THE BEAT For an answer, just listen to the “Queens” track on local hip-hop producer Rasmus Jensen’s new album “Control Your Own,” which was released this summer by Jensen’s own record label, Worldwyde Recordings. The “Queens” music video will be available on Jensen’s website in mid- December, so you can check it out to see if it looks and sounds like your home borough. “It’s basically my little nod to my adopted hometown,” said Jensen, 43, who moved to Astoria from Denmark in 1992, when he was 19. “And the video is all Queens street scenes, so I tried to capture what Queens sounds like to me in the music and then what Queens looks like in the video.” For people who live in Queens, he said, the scenes will be familiar. “It just looks like your neighborhood, whether it’s Jamaica, whether it’s Astoria, Woodside, Corona,” said Jensen, who goes by the name Ras Beats. And for those who aren’t from New York or who may have never been to the borough, Jensen hopes that the song and video capture the feel of the area. “Hopefully the video enhances the song even more, and people will go, ‘Wow, that’s what that looks like,’” he said. “Queens is where my home base is and I think my music is definitely affected by it. If I never would have moved to New York and to Queens back then … I’m just pretty sure that my music would sound different — whether that’s in the attitude of it, whether that’s in the drums or the melody or what have you. My music is definitely affected by living in Queens in a positive way and in a creative way.” With its nickname the “World’s Borough,” Queens is a famously diverse place, which just might be perfect for an artist like Jensen, who likes taking his inspiration from any music he can get his hands on. “I’ll listen to anything. I don’t care if it’s a folk record from the Czech Republic or Korean jazz record; I’ll listen to anything. So I’m completely open to that and I’m curious about everything, and I think just having the perspective of having lived on two different continents, you’re curious about a lot of stuff. You know that there’s a lot of great German rock or British jazz, whatever it is.” Jensen said that the borough’s diversity may have been what made him feel so at home. “I just kind of ended up in Astoria, but I think that’s probably what made me com- DECEMBER 2016 I BOROMAG.COM I 41 BY KATRINA MEDOFF @KatrinaMedof @katya_m22
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