You know who Jae Millz is, don’t you? You may have seen him on S.M.A.C.K. DVD Magazine going toe-to-toe with a very able MC by the name of Murda Mook, but you’re more likely to have seen him on MTV. Millz was the first artist featured on “You Hear It First” – the network’s artist-breaking segment that has helped propel the careers of such names as Slim Thug and Young Jeezy – in 2005, but his most notable (and easily remembered) appearance was on “Making the Band.”
You remember the “Showdown at Daddy’s House,” when Puff challenged E. Ness by taking him to the studio and making him battle some cat in an orange and grey hoodie? Well, the beast in the hood was none other than Jae Millz.
Fuck what ya heard -- Millz is no made-for-TV MC. He began developing his chops over a decade ago in the cafeteria of the High School of Art and Design, using lunchtable percussion to guide his earliest rhymes and immediately displaying his natural rhyme ability. When Millz was 15, an eavesdropping Keisha Morris, wife of the late Tupac Shakur, overheard him destroying some pimple-faced kid in front of his brother’s basketball game. Impressed by the youngster’s skills, Morris introduced Millz to the head honchos at Wanna Blow Entertainment, Tone and Nige, whom he immediately won over with an impromptu rhyme session.
Even though he’d proven his skills to some industry officials, Millz was still a little apprehensive in the beginning. “I was kinda worried because I had never been in a studio before. I had never been in a booth,” the Harlemite admits. “I had done things in my room, but I had never been in a real studio.”
Needless to say, young Jae learned his way around the studio rather quickly, and by 2003 his buzz grew large enough to garner that invite from Puff to battle on MTV.
By the end of the next year, Millz and Wanna Blow had a deal on Warner Bros. and an absolutely crazy single – “No, No, No” – in heavy rotation. The streets were salivating for a full-length Jae Millz project, but “the label just don’t know what to do with me,” he laments. “We had to part ways, but there’s no hard feelings.”
Undeterred, Millz and the Wanna Blow crew quickly regrouped and found themselves a new home at Universal, where they will finally release Millz’ debut album, Back to the Future, on October 27.
With his debut, Millz aims to take Hip-Hop back to where it used to be, when it was about “lyrics, the essence and the culture,” he says.
“People [in this industry] are scared to be who they are,” he continues. “Everybody wants to be tough, but not everybody is. You’ll never get too far being somebody else. People gotta find their own path and follow it, regardless of how long it takes.”
Jae Millz has been paving his own path and doing things his way for years, and he’s finally getting the chance to enjoy the fruits of his labor.
I just hope the world is ready.
