He was the in-house producer for the dominating label and addresses conversations about him and Ye being at odds.
One of Hip Hop’s most celebrated producers has sat down to walk fans through the highlights of his career. Just Blaze is responsible for many of our favorite classic hits and solidified his career when he worked as a producer for Roc-a-Fella Records. Back in the early 2000s, Blaze was instrumental in pushing “Chipmunk Soul,” a genre that he helped pioneer, as did Kanye West. As two leading forces at the time, it was unsurprising that Ye previously suggested that he and Just Blaze were often competing.
Blaze addressed that comment and more while chatting with Talib Kweli on The People’s Party podcast. The Black Star icon wanted to get into Blaze’s “Blueprint Era,” prompting the megaproducer to touch on West’s remarks.
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“Some people like to spin the narrative that, ‘Oh, they were super competitive, they were out there duking it out,'” said Blaze. “I never, I honestly never looked at it like that. Like, he would call me to ask me, ‘Yo, how did you get your horns to sound like this on this record, I’m trying to figure that out,’ right?” He added that West would hear something he was doing and offer advice on how to flip a sample to make it better.
“It was never a thing where I was trying to hold something back from him or hold back his progress, and neither was he,” Blaze continued. He said that there were times when he would hear something West did that made him circle back on something he’d been working on, but he called that “motivation” more than competition.
Check out more from Just Blaze as he discusses The Blueprint mapping out Roc’s dynasty and all things related to Roc-A-Fella’s reign on The People’s Party below.