JR Writer is remembered by most hip-hop fans as the Dominican Prince of Dipset. But the writer of writers has been steadily releasing crazy bars since the heyday of the crew, and he continues the tradition on his brand new project #iREALLYRAP, which you can hear below and purchase on iTunes here.
I met up with JR the afternoon after the big Dipset reunion show in New York City to talk Cam'ron and company, why his radio freestyles were so long, and how he ended up with Lil Wayne's phone number.
(This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.)
How did you first start rhyming? Who were the first people that made you say, I want to do this?
I was about nine or 10. It was one of my first house parties, a real house party with the strobe light in the window. It was some real hood project house party. They emptied out the bedroom and had turntables and DJ equipment playing the music. So at the end of the party, they started a cypher. Even on the way to the party, my friends Sean and Jonathan were like, “Yo, we gon' rap at the end of the party.” I was like, “Rap? Y'all know how to rap? How you rap?”
I knew hip-hop music and was a fan of 2Pac and all of them back in those times, but I didn’t know how to rap. So that sparked my interest. I snuck out the house with my big sister. It was like one in the morning, and they was talking about rapping and they laughed at me like, "You don’t know how to rap?" So that’s what sparked my interest, and I started to get the hang of it and started to perfect it. That’s where it started at.
Which rappers were an inspiration for you style-wise?
I was already a fan of hip-hop: 2Pac, Snoop and the Doggystyle album, Wu-Tang—Raekwon and them. I would say who molded my style were a lot of the Harlem rappers like Mase and Big L. Big L was a big influence on me. Cam, obviously.
I assumed that, because you have a punchline-heavy style, which I associate with Harlem and especially with Big L, and some of the DITC people in the Bronx.
Yeah, that’s a fact. Big L played a big part in influencing me. [Also] Big Pun, people like that. Back then, I really liked the complex bars similes, metaphors, stuff like that. So Big L, Big Pun, Jadakiss—they really influenced my style.
How did you first come into contact with the people in Dipset?
My man connected me to somebody that knew Cam. Before that I had a street buzz, a neighborhood buzz, because I was battling different battle rappers—battle rappers that people know now like Jae Millz. I grew up in a circle with battle rappers like Jae Millz, T-Rex, Loaded Lux, Charlie Clips—before battling was on YouTube and the cameras were out. Matter of fact, I battled Smoke DZA too, on 125th St.
It got to the point where I started battling two people at a time, because in that era you had to create your neighborhood credibility and status. You couldn’t just come out of nowhere with music, because people would be like, “Who the hell are you?” You had to have stripes. You had to build your rep.
That’s where I started. My man Luca Brasi introduced me to Cam. It was early Dipset era: Cam just had signed to Roc-A-Fella, Juelz wasn’t signed, Jim wasn’t signed. Juelz was still living in Harlem. He heard me rap and just told me to stick around and I stuck around. I ended up on Juelz's album, got my first rap check, moved out the hood, and I been straight since.
You had that one famous Hot 97 freestyle that’s super long, where you just go on a capella for several minutes after they cut the beat off.
That was after I had my deal. My first time it was just Cam, Jim, and Juelz, and that was super crazy. The second time was when I rapped for like six minutes straight.
I already felt like I wanted to get revenge—that’s why I was so motivated to go in. I had submitted a track with me, Cam, and McGruff and the sample didn’t get cleared, so I didn’t make the Diplomatic Immunity album. I was tight, I was mad. I’m like, I’mma go in on the radio, watch.
The freestyle that you’re talking about, I went for nine minutes because I wanted to break that record for six minutes. At that time, I would see Flex, and he would say people would tell him, “Let JR rap. Bring JR back. He be killing it.” So he would always call me to come up there.
What were the dynamics within the group? People see Cam'ron and Jim Jones as having sort of a love/hate thing.
I think that’s pretty much every crew or family, period. I fight with my brother all the time. From the outside looking in, you look at it like, oh shit they don’t really fuck with each other. But you don’t really know too much about it.
It’s like when you see family members fight. You think from a distance that they don’t fuck with each other, they're not going to talk ever again, they aren’t going to do business. But you really don’t know. It looks bad from a distance, but it’s regular shit. Brothers say certain shit and go off of their emotions, and then they squash it. Certain people jump out the window for no reason. You don’t really know too much of what’s going on, so sometimes you just have to stay out of it. But you can’t because it’s public.
I never feel like it’s that serious. Yesterday they were all on the same stage, and we all done said some things off of emotions. I have said some things off of emotions. I just had a conversation with Juelz about that, and asked him man to man if he feels some type of way about things I said previously. He was like, “Man, we done said worse to each other. Fuck that, you my brother.”
“Bird Call” was probably your biggest hit. What do you remember about making that song?
Shout outs to Lil Wayne. I was just in the studio with him this January.
I was with Cam, and I didn’t have a cellphone back then. He had a Nextel deal so he gave me his old phone, and in his old phone it was all the contacts from T.I. to Lil Wayne. So I called Lil Wayne. This was before he was doing a thousand verses and remixes and all that. I talked to him and he was like, yeah send me the record. I sent it to him and he went in. He sent it back and I mixed it and Flex was going in on it every day on his show. For the video version, Cam ended up doing his part.
Another collaboration I loved between you and Wayne was “We Like the Cars.”
I built a relationship with Wayne off [“Bird Call”], so any time I would call him he would do it in not even a day. There was a time where I called him and he sent me a verse in two hours, and he was on a tour bus. He had a studio on his tour bus.
The Diplomats were very busy for a while. You had the compilation albums and a bunch of affiliated projects. When did you become less active as a crew?
I feel like [it was] when everybody started doing their own thing. There was a point where we did a lot as a crew, and [then] everybody started focusing on their own solo careers. It used to be just us as a family—we was the entourage. But then everybody’s solo careers started popping and everybody had their own solo crews and albums. That’s when we started focusing on that instead of doing the whole Dipset thing that we were doing.
Do you have any regrets about that period? Do you regret not speaking up, or are there things you wish you had said?
Nothing I would have said would have changed anything, but I don’t regret anything. I know certain people look at it like, “JR Writer is disgruntled.” I’ve never been disgruntled. Anything that you might have seen me say had nothing to do with business.
These are like my brothers. I met them when I was 18 years old. These are guys that I looked up to at one point, and they are still my guys. I have never been disgruntled. Cam helped me move out the hood. I got a lot of money with Cam, blew a lot of money, seen a lot of money. I’ve seen the world. The only countinent I’ve never been to is Africa, and this is all off of music. I’m still doing my numbers. I’m able to provide for my family off of this, something Cam helped me get into, so I don’t regret anything.
You released a ton of projects up until about 2013. There was the CineCrack series, the Politics and Bullshit series...
Well, my first album deal I did with Cam. The second one, I did a mixtape deal—which I got six figures for.
So after that, Cam ended up falling back. His mother had a stroke, so he ended up moving down south with his mom to Florida. I bumped into him in Orlando, and he gave me my blessings to go ahead and do my thing. I never signed directly with him, so I was able to still create and sign deals. I ended up doing an independent deal with Babygrande, and they gave me a quarter of a mil' for a mixtape.
After that, I kept creating and I still have a solid fan base worldwide. That’s why I was able to put out projects and keep going. There were some key elements missing from what I was doing, but I was still putting out good music, substance, good joints. I feel like I could have had a strong team behind it to make it even bigger.
Around 2014/2015 you were away for a while in prison. What can you say about how that came about?
I would say making the wrong choices and not using my brain. Running around wrong places, wrong time and not being smart about it, not thinking about my career or my family. Things like that put me in that situation.
Honestly, I don’t regret it, either. I regret not making the right choices, but at the same time it was a learning experience and it molded me as a thinker and a man.
Me sitting in jail for almost two years gave me the time to slow down, be sober, and think things through.
How do you mean? You were away for 21 months and some change, right?
Yeah. It was almost two years. It sat me down because I was moving fast: smoking weed and getting drunk and doing things the wrong way. Me sitting in jail for almost two years gave me the time to slow down, be sober, and think things through—really think back to the mistakes I made in life and come up with a plan of what I’m going to do when I get out and what I’m not going to do.
Have you stuck to that?
Yeah. I mean, I’m not perfect. I made some mistakes music-wise as far as putting out my first mixtape since being home. I put it out for free. I felt like the fans deserved it because I had been away for a minute, but my entertainment lawyer was pissed off because it did over 300,000 downloads, so he was like financially, that’s not a good move. The next one I’m putting out is going to be through Spotify and iTunes. I’ve got my business right.
You haven't put much music out in the past two years. What have you been doing?
I took a break for a year. Not even a break—I fell back for like a year. I put out a mixtape last year titled Meet Zeus that did 300,000 downloads. But I sat back and looked at all the wrong things that I was doing. I didn’t put out any visuals ahead of time, I didn’t put out any visuals afterwards, I didn’t really promote it besides Instagram and Twitter.
Plus on Meet Zeus I was playing with the idea of stepping outside the box and being different with music, instead of keeping it one-track-minded with just punchlines, punchlines, punchlines. I was playing with bounce, swag rap, mixing swag rap with punchlines and playing with that and trying to switch it up. To me, it didn’t have any direction.
It was a new side of me. That’s why I called it Meet Zeus—that’s my new nickname now. But with this record, I feel like it’s bringing back that real hip-hop feeling. That’s what I feel like the game is missing. It’s a lot of watered down—I’m going to say it—mumble rap. And I don’t knock it—it’s lanes and fans for every genre. But my era, the type of music I like to listen to, it’s more complex. There’s more thought put into it. So that’s what I’m bringing to the table with this project, and I feel like a lot of people are going to love it.
