Free At Last
Words: N. Ali Early

A fresh conversation with R&B crooner Joe is hauntingly reminiscent of Dre Ellis’ character in the 2002 blockbuster film Brown Sugar. Like Joe, Ellis ultimately found himself at his wits end with the industry and its villainous ways and sought to do something about it. Both see the evil within and seek to escape it through their own ambition, their own will and most importantly, their own minds. While he’s remained busy over the years as a talented producer and singer, the seven time Grammy nominated wunderkind is indeed rejuvenated over discovering the wonderful world of individual enterprise.

Fittingly, Joe’s seventh full length album is entitled New Man. With an indie label joint venture between his own 563 Music and Kedar Entertainment to be distributed by Universal Records, the sky is truly the limit. Bryan Michael Cox, Polow da Don and newcomer D’Mile contribute production to an album short of features, which fittingly makes for a project that re-introduces a familiar face. Joe offers that a month and a half after …New Man is released, an EP of the same name will feature Nas, Diddy, Busta Rhymes, Trey Songz, Mario and GAME, among others.

“I feel like my wings have been untied right now,” he says. “I feel like I can really fly right now. I’m really about to go through a new wave of making music. I’m a new me when it comes to being inspired now.”

The transition with (Kedar) Massenberg, his manager of 15 years, marks the end of an era with Jive that lasted ten years and produced two platinum selling albums, All That I Am (1997) and My Name Is Joe (2000). The unceremonious split required a lawsuit that Joe ultimately won, as Jive tried with all their might to hold him hostage, offering him large sums of money and other incentives to stay. But he was having none of it.

“If you really break it down in numbers, these companies take so much money from the artists,” Joe shares. “You’re creating it. You’re out there doing all the ground and legwork and all they do is sit back and collect. And that’s not fair. So I would definitely not want to go back on the inside as opposed to owning my own catalogue.”

Given he’ll make $10 per record on his own label, instead of the measly buck his former employer paid him, Joe wouldn’t go back if they offered him a Benjamin Franklin filled cake every day of the week for the next two months. Moreover, given the lack of promotion behind any of his last several albums, there is good reason to suspect sabotage.

Upon his exit six months ago, Joe learned that former label mate and R&B rival R. Kelly may have been behind some sinister activity that helped push him out of the spotlight. Allegedly, Kelly moved to contact a former Program Director in a major market and requested that he not only pull Joe’s music from his station, but others as well. Given the dramatic conclusion of the R. Kelly/Ne-Yo fiasco, where the self-proclaimed King of R&B booted the younger singer off of his tour and was later ordered to pay $700,000 for breach of contract, the idea of it isn’t all that difficult to grasp.

“I’m not 100%, but from talking to people who know the dude very well, they told me it was in his character,” Joe tells. “So I can only go by the things that I hear and make a judgment for myself. I don’t really know what to make of it or what to make of dude. But he’s going through enough and he’s gone through a lot. But to stop me from getting mine, to stop me from shining, is a lot to do to another brother. It’s something that I would never do.”

Joe – “Emergency Room”
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyxIVIEDG0w]

Far from disgruntled, Joe is exactly where he wants to be. He tours when he wants to. He sings about what he wants to as loud as he wants to. He drops an album when he wants to and he flexes his muscles whenever necessary.

“He doesn’t want anyone to come after him ‘cause he’s wide open,” Joe warns. “Dude is wide open and you really don’t want to tick someone off to where they’ll put out a record on you and just destroy your whole career. I’m so capable of doing that. I could do it right now if I wanted to.”

Nowhere short of talent, Joe’s second album in five months – Joe Signature – drops in February and sees him write, produce and perform every track on it. Moreover, he plays guitar, drums and bass, giving his devoted fans all they can handle. Did someone say ‘Double Up?’

“Get your money and get your game right and be respectful,” he says. “I feel like if that’s what he did, he has no respect. Now it’s up to me to shut it down. I’m gettin’ mine and he better NOT get in my way.”