Big Jess of Unknown Prophets on his Honorable Mention compilation project

Initially, I didn't want to reach out to Slug or Brother Ali, for a couple of reasons. One was because I was pretty sure they were going to say no. And two, I wanted it to be successful without, like, "Oh Slug's on it so every blog's gonna post it." You know, its no disrespect to Slug. I think Slug is a talented dude and he's definitely got legend status in this state, but I just wanted to reach out to the new kids in the scene and go back to the era I was coming with. Kanser, Try D, stuff like that.

A couple weeks ago, I did reach out to Slug. We've kind of had a weird relationship. It's mostly my fault, because I initiate it. I was like, "I'm doing this series, it's the last volume, it'd be super random if people heard your voice on it, they'd be shook." He sent me one back [saying he was] done recording features for the year, and focused on his album now... At the end of the day, even if me and him disagree on stuff, it's not that big of a deal to me. I'd rather have him on this package of music that represents our state than not. I'm super stubborn, and it took me that long just to get the guts to ask him.

At least I did, and at least I reached out to him. He just couldn't do it, and that's cool. Everybody's got so much going on in their own life, and their own musical life, that these artists can take time and do something and contribute to my thing, I feel really blessed by that. I started reaching out to people to see who would want to do their song at the show, and most people were like "Hell yeah!" It's gonna be like a gathering; I hope people come even if they're not on the series to just show love to each other and be in the same room. I'm just trying to plug everybody that I work with and believe in.