Jamie B, elitaste’s resident interviewer (editor’s note: love the Celts shirt btw), recently had a chance to sit down with one of Virginia’s most promising hip-hop artists, and to a put in electoral terms, a viable candidate for a spot in the music industry. R.E.U.B. (pronounced Reub) began his career several years ago, but with his new single “Overdrive” from his upcoming album The Black Rapper Show burning up the airwaves in the DC area, he’s poised to capture a wider fan base. We asked him all about his beginnings in rap, his remix album The Billboard Insurgence, and his description of the DC/MD/VA hip-hop community as a whole.

First off, I have to ask about the name. For those who haven’t been following you since you began your career, why all caps and periods?

My real name is Reuben, so I wanted to make sure I stuck with my name. Based on the artists I grew up listening to; cats like Bob Marley, Al Green, Tupac, or Nas, they all used their direct names or variations of their names. I was drawn to doing that because I rap about things that relate directly to my life and the lives of people that are similar to me, so I don’t need an alias or such. As far as the acronym goes, people just started calling me Big Reub all the time in the neighborhood, but I didn’t want to be “Big” anything. My man came up with the [idea of an] acronym and we started making up different names. The first name [my friends] came up with was “real educated urban brother,” which fit, but I didn’t like it for a name. The name I ended up coining, and now using, is “real entrepreneur underground business.” I think it’s fitting because although I’m all about the lyrics, I’ve always been on the business side, too.

Now for the cliché rapper question: where were you and what were you listening to when you realized you wanted to be a hip-hop artist?

When I was young, I was dancing and into videos just like everyone else. I first started rhyming in high school, but I didn’t really care that much until I got to college. One summer there was this cat, probably the illest emcee on campus, and we were in the dorms together. He and this DJ linked up and he was playing some beat and scratching this Method Man line off GZA’s first album. This dude was rhyming over it and they were playing it out the window, so everybody on the whole street in Richmond just stopped and listened to this dude. After I saw that, I really got more serious with the rhymes and I was writing and recording everyday. I couldn’t get original beats from anybody, so I just figured I’d do it myself. I bought a bunch of equipment; I basically became the resident on-campus dude to go to for beats. I didn’t really have a confidence for rhymes yet, but right as I was about to finish school, my partners were like, “you need to go out and do your own thing.” Then I started to put myself out there more and I started to see that people were feeling the way I [made music].

You pride yourself on being the “atypical” hip-hop artist. How does your unique perspective on the industry translate into your music?

I don’t wanna say the cliché thing, but I just do me. I don’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about what I should be doing. I don’t look at the hottest record out and say, “oh, I should do that.” If I like something, I try it and I put my little swing on it. If I don’t like something, I just stay away from it. I feel like I don’t have to worry about what’s current, what has been done, what’s old school, and so on. Reviewers, interviewers, critics, [they] can decide how you should categorize [my music]. If somebody says I’m atypical, then okay, I’m atypical. If somebody says my single “Overdrive” is catchy and mainstream, then okay, it’s catchy and mainstream. As far as I’m concerned, I’m going to rhyme and I’m going to do my best to make sure I’m actually delivering good rhymes on everything I put out.

Let’s talk about the production aspect and your group The Clinic. Who’s in the crew and how are they involved with your music as a solo artist?

The Clinic is [composed of] three parts. The first part is me, R.E.U.B.; another part is my man Ajani, and the other part is my man Olawale. All three of us produce; the three singles that I have out now – we didn’t pick who was going to produce each song. I produced “Dance Machine 3000,” Ajani did “Overdrive,” and Olawale did “Lamborghini Doors.” We use each other as a way to push each other. If I hear a beat from my partner and [the beat] took it up a notch from the last couple beats that I made, I know that I’m slacking. You hear about a lot of other producers who don’t want to work with [certain] people or they’ve got all sorts of other people playing all their stuff for them. We don’t do too much of that because we’ve got each other.

The remix album, The Billboard Insurgence, is packed with 23 songs featuring your rhymes over many recent chart-topping hits. Why choose so many mainstream records to rock over?

I just figured that because most mixtapes are a lot of street tracks, I wanted to do an album based off other people’s tracks. The practical term is a mixtape, but I wanted it to flow like an album. I didn’t want it to be just for the streets, I wanted it to be able to reach the masses. You can have great lyrics on big radio songs. I picked big songs that people wouldn’t expect me to choose like “Sexy Can I” and “Lollipop.” It’s funny because I would think people would expect me to do that, but a lot people were like, “damn, I can’t believe you actually did ‘Lollipop.’” I did some of the biggest records out and I made sure that I ripped everything one of them.

Who is your favorite mainstream artist right now?

My favorite artist right now is T.I. I just got his album, Paper Trail, and he put it down. You know, he’s about to serve a little time and he really put his grind in, and he left a mark before he left [for jail.] There’s a lot of straight stories, a lot of great feelings and moods on the album. Love it or hate it, you can’t deny that the album is a strong one.

Getting back to your own career, you’ve been compared to artists like Common in terms of voice and delivery. Personally, I can hear emcees like Guru and Jay Electronica. But you’re not trying to be anyone but you, are you?

Not at all, man. I don’t mind anybody saying that I sound like [another artist]. Since I started, I’ve heard so many different comparisons. I’ve heard that I sound like Common, The Game, Black Thought, Mos Def and all the way down to people like Ja Rule, which I don’t know how you can make that comparison. I don’t want to sound like anybody, but it is what it is, I don’t even think about it. It’s all about the content, and hopefully everybody just loves the songs. You can make the comparisons you want to make, but I’m just going to keep making the music.

Now if there was one independent artist that you’d like to work with, who would it be?

It would be Blu from Blu & Exile because that dude is sick! I haven’t heard all of his material but to even hear his album Below The Heavens, I feel like that’s the type of music I would like to be involved with. I just want to do a track with him; do a song with one of his beats, and do a song with one of our beats. I just feel like he could tackle any subject and do it correctly. I feel like if we did a song together, it would have to be a story joint; we could just blow it out and show people what’s possible with hip-hop and collaborations.

You’ve got a new album coming out very soon called The Black Rapper Show. Tell us about the title, what it means, and what kind of sound can we expect from the record?

The title of the album is a sort of a spoof off VH1’s The White Rapper Show. I have some cats that I know who are white rappers that were at first somewhat offended by that show, they felt like it was kind of making fun of white rappers. I don’t really think it was in the end, but with their initial reaction I started to think about how with black rappers, there are several characters that make fun of what it means to be a black rapper. I loosely took some of those ideas for the album, but I didn’t want it to be all on one track. Basically, it just gave me a canvas to paint a whole lot of pictures of what it means to be a black person who is doing music. As far as the sound of the album goes, it’s not sample-heavy because we play a lot of stuff, too. We’ve got some super-hard joints on the album, but we’ve also got very personal and emotional tracks that tell a lot about who I am. It’s kind of like having my first album, Pair-a-dice, all over again. It’s been so long since I dropped that album, it’s like I’m a whole different person since when it first came out.

Before I let you go, let me ask you a regional question. If you had to describe the DC/MD/VA hip-hop community to a naïve music fan, what would you say?

I would have to make an analogy because I know it would take me a long time to actually talk about, since there are so many things in one. I would say it’s like having a cupcake upside-down on top of a brownie in a bowl of ice cream with pancake syrup poured all over the top of it and heated up. It’s crazy; there’s so much stuff going on here and so many different things happening in the same place. Every single that’s get put in there, it’s something that you would want.