Photography by Kristina Hill

Quite possibly 2009’s best all-round musical moment to date, Khujo Goodie and Jneiro Jarel’s Willie Isz project is out now on Lex Records (with, naturally, super-deluxe limited-edition vinyl packaging version to follow). So, back in March while mystery man DOOM gave HHC Digital the run around in a very rainy Atlanta, we sat back and kicked it with Khujo about his early days in groups like Sixth Sense and The Party Crashers, the local impact of Kriss Kross, and why original ATL gangsta group The Hard Boys weren’t feeling his ‘lumberjack vibe’…

Jneiro’s known for having a pretty encyclopedic love of music. Did he put you up on much you hadn’t heard of while recording the Willie Isz album?
“Man, he’s most definitely been exposed to a lot of genres of music! He turned me on to a few cats like J Dilla, his production, and TV On The Radio, people like that. He definitely taught me some new tricks! It’s a perfect type of relationship ‘cos you can stay fresh and stay up on what’s going on and he’s most definitely got that locked down.”

Where did you record most of the vocals?
“In my basement…”

How’s your basement different from the Dungeon Family’s legendary basement?
“With the Dungeon Fam basement there’s a lot more light! A lot more green lights! But there’s actually Dungeon East in Decateur, Georgia, then Dungeon West is in South-West Atlanta. I call my dungeon The Red Room, which is in Stockbridge, GA, Henry County, 75 South. I did vocals in Dungeon East with one of my homeboys with the Vibe Tribe; definitely a lot of love going in to this.”

Talking about the different regions in Atlanta, how does the slang differ?
“Well most artists are saying their rhyme where they’re from, ‘I’m from Decatur’, ‘I’m from South-West Atlanta,’ that’s what mostly the artists do here in Georgia, ‘cos back in the days you couldn’t really find any local southern emcees on the radio so it was always about where you were from.
“But you can tell from the slang and the dialect where somebody’s from: For the same reason some people might say, ‘What’s up shawty?’ Some people might say, ‘What’s up partna’? Some might say, ‘What’s up cuz?’ Or, ‘What’s up cu-cuz?’ So the different greetings tell you he’s from Decatur, or he’s from South-West Atlanta, or he’s from the east side.”

Can you remember the first time you came across hip-hop?
“When I first starting hearing about hip-hop period it was from New York. Before the radio, it was on television, Beat Street, Wild Style, Krush Groove… I was in junior high school when that came out and we was instantly influenced. The next day people was wearing Cazals, Adidas suits, Kangols… Folks was fresh, man. It was basically New York and Cali – that was all the music we was hearing in Georgia.
“Then in the late-’80s, early-’90s I started hearing people on the radio like Shy D, Success-N-Effect, a group called Damage, Kriss Kross, Raheem The Dream… But these were just local acts only getting radio play in Georgia, not Cali or New York or the mid-west; and not nearly what they’re doing today – now southern hip-hop is everywhere. We out there!”

So at school the kids were dressed like a scene from the Bronx?
“Yep, southern cats were looking like New York! People that were into hip-hop would kinda have the b-boy things. I remember in junior high we were breakdancing…”

Were you any good?
“Yes, but I had many injuries! I broke my leg one day riding a bike, but we had a sock-hop that weekend, so I was in there windmilling that weekend with a broken leg – then I broke my arm! I couldn’t stop when I was windmilling and broke my arm! I called my mother and she was mad as hell!”

Where was the sock-hop held?
“That was a party they used to have at school – it was called that because you take your shoes off, you got your socks on, you’re dancing in your socks… You see a whole pile of shoes just in the corner, man! It was inside the gym.”

Did they have a deejay?
“I think the deejay was a local radio man playing a cassette!”

When Goodie Mob first came out, what sort of reaction did you get in Atlanta?
“When we came out we was on the road so I didn’t even know if they was playing our music on the radio. It seems like back in the day Atlanta was big on playing other regions’ artists before they was really supporting the local artists. You had DJ Jelly, MC Assault, all those type of cats that was paying underground stuff in the mix show on the radio, but not yet songs in full rotation, so it was a lot of local acts like Kilo – he had a song called ‘Cocaine’ that was a real big song down here in the south, like a Miami Bass song really but the dude was rhyming but had a type of harmony to it. But it was tough, man, ‘cos we really wasn’t getting no play down in the south.”

What sort of reaction did you get when you’d travel to other cities then?
“I remember when we went to the Source Awards and Outkast had gotten their five mics, new artist of the year, and everybody booed us that day. They booed the whole Dungeon Family that day. It’s been a big change.”

How did that make you feel at the time?
“Man, at the time, we really wanted to fight! We was outnumbered though so we wasn’t going to fight. I remember seeing the footage on stage and thinking, ‘What’s wrong with these folk? It’s good music, live music, what’s the problem?’
“Well, for one, they couldn’t understand us! And hip-hop originated from New York so these guys coming out the cornfields of Georgia with something to say wasn’t right for them.”

Was it like that in other cities too?
“Mainly just up north. People in the mid-west and the west coast gave us all type of love.”

Why do you think that was?
“You know how New York is, they’re real hard, and they was hard on us, extremely hard on us the first couple of years. But LA, they opened up to us real good – Cypress Hill loved us, Kid Frost loved us, Dogg Pound Gangstas loved us. Then Scarface, Geto Boys, UGK, they all loved us. It was just we had to crack that hard shell up in New York, but we finally did it. We walk up there and now and it’s, ‘Goodie Mob! Khujo!’

Talking about Atlanta artists breaking out, how were Kriss Kross received locally when they first came out?
“Man, they thought that Kriss Kross was jamming! After ‘Jump’ you seen Naughty By Nature doing it, Cypress Hill doing it! Even if people didn’t want to acknowledge the south there were bits and pieces you were seeing. These two little kids got people on the east coast and the west coast going, ‘Jump!’
“I knew both of those two little bitty kids; I knew Kriss Kross, both of the Kellys. Matter of fact, I worked with one of their brothers when I used to be a lifeguard back in the days.”

What was that like, working as a lifeguard?!
“Real cool, you’d talk to girls… It was one of the most relaxing jobs I’ve ever had in my life!”

Did you ever have to recuse anyone?
“We had to pull somebody out one time. That was one of the extraordinary moments of my life. It was a little boy. I didn’t really see the boy go down, just a girl ran over to him trying to pull him out. I was kinda froze for a minute. I knew I’d have to do CPR on him, and she saved him [she was a lifeguard]. This was at Moseley Pool in North-West.”

How did you end up getting the job?
“I got the job through the city of Atlanta. When I was a younger lad, that was a job to have.”

Before Goodie Mob, you were in a few other groups, right?
“Yeah, I was in a group called Sixth Sense with Big Gipp and Organized Noize member Ray. That was when we first heard Public Enemy. We was like, ‘We gon’ be the southern Public Enemy!’ Man, the music was sampling nothing but James Brown! Damn near every beat was James Brown! That shit was tough!”

How old were you at the time?
“I was 18, 19.”

Can you remember any of the Sixth Sense songs?
“I remember one song was called ‘Pray For Peace’. Gipp was on the song and there was a girl rhyming – I wasn’t rapping them, I was kinda like the S1W, but we was called something else! It was a song about the Iraq war or Desert Storm and it got some notoriety – it was on Channel 2. We was coming up doing our thing.”

What about Party Crashers?
“Party Crashers was a group I was involved in at middle school. We had a beat-box, a deejay, two emcees, and one dude that was dancing. That was my real introduction to hip-hop, at middle school, breaking, rhyming, graffiti, all them elements. We’d come and crash peoples’ parties, grab the mic and do a routine. That was my real hip-hop fresh days, with the suede Pumas and everything!”

What was your worst fashion mistake in the name of hip-hop?
“We had a vibe called the lumberjack vibe: the flannel shirts, the cut-off jeans with the boots! I remember my homebody took me to meet the Hard Boys – one of the first gangsta Atlanta rap groups – he took me around those dudes and I felt real out of place! Those dudes was gangsta, looking at me like, ‘What you doing, boy?’ They had guns, drinking Olde English, real NWA type shit, and I was on a lumberjack vibe! I was like, ‘Take me back home, I wanna go get my gun, man! I don’t feel safe, man!’”

Earlier you talked about Jneiro’s wide musical tastes. What about the Dungeon Family?
“Well I’m a big fan of rock, from like 1972-’78, and that comes from Organized Noize, like going to the dude’s house and just buying his whole house of records and just sitting down, rolling up a nice fat one and listening to them samples all night and EQing the different sounds. I’d be looking at the record covers and notice it’s all old rock bands, it’s far-out. I think that they were the ones that almost invented music – we end up sampling from them and making new music from it. I’m a big fan of ’70s rock.”

Who is the biggest record collector in the Dungeon Fam then?
“I’d have to say Ray, he has a stupid ass record collection. Him and Rico, they got a whole room filled with records. I went with them a couple of times to buy records from a dude, and just seeing them with the records, those dudes be soul children.”
(Willie Isz’s ‘Georgiavania’ is out now. Check out the track ‘Blast Off’ by clicking here.)