What’s good everyone! I recently spoke with A Day In LA Founder DeJon Paul. DeJon and his team recently release their 2021 Los Angeles Freshman issue. We discuss what DeJon looks for in artists, setting up the behind scenes work that goes into making it happen, twitter memes and much more! You purchase a copy of the 2021 Freshman Issue HERE!
Enjoy the interview!
What’s good man, so what made you want to do a Freshman list each year?
I’m blessed, can’t complain! I grew up on XXL Magazine, and The Source and I loved reading the XXL Freshman issues, and Unsigned Hype in the Source. I may still have the one Nipsey Hussle, Jay Rock, Wiz Khalifa, and Oj Da Juiceman covered in 2010. But unfortunately, over the years, staple LA acts like Dom Kennedy, Casey Veggies, RJ, Drakeo, Greedo, Bino, KalanFrFr, and more got looked over in terms of the cover. We all know the editor of that particular magazine is Vannessa Satten, a middle aged Caucaisian woman. I’ve worked with her before on a Freshman cover project, years ago. I wish her well, God bless but I think it’s best that WE make those sort of key decisions. Being on the Freshman cover would’ve done wonders for those names I mentioned. And so, I wanted to bring that tradition to the west coast, and to the city. Only black owned!
Tell us about each artist on the list and what made you select them?
I love this year’s cover because it’s a lot more practical than last year’s. Meaning, I think these artists are going to be more agressive with this music shit in this upcoming year than some of last year’s picks were, excluding a couple. So we have Kenndog, from Watts who has a viral smash with “Beethoven”. The song has done over 30 million streams, and just landed bro a deal with Atlantic Records. He’s real animated, the song’s visual is hilarious. He reminds me of 1TakeJay mixed with Da Baby. Plus, he’s a new model for Karl Kani, so he’s branding already. Then we have YS, who’s from Bompton. He’s signed to Alamo Records, and he has the EST Gee collab, “Play For Keeps” out right now just whooping the streets. He can rap his ass off, and rep his flag without it being extra or just too much. He also has a record with Baby Stone Gorillas that I love right now. We have Ernest Kingg, who’s a indie artist from Compton, and he’s been on a marathon with his “Authentic Fr” series. He dropped tape 4 on his birthday, and it’s just boss music. He talks that money talk. Real Reasonable Doubt meets Mailbox Money vibes, just with autotune. He makes Benz music, like “CC”, his song with BlueBucksClan called “Pradada”, and “Karl Malone”. We had to tap in with Jayson Cash, who’s from Carson. The Del Amo native is one of the city’s best freestyle rhymers, we all just saw his LA Leakers freestyle, he gassed. But he also worked with Blxst on Priority, and even had Dom Kennedy pull up for the music video. And his song with 1TakeJay, “Been In My Bag” is getting spins so he’s just a shoe in for the cover. Not to mention he has a solo cover of Fader, like who else from this side is applying pressure like that. I can’t have him on Fader, but not on ADLA, feel me? Dezzie Gee! He’s gonna save the west coast, if he applies pressure and gets his label together. All that man is missing is a roster of talent. He’s an amazing producer, with a dope rapping voice just like DJ Quik and Dr. Dre. He’s a Long Beach native, and when he linked up with Huey Briss for “Nothin” he made an anthem for real grassroots people out here. DW Flame is from Long Beach as well, and I found out about him on MTV’s Wild N Out. Just having that big look, plus the “” record doing a million views on YouTube caught my eye. He freestyles on the timeline often as well, usually popping up on my IG explore page. He just has a heavy presence out here. Lastly, Khelly B got our Viewer’s Choice slot. Basically a few weeks before the shoot, I took to social media to ask who they thought should be on this year’s cover, and he got the most tweets and IG comments. He really has a community of fans and supporters that’s rooting for him, even though he doesn’t have much music out. But he does have the Airplane James collaboration, “Water” that I’m really loving right now. And he played me a AzChike collaboration beforehand, I can’t wait til he drops that. I’m happy I was able to have my picks, and then have someone on there chosen by the city.
Each year you do a photo shoot for the list. How does that go down?
It’s quite the expensive venture, lol. And I fund it solely myself. But I look forward to the shoot all year because it’s an opportunity to show these young black men / women that there is a reward for hard work. I’m not celebrating them for gang banging, or robbing, or hitting licks, or scamming, or pimping, or etc, I’m spending my money, and my staff is spending their time so that these artists know that we appreciate what they do, what they brought to the game over this past year, and that we notice they’re trying to do something positive. I’m on that same journey, so I look at this cover as a way to pay it forward.
You also do a cypher each year. How do you go about making that happen?
Well this is actually our first year doing the cypher. When I was leaving set last year, “Womp Womp” emcee, Wray and I were walking to our cars and she said, “You know you really should’ve did a cypher.” And so this year, when the shoot came back around I reached out to “Audible” hitmaker, JR who had did my podcast recently, and asked him to cook up a nostalgic beat for the cypher. He chose to flip “Boyz N Da Hood”, which is great because that’s one of those songs that are at the origin of west coast hip-hop. With this being a new wave out west, I thought it was approapriate. I hit up BlueBucksClan’s tour dj, DJ Get Cha Money and he came thru, set up, and we made it happen. Personally I think YS had the best performance in the cypher though.
I really like the way you represent your brand. You always find new creative ways to gain motion. I see you make Twitter memes and ask questions according to those memes. What gave you that idea? How has the reaction been to those? I like the way you represent the local Los Angeles scene in that.
Thank you man, I appreciate it. You know, I’m just really smart. I have this big ass head, with a big ass brain in it. I’m big on intelligence. I don’t even like stupid people. So to me, it’s really obvious. It’s common sense, if I have a start-up company that I’m funding myself, why not use cost effective methods like social media interaction and memes to drum up business and awareness. Aside from being smart, I’m also really funny and lively. So I like to have fun on the timeline, and I include my friends and a lot of funny Twitter personalities that I follow because it puts a smile on my face. And when the memes go viral, and sometimes they really do, my friends and these other Twitter characters can then reply to the thread with a link to their businesses and services. These people are chefs, caterers, hairstylists, estheticians, clothing designers, etc, and when I have a tweet doing 5 million impressions like my Cookout meme did, that’s a way for us to all gain traction. So, it’s all about spreading the love, the opportunity, the vibes, and the platform when it comes to LA Twitter. Just like I do with LA rap.
What is your main goal you want to bring to the Los Angeles music scene?
I’m devout and focused on bringing organization, and structure to LA rap. Once I have more funding, and backing behind me, I’ll be able to bring infrastructure. But for right now I have to work with what I have, and I do that by way of doing a print magazine which is something the city didn’t have before me. Or a weekly podcast on the timeline with in-depth conversations about our rap, which is another thing the city didn’t have when my podcast first aired before the pandemic. Even the Hottest LA Rapper lists I do twice a year, you just didn’t see that type of concentrated, organized thought before A Day In LA. I want to expound on that, and build on it in the near future.
As far as yourself, what career goals do you have personally?
I don’t know if I’ll ever be satisfied, I’m a serial entrepreneur. So I have at least another 100 businesses in me. I do really miss managing artists, and sometimes I wish I had a junior editor and a real editorial staff to run the magazine while I went back to managing. We’ll see if God puts me back in that line of work. Outside of that, I have a few shows in development. One’s for the internet, one’s for television. My friends are really pushing me into becoming more of a personality, even though I’m extremely shy. They see something I just don’t!
What makes you want to work with certain artists? What qualities let you know you can work with them?
It’s instant with me. I know within 15 seconds if you’re a star or not, and that’s probably because I’ve been working in entertainment nearly 15 years. The type of artists I like are clean cut, precise, detail oriented, fly, focused, driven, motivated, strong, professional, personable, and most of all talented. It’s either hit or miss with me, there’s no in between.
Anything else you want the world to know…
Yes, please be sure to tune in to the A Day In LA podcast every Friday, it’s myself, and two real LA sisters, Bryanne, and Kaelin doing our thing each week. We drink, smoke weed, smoke hookah, play drinking games, do arts and crafts, all while talking about LA rap and what’s going on on LA Twitter. Then also, check out this year’s LA Freshman issue when you get a chance. You can pick up a copy on my website, or in person at the Champion store on Melrose.
