The Versa-tile Juanye

Fresh off his release of the highly anticipated project, “Versa”, I had the opportunity to sit down with Ann Arbor based MC, Juanye at his listening party at the Motivation Boutique located in downtown Ann Arbor.

“When it came to beats, I wanted to get every possible beat I could possibly think of, a couple songs for females, songs for my mans to vibe to, a couple track vibe songs. The overall theme of Versa is versatility, different beats, different style of rapping, things that people haven’t heard before.” Juanye responded about the concept in mind that went into making Versa. “I feel like I have a unique voice when an engineer touches it on any type of beat, so, it was about just being versatile.” Juanye continued.

“My older brother, Jason, who’s doing some time right now is like 5 years older than me. One day he came home with his boys listening to Tha Carter II by Lil Wayne and I just remember thinking, “Damn, this album is hard as fuck!” and they were freestyling over Wayne’s voice. When I heard Wayne’s voice, the way he rapped and the little snippet on the beat, I just knew I wanted to rap. I came up with like five different ways I could’ve spit on that beat.” Juanye responded on his motivation to get into music. “Another big moment was when I was in 5th grade, my grandmother was real big into subscriptions that get sent to your crib, she actually found one that had a bunch of hip hop albums in it and it really meant the most in my life. I had five album: T.I.-Trap Muzik, Tupac- Greatest Hits, 50 Cent- Get Rich or Die Tryin, Jay-Z- The Blueprint, and Lil Wayne- Tha Carter. As a kid, I felt like I understood it more than most kids but I had a further mind at the time” Juanye continued.

“Derrick’s little brother Chris is one of my best friends since I was in the 6th grade. We used to live right next to each other and Derrick played me one of the hardest mixtapes of all time which was Wale’s More About Nothing, probably one of my favorite mixtapes ever. After high school, we both had a listening ear, we both have the same taste in music, he’s digitally tech savvy and I do what I do to bring to the table and it just clicked like that. I wouldn’t want anybody else to be my manager.” Juanye spoke how he met his manager, Derrick Nicholson.

“When it comes to sound, Lil Wayne is the best of all time. You may catch me with a lot of melodies and background melodies on a track, because, if you ever listen to wayne, he fills the track up, there are no empty spaces…unless he’s going off the top. ”Juayne spoke on his influences in music. “Other than that, I rock with Jay-Z heavy and I’ve been on the Travis Scott wave for quite some time. Juanye continued.

Juanye is in the process of setting up a regional tour with manager, Derrick Nicholson. “I love repping Ann Arbor and that’s where I’ll always be, even if I do run into a check or a deal someday, I’m still probably gonna be somewhere high up in this bitch.” Juanye said about setting up the local based tour.

Be on the lookout for the “Osama” video coming soon as well as multiple visuals from the project, “Versa” which is available now on all streaming platforms.

Photo Credit, Juanye Facebook page