Can Big Boi and J.I.D See the Future of Southern Rap?
Two of the sharpest lyricists in Atlanta meet up at Stankonia Studios to trade industry stories and favorite bars, and talk about how they want to see hip-hop keep evolving
Photographs by Diwang Valdez
A tlanta’s storied Stankonia Studios feel like the site of a family reunion as J.I.D walks in with a grin and daps up Big Boi with Stevie Wonder’s “As” spilling from the speakers. Both are soft-spoken, and you can barely hear what they say to each other as they exchange greetings. But it’s a safe guess that they’re taking a moment to show respect for each other’s approach to life and their shared craft.
Fifty years after hip-hop began in the Bronx, both of these Atlanta rappers have done their part to expand the definition of the genre. Start in 1994, when Big Boi and André 3000 created a bible for Southern hip-hop with Outkast’s Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik, written in the basement studio they called the Dungeon and recorded right here. Or flash forward to last year, when J.I.D recorded parts of his most recent, and most personal, offering, The Forever Story, in these same studios. Big Boi helped establish that Atlanta can never be left out of the conversation, and J.I.D has helped maintain the standard he set.
With the cameras on and lights up, they settle into a languid Southern rhythm. Much like their rhymes, their conversation feels like a late-summer evening full of lightning — bright flashes that illuminate everything in sight, unpredictable yet direct. Big Boi, 48, cracks a joke that sends J.I.D, 33, into a fit of laughter. J.I.D fires something back that brings a large smile to Big Boi’s face.
Big Boi reminds us that this isn’t the first time Rolling Stone has asked him to take part in Musicians on Musicians — it’s just the first time he had someone in mind who he wanted to sit down with. This time, when the ask came in, he knew. He snaps his fingers as he recalls how he replied: “I told them, ‘Get me my dawg, man.’”
J.I.D: I heard a lot of stuff was done in the Dungeon, but I want to know, since we are in Stankonia Studios, what, specifically? Give me the earliest memory of y’all working on a body of work in this space.
Big Boi: We started out at the Dungeon, in the basement. There was no sound booth. Just a free-flowing microphone. And we wrote all of Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik in the Dungeon.
J.I.D: Well, let me stop you. What year?
Big Boi: 1992.
J.I.D: I’m two [laughs].
Big Boi: I’m 16, 17. That’s when we got in there, together with Goodie Mob and everything. So when we got the deal, we got the budget to come here—
J.I.D: 1993?
Big Boi: Yeah. The studio was called Bosstown. It was Bobby Brown’s studio.
J.I.D: This spot?
Big Boi: This spot was Bobby Brown’s spot. The B room right here, we had this as the main room where we would record, and then they would mix it in the A room. All the songs — “Git Up, Git Out,” right in that room right there. And so some years passed and we had a show in North Carolina, and we saw Bobby Brown.
J.I.D: It’s a good time every time you see Bobby.
Big Boi: I know, right? [Laughs.] We was like, “What’s up with the studio, man?” He’s like, “Man, y’all can have the studio.” Fast forward, we did a deal with [Elektra’s then-CEO] Sylvia Rhone to get Aquemini Records. We looked up the studio. It was in foreclosure. And Sylvia bought the studio out of foreclosure and gave it to us as part of our record deal.
J.I.D: That’s crazy.
Big Boi: Yeah. We’ve been here going on a good 20 now. After me and André did [Outkast’s 2014 reunion tour], since he records mainly in his own private space, or his house — he’s in L.A. — Dré was like, “Man, go ahead and buy me out.” So I own it 100 percent.
J.I.D: That’s the hardest.
Big Boi: We here, man.
Being from the South, they try to discredit us. Y’all were the first, like, ‘No.’
—J.I.D
J.I.D: I recorded a part of one of my songs that was on my album — it’s almost gold.
Big Boi: OK, we need that now.
J.I.D: Song is called “Dance Now.” Part of the second verse and figuring out the last part, I did it here.
Big Boi: You talking about something, man! That “Dance Now,” fo’ sho’. Bamboo [Big Boi’s son, 23] was blasting the shit out of that song, for real.
J.I.D: Today, everybody blows up viral in any second, but when was the moment you felt like, “Oh, we here. We done kicked the door down”?
Big Boi: Before L.A. Reid gave us the album deal [at LaFace Records], he was like, “I want to see what the guys can do.” We did a showcase for him. He’s like, “I still don’t know if they good enough.”
J.I.D: A showcase is crazy. We do not do them now.
Big Boi: Yeah, man. We got turned down twice before we actually got signed. But L.A.’s like, “OK, I’m giving y’all a shot.” Rico [Wade] came to the Dungeon like, “L.A. giving us a budget — but it’s gonna be on a Christmas song.” We were like, “Man, they trying to fuck our career up before we get started.” Rico was like, “Nah, we’re gonna talk about how we do it at the Dungeon, man.” We had to pick between two beats, and it was the “Sleigh Ride” beat that TLC had, and we took “Player’s Ball.” Fast forward, “Player’s Ball” went six weeks Number One on Billboard [on the Hot Rap Tracks chart].
J.I.D: That’s insane. That’s the one. I didn’t even know it was a Christmas song until I got way older.
Big Boi: It evolved from that to us being in the Dungeon and just wanting to be respected as lyricists, you know? That’s one thing about the whole squad, it’s like iron sharpens iron. We were all living in one house, and it was a battle to get on certain beats. I look at it like the X-Men School for Gifted Youngsters, and everybody has specific tasks. But the main goal was to kill that microphone. And to get that respect, we were going to have to take it.
J.I.D: I’m on the same goal.
Big Boi: I can hear it. That’s why I hear somebody like you and I’m like, “Yeah, boy. He get it.” I love MCs who are not just rapping, but they’re saying stuff at the same time.
J.I.D: And then being from the South, they try to discredit us just because of the lingo. We’re closer to slavery and all that, whatever, whatever. Like, “Oh, we a little dumber?” But y’all were like the first to be like, “No. Niggas goddamn know what’s going on, and we can use this and whatever else needs to be used.”
Big Boi: We gon’ give it to you.
J.I.D: The collective thing, we took a page out the playbook. My dogs like Earthgang and all the homies — 6lack, Mereba, all them people — we mirror that image and try to take it a little bit further. Because definitely, iron sharpens iron and it’s just fun, doing stuff with people you love and care about. That’s like the best type of music you can make, having those real conversations and then going in—
Big Boi: And doing something. At the same time, too, it’s cool, because you don’t always have to be the lead batter. You can have somebody else go bat first, and then you feed off of what they’re doing. It changes the whole dynamics of a song when you got a CeeLo Green. You got an André 3000, who I had to come behind all the motherfucking time, and we just go back and forth. But it’s good though. Because we push each other to be that much better.
J.I.D: And you can’t even tell [who’s the best], it’s whoever is the best that day. There always will be another chance to say, “Khujo went crazy on that one.”
Big Boi: Khujo was most feared back then. Because his cadences and his thought process were just different. It was like you had to unlock his verse.
J.I.D: One verse that stands out: “Y’all Scared.”
Big Boi: Oh, yeah.
J.I.D: “Heat’ll make anything move.”
Both: [Together] “Even Tyson can get laid down with this tool.”
J.I.D: [Laughs.] Bruh, that’s the hardest line. Tyson was in his heyday.
Big Boi: Man, let me tell you. Tyson walked up on Khujo at the BET awards, or some award show, and was like, “What you had said …”
J.I.D: [Laughs.] They about the same size.
Big Boi: [Laughs.] Yeah. But Tyson got a lot more fights under his belt. But Khujo ain’t back down. He was like “Yeah, folk.” Mike Tyson was like, [mimics Tyson’s voice] “You had said something about me …” For real, man.
J.I.D: That’s legendary. I feel like this the first time we hearing this!
Big Boi: Shout out to Tyson and Khujo. He’d tell you that ’till this day.
J.I.D: [Laughs.] I’m fucked up by that.
J.I.D, in an Instagram caption recently, you said, “this the 50th year of Hip hop we need sub genres like them rock Niggaz got.” What would you call the sub-genre that you exist in?
J.I.D: I don’t even know.
Big Boi: It’s life music, man. I don’t mean to take the question, but … it’s not just one thing. You got trap and you got drill, and you got this and you got that, but certain sounds and stories transcend all of that, you know? That’s what makes your [music] special. You got to have substance in it, but at the same time still gotta be jammin’. You don’t wanna be too preachy, preachy.
J.I.D: Exactly, it got to be fun.
Big Boi: I think you’ve mastered that.
J.I.D: You know what I think about, too? We both got a song with Little Dragon. I love them. Like, one of my favorite groups of all time. So when y’all song came out, I was like, “Oh, this is my worlds colliding.” What specifically made you work with Little Dragon?
Big Boi: It was the sound first, and then that damn Yukimi [Nagano]… Her voice, man. Her voice was like…
J.I.D: Silk.
You got to reinvent yourself every time you come out. It’s hard.
—Big Boi
Big Boi: She can sing on anything, and it don’t sound like something you ever heard. It’s just magical. And just to have those different melodies. They’re not the same riffs, and not the same chord progressions. They go left, they go right, they go up, they go down. The music was unpredictable. And I wanted the song that we did to be unpredictable as well.
J.I.D: I know exactly what you mean. It’s the same thing for me. The record we worked on, I sent her something, they sent it back with their flavor like, “Oh, this is a good beat but we gon’ add on top of it.”
Big Boi: They put the hop on it.
J.I.D: They fearless. That’s the bottom line.
Big Boi: Another fun fact about Little Dragon. I did a song with them called “Mama Told Me” and I was on Def Jam. I was fucking with all kinds of indie artists on that album. And the label told me, they were like, “Nobody knows them.” Even though I love Kelly Rowland — she did a great job — but the spirit of the song changed when I took them off and put on somebody else just for a commercial radio feel. I shoot myself in the foot everyday like, “Man, why did I even do that shit?” So now I don’t play by the rules.
J.I.D:I feel you on that.
Big Boi: Super cool, the whole band. We used to go bowling and everything. They went on my bowling league night every Wednesday.
J.I.D: I took them to Cheetahs. The strip club.
Big Boi: Oh shit. Word?
J.I.D: 100 percent. We ate real good. I got pictures. It was crazy.
Big Boi: With that being said, has there ever been a time where you knew something was right musically and somebody or something made you change it, but your gut was like, I don’t really want to do that?
J.I.D: Maybe at a smaller point, but I kind of live in that world that you were talking about — like, I’m not playing by anybody’s rules. I’m pretty fearless when it comes to it just because of the standards that y’all set. The second album [The Forever Story], we dropped it on a Monday. That’s pretty absurd in today’s time. We decided to miss the whole little Friday, Saturday, Sunday, just to do what we want to do. Let us drop on Monday, let the music come out how we feel.
Big Boi: Where hip-hop is now, I think more artists like J.I.D need to get that machine all the way opened up. Right now, it’s a certain type of sound that’s being pushed — but that’s only one thing, you know what I mean? It’s so many artists out there that got so many dope songs, albums, concepts, so much talent. You got J. Cole behind you, which is super dope. He knows what he’s doing. When you open up the floodgates, a lot of times they don’t want that realness. But you can’t outwork the truth.
J.I.D: This is how we grow, to take it 50 more years. The dialogue, just learning off of the people that came before. That’s how I move. Trying to push everything forward.
Big Boi: That’s the name of the game. You got to reinvent yourself every time you come out. That’s why it is so hard sometimes to write, because I wrote so many songs. I don’t ever want the same pattern. I don’t want to use the same sentence. I don’t even want to use the same slang. You know what I mean? I’m in here just like I’m digging for gold. But once I strike that motherfucker, it’s over with.
J.I.D: I’m still pushing, trying to open up the sound, trying to do new patterns, make it all fresh. I’ve been on tour all year. So I’m seeing different types of inspiration from different walks of life, and I just try to be sensitive about my surroundings so I can take it all in.
Big Boi: To make records, you got to live life.… To me, being an MC, hearing J.I.D’s music makes me want to rap. That’s that shit.
J.I.D: That’s the highest compliment, right there. If I make you want to rap, I can literally say you made me rap. These guys, they were amazingly fearless. And that was something that attracted me to it. I don’t know what the next song title is gonna be, what the next artwork’s gonna look like. When I was a kid — the record had to be Aquemini? Y’all had the lady, she was naked on there. I used to carry that around and show my friends.
Big Boi: That’s Dré’s drawing. Every CD was like, “Man, what the new girl gonna look like?” The first one you can see the nipples, and ATLiens, you can see some nip. By the time we started getting up there, they were like, “Hold on. We got to just do a silhouette of the nip. You can’t just be showing no pussy on no wax like that.” Dré was like, “It’s art.” Which it is. The most beautiful thing God has created is a woman.
J.I.D: Everything about it was just pushing everything forward. Watching your journey and growing up being a superfan and just seeing how y’all transitioned into manhood, doing your thing still.… With rock, I got a little beef just because I want our genre to be able to grow and see us do all the same things as the Rolling Stones and all them onstage. Making sure this culture is respected.
Big Boi: You know what’s really the whole key to it, man? I call that shit “out the way” records, man. Ain’t even staying in your own lane because all lanes are our lanes, you know what I mean? Just dominate whatever you’re gonna do. If you do it from your heart, you’re gonna kill every time. Just go super hard, man.
J.I.D: You’re straight inspiration.
Big Boi: You stepped it all the way up and all the way out, man. It’s Killer Mike, you, and Janelle Monáe … even without the titties out.
Photo Producer by DAVID KA. J.I.D: Styling by ALANNAH ROSE. Video Producer: KIAH CLINGMAN. Video Director of Photography: VALENTINA LEE. Camera Operators: AZARIAH OLDACRE and Angelica Perez. Gaffer: Sarah Serrato. Sound Mixer SPENCER POOLE. Interview Editor: ARIEL HAIRSTON. BTS Editor: ZOE MOUNTAIN. Photographic assistance by DONNY TU. Production assistance by JAE DESOUZA.