Creatively, the key to JEMS! is a freedom to blend the process; while J.Robb’s pedigree for future beats anchors their sound and Elujay writes and handles the mic, the two musicians come together on the production. The pair recently released their sophomore album, the follow up to ‘GEMS IN THE CORNERSTORE’

As songs formed, they embraced a Caribbean influence — J.Robb is Bajan, Elujay is Trinidadian — listening to old dancehall mixtapes on YouTube, and mapped out a stable of collaborators and players that skew UK-based. On ‘BMW’ on their latest album, they’ve collaborated with south London’s Louis Culture. 

VIPER joined the duo alongside ‘BMW’ collaborator, Louis Culture, to talk about their new album, ‘GEMS IN THE CORNERSTORE II’, the influence of Caribbean music and parent’s criticism…

How did JEMS! first link up with Louis Culture? 

Elujay: Somebody put me onto [Louis] music and showed me the ‘TWISS’ video. I was like, “this guy is nice!” I saw him in Hackney Wick a few times and he was friends with Gaia. 

Louis: Shouts to Gaia!

Elujay: That was our mutual friend and then [to Louis] I just hit you on Instagram because I was like, I don’t know if I’m going to see this guy again. 

Louis: I remember when my project dropped, [Elujay] started showing support, which I really appreciated a lot. I think he commented on ‘7AM’ or ‘TWISS’. I’d heard about [Elujay] before and then I think I mentioned him to Pablo Pullen. Pablo’s ear is a bit more out there than mine at times when it comes to artists, he’s very much like an A&R; even though he doesn’t take credit for it very much. Then I think the first time we met, [Elujay] came to the studio.

Elujay: Yeah, we had a session and made two songs. We made ‘BMW’.

Louis: First, we had a long conversation and got to know each other and covered a lot of things. Then, as a fellow Ableton user, to watch [Elujay] work and see the wizardry of how quick he comes up with an idea. Also how he takes apart someone else’s idea and brings more to it, I was very impressed with that.

Elujay: That was two years ago, right? 

Yeah. That was, yeah; it’s crazy. 

Elujay: That’s the history of our relationship and then I had this tune I was rapping on and I was like, “yo, you should get on this.” I was just joking, I made that song as a joke. Then I was like, “yo, it would be cool to get a UK rapper on this.” Then I met Louis and I was like, Louis is perfect! Louis is different from a lot of different people because he wasn’t just a rapper, he was an artist. He curates things in a way and he knows how to use his voice in a way that other people don’t necessarily know how to do. I thought it would be a cool connection. He’s also Trinidadian like me.

Louis: Can’t forget the Wiley reference! For context, my family is actually Guyanese but my granddad’s mother is Trini. Guyanese people and Trini have a very close connection and culture so it’s always nice meeting some of the diaspora where we are from.

Elujay: Yeah, we’ve got the same background because my mum was technically born in Guyana, but she moved to Trinidad when she was young. It’s the same kind of families, it’s the whole diaspora slave trade; people jumped islands. Overall, with the project and this song particularly, I wanted to do songs with people that were like minded. Hopefully people love it. Louis: Also, I don’t want to leave J. Robb out of the conversation so the first time I heard him, he did a Lauryn Hill flip called ‘Come Again’ and it’s still one of the musical things that moves me in such a way. I’ve argued with a lot of people that his version is as good as the original, ‘Doo Wop (That Thing)’. His version is very eerie and really emotional and I feel like even coming full circle to be part of their sequel project, I’m so proud to be a part of it.

Elujay: J’s the Goat Man. He’s the fucking man. 

J. Robb’s heritage is Bajan, a lot of people migrate between the islands, especially Trinidad, Guyana and Barbados. How did Caribbean music influence and inspire you all?

J. Robb: I’m first generation, so growing up my mum would play Lovers Rock, Reggae, the same sort of vibe that the three of us link on. I actually didn’t know that I had family in London until this year; I met two cousins. 

Elujay: You didn’t say that, bro. What?! 

J. Robb: I forgot! I guess my great grandfather had a whole separate family somewhere. He left the island and moved to London and then had another family. So I got to meet some of the cousins this year. When I was there last time, I went to Brixton and caught the vibe. It reminds me of growing up and hanging out with the family. All my family here is from New York so when I was living there, we’d have cookouts and whatnot. But the vibe’s just always been around, it  influences how we create, especially on this project, given that we were able to really connect and figure it out without having to use too many words about what kind of sound I want to go for or what would sound good on this? It was really easy, that’s the best way I can put it. 

Elujay: We’re island boys! [Laughs]

You’ve got diverse styles on the project, including Jungle and Drum & Bass production, which was also pioneered by British-Caribbean musicians. How were you inspired by those sounds? 

Elujay: It all evolves from Reggae. A Reggae beat is literally Street Soul slowed down and Street Soul drums are basically Drum & Bass sped up, it’s literally the same shit just sped up or slowed down. I think the UK scene in particular has definitely been influenced by yard culture, it all kind of stems from the Caribbean, 

Louis It’s actually always been a crossover when I think about it, if you look at the ‘Divali Riddim’, which was Lumidee used for ‘Never Leave You (Uh Oh)’ and all those remixes going viral, then you got like a history of toasting and then it’s just a sonic thing. Then present day you have Grime culture, cookout freestyles, I think we’re at a place now where we’re realising the similarities and that a lot of things are kind of just sonics and genre crossover. So it’s nice that we’re at a place now where Ian’s in London for a bit, and is soaking in the culture and coming in very open minded. We linked up through mutuals and it’s not the British A&R paying for the verse or the label person saying, “you’ve got to go and make a track with them.” I like the fact that it all came about very naturally and it speaks to the progression of music and the power of SoundCloud. SoundCloud plays a very big part in where we are today. 

Elujay: No doubt, to piggyback on that, I’ve been going to England ever since I was really young, like seven, because I have family there. I remember growing up listening to Hip Hop from the US and then hearing Grime, like, “what is this?! This is interesting.” My ears were getting perked up, I used to be obsessed with this one song. I heard it last time I was there and it brought back so many memories. The UK influence has been very, very deep in the music for a while and being of Caribbean descent, it just made sense. I think it made sense for J. Robb as well. Because he understands it, we don’t really even need to talk about it. It’s just something that just sits there, kind of like a baseline. If you really think about it, the best music stems from Dub culture and Reggae and Lovers Rock, it’s all pretty relative. I love music genealogy, is that the word to call it? Where you can figure out where stuff stems from. 

J. Robb and Elujay, was the production handled by both of you together as JEMS?

J. Robb: Yeah the majority of it, it’s kind of a back and forth thing. Either he’ll start an idea and I’ll finish or I’ll send him something and he’ll  build a song and then we go back and forth until we’re done. I think the Drum & Bass one was a song he made, but it had a totally different vibe. And I just so happened to be working on some Drum & Bass shit not too long ago, so I pulled the drums from it. But most of it is us going back and forth.

Your sophomore album was inspired by Caribbean sounds, so did you take a starting point or let it all become free flowing when it came to the overall sound?

J. Robbb: I view the album as a time capsule of where we were. The first song we did was ‘Flights’, which didn’t start out fully as a Lovers Rock kind of thing; the bones were there, but we tapped in with Budgie to help us take it to where I needed to be. From then on, the things we had been listening to and consuming were pretty in sync. Whether he was showing me the Street Soul stuff, I was getting more into Reggae and Dub at that time. I guess we both got a little bored with what we were normally listening to. Over time it built up into this, it’s clear what our influences are for this period. We were listening to UK artists, I think Pink Pantheress just came out and shit like that. A lot of different influences were pouring into where we were at the time and we were neighbours so we could really go in on some shit. I guess it wasn’t really deliberate, it’s kind of like a divine thing, where it was meant to happen that way so it came out like that. 

Elujay: I think we were both pretty bored with music. 

J. Robb: Absolutely. 

Elujay: Was it a Dom Kennedy interview? He said, “I started making music because I couldn’t hear anything that I wanted to listen to.” I was like, “damn!” In the past we were just making stuff to make stuff, obviously out of passion. But now it just felt like we were making stuff to listen to it in the car.

J. Robb: Facts. We’ve had it for almost three years so we’d make a song, listen to it for a month and say, “Let’s fix this one thing.” This shit was in my car stereo for a year and a half. 

Elujay: Yeah, if it made sense in the car, it made sense. That’s kind of the rule of thumb, the whip test is so important. I don’t know how viable that is for people in the UK because you guys take the tube everywhere. But if you have a whip, you’re blessed, because the whip test will tell you everything you need to know.

Louis, did you hear much of the development of the project? 

Louis: I think it was quite early because I was sent ‘BMW’, I don’t know if it was played in the session that we had. I didn’t really know where the project was going on at the time. 

J. Robb: Yeah, I wanna say we sent you ‘BMW’ in 2022?

Elujay: We were both there, we played a show.

J. Robb: But we made ‘Flights’ a year prior, we were just chilling. 

Elujay: I don’t think we knew where the project was going to go at that point. I was dealing with some shit, I was also touring for the latter part of that year. I’m a little discombobulated and last year was a head fuck, it was not the most ideal. But I’m glad we put our heads together and finally got someone to distribute the record. It’s coming out, I didn’t think it was going to come out.

J. Robb: For real? 

Elujay: For real, I lost hope bro. We talked to seven different distributors. It was just edging and I was just like, I don’t know. But during the time we met Louis, I didn’t really know where we were going with it. I was a little bit confused, but I knew we wanted to do something different from the last one. I knew that we were headed less on the nose of things. Music comes in waves and things come back. I was like, how do we bring something back that isn’t really being brought back in our own way? Because I was looking at the way all these Americans were trying to rip Pink Pantheress, it was just so funny to me. It’s funny that she kind of turned Garage and stuff like that into Pop music. It kind of reverted back to the status it had in the early 2000s in the UK. Louis: I was talking to Tendai and he made a good point, that it’s one of the most successful Garage albums ever. Kind of default, that just speaks to the power of how she transcends that sound. 

Elujay: Besides Craig David, of course, as an honourable mention. We just look at the stuff that we love. There’s a lot of people who love this kind of sound, and they feel like it’s a missing void in music where people aren’t really tying in the Caribbean roots to other places. No offence but with Dancehall, how many times can you do it?

How has the rise of collaboration between international artists changed your music for the positive?

J. Robb: I feel like we’ve done a good job of making our collabs feel natural. Because someone will jump on a Drill beat, or like that era when Drake was on every London song, which is cool but it feels less of a full collaborative effort and more like, “let me just send a verse.” I’m trying to think of good UK/US collabs that I’ve come across and I can’t even really think of any honestly. It feels like it’s doing a UK sound or doing a US sound. I can’t think of any, maybe Sampha? But I feel like we’ve got the best of both worlds personally.

Elujay: I like it when African artists work with UK artists because some of them might be drawing on their Nigerian history and influence. Like Burna Boy and Skepta, stuff like that is cool but I think the best way to do that stuff is to spend time in the place you’re influenced by, study it and listen to some music.

Louis: I think travel is so important, obviously when you’re touring you might be in the city for 24 hours, but you don’t really get to soak it in but spend a couple weeks somewhere and catch a vibe, I think it’s really beneficial.

Elujay: Yeah, you’ve gotta travel, soak in the culture and go to somebody’s momma’s house, have their cooking, do some regular shit. You’ve got to figure out where they get their influence from because it’s not always the music they get influenced from. It might be just day-to-day stuff that you don’t see, because you’re just so transfixed by this whole idea of them being an artist and not them as a human.

What’s the wildest International collaboration that you’ve heard?

Louis: I actually love it! Bjork and RZA, RZA did a Bjork remix. 

Elujay: This is random but the homie from Cruiser fucking produced for Kanye, I thought that was pretty sick. And Kanye fucking sampling Dijon, that was random as hell. Did y’all hear that? It was on the ‘Vultures’ shit, that was so random. 

J. Robb: That’s hard, because I don’t listen to music, I’m not going to lie; rarely. In the car I hit the shit you like button on Apple and it just plays songs that I like. I’ve listened to the same songs for like 20 years. But I’d probably say the collab I like is the Sean Paul and Keyshia Cole song, ‘(When You Gonna) Give It Up to Me’.

How do you bring your cities’ sounds together when you’re working with each other?

J. Robb: I’ve lived in so many different cities growing up. I was born in Baltimore and I did high school here, but in between that I lived in New York for a while, that’s where my family is. I lived in Atlanta growing up as well then I came back. For me the Baltimore sound wasn’t really super influential, all they do is House music or Club music. So I kind of missed the boom when it happened in the late 2000s until the 2010s when Diplo used to live here with M.I.A. That’s sort of where they did the ‘KALA’ album with ‘Paper Planes’ on it. There’s one guy from here named Blackstar, he produced a lot on that album but I was too young to even know what was going on. I wouldn’t say there’s too much of a city influence on our project but I do always say that Oakland reminds me of Baltimore, if I had to pick a sister city. Besides the grit and the brick everywhere, I’d say Oakland is pretty similar. They’re both coastal cities but I can’t say that it’s super influential on the sound of this project because I don’t really even do it that often. Again, it’s just Club and House music for people to hear. 

Louis: I think as far as artists from other places, the accent’s always going to hold it by default, you’re going to represent and you’re going to stand out. Sonically it’s a bit on and off, because on one end, I’m most known for some of my Garage stuff and my early stuff which was very electronic and dance. But then at the same time, there’s lots of influences beyond the City of London. At the same time, I’ll still reference things. There’s a lot of sound things that people might not pick up on. I’m thinking about drums that Cairns Hill did or something by Lancey or Skepta at the same time.

Elujay: Without sounding like a broken record, the Oakland sound is like the Jamaican sound, it’s all related even down to the Street Soul stuff. If you listen to some of the Loose Ends stuff, it sounds like modern Bay Area music, the basslines, you can draw comparisons to what has been co-opted as the Bay Area sound, with DJ Mustard. But the bass lines are ripped from 80s funky sounds like Loose Ends. Loose Ends were definitely ahead of the curve with that sauce. I’ve always incorporated that into the music, I always try to juxtapose whenever I make stuff. Obviously the two singles are very straight on, it is what the genre is. But a lot of the rest of the project is juxtapositions, I think me and J are just trying to play with different styles of shit and create a sparring match between two sounds. 

You have Budgie on the album, how did you link for ‘Flights’?

J. Robb: I met Budgie once or twice before, in LA on a random night but our first time working together was for the song. We finished our version of the demo and [Elujay] was like, “bro let’s call Budgie and get some of his pointers to make it more Lovers Rock.” It was a very basic beat just to get the song done. So we met up with bro and we played it for him and he’s like, “it’s cool. It’s not Lover’s Rock though.” We’re like, “word? Okay.” So this fool pulled out a four bar loop with some drums and was like, “take these.” So I spent 20 minutes tweaking it to make it sound loud and putting it together. Bro basically coached me on how to produce for the whole session. We added keys and stuff and then what you hear now has additional ideas from tapping in with people just to make that song as big as it is. That was my first time working with Budgie, he’s an OG. He’s super knowledgeable about his craft and I was very happy we had someone to make my job easy. 

Elujay: He DM’d me one day and he was specifically saying, “I love what you and J. Robb do.” He hit me on some random shit and I was like, “dude, this is crazy!” I’m a huge fan of his beats and shit. I think the day we made ‘Flights’, it was like the day we had that session and we thought he was going to love it. We played it and he was like, “nah, brothers, this is not it.” I was like, “ahhhhh!” I think the link up was pretty natural though, I’ve spent a lot of time hanging out with him not even making music, just listening to records. He shows me all this obscure UK music and old R&B stuff I would never really hear, but I’m kind of an archivist in the same way where I would spend hours on YouTube finding shit. He’ll go beyond that, he’ll go on websites to find vinyls of very obscure, esoteric shit and listen to three seconds of it and be like, “yeah, I’m buying that; no one’s got this shit.” He has all these samples and that’s the source, I want to get into record collecting when I get a little older. 

How did you turn that Budgie critique into an inspiring moment?

J Robb: The session was so chill because he’s a chill dude and we’ve done this long enough to where an opinion is not that big a deal. I’ve made plenty of duds, I’ve had sessions where they don’t like a thing I play. I had a Pink Pantheress session once where she didn’t like shit at all, she was like, “you’re good, I just don’t like any of the shit you played.” So she gave me some vocals like, “make something with this.” I had to learn what she liked in that session so it’s kinda similar, except him being a producer, he was able to literally tell us exactly what is needed to make it what we wanted it to be.

Elujay: Personally I like constructive criticism but if you’re going to be in here on some negative shit and you’re not telling me anything I need to know to make this better, you’re wasting my time. Thankfully, I haven’t had any sessions like that in the past five years. People have been pretty nice, I just want to make shit better so if you’re telling me that something isn’t up to par, that’s fine, I welcome that, I’d rather somebody do that instead of just being like, “oh, this is fire.” When it really isn’t. 

J. Robb: Also it can’t be anybody, you’ve got to be someone I look up to or I respect what you do. If it’s some dude you don’t know in the session saying, “that’s ass,” that doesn’t really mean much, you know? 

Elujay: No, not at all. Also, sometimes it doesn’t even matter what somebody thinks even if you do respect them, because that’s the first time they’re hearing the song. I heard stuff in sessions where I didn’t like it, but then I heard it outside the studio and I was like, “oh, this is amazing.”

It’s really about perspective and the time and place you’re at. I think you gotta go off your own gut. But if you find yourself months later coming back to something, there’s definitely some magic in it. I think the good thing about a collab project is that you can feel close and removed from it at the same time. Thankfully, most people have definitely had a lot of positive reactions to the music, but it doesn’t hurt me as bad. My parents didn’t like our first record. 

J. Robb: To be honest, my mum didn’t like it.

Elujay: But they liked this one, the new one. 

J. Robb: My mother loves this one. The first one, she was like, “it’s cool. I’m good but if people like it, that’s great.” 

Louis: I think a parent is always an important co-sign, it doesn’t matter. But then in the back of your head, you hope they like it.

Have all parents given this album a thumbs up?

Elujay: Yes. 

J. Robb: My dad is the critic, he’s a producer as well. He’s got plaques everywhere and shit; he’s that dude. So I ask, “do you like this song?” And he’s like, “it’s cool. The BPM needs to be upped by…” I played ‘Flights’ and he’s like, “the pitch is a little off, up it by two.” It’s very specific but honestly, it ended up making the song a lot better. So for me to get his approval, that’s always the hard one. For this project, he’s like, “this shit’s good! Good job.”

Who’s your dad? I’m guessing he’s a successful producer if he’s got plaques everywhere! Is this public knowledge?

J. Robb: Probably not, he was low key about it. But he worked on Musiq Soulchild’s first album and this Rap group from the 2000s called the Spooks. He’s done Jermaine Dupri stuff, he’s done a lot. The dude asks me every six months, “have you sold 4 million records?” I’m like, “no!” He’s like, “I’ve sold 4 million records, make sure your publishing’s in order.” He’ll go on a tangent. 

Elujay: Shout out to Big Ed.

J. Robb: Yeah, he also got us our deal too, which is great. 

Elujay: Crazy bro, he’s really plugged us. What’s your dad’s favourite song on the album?

J. Robb: He switches what he likes, unfortunately he likes ‘Slow Dance’ a lot. He likes ‘BMW’ as well, I think it’s his favourite. Shout out to old guy.

Photo by Jeremy Gould

Interview by Lily Mercer