No Will but plenty of raw power

By REBECCA BARRY

For every booty-slapping MC flashing gold teeth at the camera, there's a humbler, quieter musician hovering in the shadows.

DJ Jazzy Jeff wouldn't have it any other way. "I've been blessed with a long, beautiful career," he says on the line from his production company's headquarters in Philadelphia. "I don't prostitute it."

Many will remember him as Will Smith's bumbling sidekick in the 90s sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. But where Smith went on to stake out a career starring in Hollywood blockbusters and fronting the hip-pop duo, Jeff remained under the radar of the public eye.

Instead, he set up his own production company, A Touch of Jazz, and left the glory to his proteges, among them, sublime soul singer Jill Scott.

Fourteen years and five albums with his Bel Air buddy later, Jeff Townes is back in the limelight with his first solo album, The Magnificent, a deep, funky affair featuring Pauly Yamz, Baby Blak and Boyz II Men's Shawn Stockman. But why the wait?

"I wanted to make sure it was going to be for the right reasons. You get to a point where you want to do records you feel comfortable with, not necessarily something someone is pushing you to do or you're doing just because you want it to sell a bunch of copies.

"To be able to go in the studio and do what you want to do without any restrictions, is great. I'd rather not put out a record if I can't put out the record that I want to.

"You don't get an artist who paints a picture and you tell the artist exactly the kind of picture you want to paint. You let him paint it. If you like it, you buy it and if you don't, you don't."

He overuses the cliches "creative freedom" and 'it's all about the music", but Jeff is one DJ who means it. Over the years he has turned down plenty of offers from bigger labels, wanting to cash in on his masterful turntable skills and pioneering scratch techniques.

"I'm not against that, but I've been in the music industry long enough that I think I should be able to do what I want instead of what's supposedly popular."

It wasn't always the case. When he and Smith first conquered the popular charts with the absurd but funny single, Girls Ain't Nothing But Trouble in 1987, the duo were praised for their genial charm and criticised for making bubblegum rap.

"When I first started out I didn't really understand," he says. "You feel so anxious just to be heard that you almost woulda did whatever someone told you.

"I wanted to form a production company so I could do all different kinds of music, because a lot of times people don't expect you to do more than one thing. If you do hip-hop, people just want you to do hip-hop. Being able to make R&B-soul, jazz and rock records was hard for people to understand. A Touch of Jazz was formed so I could basically hide behind the moniker of a production company and do whatever I want."

Despite the title, he's adamant it's not so much a self-congratulations as a play on words of a single he did with Smith, The Magnificent Jazzy Jeff.

Still, he is arguably as influential as East Coast hip-hop groups A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul, who were credited for marrying jazz and rap.

"I don't know about that. I'm just blessed to do something that I can make a really good living off, but I'm absolutely positively not doing what I'm doing because I can make a good living off of it. I really, really, enjoy it. I travel the world and DJ and it's not because I have to. I love it.

"There's no greater feeling to play and make people enjoy music. There's times I feel that I have the best job in the world. I'm a hip-hop guy till I die."

Performance

* Who: DJ Jazzy Jeff

* What: Aotearoa Hip-Hop Summit, 2003

* Where: Aotea Square, Auckland Town Hall

* When: Today and tomorrow (Jazzy Jeff performs tomorrow night)