Busta Rhymes’ New Artist J-Doe Is Finally Ready to Step Into the Mainstream

Busta Rhymes has been doing this rap thing for over 25 years now and his exuberance and vigor remains intact despite his age. Even though his long dreads aren’t swinging back and forth like they once did, Busta’s effusiveness for the sport of rap is at an all-time high. Now, in 2015, his enjoyment for hip-hop comes from watching his own artists create legacies of their own for his Conglomerate Records label.

After O.T. Genesis stole the summer of 2014 with this Top 20 single, “CoCo,” Conglomerate is buzzing on the streets again. Now, Busta is leaning on J-Doe to keep the momentum going for his home team. The two artists linked back in 2011 for J-Doe’s “Coke, Dope, Crack, Smack,” which was then remixed with T-Pain and David Banner. Their relationship then took the next step when Busta decided to bring Doe over to his label. From then, the two became frequent collaborators and have been releasing freestyles conveying their strong sense of chemistry on the rap front. After taking a small break in order to take care of his son and learn the ins and outs of the business, J-Doe is ready to deliver another banger for Busta and Conglomerate. His first single, “iongivafuhabownuhn” is now his first stab at mainstream success. With a star-studded video and major co-sign intact, it’s time for J-Doe to get his chance to shine.

XXL spoke with J-Doe last week to discuss why he elected to sign with Conglomerate, his chemistry in the studio with Busta Rhymes, O.T. Genasis’ success with “CoCo” and the best advice he received in the industry. —Carl Lamarre

XXL: What made you decide to link up with Busta Rhymes and his label The Conglomerate? I know you guys had a good relationship prior to you signing. Why now?
J-Doe: Why now? Well, that’s a very good question. I think it’s very important for artists and people in general to know that now we have the right support and the right team. We have the right people that are going to be able to help this record get the light of day like it’s supposed to. Before—even with a legend like Busta—he doesn’t have all of the resources to make a song have a shot. We still needed to link with the label. So we did a deal with Sony/Columbia through Salaam Remi. We did that. We needed the PR. Everybody is in place and we’re all on one course. This is really gonna give us a shot to make it all happen. It takes a long time sometimes to get all of those pieces together before you can get ready.

I remember you had the remix for “Coke, Dope, Crack, Smack” back in 2011, which featured T-Pain, David Banner and Busta. What was it about Busta that caught your eye from not only an artist standpoint, but from the business end as well?
At the beginning, I think I might have been just so much of a fan. When I first met Busta, he was like one of favorites, if not my favorite, through my high school years. So I was coming into a time when I was meeting him and him being interested in working with me. He wanted to sign me back then, even though there wasn’t a real Conglomerate yet.

Back during those Flipmode days?
Right. I wasn’t around during the Flipmode days. He was just starting the Conglomerate idea when I first met him. Later, I had my time where I took some time away from the Conglomerate to go figure out my own stuff and my own decisions. Then, I was able to make a real educated business decision about what type of business people I wanted to be around and do business with. And Busta, to me, is one of the last people that truly get excited about music and still cares. He really wants to see music as a whole and hip-hop as a body to be respected. When I watch him get excited as he does when he hears the records I play, it just shows me that he’s not gonna get tired.

That’s a big problem with the industry now. Like, if your first single ain’t Platinum, you probably gonna fuck around and get dropped. That’s because the label needs to see an immediate return on everything nowadays. So there’s not a lot of second albums coming out. There’s a lot of first singles, but there’s not a lot of albums, period, that’s coming out. If your first single don’t do well, they might not give you a second single. So with Busta, first, what he sees in me was bigger than that. Also, with Salaam Remi, they get it. They see the growth. They see the possibility and all the things that come with me as an artist. They bought into that idea and I definitely bought back into them.

Your labelmate, O.T. Genesis, struck gold with “CoCo” and landed himself a Top 20 single. After seeing his success, does that put additional pressure on you to deliver knowing that you’re the next dude up at Conglomerate?
Nope, not at all. For one, O.T. and I are completely different kinds of artists. Things that I’m gonna talk about and things that I’m going to bring to the game, you’re not gonna get from O.T. That’s the same for me. You’re not gonna get those kinds of turn-up, coke, hood records from me that the people want. At best, I’ll probably do a verse or a feature. But that ain’t my lane. You know, with that record, everything is all about timing. Once you really appreciate and understand that, you will never be envious of another man’s success. His success only says that it was time for that record, that it was time for that crunk move, ’cause there was nothing else like it. There was nothing else that felt like it. He came with what made the perfect amount of sense at the right time.

So I’m proud of that boy. I’m happy for my brother. Now, it’s my turn. If my record does more than that or it does worse than that, it was time for me to do that. And that’s gonna say nothing about what I do for the rest of my career. I’m loaded with records. I know what I’m about to do. My label and everybody else knows what I’m about to do. So we ain’t worried about a thing. Of course, we would all love to go Top 20 [on Billboard] and have a record like that. But if ain’t time for that, I’m not pressed. I feel good about having a great release, great rollout and watching it grow.

Let’s talk about the record “iongivafuhabownuhn.” You had a crazy rollout in terms of the cameos in the video. Talk about how the video came about.
Well, the video was an idea of Busta’s. He had an idea of putting a viral campaign together like that and getting a lot of different people to just do the words and just have me do little bitty parts of it. Then, we just threw it to the team. We just brought in celebrities that we both knew. We brought in good people who are influential in their own right from the internet, radio, blogs, everything. We just wanted to give people the real viral experience because we see people rapping into the camera all the time on Instagram, Vine, whatever. That’s just the wave. You’ll see people on Snapchat watching themselves singing to their favorite songs in the car. But we don’t see celebrities or trendsetters doing that. So I at least was the first person that I know of to actually make that into a video. I wanted to start a craze for people making their own videos, the same way they already were anyway. That was the whole idea behind it. Now I have another video that I already shot to it that’s a more traditional idea. That’ll be coming out a few weeks after this one.

What’s the chemistry like between you and Busta in the studio?
Man, most of the time with me and Busta it’s very rare that we’re coming up with something on the spot. Most of the time, it’s me coming to the studio with an idea and he loves it enough to be a part of it. He loves a lot of records and wants to be a part of each one. But he kind of has to pick which ones to be on, because he can’t be featured on every song that I do. But he loves a lot of my records. Sometimes they touch him in a special way that they’ll make him actually wanna do his dance on there, too.

That’s what happened with the “Coke, Dope, Crack, Smack” record when we first did that four years ago. That’s what happened with “You Don’t Really Know,” which was the one over the Outkast joint. It was just a verse I had done, and he did a verse to it. I was like, “This could be a cool little mixtape joint to throw out. I should do a hook on it too.” We ended up throwing a hook on there and it ended up being a cool vibe. We shot a quick video to it and threw it out just for the people to enjoy. Some people were asking me where can they buy it. I was like, “We don’t own that beat.” [Laughs]

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