“Bandz” might make her dance, but this week’s “Renaissance Man” is where legendary rapper Juicy J shares his “Chronicles.”
A founding member of Three 6 Mafia — who has gone on to have an outstanding career in music, become an entrepreneur and author, and take home an Academy Award with his rap group — Juicy reminisced about his rise to fame from humble beginnings out of Memphis, Tennessee, in the early 1990s.
Even when that iconic rap trio started making it big, none of it felt real for J, he told me.
“Back in the day, we used to do radio promo shows with Destiny’s Child. I remember Kelly Rowland was telling me, she was like, ‘I love your music! I love your music!’” Juicy said.
“I was just shocked. I didn’t think everybody listened to Three 6 Mafia.”
The sensation only grew, and Juicy soon noticed that entire audiences in foreign nations would start singing along at shows — all in English.
“They knew all the words,” Juicy recalled of an early show in Japan that’s been stuck in his mind ever since.
Next, he and the Mafia struck Oscar gold, winning Best Original Song for “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp,” featured in the 2005 film “Hustle & Flow.”
“We were the first people they reached out to to do music in the movie,” Juicy told me. “And man, I knew something was going to be special about the movie. And we did our thing on it.”
But winning took second place to what came right after the Academy Awards.
“We had one of the longest Oscar parties of all time … at the Playboy Mansion,” he said, offering some of his preferred gentlemen’s clubs across the US.
Though he also spoke about the emotional resonance of his vulnerable memoir, “Chronicles of the Juice Man,” which hit shelves earlier this month.
“You know, [I’m] letting everything out, man,” he said. “If I could help somebody … Because there’s a lot of people that have these issues, inside music, outside of music — drug abuse and just everything, mental health, all that.”
“So if I could just touch some lives, man,” he said. “I feel like we’re all here for a purpose, and our purpose is to help people and just try to get people closer to God if we can. So that’s the mission I’m on right now.”
But that’s not the only objective on Juicy J’s mind. He wants to see an outstanding future for hip-hop — and that’s going to require some changes for modern artists.
“I hear a lot of people trying to be like each other … Just do whatever comes to mind,” he advised.
“I feel like these days, a lot of people, a lot of music, don’t sound too different. A lot of it sounds the same, which is cool, I still love it, but I’m waiting to hear what somebody else is going to bring [that’s] different to the table. Then I’m willing to listen,” he promised.
Detroit native Jalen Rose is a member of the University of Michigan’s iconoclastic Fab Five, who shook up the college hoops world in the early ’90s. He played 13 seasons in the NBA before transitioning into a media personality. Rose executive-produced “The Fab Five” for ESPN’s “30 for 30” series, is the author of the best-selling book “Got To Give the People What They Want,” a fashion tastemaker and co-founded the Jalen Rose Leadership Academy, a public charter school in his hometown.