You Can Come from Nothing but Still Succeed

JR (age 33) is a rapper born and raised from San Jose, California. Besides the music biz, he loves to play basketball and football. His family has an MMA gym in San Carlos where he was taught martial arts at a young age by his uncle. Growing up, he moved around a lot as a kid and went to nine different schools. It was pretty much a different school every year. Music was definitely something he used as an outlet for all the hardships he was facing in life. He started off writing poetry as a kid and it wasn’t until he was 15 years old that he began transitioning to writing music instead. In his freetime, he would constantly be freestyling whether it was with his friends, family, or by himself. About three years later, people started telling him to record his music after listening to his work. At the time, his friend’s uncle had a studio where he would begin recording. As his music got out to more people, he got opportunities to perform at fairs and other venues; in fact, his first performance was at a place called Britannia Arms in the Almaden area of San Jose. He was able to get in touch with people who had access to better studios for him to record. At a club, he met Furious, one of the A&R coordinators from EMPIRE. JR would go over to his studio and Furious shared his music with other people. Now life as we know is full of surprises and there will be events that forces us to take a different path. When JR was 23, he took a break from music to raise his daughter and for the next three years, he needed some time to figure out his life. I had the honor of interviewing him for a brief moment, asking him a couple questions to give us a better understanding of who he is as an artist.

What inspired you to start doing music?

I honestly always felt that music was an outlet for me. Growing up in different and difficult environments, music was a way for me to express all my emotions that I was feeling. Also, artists such as Mac Dre and Dre Dre were inspirations for me.

If you could go back and redo your music career, what would you do differently?

I probably wouldn’t have taken such a huge break from my music as I did. By continuing to pursue my music dreams and goals it would have kept me focused and less distracted from the other things that were going on in my life.

If you had the opportunity to collaborate with any artist, who would it be?

They would have to be G-Easy, Millyz, E-40, and Mozzy.

What is 3 advice you would give to others?

My advice would be to stay consistent, be yourself, and stay humble.

Define what music means to you?

It is an expression of your pain, excitement, and your life. Whatever you got going on, you put that into your music.

What makes you stand out from the rest?

A lot of people do things for gimmicks. I am authentic in not only my music but in every aspect of my life. It is important to always stay true to yourself.

During the Covid outbreak, he started picking music back up and took it more seriously. He participated in a lot of Instagram challenges while doing freestyles and posting them on his social media. Once COVID died down, he hopped back into the studio to record more music and that has been his journey so far. His first song is called Aint Gonna Try and his most recent song is Praying For a Change with 18,284 views on Spotify.

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