Joe Flizzow and Yung Raja are ending the year 2021 on a high note! The Def Jam South East Asia labelmates were recently revealed to have been included along with 48 other talented artistes around the globe in Snoop Dogg’s compilation album, “Algorithm (The Global Edition)”.
In the album, Flizzow (full name Johan Ishak) shows off his rapping skills on the track “Alright”, joining forces with Redman and Cleveland singer Nefertitti Avani, while Raja is featured in the song “Qualified”, alongside Larry June, October London and Snoop himself.
“To be honest, he just announced it. He listened to my track ‘Ciao’ featuring Jay Park and MK and he was standing up and dancing to it. When the team gave him a list of artists to work with, Snoop just said that he wanted to work with Joe Flizzow,” Joe revealed in an online press conference for the project which was held last week.
He added by saying, “I’m a huge Snoop Dogg fan. He’s the reason I started rapping. He’s been a role model to me since day one. I’ve been a fan since 1993. If you go through my photos as a teenager, I had three Snoop Dogg T-shirts, that I rotated every other day.”
“I probably wore those three T-shirts 180 days or 200 days – to the point where in my school, they used to call me ‘Joe Snoop’ because everybody would be like, ‘This kid doesn’t have other shirts to wear?’ So it was like a dream come true,” the award-winning star added, before revealing that he used to cover Snoop Dogg’s tracks at talent time and shows.
When asked about how this project with Snoop came about, Flizzow revealed, “I actually met him about 10 years ago, or maybe less, in Bangkok. I met him on two occasions. The first one was at a concert. They brought me backstage, and it was a quick one, we took a photo together.”
“After that, they were having sort of like a post-mortem organised by DJ Uno. At first, I wasn’t sure on whether I should go and meet him. However, I braved myself (to approach him). He’s like a big brother and he’s very friendly,” he said, adding that the legendary artiste also asked a lot about Malaysia during that meeting.
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So what did this duo learn from the project with Snoop? The “Ciao” jam-maker, told us, “For me, I learnt to never give up on my dream. I dreamt of that moment like this, growing up as a hip-hop fan. This just brought me back to why I started doing this. It was never for the fancy dinners or the fancy clothes. It was for my love for hip-hop. I feel like it takes me back to when I was 14 or 15 years old when I first said that I wanted to become a rapper.”
The 26-year-old rapper chimed in by saying, “Similar to what Joe said, it’s like a reminder that anything is possible. If you set your eyes on the goal and are bold enough to dream it, it will come true. It’s just a reminder to have faith in your dreams and in yourselves. This is all it is. It’s nothing more than that, I feel.”
Watch the lyric videos for “Alright” and “Qualified” here:
