RJD2 returns to his hometown of Columbus and makes another masterpiece
Veteran beatmaker and soundscaper RJD2 is trying to re-acclimate. After a decade and a half living and making music in Philadelphia, Ramble John Krohn and his family relocated to his native Columbus, Ohio. Talking by phone from his new/old home, he admits that it’s a challenge uprooting from a scene where a vast network of collaborators was literally up the street from his house. But at the same time, he’s never had a hard time making friends—and we hear them all over the new Dame Fortune, released on his RJ’s Electrical Connections label.
Teamwork has historically been a staple of RJD2 records. His previous outing was the critically acclaimed STS x RJD2, a full-length project with Philly-via-Atlanta rapper Sugar Tongue Slim. It was a lively mix of poppy, playful beats and Slim’s trademark lyrical somersaults—with nuanced moments of introspection and a featured hook by (gasp!) soulful Americana songwriter Amos Lee.
“Making records like that really facilitates my confidence in doing things that are a little left of center,” says RJ. “The goal there is to find an elegant thing that people can relate to instantly. A groove, a pocket, a chord change that hopefully won’t be boring after you listen to it a lot. And that is its own particular challenge.”
Last year also saw a vinyl reissue of The Abandoned Lullaby, the sole LP from the band Icebird, RJD2’s 2011 collaboration with Aaron Livingston, a guy you might know better as Son Little. The record was less dance-floor-oriented than his normal fare, dabbling more in psychedelic grooves, with Livingston’s gripping vocals taking center stage.
Talk turns to process, and RJ explains that there’s no one-size-fits-all mold for the beats he makes and the voices that find their way onto them. Sometimes, he’ll be in exploratory mode, messing around with modulators and synthesizers and drum machines until a seed of a song reveals itself. And sometimes, it’s more intentional.
“About halfway through the Icebird record, we made ‘In Exile,’ and that was a song where we realized we should change up the dynamic to keep it interesting,” says RJ. “We thought, ‘Let’s come up with a song that’s just acoustic guitar, strings, vocals and nothing else. Let’s keep it all mid-range and see what happens.’”
STS x RJD2 track “All I Wanted Was A Caddy” is similar. It’s the point in the record where the ’70s house-party tone—horns, strings, piano and guitar—gives way to simmering industrial synthesizers. RJ says it came about to give the record variety, though Slim—whom he connected with through producer and Philly friend Khari Mateen—could pretty much spit fire over anything.
“My normal experience from working with people musically is I will send them 10 beats and they’ll send me one or two with their parts,” says RJ. “I’m used to having to throw so much against the wall. But with Slim, I’d send him, say, six tracks in a folder. In a week, he would send me five back. It was crazy how prolific he was off the bat.”
Like “Caddy” and “In Exile,” Dame Fortune also has surprising twists and turns in tone but also a strong roster of people at the mic—beginning with Jordan Brown, a friend of Slim’s who sang most of the hooks on STS x RJD2. Brown takes center stage on lead single “Peace Of What,” a horn-laden socially conscious jam that nods to Main Source’s “Peace Is Not The Word To Play.”
“I’ve got this self-imposed rule now; I don’t want to be singing more than two songs per album,” says RJ. “And when you work with somebody like Jordan, it’s one of those times where you realize there are people out there that are born with a voice that you just want to hear.”
He also pairs up again with Phonte Coleman of Little Brother on tripped-out soul soundscape “Saboteour”; RJ met him as a fan at a Beat Society event in 2006, and has worked with him regularly since 2010’s The Colossus.
Livingston appears on rambling rocker “We Come Alive,” which was finished before his Son Little gig took off full steam. RJ says that while most people know him as a powerful singer, he’s a quadruple threat: a fierce guitarist, a producer and a songwriter as well.
“When I heard ‘Guns Are Drawn’ by the Roots (where Livingston was featured), I started digging into his old band the Mean, and looking into his lyrics and thinking, ‘This guy is also one hell of a writer,’” says RJ. “And then you see him play guitar and you see he’s a badass. And then you see he produced most of his record.”
Vocalist Blueprint sings on “Up In The Clouds.” The Columbus rapper’s work with RJD2 dates back to their duo project Soul Position, which released two LPs on Rhymesayers in the early aughts. And another Ohioan sings on “Band Of Matron Saints”: Josh Krajcik, best known for being a finalist on The X Factor. That’s not why he was picked, though; RJ was just looking for somebody who could belt like Joe Cocker, and found out his lineage after booking him. “I didn’t even realize that, in that world, this guy’s a big deal,” he says. “But I had my head in the sand.”
Which is a testament to how RJD2 works. He doesn’t write songs for artists he wants to collaborate with, he simply writes songs. When they’re done, he studies the landscape and tries to imagine who would best inhabit it.
“That is the thing that I think is so fascinating about music, that the mechanics of it translate into the aesthetics of it,” he says. “And it is not easy to envision for me how I am going to aesthetically feel about something until the song is done.”
—John Vettese
