LU: On your song “Savage,” you sampled an old calypso. Where did the idea of sampling in soca come from? It’s almost unheard of…
LAZA: That’s true. People don’t do it that much, but we’ve been doing it, though. The cornerstone of hip-hop and dancehall and modern reggae and dubstep has a lot to do with sampling. With respect to business, it must be done properly. We struck an agreement with Maestro’s estate before the song came out. The song came out a month later than it was supposed to because of negotiations, and the person who was in charge of Maestro’s estate, his mum, passed away a week before we were supposed to release the song. So we had to wait and pay respects.
Peter Doig, the world-renowned painter, is a friend of mine and he used to have these wicked parties at his studio called “studiofilmclub,” which is where Sam and I first played out. He used to rinse out this Maestro track “Savage” for me, which was part of his renowned record collection, every time I was at one of his parties, every Thursday. Everything he played, it felt like I needed a copy of that record [to] do something with it. When Jus Now got together, it was the perfect time. When Sam and I linked up we did it, took it to Bunji and you know the rest.
Sam: When you hear more of our stuff you’ll get that. We’re more about making the old school sound futuristic than following the more obvious trend.
LU: What soca artists would you love to work with?
LAZA: The crop of guys who were working with is really on it and it’s a nice situation. Bunji, Machel Montano, Kees, Serocee, 3Canal, MX Prime, Kerwin Prescott… very happy to be working with these guys.
Sam: I’d actually like to do a tune with Olatunji, and Silva, who is part of Destra’s band. Farmer Nappy, I feel as though is the most underrated soca artist. We may be working with Patrice Roberts. I definitely would love to go to Jamaica in the future. [I’d like to] go to America and work with R&B artists, not even just big people. We are incorporating world music so it’s about traveling and collaborating with people wherever we go.
LU: Have you guys seen the “Truck on D Road” parody, “Cow on D Road”?
LAZA: He was so serious about it, he made two videos. Bunji probably finds it annoying that the cow thing keeps on following him, but maybe we can make a humorous tune about that next year or something. It’s also hilarious that when we were in India, before we finished the tune, there were so many cows around and we actually were singing that out loud before it even happened! Talk about the power of suggestion.