JIHAD  (August 2006) | Interview By: Zuka

   

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Interview was done in August 2006

Questions Asked By: Zuka

Jihad did a drop for dubcnn, listen to that here

Related Media

Jihad - Crash
Jihad - Nigga Datz Hood (featuring Eastwood, Cross & Cook)

 

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“I try to put my own life experiences into what I do, but at the same time I wanna keep it conscious,” says Jihad about his music. “I speak on my background, my heritage, my beliefs. We try to just encompass everything that I am and also what I believe in. My believe in faith is Muslim, so I try incorporate in there. Also, I speak on what I know. That’s my life in the streets and what I’ve seen.”

“Everything I try to do, I try to put some type of message within it. In a lot of the music you’ll hear on the surface may sound like everything else on the radio, but if you get deeper into the lyrics there’s alternate meanings in each line that you’re hearing. It may have 3 or 4 different meanings. Each one has its message. Nowadays if you listen to music it’s sensationalized. You’ll hear it that moment and it’s cool, but nothing sticks with you. Before when hip hop just came out it was about the hood and people’s everyday struggle. You could benefit from that and listen to it now and get through the day. That’s the kind of music we try to deliver to people. Where they can take it and actually gain something from the music, as apposed to as just use it as entertainment. I mean, it’s entertaining as well, but you get both sides of the fence.”

“The whole purpose of me choosing the name in the first place is it represents me as an MC and as an artist, but also as a human being. Thing is, what we try to do is really clear the misconceptions that are out there about my people and Islam itself. Jihad in itself, people think it’s the holy war and it has a negative [meaning] out in the United States and the western culture, but in reality it’s actually inner struggle or to be perfect faith, the struggle within yourself to do good.”

“You can adapt one of the altered meanings. It’s holy war, but that’s a defensive holy war. That’s part of the music, so we know that people who see it and have already experienced and have taken it negatively [they] try to twist it, but if you do the real research and get the true knowledge, which we try to bring to people, that’s what it is. As an MC… if you come at me lyrically it [Jihad] defensive. I’m not gonna start nothing with nobody, but if you come at us we are ready. I’m a man at the end of the day, but we don’t bring anything negative or nothing. We try to do something positive and help the people.”


The first time Jihad actually got a lot of attention was when he beat Jin the MC in a battle!

“When I battled Jin at that point he was just fresh off 106 & Park, so he was doing what he did. When I came through I comfortably shut him down and that is what actually created my relationship with Cookie from Cook Entertainment. He’s head of West Coast Ruff Ryders, so that actually opened up a lot of doors for us that got us into the industry. Where we’re at now we got attributed to that along with a bunch other events. That would definitely be one of the turning points.”

“Battling comes down to just turn down your opponent. It’s more like a challenge between two artists and who got more skills that day. That day itself when I won that battle it could’ve gone either way, but I had God on my side. That sparked a whole new network and everything for us. It was a big deal and a turning point for me definitely.”

“The dudes who were throwing [the battle] didn’t let anybody film, except they had a camera running. So it came down to the video tape, but we never got our hands on the video tape. It was a lot of buzz in LA on the streets and the people that knew about it, but at the same time we never had no footage and couldn’t take it to no label. We took it as it is. People knew about it, but in the end we never got it. It wasn’t published to a label to be coming at us. We had a meeting with the Ruff Ryders. All the meetings we had came through Cook. We had some deals thrown at us here and there, but it was nothing we were really feeling at the time.”


Besides the Ruff Ryders connect, Jihad is also working with DJ Warrior; one half of the Cali Untouchable DJ’s.

“Warrior’s cousin is actually our big homeboy, my homie Burn, So we’ve known Warrior before he was up in the game and everything. He ran around with the same circles as my homeboys. He’s homeboys with them. He’s a part of their clique and stuff like that. Then my homie Nutty, they’ve known each other for a long time. When he started DJ’ing him and Warrior all made up before that. Later down the line Warrior became who he was. We’ve known him for a minute.”

And DJ Warrior is doing Jihad’s Death Before Dishonour mixtape together with DJ Nutty.

“The title in itself kinda explains our mentality just how it is,” says Jihad about his first release. “It’s all about keep it true to who you are. More than anything you gotta keep your morals and beliefs and that’s bigger than any money or anything else. It dishonours you as a person or the people you are around. On the tape it’s all original production. No jacked beats at all. It’s basically a street album, but we just do a mixtape cause that’s how we’re doing it independent.”

“We got Warrior on there. We got Nutty on there. We got Eastwood from Selfmade. We got Cross from Ruff Ryders… we got Safir, Chop Black… Scipio is up on it. Cartoon Ruff Ryders. We got a lot of original production. We got my boy Pakman. That’s a Rebellion, another homie. We got J Classic. We got a lot of up and coming producers, so it’s definitely more like an album when you listen to it you’ll see it’s all original.”


Dubcnn has two tracks from the mixtape for download.

“Crash a story that happened to me in ’99 around November,” says Jihad about one of the two tracks. “What happened was I was with my homies one night. I was caught up back then. We was doing whatever we did. I got into some incidents. There was 5 of us up in my car. Whatever happened was I was speeding on the freeway, so we got into some other cars. Next thing you know my car spins out on a turn. I’m going like 100 [mph]. The earthquake happens here at the same time too, so I’m breaking whatever. My car slide into the wall on the freeway. That whole song encompasses that whole event. What actually happened was I hit the wall and we ended up in the middle of the street, but we had like minor injuries. We all walked away from it. The police came, they were asking me, I was under the influence and this and that. That event was like another turning point in my life more than anything cause I felt like I almost took out four of my homeboys or including myself and God knows who else. It was definitely like a big change. It was a point in my life things went into a different direction. God kinda checked me at that point to maybe get back on my tasks.”


The other song Dubcnn put up is Nigga Datz Hood.

“The recording of that song in itself was crazy cause it all happened in a matter of one or two phone calls. Cook is the one actually who put that together. We were at the house, at the studio and he called me saying Cross was in town. This was around the time we just started the mixtape, so it’s probably around February. We drove out to pick up Cross and he’d get on to drop a verse. Cook ended up calling up Eastwood too. So we hooked up with Eastwood. Everybody comes down to the spot. We already had a song ready for Eastwood, so he dropped his verse and Cross is writing his verse and putting together the hook and what not. Next thing you know we got Eastwood jumping on that track, then Cross came in and took his and took Cook on the hook. Him and Cook came up with the hook together on the spot. It was crazy. It’s everyone’s perspective of what they think is hood. For me, I spoke on my background and where I come from and what’s hood out there.”

“We got some footage that we’re later on gonna throw together on a dvd of the whole situation. We have footage all over the place from a lot of the stuff coming together, so we’re definitely gonna throw it together. We have no release date on it yet. We’re still gathering our footage. We got footage with Swizz Beatz. Cook had some meetings with Swizz. We got all kinds of footage. It’s all kinds of stuff flooding around. Stuff with my homie Chop Black. Big shoutout to Chop Black! They holding it down, so we got stuff with them too. It’s a lot of footage. We definitely gotta throw it together on dvd. Right now we focus on just this mixtape. It’s still in the making. We’re still putting everything together.”


Jihad is Pakistani with an Afghani background. A couple of years ago Afghanistan of course got invaded. This definitely had an impact on the man from Cerritos, CA.

“I was out here at the time. The majority of my family is in Pakistan, but my background is Afghanistan. It’s a tough situation. You see your people getting attacked realistically for nothing. It was justified to the media and what not, but when you really know the situation and you know the your over there that are really telling you what’s going on. It’s really different than what you’re seeing on TV. The people are suffering. Over there are still mine fields from the Soviet Union. Now they’re getting attacked still. They just got out of war with another super power and now they’re getting attacked again a couple of years later. The country ain’t even stable yet. It’s bad for the innocent lives that’s being taken more than anything. It is difficult out here too. It was not aggressive in that sense, but there were people that were questioning and asking what’s up with your country and your people. [If] you’re ok out here.”

“Even the Taliban. At the time that they came Afghanistan was at a certain point… even when they were there it was during war. If you look at the United States, when it’s war time they cut down on everything. They make whatever laws they can pass to justify what they do. I couldn’t really speak on them and seen them as a real recognized government. The people recognized it, but they didn’t even get recognized by the U.N. or whoever outside of their own country. They definitely did some negative too, but I know they brought a lot of positive too.”

“I’m born in the 80s, I’m born in ’81. When I was growing up at that time it was cold war, so you see everything in the movies. You see Rocky fighting a Russian. Whatever type of movie they find the Russians cause at that time it’s a cold war, so that’s the enemy. You link it to the 90s everything is talking about Muslim terrorists. You see dudes blow themselves up and it’s kinda like where they hell is this all coming from? At that point the majority of terrorism that took place in the world wasn’t even located in the Middle East. At that time we were the ones it was happening to, so of course we’re conscious of it, whereas everyone else just seeing the images that are driven into their head. Around that time when 9/11 popped off I already knew what was good. It was something I already knew that was gonna happen before because anything they try to do is they’re gonna pin a group of people paying pictures, so if they go out there to do what they wanna do they’re gonna do it. That’s what they been doing and if you follow true Islam it ain’t even speaking on suicide bombings and killing innocent people. That ain’t Islam. The people who are doing it are stupid too cause that ain’t even Muslim. You can’t be out there doing all that.”


The media might be portraying a bad image of Muslims. A lot of people that read this might (stereotypically) associate Middle Eastern men that have a big beard with terrorists, even though they know not all these men are actually terrorists.

“It’s just the big picture they’re painting. I don’t think it’s justified it at all cause in Islam you’re supposed to have a beard. So if the males all had beards you can’t sit there and say all these dudes are affiliated with terrorism. Even a percentage of terrorist organizations gives money to the people. It’s a big stereotypist profiling and especially in the west that is not supposed to be happening. We’re supposed to live in freedom and have freedom of speech and everyone have their own rights. When you look at it, it’s not true.”

“If you look at Hispanics and African-Americans they made it to: if you see a dude dressed in a white tee walking he’s gonna rob you. More than likely that ain’t the case, but that’s a picture they’re painting through the media and through the movies and everything they’ve been doing. Of course the people are gonna be afraid cause that’s what they see, so you can’t necessarily blame them, but at the same time it is up to us as human beings to go seek acknowledge and really find out what’s the truth. You can’t just believe it, especially nowadays. You would figure everybody knew by now, you can’t believe everything you’re seeing. You gotta go out there and research and at the same time I understand cause that’s what’s out there. When it’s constantly driven into your mind every day, every time you turn on the news you see something like that more than likely it’s gonna play on your emotions.”


The latest arrests in England have an impact on the society. A government that protects its citizens from terrorists is more likely to get support from the people than a government that doesn’t. We asked Jihad if he thinks this was a scare tactic from the governments to keep the public on their feet or if it were really terrorists they put behind bars.

“I think it’s a combination of them both. They’ve been doing that since before 9/11 and 9/11 was just a set off. Yesterday I was watching something on CNN talking about one of the friends of one of the accused of the crimes. A lot of them are young kids, so he’s speaking on it himself talking about ‘nah, it’s not even in Islam to be doing that’. They got these kids, but they got no hard facts against them. They just snatching them up. Definitely the way they publicize it too, especially when you have no hard evidence you can’t be out there claiming people did something. When you’re out there already accusing someone to be guilty automatically the people are gonna obviously say something is wrong here. Especially the way they make it seem they are already guilty. They’re gonna be in fear, but who knows they might not have done anything. You never know! So it’s definitely a scare tactic. They haven’t even had a trial yet. I understand if there is a trial and evidence is all mounting against him and there was real evidence, then you have a real reason to be afraid, I guess. Right? This is in the beginning stages of an investigation.”


America is (was) in war with Afghanistan, is in Iraq… Obviously, as you could have read, Jihad doesn’t agree. To get peace in the Middle East it needs to go through a long process of negotiations, but…

“The first thing that should happen is they shouldn’t be out there trying to colonise everybody trying to do what they’re doing, but at the same time it’s both ends. I’m born in America. I feel for the people that out here too cause these people are out there sent out. In the army they ain’t trying randomly go kill people. Some of them do it for their own survival too. They need money and they’re either from some low income families or what not or whatever situation they’re in. I feel for those too. I feel for both sides cause both sides are my people, but I feel for the Middle East too cause they’re out there getting attacked left and right. It starts in Afghanistan, now you’re in Iraq, now you’re in Lebanon, next thing you know you’re in Syria and Iran. The whole campaign is going on and it’s just innocent lives being taken.”

“If you really wanna make peace it’s not hard cause these people ain’t trying to fight. They’re trying to live their life, man. Last I checked they weren’t fighting with nobody until you came in and attacked them. I’m on both sides of the fence, so I see my people being out there and a lot of them don’t agree. My homeboys are out there fighting, so I’m worried about that too. They might get killed too. If they’re coming back in a body bag I’ma see that too. If I go home I’ma see my people in a body bag too. At the end of the day we’re killing each other over something stupid. Human life is bigger than that. It’s more precious than just what you’re gonna get in this life. It’s stupid.”

“They’re looking to stop terrorism, but in the end you’re just feeding and fuelling it cause you’re attacking these kids and they’re watching their whole families get wiped out. What do you expect? They ain’t just gonna sit there. If someone came to America with some of the stuff they they’re doing out there I’m more than sure that the kids that are growing up and everyone else would try to defend themselves. They would get hatred to whoever’s attacking them. I think they’re fuelling it more than creating the peace. At the end of the day everyone wants peace. Everyone in the United States wants peace. Everyone out there wants peace. The whole thing is built off fear. It’s a bigger goal other than that for the people with powers, so they’re using whatever tactics they can get.”


Finally, Jihad has some last words and shoutouts for everyone out there.

“I just wanna give a shoutout to everybody who’s supporting and everyone that is down with us. Death Before Dishonour is a tape. You’ll see it and people get out there help support cause we try to make this really happen and create some type of change and a positive change. It’s something in the music that isn’t there right now. It’s there, but it’s not being promoted. We need the people to get behind it to promote it.”

“We got my whole camp. Everyone I’m involved with that’s Rebellion. Pakman, that’s our producer. Look for him. DJ Nutty is dropping them tapes. DJ Warrior definitely, he’s opening the door for us. Cali Untouchables are holding down the west coast. All things international and national it’s global at the end of the day. We all go through struggle and that’s why my name is what it is, so we all relate to each other and at the end of the day if it’s for something positive we gotta stand together to make it come to them.”

“I wanna give a shoutout to the whole Rebellion: Pakman, Nutty. My cousin Drifter, look for that Troubled Soul album. We’ll be hitting you with it. And then Cook Entertainment all day. Shoutouts to Cookie and Joe Park in the streets holding it down. Joe Park is the one who made everything happen with the Jin thing and all that. So this is for Joe Park. That’s my homeboy. Dubcnn ya’ll! Keep it proper.”