Justin Smith (born in Paterson, New Jersey on January 14, 1978), better known as Just Blaze, is an American hip hop music producer from Paterson, New Jersey. He began producing for well known musicians in the late 1990s.
He also recorded several tracks for the popular video games Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004 and NBA Street Vol. 2 and is a playable character in the game as well. He attended Rutgers University for three years before dropping out.
A large part of Just Blaze's technique consists of altering the speed of samples, as well as adding in his own drum beat. In this way, he draws some of his influence from Wu-Tang Clan producer RZA, who has utilized sped-up soul samples in several of the group's beats. Just Blaze has used this technique with songs like "December 4th" from Jay-Z's The Black Album (which uses a sped-up sample of "That's How Long" by The Chi-Lites) and "Touch the Sky" from Kanye West's Late Registration (which uses a slowed-down sample of Curtis Mayfield's "Move On Up.") However, he doesn't always do this; on "Public Service Announcement (Interlude)" from The Black Album and Foxy Brown's "Foxy Lady", for instance, the speed of the sample used is left unchanged. His work also often features the trademark phrase "No more handclaps" and a distinctive pronunciation of his name, with the 'a' in 'Blaze' lengthened and rising.
Just Blaze has recently started a record label, Fort Knocks Entertainment which is distributed through Atlantic Records. His first artist is Saigon. He is currently producing Saigon's debut album, The Greatest Story Never Told. It is expected to be released in 2008.
His brother is Daren Smith, aka DJ Poun'. He is a resident DJ at the Atlantic City 40/40 club. He has recently appeared on VH1's The White Rapper Show, giving two competing teams his latest productions, at which point the teams had to make a song and then have it played at the strip clubs.
"Just" is a single by the English rock band Radiohead, released on August 7, 1995. It is the seventh track on their popular 1995 album The Bends.
Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke wrote the song about a narcissistic friend of his, which on closer inspection is showcased by the imagery in the lyrics - a parallel to earlier My Iron Lung EP track "Lewis [Mistreated]". He also says that it was somewhat of a competition between him and Jonny Greenwood to see who could fit the most chords into a song. "Just" is especially notable for Greenwood's guitar solo, which showcases some of his first uses of the Digitech Whammy Pedal. The guitar work in the song has been seen as an homage to post-punk band Magazine, one of Radiohead's key influences at the time.
In the UK, this single was available as two CDs: the first one featured different tracks, and the color of the album art on the second single was inverted (the album of the single released in the United States featured the same album art as the second album).
