DX: What would you say are your two or three favorite songs from it?
JO: The Little Brother record I like a lot. There’s a song called “Home” I did with a bunch of guys from Seattle that most people might not have heard of, that one I like a lot. And probably the Elzhi and Royce song, those guys really did their thing. It’s funny, I’ve been working on it for like a year and a half, or two years, and I’m not thoroughly sick of any of it, so I’m thinking I’ll be all right. I don’t hate it yet. It’s not one of those records where I’m trying to wild out on songs; it’s about a complete project, and me somehow making all of these people fit into my sound, that was the challenge of it.

DX: What’s the title?
JO: It’s called White Van Music, that’s one of the first songs I ever did for one of my friends in high school. I named my publishing company that, so I figured I’d just ride with that. There’s no special meaning behind it. Maybe that’d be mysterious or some shit.

DX: I’ve heard your record collection is crazy.
JO: [Pauses] Yeeeah, I take the record collecting thing pretty seriously. [Laughs] I’m actually going to Amsterdam for a record fair on Wednesday, so I’m getting ready for that. I’m going out there with my peoples from Toronto, MoSS and Mr. Attic. So hopefully I get some shit I can make into a future hit or something. But yeah, that’s a big part of why I do what I do and how I have a certain talent, all the records I’ve got.

DX: How much of that is for your listening pleasure as a fan, and how much is for your work as a producer?
JO: As the years go on, the records don’t even mean as much to me sampling-wise. It’s not as much as, I can pretty much grab stuff and find sounds that I like. But definitely, as far as collecting, there’s a lot of stuff I collect that I’m not even thinking about sampling at all. And that’s the stuff I haven’t been spending a lot of money, that I end up making beats out of [sic]. It’ll be some random record that’s rare that I won. I have access to the Stax library, so I’ve been using a lot of that stuff, I’ve got a bunch of multi-track sessions for that. In 2008, there’s different ways to do shit.