{"id":598883,"date":"2026-04-10T23:36:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T23:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/598883\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T23:36:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T23:36:09","slug":"dj-clue-talks-j-cole-clipse-trying-to-get-jay-z-back-in-the-studio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/598883\/","title":{"rendered":"DJ Clue Talks J. Cole, Clipse & Trying to Get Jay-Z Back in the Studio"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tDo remember! Cluminati! Clue, Clue, Clueee, New S\u2014t! and of course the evil laugh. All of those are memorable drops made famous by the influential DJ out of Queens, DJ Clue<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tExplore\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

See latest videos, charts and news<\/p>\n

\n\tDJ Clue started his career in the \u201990s where he went from flooding the streets with the mixtapes he put together while still living with his parents to signing a record deal with Jay-Z<\/a>\u2018s Roc-A-Fella Records to becoming a mainstay on New York City\u2019s radio airwaves on Power 105.<\/p>\n

\n\tSince, Clue has enjoyed a bit of a resurgence thanks to a younger generation of fans: he\u2019s been featured on the Grammy-nominated Clipse<\/a> comeback album Let God Sort Em Out<\/a> and J. Cole<\/a>\u2018s surprise Birthday Blizzard \u201926<\/a> EP featuring four freestyles over classic Clue tape instrumentals like Diddy<\/a>\u2018s \u201cVictory,\u201d\u00a0Black Rob<\/a>\u2018s \u201cCan I Live,\u201d\u00a0Biggie<\/a>\u2018s \u201cWho Shot Ya?\u201d and\u00a0the LOX<\/a>\u2018s \u201cMoney, Power, Respect.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Cole tape was well received by fellow artists and fans alike with Jay bringing it up in his recent GQ interview and Travis Scott<\/a> telling Clue that he enjoyed it when they ran into each other at FanaticsFest, with Scott telling the Queens DJ, \u201cYo, that Cole s\u2014t was hard.\u201d And while Clue has done some recent production for rappers like Lil Wayne<\/a>, Sleepy Hollow and DaBaby<\/a> \u2014 with more producer credits in the works \u2014 he teases that\u2019s he\u2019s dropping something soon, but avoided going into details.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe legendary DJ came through Billboard\u2019s New York City office recently to talk about the rappers that have reached out to him, the underground versus the mainstream and how he first got started.<\/p>\n

\n\tCheck out our conversation below.<\/p>\n

\n\tHad anybody reached out to get on a song or to clear your voice to sample before Cole and the Clipse did?<\/p>\n

\n\tPeople usually want me involved in that type of stuff. Like when the Clipse reached out, Stephen Victor met with me to play me some s\u2014t that Pharrell wanted to do, so that\u2019s how that came about. And then me and Cole have been talking about doing a freestyle a long time ago, off one of my old beats from The Professional.<\/p>\n

\n\tJust one freestyle? And how long did it take to put the tape together with Cole?<\/p>\n

\n\tRight. And I had to go pull one of my old DAT tapes to burn the instrumental, but he never ended up doing that. He then just called me out of the blue like, \u201cYo, I\u2019m gonna send you some s\u2014t. Tell me what you think about the idea of doing a mixtape. So after he sent the idea, I told him to give me a couple days to live with it and get in my zone. Once we came up with the plan to put the mixtape together real quick, I kind of was like \u2014 because remember, the weather was bad and we were in the crib \u2014 so we were talking about titles, and I was like, \u201cYou know I did one called Birthday Blizzard \u201996.\u201d We then just kind of went back and forth, he knocked out the freestyles, sent them to me, and then I kind of had to get back in that bag, you know?<\/p>\n

\n\tI was gonna ask if you had to go back and listen to some of your old s\u2014t.<\/p>\n

\n\tYeah, word. I had to make sure I was emulating the vocals right. I feel like my voice is a little bit different. <\/p>\n

\n\tWanted it to sound a little dustier?<\/p>\n

\n\tI wanted that authentic sound.<\/p>\n

\n\tThose are your actual vocals on the Clipse record and not a sample? Talk a little more about that process.<\/p>\n

\n\tThey played me the tracks and Pharrell had sampled them and put them where he thought they worked at, you know what I\u2019m saying? So that\u2019s how that went.<\/p>\n

\n\tWere you in the studio with them at all?<\/p>\n

\n\tNah, not at all.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat was all email?<\/p>\n

\n\tRight.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo how about the artwork for the Cole tape? Because it looks like I could walk outside and cop that on the corner or in a barbershop.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis dude named p:type did some of my mixtapes, so they took the whole scheme from that to give it that authentic look.<\/p>\n

\n\tLet\u2019s get into the beats he chose. For someone that\u2019s familiar with your tapes those are beats that everybody was trying to rap on when they dropped. How did you feel when he sent you the freestyles? <\/p>\n

\n\tClassic. I mean that\u2019s some authentic Clue? s\u2014t for real. What a lot of people don\u2019t know is when Cole was first trying to get on, he used to come around to hang with me and Skane Dolla to just vibe.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe was in Queens at St. John\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\n\tRight. He was a hungry artist trying to get on type s\u2014t, you know? He used to play basketball with us. Matter of fact, he joined my gym at Chelsea Piers after he started rapping. He would come hoop with me in the gym for a long time. I\u2019ve known Cole for a while before he was even lit like that.<\/p>\n

\n\tYou guys already had a rapport.<\/p>\n

\n\tCole walked my daughter into her Sweet 16.<\/p>\n

\n\tI didn\u2019t know the connection was that deep. I remember when Push and Malice played the album for some media and DJs, and talked about needing to have you on \u201cInglorious Bastards<\/a>\u201d specifically. How did you feel when they reached out to you?<\/p>\n

\n\tTo be honest with you, a lot of people have reached out to me to do s\u2014t throughout the years because I feel like that era is just nostalgic. People always say that the energy I brought is missing from the game type s\u2014t. I supposed to do some s\u2014t with A$AP Ferg, I was supposed some s\u2014t with A$AP Rocky, a lot of different people have reached out to me to do s\u2014t, bro.<\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019ve felt this way for a while and wanted to asked if you notice how the underground influences the mainstream. Do you think that\u2019s always been a thing?<\/p>\n

\n\tYou think underground influences the mainsteam?<\/p>\n

\n\tI do, of course. Do you disagree? I think you look at Tyler\u2019s Call Me If You Get Lost with DJ Drama and Playboi Carti\u2019s Music with Swamp Izzo and Cole reaching out to do a tape with you shows that influence. These artists were once considered underground, so I feel like now that they\u2019re at this level, they want to tap into that feeling from when they were either fans or on the come up in a sense.<\/p>\n

\n\tI feel like it\u2019s more so that they know what recreating that feeling means to the game. I feel like that part of it is missing because a lot of the music that comes out now is microwaved. You hear a song and think that the artist is dope then they put another song that doesn\u2019t work and then another that doesn\u2019t work, and then they just fade away. And that comes from not putting the groundwork in and building a strong foundation. Nowadays you could come up with a hit song and just get thrown in the fire and you just have to figure it out.<\/p>\n

\n\tHow did you feel about the Tyler, the Creator album with Drama hosting and the Playboi Carti one hosted by Swamp Izzo?<\/p>\n

\n\tI thought it was a dope touch. I don\u2019t know if I would\u2019ve done it in the same exact way, but I thought it was dope for both the DJs and the artists. I used to do a whole bunch of quote unquote album sample tapes where I would take maybe a verse and a half to preview somebody\u2019s album. I did T.I.\u2019s first sample tape, Usher\u2019s first sample tape. I did some with a bunch of different artists.<\/p>\n

\n\tDo you ever think how you would\u2019ve approached your career if you were coming up today?<\/p>\n

\n\tYeah, I would\u2019ve for sure took over because with the technology we have now? If I\u2019d had it back then? Forget about it. You could make a tape and just put it on SoundCloud. I would\u2019ve been the Michael Jackson of mixtapes if that was the case.<\/p>\n

\n\tJay mentioned you<\/a> in a recent interview. He said you sent him the Cole tape because you were proud of it. Is that why you sent it to him?<\/p>\n

\n\tWe speak all the time and I send him s\u2014t sometimes, but my motivation for sending to him? It\u2019s to get him in the booth, That was my real motivation because when I\u2019m around him here and there, I\u2019m like, \u201cYo, when we doing something?\u201d And he\u2019d be kind of standoffish sometimes, like he\u2019s not sure. And I get it because at this point, what\u2019s he gonna talk about? He\u2019s done talked about damn near everything. You got to be in a certain zone. I also thought he would enjoy it because I feel like that was a special era when we were running around the clubs every night. I would drag him out and I would take a new record to give to the DJ to play, so we could see how the record sounds and how people in the club would react to it.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was kind of a play to be like, \u201cYo, let\u2019s do something.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tI had sent him this one specific beat that I thought was so fire for him, but he ain\u2019t really react to it. I think he was still going through s\u2014t and I wanted to have him put his air on it and get his mind over things, you know? Music is therapeutic for everybody, even when I think about situations like when I lost my dad. When you have those type of moments, any music you would listen to or what you were doing or where you were at is always gonna be embedded in your memory. It\u2019s just one of those things that just helps you through tough times. <\/p>\n

\n\tHopefully we get Clue? Jay mixtape soon.<\/p>\n

\n\tListen, that would be dope. That\u2019d be fire if he were to do that.<\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019ve always wanted to ask you this. Back in the day, you would have unreleased tracks and exclusive freestyles. How were you getting all those exclusive songs? Were people popping by the crib?<\/p>\n

\n\tThey would come to my crib sometimes. A lot of the OGs been to the crib, whether it was Keith Murray and Das EFX. Prodigy from Mobb Deep been to the crib. Fat Joe been to the crib. Ja Rule been to the crib. Jay-Z been to my mom\u2019s crib.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo you had a makeshift studio in the crib?<\/p>\n

\n\tIt wasn\u2019t even a studio, bro. It was a microphone and a turntable.<\/p>\n

\n\tWas it in the closet?<\/p>\n

\n\tNot even. Actually, as s\u2014t went along, though, I was booking studio time to have them sounding better. I was really always big on sound quality.<\/p>\n

\n\tWould people bring you their DAT tapes?<\/p>\n

\n\tYeah, people would record stuff because sometimes I would be busy on the road and people would go to the studio and record s\u2014t to give to me or to send it to me. Stuff like that. Sometimes I would send somebody to them to pick stuff up.<\/p>\n

\n\tHow about the unreleased s\u2014t? Were labels giving you those songs under the table?<\/p>\n

\n\tI can\u2019t tell you that [Laughs.]<\/p>\n

\n\tStill? 30 years later? [Laughs.]<\/p>\n

\n\tI would always get s\u2014t, but there were always rumors around like, \u201cClue stole this and stole that.\u201d I never stole anything.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhy wouldn\u2019t they want their s\u2014t on a Clue tape, especially during that era?<\/p>\n

\n\tExactly, but, you know, there was always that, \u201cOh, Clue stole the whole library from us.\u201d That\u2019s all bulls\u2014t. I can see an A&R or manager giving you something because the label didn\u2019t want to put it out. Or if the artist had some s\u2014t that they couldn\u2019t get the sample cleared or something.<\/p>\n

\n\tAre you considering doing another Professional tape?<\/p>\n

\n\tIf I did another project, it\u2019ll probably have a different name. I got a whole archive of songs I\u2019ve never used with all kind of artists you can name. I got Tory Lanez verses, I got Young Dolf verses, I got Future verses, I got Moneybagg Yo verses, Lil Durk verses.<\/p>\n

\n\tHave you put your touch on any of them or are these songs that you\u2019ve produced?<\/p>\n

\n\tSongs I\u2019ve produced that they rapped on. And I always feel like, when I make songs, I don\u2019t make a style that\u2019s a \u201cnow\u201d style. So these songs, they wouldn\u2019t sound dated.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd those Professional tapes were different from your street ones because you had to use original beats, right?<\/p>\n

\n\tI mean, those Cole freestyles, he cleared those beats.<\/p>\n

\n\tExplain to people how you put your tapes together and distributed them back then. I remember seeing a clip where Whoo Kid said he used to borrow your tape machine.<\/p>\n

\n\tI used to duplicate all the stuff at the crib. I had a bunch of CD towers where we burned a bunch of CDs at the same time. First it was the cassettes and for a little while we had both cassettes and the CDs.<\/p>\n

\n\tHow many cassettes were you making? How time consuming was that?<\/p>\n

\n\tAt first, it was because you had to do it real time, but then we had speed recorders. Those were super expensive but it was worth it because you make the money back quick. You would put 10 cassettes in at the same time, and as fast as you could fast forward a cassette was how we were recording. So you record the first side, flip it, record the second side, done. Then you put the sticker on it.<\/p>\n

\n\tSo that was like an assembly line with people helping you?<\/p>\n

\n\tEven my mom would help out because sometimes I would have to run around. She was instrumental in the success because she was a retired accountant, so she would do all the accounting. She made sure all the checks came in, make sure everyone paid.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was an independent operation.<\/p>\n

\n\tYeah, it was a real operation. A couple of my friends would help me load the trucks up and we would run around the city to whatever local spots, and then the rest would get mailed out. At one point it got so crazy, I had to get a plant to help me. It was a plant in Texas that I would send stuff to and they would print everything. That\u2019s when I had the really super high-tech looking CDs. They were like real albums. <\/p>\n

\n\tWhat instructions would you send them?<\/p>\n

\n\tI would send the artwork and send them the master, and they would print it up. Then they would take it to the airport to send it through United Airlines Freight and s\u2014t, and I would go pick it up at LaGuardia.<\/p>\n

\n\tHow many tapes and CDs?<\/p>\n

\n\tThousands. I had a bunch of trucks to go pick them up and back then, UPS was doing COD. So I would put the COD label on it and mail it out. And then they would go deliver it, they pay them in cash or with a check once it\u2019s dropped off, and they send us the money.<\/p>\n

\n\tWas your mom annoyed at first?<\/p>\n

\n\tShe didn\u2019t like nothing about the loud music late at night because I used to be up late. She kind of learned the vibe eventually, though, you know what I\u2019m saying? She would call me about songs she liked. She would call and be like, \u201cThis is hot, I like this. This is dope.\u201d She got that A&R ear to say what sounded good and what don\u2019t. It was weird, but at the same time it was fire too, you know?<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen did you decide to start making beats?<\/p>\n

\n\tI started making beats, probably\u2026 I used to rap first. Actually my rap name was \u201cDrama.\u201d That\u2019s the crazy thing. I told Drama this too. My rap name was MC Drama.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis is before DJ Clue, right?<\/p>\n

\n\tYeah, and then it was just something in me where I like being behind the scenes. Me and my partner Doro we used to try to make beats on a regular Casio S1 keyboard. It was super difficult because you had the cassette playing, then you had the keyboard, and we would try to sample stuff, and that\u2019s how we would do our beats. From there, Doro went to school for engineering, and he came back, he taught me how to produce on an SP 1200 and on an MPC. I sat with the MPC and just figured out how to chop the samples and do the drums and s\u2014t, and just took off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Do remember! Cluminati! Clue, Clue, Clueee, New S\u2014t! and of course the evil laugh. All of those are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":598884,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[64,63,134,1379,5296,136],"class_list":["post-598883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-features","tag-interviews","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598883","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=598883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/598883\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/598884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=598883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=598883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=598883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}