RJD2 on San Francisco
A Side Conversation with RJD2
By David Ma
When interviewing artists, I make an enormous effort not to stray away from my preset interview questions. This is to simply keep the interview concise for the both of us. But it happens every time. For the most part I don’t mind, yet I don’t want our allotted time to be wasted on chitchat when I could be focusing on topics related to my article’s angle.
This happened the other day when I talked to RJD2 for an article I’m working on. Always the humblest of individuals [I interviewed him when Deadringer was released], the interview somehow went off on a tangent when he asked me where I was from. I replied “The Bay Area”, and this is where the side conversation takes place. And unlike most artists whose diatribes are unfunny, uninteresting and unusable, RJ’s reflections about living in San Francisco before becoming a sought after super-producer are actually interesting. At least I think so. And hopefully some fans of RJ from the area will think so too.
Yeah, I’m from the Bay Area. South Bay actually. You used to live here? Where?
17th and Utah, in San Francisco.
I’ve never read about that ever. I’ve always thought you grew up in Ohio then moved to New York when things started with Def Jux.
Well, sorta. I don’t think I’ve ever really discussed living in San Francisco before. It was a brief stay and it never really came up before. But yeah, I grew up in Ohio and after high school, I moved out to the Bay for a couple years in around ’94-’95-ish.
How’d you like it here?
Put it this way, if I won the lottery tomorrow, and I could do anything, I would take my current house in Philadelphia and transport it to where I used to live in the Bay.
What do you miss about San Francisco the most?
You guys have the best weather and best burritos!
You’re right about the burritos. But what’d you do here? Were you making beats then?
A little. I mostly DJed. But mostly I was just working my ass off. I used to work the morning shifts at some coffee shop off of Market. Aaahhhhh, I can’t remember the name of it.
What else do you remember about your time here?
I actually used to live by Twist, the famed graffiti writer, I’m sure you know of him. So I always had to get up real early, at like 4am all the time and walk to work at that coffee shop. It sucked. But I remember they would bus this electrical stuff in and out by the coffee shop everyday. And I swear, these buses would not run for more than 48 hours without Twist tagging each and every single one over and over.
That’s pretty funny.
Yeah, it became a running dialogue I’d would have with my co-workers. We’d see this thing play out in front of us everyday, or almost everyday at least. Every three weeks or something, the city would re-paint these buses green. And I swear, one day later, I’d see these little silver Twist tags all over them. Three weeks later, it’d be the same thing— they’d repaint the buses green and the very next day, Twist would tag it. It was hilarious. I mean, he was like the superstar of the graffiti world at the time and I’d see it play out every fucking day.
So why don’t you just move back?
I have a lot of shit in my plate right now. Like I said though, if I win the lottery man.
Where are you now?
On a train to Philly.
Sucks to be you. Just kidding man. Anyways, back to the interview…
