| For a debut artist who has toured with M.I.A., has a dance move called the Air Cock Thrust and gets "white girls to shake their ass till his dick turns racist," Naeem Juwan is one soft-spoken dude.
"I’m a pretty quiet, reserved guy," says the New York via Philadelphia via Baltimore MC. "I only wild out when I’m around close friends."
Unless, he adds, there’s music around. Then the slight-statured MC with thick black-rimmed glasses smashes bottles, climbs speakers, jumps on bars, falls to his knees and grinds with the audience. At the first drop of a distorted bass drum hum or handclap, Juwan becomes a one-man party.
"I’ll go into a club and completely freak the fuck out," he says.
Twenty-year-old Juwan has spent the past couple years rocking parties, mainly in New York, Baltimore and Philadelphia, with his producer Alex "Armani XXXchange" Epton and two DJs, Devlin and Darko. Collectively they’re known as Spank Rock.
Their new full-length album, Yo Yo Yo Yo Yo Yo, will be the first major project to merge two of the hottest U.S. club scenes at the moment: the Baltimore "B-more" scene and the Hollertornix scene in Philadelphia, whose biggest export is a little-known DJ and producer called Diplo.
"I don’t know how the two scenes came together," says Juwan. "But I would like to take some credit for it. Not leaving Baltimore behind when I was in Philadelphia."
As a teenager in Baltimore, Juwan saw rapping as a good way of making fun of his friends. He listened to Rawkus Soundbombing mix-tapes and took notes on MCs like Talib Kweli and Mos Def.
"I was into writing complex rhymes about politics and love, you know," says Juwan with a laugh as he talks about a group he and some friends put together in high school, named after their music teacher.
"We all made fun of him a lot because his voice would always crack," says Juwan. "He had this real cool deep jazz voice, but it would always crack really horribly. Like he was going through puberty."
Juwan grew up and moved to Philadelphia, where he started following Hollertronix DJs Low Budget and Diplo anywhere they had a show. He found something real in their mashed up club mix of hip hop, booty bass, electro, baile funk and anything else that was poppin’ off at that moment.
"I was the kid at all their parties dancing real hard," says Juwan. "Like the first one to arrive and the last one to leave. And I’d even be clappin’ at the end like, ‘yeah, love y’all!’"
All that partying sent Juwan on a search to find his voice as an artist. He had been working on some music with Epton, an old friend from Baltimore now living in New York, when Epton gave him a push in the right direction, at the right time.
"I was just working with Alex and he kind of wanted me to have more fun," he says. "It was right on time ’cause I didn’t really know what I wanted to say or what I felt comfortable doing. He brought me more to where I wanted to be in terms of free expression and not being worried about what people expected."
Juwan expressed himself with aplomb on his first big single, "Put that Pussy On Me," a filthy party banger that used a sped-up sample off the beat from Snoop’s "Drop It Like It’s Hot" and a snippet of the intro from "California Girls" by the Beach Boys.
Ultimately it was Diplo who would not only help raise "Put that Pussy On Me" to incredible heights in clubs, but also help get Juwan a record deal at Big Dada, the label that released Diplo’s Florida.
"Once we got the deal," says Juwan, "it was like, alright let’s get this done."
He and Epton, a one-time apprentice of DFA maestro James Murphy, went to work in Epton’s Brooklyn bedroom studio for a year. The result, Yo Yo Yo Yo Yo Yo, is already the party album of the year.
"I feel really good about it," Juwan says about the album, although he initally had some reservations about letting it go. "There was a moment right before we had to turn it in when I was freaking out, saying stuff like, ‘man, I don’t want it to go out like this. I gotta make this perfect.’ Then I just relaxed and let it go and now I listen to it and I’m really proud of it."
Now, with their album getting released and a big North American tour just starting, Spank Rock is about to get swept up in its own hurricane of hype. Hype Juwan chooses to ignore but recognizes exists.
"OK, we got some articles and I think we deserve them," he says. "I don’t think they’ve made us out to be the next greatest thing ever."
For now, Juwan is just taking it easy in Baltimore, enjoying the calm before the storm. "The storm’s definitely coming. I’m just trying to board up my windows right now." |
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