Last week, Just Blaze celebrated the official launch of Stadiumred, his new studio in Harlem. After spending over a decade producing classics for everyone from Jay-Z to Freeway to T.I. at Baseline Studios, the man born Justin Smith just had to move on. He officially closed down Baseline last January and moved his base of operations to Stadiumred. We chopped it up with Just about his favorite memories from the Baseline days and even got him to spill the beans on producing his latest banger, Eminem's collaboration with Lil Wayne, "No Love." So please, no more handclaps...Juuuust Blaze!
As Told to Insanul "Incilin" Ahmed
On his favorite Baseline memory...
"It's all like one big 12-year blur. But one of the best ones was the day I walked in there. I used to work in a studio called The Cutting Room. They were trying to get me to go to this new studio called Baseline but I didn't want to go. When I finally went, there was this good energy from the first moment I walked in. I used to be in a band that disbanded four years before that. [The band was called] AF The King and I was the DJ. And when I walked into Baseline, I realized I was in my band's old rehearsal space. We used to have a punch-in code on the door, I'm like, 'Yo why do I know the code to this building? I never been here before.' The code was 3933. It took me a day to realize that I was in my band's old rehearsal space.
On making Eminem's "No Love"...
"It was something that we had been talking about since his second album. I been cool with Riggs Morales [A&R from Shady] and Paul Rosenberg [Eminem's manger]. Before Riggs was even around, there was a guy DJ Mormille [A&R at Interscope] and he was trying to get me to work with them. But the schedules never lined up and the timing was never right. It was a good thing it happened when it did because it made an impact. It was the first time Em stepped outside of his lane. I was the first outside producer he ever worked with. And the good things that came out of working with me opened him up to working with other producers. I'm glad it happened when it did.
