tape players and used it as a mixer, because I couldn’t afford a mixer. I had a wire and when I would hit the wire on the cassette player, music would come out. That’s how I started using a miniature fader to transform shit. My dad would always get mad because I was messing with his tape recorders. I would be in my room all day just fucking with them, studying all the wires. Until one day, I finally got it to work. I was really on my MacGyver-type shit.
Prince
When I was 15, I was still in Memphis, in the hood, broke. But I met this dude named D-Magic. A friend of mine was like, “Man, I got this friend with all of the equipment, we should go over there and record.” So I went over to his shotgun house—where you look through the front door you can see the back door—with this dude named Vasco, who was rapping with me. [D-Magic] had turntables, mics, everything I couldn’t afford. I immediately ran to a turntable and started scratching, and D-Magic was like, “Damn, you cold as fuck.” He was an old-school nigga, so he was like, “I just play music, I don’t know how you’re doing all that shit man.” Immediately, he was like, “We should get together and start a business. I’ll set the equipment up, you DJ, and we split the money.”
I thought I was the shit. I was getting little gigs—birthday parties, weddings, stuff like that. I would get in so much trouble at school though. They would always have me in the principal’s office, in detention, sometimes I got kicked out, and I was even arrested for trying to sell some weed. But eventually the principal was like, “Look, if you stay out of trouble, I’ll let you DJ the next school dance.” So I did, and when the school dance came, I was going crazy. I was spinning behind the back, underneath the legs, all that. It was like some Juice shit. That’s when I started to make a name for myself.
But from a young age, I wanted to be versatile, just like Prince. He could produce, sing, and rap. That’s why, for a little bit, I wanted to be an R&B singer too. But I settled into the background DJing. One day, Vasco and I had a gig. He would always be back and forth in jail. He would steal cars and pick me up, then we would ride around until he got caught and locked back up. So, before the gig, Vasco went to jail. I was like, “Man, fuck it. I’ll rap myself.” Although I never wanted to be a rapper, I let the instrumental play, grabbed the mic, and just started performing.
8Ball and MJG: “Mr. Big”
Around this time, I had met 8Ball and MJG. They were killing it. There was no music that represented Memphis like them, because they had the pimpin’ shit, and if you know Memphis, that’s big. In the mid ’90s, pimps were everywhere in Memphis, on every street and corner. I became 8Ball and MJG’s backup DJ, because one day the other guy that was DJing for them didn’t show up. Then, another day, in the studio, their DJ wasn’t there again, and they needed some scratches, so they was like, “Juicy, come on up and do this man.” When they saw me scratching, they were amazed. They were like, “You cold as a motherfucker.” Then they saw me rap and they were like, “Man, you can rap, too. Why don’t you be rapper?” But I was like, “Nah.” I still only wanted to be a guy in the background.
I had a few Juicy J mixtapes out at the time, and one day in the studio this guy who worked there was like, “Yo, you should meet DJ Paul, you could start making beats together and shit.” Paul was on the come up too. So we connected and started putting out mixtapes with a whole clique of rappers and called it the Backyard Posse. That group was like 20 people deep, so eventually we chose the best six members and created Triple Six Mafia. Soon enough, we had so much buzz around town that we decided to record our first CD, Mystic Stylez. The sound of that album was dark. I used to watch a lot of scary movies, like Halloween, Friday the 13th, and Poltergeist, and started sampling them and bringing that into my sound.
Willie Hutch: “I Choose You”
By the time I was 25, Three 6 Mafia had dropped When the Smoke Clears, and life was good: We was selling records, making money, riding around in a Bentley with a driver. The only reason I got a driver is because I watched so many mob movies and saw John Gotti and Lucky Luciano and was like, “I gotta get me a driver, man.” I was coasting in the back, with platinum and gold watches on, doing it big.
Things were starting to change, but in Memphis we was kings. We were signing local artists to our label, Hypnotize Minds, and I was really trying to be like Berry Gordy or Al Bell, who ran Stax Records, which had all the legendary Memphis artists like Isaac Hayes and the Bar-Kays. I was just riding around Memphis, feeling like a king, listening to Willie Hutch. In Memphis, that old-school pimpin’ music is loved by everyone, even if you 17 years old. Whenever somebody said, “Play me some pimpin’ man,” you knew. You would go to the club and at the end of the night they would drop a Willie Hutch record, and niggas would be in there rowdy, in a circle, hollering, “Get buck, get buck!” Man, what a time.
Dionne Warwick: “I’ll Never Love This Way Again”
You go from being an underground rapper to winning an Academy Award, shit gonna change. We was on top of the world. We had a TV show, an Oscar, and bought a house out in L.A. But man, it was the pussy, the threesomes, they came a dime a dozen. I partied so hard. I could never live like that again. If I could turn back the hands of time I would stop that shit—I could have died out there in L.A. At the time, we dropped this song that went, “Love having sex, but I’d rather get some head,” and that was real life.
Right after that Academy Award, all I could listen to was Dionne Warwick. I would just get drunk, take some Xans, fly on planes, and spaz out to Dionne Warwick in my headphones. This chick was singing about how her life is miserable, talking about being lonely, and having nobody. I could hear the pain. But I’m a producer, so I listen more for the sound, and the basslines, strings, and arrangement really grabbed me. That was just for me though. Whenever I got around other people, we was just listening to rock. I remember being drunk as hell on stage with Linkin Park and playing pool with Chester [Bennington], RIP, and Mike Shinoda. But at the end of the day I would just go for a jog around L.A. with Dionne Warwick playing.
Rick Ross: “B.M.F.”
Suddenly, the phone stopped ringing. One day I was doing shows, getting money, then the next I was like, “Damn, what the fuck is going on?” We were in L.A., and Project Pat used to come over and be like, “All you do is smoke weed all day, y’all niggas is too high. Get your ass up, get on the internet, and start putting some mixtapes out. Music is changing.” I wasn’t hearing it though. I was all like, “I don’t do free music, man.”
Eventually I listened and started going on the internet. I was jumping around, listening to a lot of Gucci Mane and Jeezy, like, “Oh shit, these beats is different.” That shit made me come to my senses, realizing that I lost part of myself. I was out in L.A., in the club, listening to techno, which sounds good when you’re drunk all the time. But that wasn’t what Three 6 Mafia was raised on.
Even though we had always produced our own shit, they wanted us to work with different producers, and I gave in. I was in the studio with Dr. Luke, tryin’ to tell him to make me beats more like old Three 6 shit—he was cool as fuck, but that wasn’t it. And then one day I was on Twitter, and people kept hitting me about this producer Lex Luger. I heard “B.M.F.” and instantly had to reach out to this nigga. When I started making mixtapes with Lex Luger, shit started popping, quick. He was a producer, and I was a producer too, so I let him do his thing. But every time I would incorporate my signature “yeah hoe” and “mafia” samples in his beats—that was me saying, “Hey, I’m still here. This is me.” And they fell in love with that shit.
Then my eyes opened up. I remember walking into this party and there was naked girls everywhere, people fucking everywhere, cocaine everywhere, and I wasn’t doing none of that shit. I had a drink and was like, “Man, Hollywood is weird as fuck.” Soon enough, when one of my girlfriends was staying with me, I just got up and said, “Fuck this shit.” I told her, “Let’s go back to Memphis.”
Gucci Mane
My solo thing was taking off. I was listening to a lot of Gucci Mane, and I just started looking at the game totally different. When I first decided I wanted to be an executive, I was more like a producer, manager, and father figure to the artists. But I had to stop thinking like that and think more like Berry Gordy. Berry started as a producer and songwriter, but he also brought in a shit ton of other writers and producers—that’s how he built Motown. So I started signing a bunch of new artists, and although I kept rapping—I always will—I didn’t want the spotlight as much anymore.
After turning 40, it was the first time in my life I took a real vacation, I was always just in the studio 24 hours a day. But now I’m mostly just on my executive shit. I got my own publishing company, and I just had a baby. Life is different for me now. I’m more about putting these youngsters on. I always wanted to run a major label. Not too long ago I had a vision of myself, sitting behind a desk, in charge, just like Berry Gordy.