Juicy J nearly retired after Three 6 Mafias Oscar win.
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I started hearing about N.W.A.
later on, it could have been 89.
I would play all kinds of music.
I had this crazy DJ routine I would do.
You remember the DJs would go back and forth on Technic 1200s behind their back?
I used to do all that stuff, tricks on the turntables, shit like that.
I was cold, man.
I was DJ-ing clubs and any little birthday parties.
I started when I was 16.
I didnt have the money to get the equipment, but I could scratch pretty good.
Fuck that pretty good.
I was the shit!
I was a cold-ass scratcher.
You knowthat transformer sound?
I was fast and quick with it.
I had some crazy techniques I was doing in my younger days.
I met this guy named D-Magic.
He was a DJ in town, kind of an old-school cat.
I immediately jumped on his turntables, scratching and shit.
He was like, Damn, you cold, man.
Wed split the money down the middle.
I could do a dope rap, but I wasnt really trying to pursue that.
I would do a lot of that; that was my technique.
And I would have the homeboys from the hood come in and they would rap.
I grew up in a tough neighborhood [North Memphis], so everybody was pretty much a criminal.
They would initiate the streets, rob, get in trouble, steal cars and shit.
They would go to jail.
But a lot of times they wouldnt show up, because they got locked up.
One day I just got tired of it.
We were trying to pursue this music career, but youre trying to pursue that criminal life.
It just doesnt mix.
So I grabbed the microphone and said, Im gonna start rapping myself.
Essentially, you became a triple threatDJ, producer, rapperout of necessity.
And eventually you connected with DJ Paul and did a bunch of tapes together.
Paul had a lot of equipment, a lot of keyboards and a nice, good, expensive 4-track.
We just hit it off.
We started making shit together and people started going crazy about our mixtapes.
We started making a lot of noise.
To make a long story short, we started Three 6 Mafia me, Paul, and Lord Infamous.
I wanted to be like Berry Gordy and the guy from Stax Records, Al Bell.
I felt like I was talented, but I didnt know nothing about the business.
I read all those books front to back.
I would use that knowledge when we started Hypnotize Minds.
I knew about publishing.
I knew about managers.
I knew what producers get.
I knew what artists get for royalties.
It gave me a little bit of leverage when we started our own record label.
We were living in L.A. at the time.
Columbia [Records] kept calling us asking wheres the Three 6 Mafia record.
It was a lot of pressure on us.
I was actually scared to be a solo artist.
I didnt think people really wanted to hear me.
It wasnt like I had a name for myself.
There was just a lot going on.
I had just won an Oscar.
I wasnt really paying attention to what was going on in the outside world.
I was living a fast life.
My brother, Project Pat, would come visit me all the time.
He would always tell me, What the fuck yall doing?!
He was like, Dont you know yall name is not as popular as it used to be?
He used to kill me.
Wed take a year or two off.
Thats how we used to work.
But Pat saw a lot of other rappers coming up.
I noticed that the phone wasnt ringing like it would.
Things werent really going the way it was going [before].
When I started working onHustle Till I Die, I took a trip to Atlanta.
I got around, went to some clubs, and just listened to different things.
I did a record withGucci Mane.
That was a dope session.
My brother was there with Drumma Boy, who was a new up-and-coming producer from Memphis.
I was like,That mans beats is hard as fuck.
It was like a different sound had kicked in.
The way Three 6 Mafia was going it had ended it.
A new wave was coming through, and our wave was pretty much done.
I believe the reason we couldnt keep up was because we was living in L.A.
If I wouldve been staying in Memphis, I probably would have knew what was going on.
She was trying to change our sound.
We did a couple ofthem pop records, but that wasnt us, man.
I mean, we put an album out [2008sLast 2 Walk], that song Lolli Lolli.
We had success with whatever we did, but it wasnt selling like the last stuff.
It wasnt like Stay Fly, Sippin On Some Sizzurp, and Poppin My Collar.
Lets be real, the Three 6 Mafia buzz was dying.
We all were frustrated, and I felt like we should put things on hold for a second.
[By 2009] I was really thinking about retiring.
I had a house in Memphis, this beautiful house that I never lived in.
I built it from ground up and it had like four acres of land.
I was like,You know what Im gonna do?
Im gonna go back to Memphis.
Im not gonna lie to you.
I was really losing my mind.
I was going to so many parties and popping Xanax every day and smoking weed and smashing different girls.
And thats cool, dont get me wrong.
Thats a really good life.
But at the end of the day, I mean, how long is that gonna last?
So, I went back to Memphis and I loved it.
I was telling people I was retired.
But obviously you didnt.
Instead, you ended up having this resurgence as a trap artist.
What do you attribute to that?Project Pat had a handful of new, young rappers and producers.
He found some talented motherfuckers.
He was starting a little record label.
I would jump on these artists songs with them and make some beats to put out with them.
What was crazy wasthese artistswereunknown, so people werent really looking at them, they were looking atme.
That record was going crazy.I think Im Big Meech!
Larry Hoover!And I was like, That sounds like some old Three 6 Mafia.
But it sounded different because [Luger] was using a laptop.
It didnt sound old-school vintage like the 90s or early 00s.
I reached out to him.
You know, Im used to rapping [over] my own beat.
It took me a couple of weeks.
I was trying different shit.
I had a gut feeling that this shit was going to really do something.
ThoseRubba Band Businesstapes with Lex Luger, really that whole period in the early 2010s, was wild.
I was high every day, drinking that yellow syrup and that purple syrup.
Id find myself in a different space.
I felt like I had this superpower when I would drink lean and pop a Xanax.
I felt like I could do anything.
I was in L.A. and I had this little apartment.
I used to have a studio session called Stoners Night.
Those drugs made me so stress-free.
I didnt give a fuck or care about anything.
I just cared about getting high every morning and making music.
The vibe was crazy.
I was like, Thats what they call them, huh?
Thats where I got that line from.
I thought that word was amazing.
I felt like I was making trippy music.
Theres a YouTube video of me dancing on top of my Rolls-Royce.
That motherfucker was like, Yo, whats wrong with you?
I said, Im trippy!Im high as hell, fucking going out of my mind.
But understand: I had made so much money.
I had won an Academy Award, sold 30 million records.
I was so drunk and fucked up that night.
I woke up in the passenger seat of my car that morning.
TMZ was out there, taking pictures.
I just felt like I was just having the time of my life.
So much of this period up throughStay Trippywas marked by this hedonism in the lifestyle that you were living.
But, in recent years, youve scaled back on at least the hard drugs aspect of it.
What changed?Well, I still rap about certain things here and there.
I mean, Im smoking weed right now.
Thats a given thing.
I consider myself a real musician.
I cant talk about the same thing over and over again.
I can, but I have to venture to put it in a different kind of way.
Its gotta be another point of view.
At the end of the day, Im growing, Im not getting no younger.
Some people just stay on drugs until they burn completely all the way out.
I had a crazy Xanax addiction that I had to go get some help to get off of.
Ive got a daughter now.
Im not nobody that stays in the past.
So in 2020, youre gonna hear a 2020 Juicy J.
He might be doing some trippy shit.
How do you feel seeing your legacy represented in this younger generation of hip-hop artists?Its a blessing.
I wake up one morning andeverybodys sampling my music.
Ive been a producer from day one.
I got a lot of stuff coming out that I produced on.
Everything that I put my hand on is relevant today the flows, the snares, the drum patterns.
I always looked at Three 6 Mafia as a special group.
I never sold the publishing.
We never sold it.
Its going through the roof.
I clear like two, three samples a day.
Were like the Princes and Michael Jacksons in rap music.
We can tour for the rest of our lives on rap.
People will still play our music like they play it now.
Ill pull up my new shit.
I feel like I could go up against anybody.
Youve got the records.
Who do you think would be a worthy opponent?Honestly?
I never put myself low.
Always put yourself in the highest position possible.
I could go up with Jay [Z]; I could go up with Nas.
I know its a different kind of category, but I could go up with OutKast or with whomever.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
