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.
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Let’s talk about the partnership that you have with Crown Royal for the 1414 tour. How did that come about?
I started this vlog called Living the Life and it was basically celebrating what you have at the time. I think there is something about our generation or our culture as Black people, if somebody says ‘Jermaine what are you doing?’ And I say ‘I’m on a 14 city tour right, I am going from city to city everyday on a tour bus having meet and greets, shaking hands, talking and trying to convey this message to everyone,’ the person will always say “what else are you working on?”
What do you mean what else am I working on?!
But I take the blame for this because I have been one of the people who have tried to say I’m doing this person’s album, I am doing this album and, we all have! Puff does it! Jay does it! We all do this! But at some point you have to stop and look at it and to ask me what else I am doing is just crazy.
The Crown Life thing, their whole image is to celebrate life whether it is big or small and when I saw what they were talking about and they saw what I was talking about it just felt like a perfect thing.
14 cities in 14 days, that is an ambitious plan. How did you prepare yourself before you got on this tour?
I didn’t. I just went from hanging out with Kanye and Jay in Atlanta for their tour and I went straight to my bus. I was almost like I was on their tour. They were starting in Atlanta and I was jumping on my bus at the same time. But I really didn’t even prepare, I wasn’t even thinking about it in that way. I should have prepared the guys with me because they have never been on the tour before. It is interesting being on this tour with a group of young men that have never been on tour before. Everything is exciting for them.
What else would you want our readers to know about Global 14?
Let’s just make sure that everybody understands that GlobalGrind and Global 14 are not the same thing! Everybody keeps asking me! This is a social network and GlobalGrind is a Black Huffington Post. I don’t know what y’all call it but that is how I view it. I believe that is what Russell was trying to create. That is one of my idols. It’s always funny with Russell because we have companies that names sound really close, like he had Def Jam and I had So So Def and it’s like GlobalGrind and Global 14. But Global 14 means JD. That number has always been the same since my album life in 1472, that’s just something I always do.
So where do you hope to see Global 14 in 10 years?
My ultimate goal is just to get a million members. I don’t care about nothing else after that, just a million working members. A million people actually working on the site and using the site, anything after point is just great.
