For the past 15 years, Justin Smith, better known as Just Blaze, has become a vital figure in Hip Hop music. Born in Paterson, New Jersey, after his starting out as a local DJ in the early 90’s, Just Blaze landed a gig as the in-house producer for Roc-A-Fella Records along with another budding talent, Kanye West. Mainly producing for prominent label artist, Jay-Z, Blaze’s first breakout role was producing five tracks off of Jay-Z’s The Dynasty: Roc La Familia, which ended up becoming the 20th highest-selling R&B/Hip-Hop Album of the 2000-2010 decade.
Just Blaze was a producer on follow-up albums The Blueprint, The Blueprint 2, and The Black Album most notably responsible for tracks “Girls, Girls, Girls,” and “U Don’t Know.” After reaching international fame in 2002 for his production of Cam’ron’s smash hit “Oh Boy,” Just Blaze has since gone on to produce for Snoop Dogg, Usher, Mariah Carey, Kendrick Lamar and produced five tracks on Eminem’s Grammy Award winning album, Recovery. He even produced T.I.’s 2008 international hit with Rihanna, “Live Your Life.”
When Jay-Z retired (the first time) in 2003, Just Blaze devoted his newly found spare time heading up his own label, Fort Knocks Entertainment. The imprint has gone on to sign a handful of acts that he had been watching from the underground circuit like Saigon, Quan, and Dave Young. If he’s not signing off on future releases from artists like Kelis, you can probably catch him on a stage somewhere. Earlier this year, he teamed up with other Sun City artist Baauer for the Big League Tour. When asked about their tour dynamic, Blaze recounts, “I haven’t toured for so long, and I know that just like there are things he could learn from me, there are definitely things I can learn from him. Even though we have a lot of things in common musically, we’re from two different points in history, so it’s a mutual learning thing. It’s always good to have younger energy around you, and it’s always good to have experienced, older energy around you, and when you put those two things together, it just makes it easy.”
So what can you expect at a Just Blaze show? “…You’re obviously going to get a little bit of a mix of everything, from hip-hop to classics, old stuff, new stuff, dance music, whatever. I think the main thing to expect is high energy.” Bring your energy and join us as Just Blaze takes the stage at Sun City Music Festival on August 31st and September 1st. Buy your tickets today!
