SOHH.com: Creating The Music In "Juice" (25th Anniversary)

SOHH.com Exclusive: Peep the music behind hip-hop classic "Juice"

Transcript

00:00 Making it work was kind of easy because the movie itself, you know, lends itself to, I

00:07 mean, it's right in the artist's vein. The artist understands that they grew up in the

00:11 lifestyle, they understand, it's centered around them. So what we did was pretty much

00:16 just screen the movie, let them see it, and I told them, "Look, you guys write about anything

00:21 you want to write about. You don't have to like, you know, sit there and write something

00:25 for a particular scene." So we just let them do whatever they do best, and then they came

00:32 back with what I thought was pretty, was very good.

00:34 Well, the title song, like I said, once again, was written by Rakim. He sat down and we talked

00:39 about it over the phone. We went to see the movie a couple of times, and he just wrote

00:43 from his heart.

00:44 It's a hardcore movie. Life in Harlem is hardcore if you were a kid growing up, you know? What's

00:49 up, y'all? This is DJ Muggs from Cypress Hill.

00:53 Sandog.

00:55 Be real.

00:56 Fat.

00:57 Fat.

00:58 Word up. Word up. We did a song on the soundtrack called "Shoot 'Em Up," and the reason we did

01:02 the soundtrack, the song, it flew so good with the movie, and the movie touched us well

01:07 because us growing up, we had some kind of an experience like that, where one of our

01:12 own friends killed a couple of our own friends, you know, it was like a family thing. So when

01:17 we saw the movie, right away, that song we had just, man, that's perfect for that.

01:21 Yeah, you know, a lot of people said, "That ain't gonna happen. Ain't nobody's homeboy

01:23 gonna smoke that homeboy," but it happens.

01:25 You know, it's like, well, it's like, you know, kids coming up in the neighborhood, it's

01:28 like a cycle of kids, there's juice, everybody's trying to get juice in every neighborhood,

01:33 you know? And young kids come up, you see the older guys doing this, going up, you know?

01:36 And then once they get out there in the street, you know, it's time for them to do for themselves.

01:39 So if they don't do right, they're gonna do wrong. If they do wrong, they be out there

01:42 in the street slinging, trying to get props. You can't get props if nobody's checking for

01:46 you, nobody's gonna give you no respect.

01:47 True.

01:48 So then you gotta run with the troop or a posse of brothers, and you get together, you

01:51 gotta start running brothers down, and start taking blocks.

01:54 We were part of it, man, and it's something that drags you all the way through the ground,

01:58 man, through the mud. You get back up, and people who could persevere and go on, man,

02:03 like us. You know, we still think of our friends, but in a way that it kind of, like, helped

02:07 us relate with this movie.

02:08 Yeah.

02:09 Yeah.

02:10 Yeah.

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