“We operate in this logic of” we are stronger together “”, recount Caballero and JeanJass

Rappers inseparable from the Belgian scene, Caballero and JeanJass have decided for the time of a project to each stand on their own two feet. Or almost. After the trilogy Double helix (from 2016 to 2018), which earned them great fame, then the collective album High & Fine Herbs in 2020, the two artists each return with their solo album this friday.

But it is together that they present their respective projects: Oso for Caballero, Hat Trick for JeanJass, two distinct spaces of creation where they develop their own universes, compiled in the same double album. And it is with two that the two friends ensured the promotion of these almost solitary projects, united by a complicity as musical as friendly.

Why this desire to release two separate solo projects?

JeanJass: We like to play with the formulas. There were those of Double helix, High & Fine Herbs, and that was a new concept that we had been thinking about for some time now. For a year or two we said to ourselves that it would be a good idea to do an “OutKast”, a precedent in American rap where OutKast did exactly the same concept. [Speakerboxxx/The Love Below en 2003]. It was to do something new, talk about us and do more intimate songs. And surprise people a bit because that’s what we’ve always loved to do from the start.

You needed the listeners to clearly identify your two respective worlds?

Caballero: It’s a little fresh air in this two-person formula, with light themes and lots of fun. We didn’t really need it but we found it interesting and we thought there was something to do a cool thing. It makes room for more intimate, more sincere, more personal stuff… And even things more in our own DNA as rappers.

These two albums are nevertheless released in a double album, and you are promoting together. Is it difficult to separate you after all?

JeanJass: It’s just more fun. In fact we are better together in any exercise, in the studio, on stage or in promotion. Sometimes I find it easier to talk about his project which I know by heart because we worked on it together, and for him it may be easier to point out interesting things about mine. We do not speak with the same voice and I think that it is enough to listen to the two CDs to realize that we are different people.

Caballero: We still want to show this freedom to do solo if we want. If we want to offer things to two we do one Double helix, if we are hot to invite all the stoned friends we do a High & Fine Herbs 2… It’s good to mark the fact that we are very free. And so that people are not lost, we prefer to tell each other that we keep the strike force that we have together to get the message across, rather than saying to each other “wait, they are separated, what? -what is there ? It’s the war ? “

And you wanted some consistency between these two projects?

JeanJass: Not really. I think there is one anyway because we have tastes in common, composers in common too. But it’s quite accidental, we work a lot on the affective, on the feeling, we sympathized with a lot of people with whom we each made our songs. But each did exactly what they wanted to do. Obviously we wrote songs in our corners but we listened to them immediately together and we pointed out things to change or not. There is always this work in pairs.

It’s not really a right to look, but you still had a look at what everyone was doing?

Caballero: It’s like you have a best friend and you make music with it. You are going to tell him that you do not like that much, that yes … And he listens or not to the advice!

JeanJass: I am his consultant!

Caballero: I do not have the right to supervise by saying to him “no you must not do that”, it is he who decides! If he has a clear vision for a song and wants to go through with it, he’ll go.

JeanJass: It’s not just the two of us.

Caballero: Yes there was Lomepal too, he helped me enormously. And it’s the same thing, he comes, we chill, I make him listen to my songs …

JeanJass: There is also our sound engineer Jules, and Dee Eye who is a composer who has produced a lot on both projects. There was a kind of hard core with whom we made these two albums. Always in this logic of “we are stronger together”, that’s how we work.

JeanJass, your album is called “Hat trick”, can you explain this title?

JeanJass: It’s an expression that translates to “coup du chapeau” in French. It is the dream performance for a soccer player. It is the fact of entering the field, putting three goals in a row and being the man of the match. This is a bit like the image I wanted to send, to sell a certain quality.

You also have this football aesthetic on your cover, with a jersey.

JeanJass: I took the codes from the sticker books I had when I was young. It’s a very nineties imagery that I really like. I designed a football shirt with an Antwerp brand called Arte, managed by a friend, all of this was also done in a fairly family way and I am super happy with the result. And soon we will release the jerseys, I do not have the details yet but soon I will release the information on them.

Caballero as for you, your album is called “Oso”.

Caballero : In Spanish it means “bear” and it could be just an alias, a second nickname that I’ve always been given a bit. There is also a reference in the album in an interlude, where it is my father who told me a story when I was little. He told me that he had super powers and that he could change into a bear when night fell… You could say that he is my animal mascot, like in the boy scouts. Every time on my way there have been things with the bear, and even I think I could clearly be a kind of bear, a little round, who looks cute and nice but when he gets angry … There is gentleness and aggressiveness. Which is reflected a bit in my music too. It’s pretty effective in defining me.

On the themes where you find yourself, you both talk about your families, your childhood, the way you grew up and maybe even a certain disillusionment at having grown up …

JeanJass: In absolute terms, it sucks to grow up. Everything is better when you are a kid, when you are young. You have the impression that there are only duties and obligations that come with the years. It’s part of the age that we are starting to have, we are both in our thirties and there is a form of nostalgia. I’m a little stuck in the nineties for a bunch of stuff because those are the years I grew up. After that does not make me sad either, I like everything that is done today and I am super happy, despite the pandemic and all the mess, in itself everything is fine. But we’ve always liked it, even in what we listen to and what we do as music, we go through I do not know how many decades of rap in terms of choice of intruders and things like that.

What’s interesting is that you can explore more personal themes.

Caballero: It’s our feeling, but maybe there are people who wonder why they don’t make these songs together. Then why not, maybe we would get there in the end but we are more comfortable talking about it alone. When we get together there is more this spirit of camaraderie, of laughter, we smoke a joint or two, we say bullshit we make jokes … When you find yourself at home writing there is another thing that comes out .

You also find yourself on the theme of love, a subject difficult to tackle as a couple …

JeanJass: We wrote a love song together, but it’s an intimate theme, so you can talk about it in a transparent way. Obviously, on his track Para siempre I’m not going to get to the end and drop my little verse “yeah they’re super happy, that makes me super happy”! No it’s a bit weird, indeed.

Do you two have the impression of forming a balance? The yin and the yang as Caballero approaches it in his album?

Caballero: Yes it is a beautiful comparison. Complementarity: you can define us with that word, without going much further.

How are you artistically complementary?

Caballero: We have a lot of musical tastes in common, we understand each other on a lot of things, at the same time we also have differences which come to bring interesting things. Apart from that, JJ is a sound engineer, beatmaker, he knows how to mix a song and has a professional ear that I don’t have. I studied graphic design and I have an eye for all that is visual, the a little eccentric ideas of clips or visual concepts. I’m focusing a lot more on that. It forms the great yin and yang JJ Caba.

And where are you with your “High & Fines Herbes” TV project?

JeanJass: The world is a bit blocked, which makes it impossible to bring together a good fifty people in Barcelona in a villa. But as soon as we can we’ll do it again because it’s super cool to do, it’s a lot of work, it requires a lot of preparation. It could take a new form, here we were on a series, a kind of reality TV parody. But tomorrow it can be like Koh Lanta for example, and we go to a desert island …

Caballero: Plant weed! We like to surprise and piss off a bit. To titillate people a little, that they say “ah no and in fact yes that’s cool”. I always liked it when artists made it happen in me.

JeanJass: There we will fully defend the solos, hoping that at least in the summer of 2022 we can do some concerts. I hope it will happen sooner, but we’re getting ready, we’ve got lots of songs and ideas.