07 Aug 2011, Posted by admin in Headlines,Thoughts, 0 Comments

Jehst The Best

Photo by Dom Flemming

Words by Kitty

William G. Shields, better known as Jehst (or a host of slightly more obscure pseudonyms should you delve into his discography) was never set on being radio-friendly.  Since his first release, the lo-fi Premonitions EP, he stuck out as a rapper who much preferred distopia to diamonds and gangster shit.  His lyrics – truly intelligent and never afraid to be brutal – elevate him musically to realms Tinnie Tempa could only masturbate about (though that soft Kentish drawl and lush production sometimes disguises his sharper edges).

Jehst’s fourth full-length, ‘The Dragon of an Ordinary Family’, is a little sunnier than his prior efforts – all funky baselines and lazy beats – but that brutality is still there, as is the utter, utter tunage.  It hasn’t left my turntable for some time now, which is why I decided to give Jehst a call and chat about it.  And him.  And hip hop in general.  It was a rather long chat.  I tried to edit it but damnit, he’s a very interesting gentleman, as you will read.

 

What record first made you think, ‘Yeah, I want to rap’…?

When I first heard hip hop, it didn’t make me wanna rap; the idea of doing it developed slowly. In terms of a record that really had my attention when was very young – Run DMC, Raising Hell. That record had a lot of impact on me – just playing the tape over and over again – when I was say, 8 or 9 years on. I don’t know whether pop music could ever be like that again, it’s so raw. But years down the line, in terms of something that made me want to put stuff into words, and take a lyrical approach to hip hop, it was Nas’s Illmatic. It’s one of those records that really puts you into the artist’s shoes.

 

The mainstream UK rap scene at the moment is pretty boring and commercial. It seems like there’s a bit of an agenda inside the industry to keep it that way…

There’s definitely been an agenda within the music industry, and the media in general, in terms of what to focus on. Y’know like, what hip hop has become. It’s always had dramatically different takes on things from different artists – and that’s what’s good about it. You need to have a bit of gangster rap, and a bit of really hippied-out conscious rap. I think what’s sad now is that it is just this cardboard cut out, gangster stereotype, with very mainstream, capitalist, consumerist aspirations. It’s conforming to the establishment, not what any form of counter culture should be about. And I think hip hop in particular has been completely drained of any political or social relevance.

 

We need the Pharcyde back. They’d would know what to do…

You know what’s really sad? I don’t know if you’ve ever seen What’s Up Fatlip, Spike Jonze’s doc about Fatlip of the Pharcyde? You watch that and Fatlip’s basically saying, “We weren’t feeling it, we thought we were meant to be doing some hard shit”, and it makes you realise, from an artistic perspective, everybody goes through these thoughts. For a long time now, people have been at odds with what is expected – the generic watered-down version of what is current. He was saying that they felt like they were supposed to be doing some Wu Tang hard shit. Tre was talking out how his singing style just didn’t fit with that the industry wanted.

 

In retrospect though, hip hop from back then just seems so much more real and honest…

It’s easy to romanticise a period of hip hop, but really it’s been commercial from the beginning. There have always been hit records. And that’s how I see it now, regardless of what the content is, the minute you’re releasing music, you’re dealing with a product in a capitalist society. Therefore it’s confined to those constraints. You know, you can say the most political shit if you’ve only got 100 fans. But the bigger you get, you have to watch yourself. It’s the nature of releasing music as a commercial venture. Nowadays you’ve got the internet so you don’t need to do that so much … if you want to be ‘fuck commercialism and fuck conforming’, give your shit away. Because otherwise you’re always going to come up against that problem.

 

So to make it, you’ve got to ‘sell out’ somewhat?

I’m not saying that everyone should be prepared to sell out. But I’m saying that if you’re not prepared to sell out, be prepared to struggle. That’s the issue – artists whinge that they’re struggling, but if you wanna do shit that you feel, be prepared.

 

You mentioned Nas’s Illmatic had a big impact on you. What was it about that record that affected you so much?

It just had another dimension it that other stuff didn’t. It’s quite a personal record, one of the most personal hip hop records from that period. The sound is classic – it’s very short and it’s trimmed of all the fat, and you’re just getting that essence of NY early 90s hip hop, boiled down to the raw elements. I guess it covered aspects of Nas personality, without sounding fake. Whatever pictures he’s painting, it’s a perspective. I think that’s true about humans – we’re very contradictory beings, so that’s something that makes it very human and personal. It’s not scared to be aggressive, and nostalgic or loving or caring at the same time. The producers on that record are some of the most amazing blueprint, post-Marley Marl NY producers, that developed that take on chopping records. Like Pete Rock, Q-Tip….

And there’s no guest spots, so it doesn’t get watered down. You go into the artist’s world – it’s poetry. Seeing the kind of parallels between what he was going, and what other writers were doing, made me appreciate how far you could take rap, lyrically. It’s almost journalistic in places, and then in the places it’s ultimate fantasy in its breath of imagination.

 

I guess I could draw some parallels between you and him; lyrically you seem to be pretty honest and vulnerable…

People have said that to me, and it’s not something I ever really thought about. It’s the same with Tupac. Why do some many people love Tupac? A lot of rappers never gave that element of vulnerability. You do that, and then people can relate to it, then people can take you down off the pedestal for a minute. “This guy’s like me, this guy’s saying what I’m feeling”. I could relate to that, in Huddersfield. And how can this kid in Huddersfield relate to this guy in Queensbridge New York? It’s every day shit, in your neighborhood, wherever you are – if there’s any level of poverty or social problems… he touched on those things, but at the same time, he’s got crazy imagery like comic books and action movies that’d make you get excited.

 

What can we expect from the new album?

The intention was to put the focus on the lyrical content. By not trying to produce all the tracks myself I could approach the tracks with the attitude of, my only job is to write and come with the lyrics. I felt like I owed it to the fans to do that.

It’d been so long, stopping and starting and coming back to it gave me the opportunity to be selective; you know, some tracks sounded great after 4 years, and some that I thought were wicked back then I cut. In the long term, it worked out, ’cause the really strong material made it through … even though I might have been sick of it. Thankfully I’ve got quite a big discography so I don’t have to play more than 4 or 5 songs from a record live. *laughs*

The Dragon of an Ordinary Family is out now on YNR.  You can get it here.