Just Blaze says “Girls, Girls, Girls” helped shape Jay-Z’s album The Blueprint
Iconic producer Just Blaze recently opened up about Ghostface Killah‘s influence on Jay-Z‘s “Girls, Girls, Girls,” and how the record became the structural skeleton for Hov’s sixth studio album, The Blueprint.
While explaining the relevance of Biz Markie, Slick Rick, and Q-Tip features on the song, Blaze revealed that he originally made the beat for Ghostface but ended becoming one of the first songs to be recorded for the project.
“The Blueprint is kind the culmination of what we were tryna figure out on [The Dynasty: Roc La Familia] and [Beanie Sigel‘s] The Reason,” he began. “Hip-Hop [Kyambo Joshua] will tell you himself, Ghostface was his favorite rapper. So we were all definitely influenced by Supreme Clientele, specifically. When we were in that chamber, I had actually made ‘Girls, Girls, Girls’ for Ghost; about a year and a half before The Blueprint was ever a thought, that beat was already done.”
“I remember Jay walking into the studio like, ‘Yo, I just got the CD from Ye, let’s go.’,” Blaze went on. “And I’m like, ‘What we doin?’ And he says, ‘We’re back to the soul music.’ So the first thing I think of is that Ghost beat. Ghost is my brother now. At the time, I didn’t have the link to Ghost. So, I could hold out and pray that I meet Ghost one day; or this is the chamber that Jay’s in right now, boom.”
“We wanted it to be familiar voices that, even at that time, were old school voices,” Blaze added about the features on the album. “And we wanted it to feel like Hip Hop. Because if you remember, we were just coming out of that keyboard beat phase. So it was definitely a conscious ode to a different time and a different sound.”
“Like, as that album started to take shape,” he explained, “we knew that we were about to change things sonically. So it wasn’t a coincidence that we got those three artists.”
