The project as a whole pays homage to Benton’s late friend and manager but there are still sprinkles of Jarren throughout. “It’s not completely dedicated to Slow but there’s a lot of him, especially this one particular song on the EP. There’s a lot of emotion on there, it’s crazy. You don’t hear a lot of ‘I’ll stick you in the dryer…’ Not a lot of that sh*t but it’s like a tame Jarren. In a good way.”
So, yes, this recent evening with the “Skitzo” creator is a little different. The video set for “Diamonds & Fur”—his mellowed-out lead single from the project — is a bit more subdued than his usual. “The concept of the song is talking about life before chasing music,” he explains. “It’s a lot of sh*t you go through, not just personally but with family, girls, whatever…”
“And you’re going through all that sh*t, in the midst of, and damn it’s so simple,” he says, trailing off. “‘Damn, I just wanna wear a fur coat and rock some f-cking diamonds.’ So it’s basically just capturing the struggle to the point of getting a fur,” he adds, fingering the multicolored coat his producer Kato jokingly calls ‘the Unicorn Fur.’ “Hopefully I have a real fur one day…”
The 8-song EP, almost exclusively produced by longtime collaborator Kato, boasts quite a few featuresincluding his Funk Volume family Hopsin, SwizZz and Dizzy Wright. According to Benton, he had enough music to create a full album but the plan is to spread the work out a bit. It’s a notion that ought to hold his insatiable fanbase over.
If Benton didn’t know the extent to which FV fans are committed, he learned after Hopsin’s prank in December where the imprint head feigned leaving the rap life behind. “Hopsin do Hopsin man…,” Benton says, smiling. “If there was a definition of Hopsin, it would be in an encyclopedia. I knew he was joking because he called us and let us know beforehand.”
“Yeah, he told us way in advance,” Kato interjects. “People were on Facebook talking about killing themselves and all that…”
Jarren adds, “I was like, ‘These ni**as is crazy.’ Some of these fans scare me. I appreciate the love for the music but it’s like, ‘dude things.’ Like, I’m chillin’ after the show, drinking, I’m down to show love, take pictures…”
“I appreciate the fact that they appreciate me,” he says, pausing. “But I don’t really wanna chill with you after the show, dude. After I get drunk and I’m on the tour bus, headed back to the hotel…”
These are the moments where Slow would come in and do work, presumably. “Slow was the ni**a who was supposed to be a tour manager on the road and he’d get pissed off and stop being a tour manager,” the rapper says, laughing. “I’m like, ‘Ni**a, how you gon’ do that? You can’t quit being a tour manager in the middle of the f*cking tour!’ That was him. We were like, the not-so-odd couple, we used to bicker about the dumbest sh*t but I miss that about my ni**a man.”
http://instagram.com/p/xSD9sFgiF5/
