Jermaine Dupri On Global 14: "To Ask Me What Else I Am Doing Is Just Crazy!"

It's not shocking to learn that super producer and So So Def founder Jermaine Dupri lives his life in the fast lane. Jermaine is hitting the road to promote his social network site Global 14 for his 1414 Tour in collaboration with Crown Royal.

The ambitious tour plan has Jermaine and his team zipping around the country to 14 cities in 14 days, to throw 14 networking events.

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Dupri has been in the game for decades, has worked with nearly every big name and is responsible for an uncomfortable mass of the beats we break our necks to.

But for the first time in his career, the producer does not want to talk about music.

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On his New York stop, Dupri took some time away from his tour bus to chat with GlobalGrind about his new project, his relationship with boss man Russell Simmons, and the overwhelming pressure to answer the big question of “what else?”

GlobalGrind: How did the idea for the 1414 Tour come about?

Jermaine Dupri: I have been trying to figure out how I would do a tour of a social networking site. The key to this is to really put people in a room that they don’t ever actually get to be in. So many people talk to one another on social sites, but you don’t even really know these people, and that’s the difference between Global 14 and Facebook. On Facebook, you more or less you know your friends, Global 14 is more like this person from Detroit is really friends with this person from L.A. and they talk everyday on the site and it is an ongoing conversation. But at what point and time are these people going to meet? I felt like it was my responsibility as the network to arrange that. All they have to do is come, socialize and meet somebody who is there.

Is this an idea that you have been holding onto for a long time?

It has been an opportunity that has been on my mind for a while. The whole thing with 1414 was ‘can I really pull it off?’ A lot of people are mad right now because we aren’t going to different places. But it is hard to get there in 14 days. We just came from Detroit; it was 12 hours on the bus and at each stop, as soon as we stop partying, we have to get on a bus and go to the next city. There is more work involved with this than there is actually partying for me.

This is your third city. How has your time on the road for the Global 14 tour so far?

It’s pretty interesting because it is getting an idea out that people aren’t used to. Sometimes it is kind of like moving things that aren’t really supposed to be moved.

I really don’t even want to do any interviews with nobody from music publications during this tour because all they want to ask me about music and I am trying to talk about getting my social network off the ground. 

Music is always going to be a part of my life but I am just trying to get people to focus on Global 14 for this tour.

What is your main goal with this 1414 tour? What do you hope to accomplish?

Really, just to make sure that everybody knows that Global 14 is a social network. It is not a site for Jermaine to overly promote himself to you, which I can if I want to, but that is not what the site is for. It is a place that I built and ultimately I feel like it’s a place that everybody is going to have to use regardless of what business they’re in.

You talk a lot about ‘kids’ being on your site. Do you have a specific demographic that you are targeting with Global 14?

I call everyone a kid. If you’re on my site, then I call you kid. But I really don’t have a demographic.

Last night in Detroit was funny because I posted a picture up on Twitter of the line outside of the Detroit event and people on Twitter tried to clown me and say it looked like it was nothing but old people. And I’m like you right, but that’s a good thing for me because that means that I don’t have a bunch of knuckleheads on my site.

What it really boils down to is that Global 14 has such a wide range of people on there because my interest is not ages 16 to 25—my interest is ages 8 to 40 or even wider.