Juvenile Speaks of His Reality

Words: Karen Bliss

New Orleans rapper Juvenile.

New Orleans rapper Juvenile didn’t hustle into Canada surrounded by a huge posse of people like Eminem, Nas and P. Diddy have done in the past when they’ve met with press to promote their albums.

In a quiet suite at the Pantages Hotel in downtown Toronto, the 31-year-old Juvenile, born Terius Gray, is joined only by his buddy Wilfert Zanders and is low-key and chilled. But inside, Juvenile is angry.

He had already titled his seventh and newest album Reality Check when indeed he got one. “We started promotion on the album before the hurricane hit. The guy who is sitting here (points to Zanders) came up with the title of the album at the time because it was real fitting,” says Juvenile. “He was talking about something else, and I was trying to get the title, and he happened to say it in the conversation and I said, ‘Right there.’”

When Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, Juvenile’s city was destroyed by the storm and flooding, along with his newly built house in Slidell, Louisiana. He chose to delay the album to lay down new tracks. The single, "Get Ya Hustle On," told his fellow New Orleans natives to survive by any means possible.

The poignant video for the song was shot amid the ruins of New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward, and features three children wearing masks that read “help is coming” on one side and the faces of President George W. Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin on the flipside.

“This is a tribute to those who died in the wrath of Hurricane Katrina/The storm may have passed but for thousands the struggles are just beginning,” reads the text introduction.
 Too bad he couldn’t have included the recently uncovered film footage of Bush and his administration acknowledging the impending danger of Katrina and weak levies prior to the hurricane. Building and ferry owners are often held criminally negligent when people lose their lives in fires or sinking that could have been prevented; why not the President?

“We mad. We real angry about it, but, you know, it’s like being in lock and chain. You can’t do nothin’ about it. All you can do is talk about it and try and do as much press as possible. When it’s the President, it’s different,” says Juvenile, who is living in Atlanta while his house is being re-built.

On the plus side, when Reality Check finally did drop on March 7, it debuted at No. 1 in America on the Billboard 200 album chart and quickly surpassed gold. Soon he will embark on a short House of Blues warm-up tour in America prior to a larger scale summer tour.  He expects to be up in Canada for the Caribana festivities in Toronto the first week of August.

“I’ve never been to Canada (before). That’s crazy. I do real well (here),” he says. “First, I’m going to take a House of Blues tour across the (U.S.), just to be light, and then I’m going to do something big in the summertime. I don’t know who’s gonna go out with me, but I know it’s going to be something big. It’s gonna be something real big.”

As he prepares to take his message on the road, Juvenile also wants to get another Juvenile/Skip/Wacko project off the ground "closer to the end of summer," building on the success of the 2004's "Nolia Clap," off The Beginning of the End . . . He is also launching a clothing line, Stacks and Bundles. "We’re getting everything in order first. It's basically getting a bunch of celebrities to wear the clothes first," he says. "I want to make it real significant before I come to the stores with it."

But more importantly, expect an expanded Reality Check to hit stores in the near future, with additional songs. “That how I like to do it. That’s my track record. That’s how I sell my albums," says Juvenile, whose 1998 album 400 Degreez was also released in two versions, one completely solo and another with guests including Jay-Z.

"There's so much more to talk about," he adds, "so much controversy surrounding me and my city and what's going on right now. What I'm trying to do is to give my people the lift that they need to come back home."