When I was at Shemspeed’s CMJ concert in Brooklyn, I got the chance to talk to Y-Love. He called out Jay-Z, talked about going more pop with his sound, and dropped some theology.
KEISLER: Long story short, how’d you come to Judaism?
Y-LOVE: I saw a commercial on TV when I was seven years old that said happy Passover, and I told my mom I wanted to be Jewish. And ever since I was a little kid (MEK: You went straight to Orthodoxy?) Yeah, I never really got into non-Orthodox Judaism, I had a metaphysical problem with that. For me personally, my issue with non-Orthodox Judaism, was, if g-d is infinite, He fills up everything, on all planes of existence at the same time. To apply a linear application of time to g-d, to say back in the day it was like this, and today it’s like that, to me that doesn’t work. So that’s why I went to Orthodoxy.
I think you kind of see that mentality on your first album.
That album came out roughly around the same time Soulja Boy came out , and I was so pissed, cause at the time I was up at two in the morning with English to Hebrew to Aramaic dictionaries, and he was (KEISLER: YOUUUUUUUUUUUUU!)…Exactly, cause I was coming out with four language wordplay and he’s coming out with YOUUUUUUUU and blows up.
Well he’s in jail now.
Yeah I found that out on Twitter, now I know what today’s least important news is.
So what’s with Hood Samaritan?
Everything blew up with me and DeScribe when we did that collaboration – this is another collaboration to redefine Y-Love, I’m really breaking out of the box I was in before. It’s totally different now, you can see I look totally different (MEK: You switched the flow up, right?)…Yeah, it’s a lot more accessible, a lot more English, it’s not 100% English, but it’s still 90% English as opposed to Aramaic half the time.
You kind of slowed it down too, from that rapid East Coast thing.
Oh definitely, to make it more accessible.
What’s the Baltimore sound? More east coast or dirty?
Well Baltimore has its own sound, there’s that chick Keys (MEK: YO, Keys is on point), I love what she does but I wish she would be more positive, I love her flow (MEK: All she does is diss Nicki Minaj), and then she has other songs, dissing, and very materialistic (MEK: She has that song where all she does is hate on her boyfriend). She’s always against something, if she had a track about empowering women instead of I HATE THEM BASIC BITCHES…then there’s Shy Lady Heroin who came out against Keys…but in general the Baltimore scene is a lot more positive than a lot of other scenes.
Is that connected to the club culture?
Oh, Baltimore club music is a whole other thing. That’s what I was raised on, if you hear me doing fast repetitive styles, that’s that influence coming out.
What rap do you listen to?
A lot more hardcore stuff than comes out in my lyrics, let’s put it that way. I listen to Immortal Technique, K’naan, everybody on Rhymesayers, Brother Ali I’m really into, and then pop stuff like Busta Rhymes and Ludacris. Everyone’s listening to Watch the Throne…
Really? I can’t stand that album.
Why?
I just don’t want to hear Jay-Z rap anymore.
I feel you, Jay-Z disappoints me as a person, but not as an MC.
He disappoints me as both.
He disappoints me as a person. Prime example, I’m real involved with Occupy Wall Street, I built the general assembly’s website in New York, and Kanye showed up to Occupy Wall Street, talking solidarity with the 99 percent, where was Jay? When Hurricane Katrina happened, Kanye was on national TV talking about George Bush doesn’t care about black people, Jay-Z, he sold a car? Like come on bro, you’re from Bed-Stuy, can we see a Jay-Z recreation center or something.
My complaint with Jay-Z is he destroyed Rocafella.
He’s really all about the money, he’s about making himself rich at the expense of others.
At the expense of Beanie Siegel.
(laughs) Beanie got clowned in every single way.
I miss that old Rocafella stuff and nothing Jay’s done since then has been at that level.
I think his new stuff, you can tell he’s not trying to be the MC he was then.
I don’t know, I feel like he simplified the flows too much, and lately I don’t like his vocals either.
How do you feel about Kanye though?
Kanye’s not the kind of rap I usually listen to but I definitely respect him as an MC, and how he’s grown as a rapper, he was a lot more traditional sounding on College Dropout and he’s more offbeat and out there now, and his production goes in weird places, he’s doing him. Jay, since Blueprint 3 is just watered down.
Drake gets hated on all the time.
I hate on Drake.
But I can never hate on him, cause he’s the only other black Jew in the rap industry blowing up on the pop tip. Shyne’s on that gangster tip.
How’s he going to be Chassidic and gangster at the same time?
Easily, he said in XXL magazine, “there’s nowhere in the Gemara that says I can’t drive a Maserati”.
But is he still rapping about killing you?
…Yes, cause that’s his persona, he says “I get paid to drop F-bombs”.
People were giving Mase shit back in the day for saying he was a pastor and then doing gangster rap…
That’s a difference between Christianity and Judaism, if everything’s nebulous people are allowed to make judgment calls. Unless you’re Catholic there’s no canon. With Orthodox Jews, it’s like look, am I doing anything wrong? Well then shut up. So that’s his point of view, I respect that, cause that’s my point of view with what we do at Shemspeed. Until you see something actually wrong that you can point out, don’t say nothing. We’ve dealt with a lot of haters in the Orthodox world.
It’s funny to me, cause coming from the not-Orthodox world, Shemspeed seems so innocent and so moral.
I mean, yeah, we’ve had crazy rapper experiences though. When Remedy came down with a whole bunch of people from Shaolin to one of our shows, Staten Island projects was represented fully in this club, and who was it who got the VIP room shut down for blazing in the club?
Shemspeed?
Yeah, and then you see a whole lot of Jews in yarmulkes getting led out of the club. So, we get down. Granted, nobody’s getting shot, and if somebody punches you, the next words out of their mouth are “excuse me”, we don’t need metal detectors or anything like that.
So what’s happening project wise?
I got the Hood Samaritan mixtape coming out, I got a documentary about me coming out in the spring, I got this new video with Andy Milonakis and TJ Di Hitmaker on MTV, The Takeover, so yeah, Shemspeed’s taking over. That’s what’s up.
Max Elstein Keisler is a third-year journalism major at Harvard Extension School. He’s involved in the local music scene in Boston and the coverage of Jewish music worldwide. His writing can be found at maxelsteinkeisler.com. His column, The Product, usually appears here on alternating Thursdays.
