They brought their bus to the venue we were at and invited us aboard to preview their project, so they could present the idea for Joey to lay his verse on “‘Tis The Season.” I had my song “Q&A” for about seven months or so by then, but it wasn’t mixed, so I couldn’t play it for people other than my crewmembers until we had the final product. HOLMLUND: About the beat… how do you respond to people comparing its similarities to Audio-Push’s “Shine” by Hit-Boy?įLY: While on the “Under The Influence” tour, we crossed paths with Hit-Boy and Audio-Push, who were on the Lil’ Wayne tour at the time. Everything on the project speaks to a different part of my life.įLY: Honestly, it was just things that touched my soul when I heard the beat that my Cali producer, ESTA of Soulection, did at that moment. I’d say my sound’s really rooted in that, infused with just me growing up in Brooklyn, really, and being an American kid. No one really put me on to hip-hop like that… My dad’s from Jamaica and my mom is from Barbados, so that’s really the stuff I grew up listening to. HOLMLUND: For Thee Way Eye See It mixtape, do you reference aesthetically anything you listened to growing up in Brooklyn?įLY: I wouldn’t compare my sound on the mixtape to anything, but my influences are like-the minimal amount of hip-hop that I actually do know-because I didn’t grow up listening to hip-hop like that. We finally ended up getting help from an old native with a pick-up truck that had an actual pet wolf in the back.
We had to climb down this hill that the highway was on just to walk to different gas stations to find some diesel. The van we drove ran out of gas in the middle of nowhere in New Mexico. There was a rainstorm in Detroit when we were there, and there was a mudslide at the top of the stadium, so many crazy things…įLY: We are still independent, so we drove our own sprinter van, we didn’t have a tour bus or anything like that. HOLMLUND: Any crazy experiences on the road?įLY: Yeah, definitely. When we started out, we’d play concerts for like 200, 300 to a thousand people, and then with the “Under The Influence” tour, we’d play to hundreds of thousands of people. It opened our eyes to what real shows be like. How was that?įLY: It was an amazing experience and it’s weird, because nobody ever really asks about that, and it was so big for us.
HOLMLUND: What really put you on the radar, I think, was touring this past summer alongside A$AP and Wiz on the “Under The Influence” tour. HOLMLUND: How were you discovered so young?įLY: Honestly, I still feel “undiscovered.” Actually, not so long ago in high school, my boy, Joey, got discovered… No one really came and found CJ Fly, if you know what I mean. HOLMLUND: You’re young and you just crept up on us…įLY: Yeah, I’m 20. Like “Downy,” but with an “er.” And my first name is pronounced “Shane.” MARCUS HOLMLUND: People know you as your rap moniker, CJ Fly what’s your real name?ĬJ FLY: My real name’s Chaine Downer, Jr. Interview is pleased to exclusively premiere CJ’s “Q&A” video and chat with the rising emcee about comparisons, careers, and crazy experiences on the road, below. “Everything in my life that I rap about is realistic, so there’s really no need.” Having opened for A$AP Rocky and Wiz Khalifa on tour, alongside Bada$$ this past summer, his “truth” is about to become widely known-especially if his stellar mixtape debut and upcoming Pro Era collaborative project (set for this Valentine’s Day) have anything to say about it. “I don’t really like to over-exaggerate,” Fly says. Rapper CJ Fly, of Brooklyn collective Pro Era (also home to Joey Bada$$), likes to filter Golden Age hip-hop through his 20-year-old lens, to achieve something he simply calls “truth.”
#CJ FLY MIXTAPE PRO ERA MOVIE#
PHOTO COURTESY OF DEE FROSTEDįrom the ’90s scratch-and-scribble bombast of Statik Selektah’s “Day ZzZ’s” production to the ’70s gangster flick-sound of the Backpack-helmed “Left Get,” Thee Way Eye See It is arranged like a movie montage, minus the camera.
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