JGIVENS – The Non Average Rapper
LA Hip Hop Events had the opportunity to sit down with JGIVENS, an emerging Christian Hip Hop artist signed to Humble Beast Records a few questions before his big show at the Roxy, May 22, 2016. What an honor to sit down at this point in his career to discuss being born in Los Angeles during the early 1990s, his mother’s decision to relocate them to “Sin City” and how music came to be his life.
(JGIVENS Interview & Photo By @TamiTemple)
LAHHE Let’s start here, high school A.P Honors student, graduates from USC with a Mechanical Engineering Degree. Tell me when did you have the time to develop your craft?
JGIVENS Never (laughs). I started rapping my second semester of my fifth year of school. I was on my way out. But as far as actually composing a rhyme that was in early 2011. Writing was a part of my entire schooling. I hated English class, didn’t really like reading that much I was more visual. I was in orchestra, involved in other aspects of art but not language arts. Writing I picked up as a trade academically. Hip Hop, I was born in 87 so I’m a product of it.
LAHHE Name some of the dope emcees that you like or influence you.
JGIVENS I’ll say the mixtape I was listening to when I wrote my first rap was Lupe Fiasco ‘Enemy Of The State’. So Lupe, Eminem, Jay Z, Nas. My absolute favorite lyricist with cadence, style and content is Andre 3000.
LAHHE You obviously have a church background, interesting you don’t come across as preachy, you did a very good job of balancing both Hip Hop and the Christian realm.
JGIVENS I was raised in a single parent household and I would come visit my dad in Los Angeles. We are like five generations of Missionary Baptist church all the way from Mississippi so church was kind of a part of our lives. But in that walk you have to still walk on earth with everybody else. We all out here going through it and so as honest as you can be with you going through it, that’s how its gonna come out.
I mirrored the same stuff my parents dealt with in dealing with drug addiction. I also dealt with being in the church and looking a certain way inside church and through the rest of the week going out and getting it. So yes the struggles have been there but I think they are not struggles that are different from everyone else. It’s just that when you list them out and start articulating them you see the whole storm that you live in on this earth that we all live in. As an artist I tried to look at this earth that we live in and look around paint the picture.
LAHHE You were born in LA and moved to Vegas. The things that your mom tried to save you from here then your exposed to what in Las Vegas?
JGIVENS Vegas was a whole other monster. Everywhere has evil and turmoil and peace and love. It just has different paint jobs. Particularly the gang culture the gang life. My family was directly affected; my cousins were crips. My family was a crip family. Mom didn’t want me to be no gangbanger. One day we were at the Roadium swapmeet some bloods rolled up on my mom and said give me your Gucci handbag. He pulled out a gun, squeezed the trigger and the gun jammed. Then afterwards moms was like I’m out. We left a month before the Rodney King riots. My mom left escaping the wilds of Los Angeles that were centered around gangs and we jumped into an adult industry, casino lifestyle.
LAHHE Lets get into Fly Exam, when you started writing this project were you in Vegas at the time?
JGIVENS I was in Long Beach, the west side of Long Beach. The album was crafted from scratch from producers like Daniel Steele – Beautiful Eulogy | Anthony Cruz. We were able to really compose everything there and recorded the whole album in Portland Oregon at Humble Beast.
LAHHE Out of my own curiosity what is the song Fly Exam about and why is it so short?
JGIVENS I’m glad you brought that song up. That particular song is a transition on the sequencing from side a to side b and it’s an interlude. I was like, I’m gone make the title track an interlude and do this 80’s tight style. I wanted to go Prince a little bit, Daniel Steele produce it. That 80’s style represents when I was born.
LAHHE Attack of The Clones.
JGIVENS I had like this reoccurring thing on social media. Where I was like attack of the clones. One I’m a huge Star Wars fan. In my entire catalog I always have Star War references somewhere. That song is talking about these people that mimic each other. People who copy each other’s art. I’m so tired of artist copying all the time. Like in hip hop clones will copy a cadence, they’ll copy a song style. Everybody wants to sound like Drake, everybody wants to sound like Kendrick. The attack of the clones is like everybody’s copying and spiritually the clones are like in Star Wars, the storm troopers. They are the army for the dark side.
LAHHE So Fly feat. Beleaf
JGIVENS Shout out to my brother Beleaf from Kings Dream Entertainment. From the Dream Junkies for killing that. That song sonically when I heard that beat produced by Daniel Steele I was like I want to give this to Beleaf just with the style. The day that Kanye All Day came out we were about to record so fly. I’m a Kanye West fan so I wanted So Fly to be like that stunting Kanye West, Big Sean. Like, I’m so fly I know you feeling it. So that was really being like braggadocios but then looking at like why the fly have to be so ignorant?
LAHHE You have a show coming up May 22, 2016 at the Roxy has it hit you yet?
JGIVENS I’m excited. Like I don’t even know how to emote it’s so big, it’s the legendary Roxy Theatre.
I’m bringing a message there. They let us in. On some music stuff I get to like live the legacy a lot of legendary artist that 1. I never thought I would be in that timeline. I never thought that I was destined to do music. I started doing music by accident. People were telling me you’re dope and I was like for real and they were like keep going and I was like ok. So to fast forward to this life and I’m about to perform at the Roxy, what the heck? Are you kidding me. I don’t know how big it is. But I know how big it is. I’m excited to see what comes of it. If I run out of raps after the day at the Roxy at least I can tell my kids I headlined there.
LAHHE We do this thing where you share whatever you’d like if it’s in music or love, a message or anything you want to leave us with?
JGIVENS First thing I’d say is there’s nothing new under the sun.
Everything that you see has been seen before. And so be wise in your own eyes.
Take from the community what it is to help develop the community for the future.
Take all the information and everything there is that you observe and know that you’re just a little blip in eternity. Be creative because art is one the universal languages we have to relate to people.
ARTIST CONTACT
JGivens is on a level only seen by a small handful of MCs. I’m talking the all time greats.