JORDAN on His Upbringing, Influences in Rap, and State of Hip-Hop in Arizona.

interview and article by Riley McKinnis

This week we got to talk with up and coming Arizona trailblazer, JORDAN. For those who aren't familiar with the Chandler artist go check out his newest releases along with some of his deeper cuts here on his SoundCloud page. You can read the full interview below:

Riley: "Let's go ahead and start where everything started, tell me a bit about your upbringing and what brought you into rapping."

JORDAN: "Definitely rap has always been an essential part of my life since about 6th grade but even further back than that. When I lived in a two parent household, I was really religious so we listened to a lot of R&B, Soul, and even Christian Rap, and that was really my introduction. I feel like that taught me to be more lyrical because Christian rappers ain't cursing and really saying nothing crazy in they songs. Also they stick to one subject. That really opened my ears and I thought it was really cool how they articulate themselves without cursing. My parents then got divorced and at that point I was living with my moms and uncle, and my uncle was a raphead. It was a major switch up, he really took me to school. I was listening to Curren$y, all the JetLife tapes, also a lot of Cam'Ron. Matter fact, one of the first songs he played me was The Mob by Lil Wayne on the Carter II. Then of course, sooner or later I started finding instrumentals on my Mac and me and my lil bro was freestyling over any beat. We got pretty good at it then I had stopped for a bit, then I moved back to Arizona and started back again after going to high school I would be freestyling in the homie car, you know how it goes. My homies said I was pretty good so after I graduated I recorded a couple tracks and they both got a couple thousand views and that was pretty cool, and then here we are now."

R: "So one of the biggest things when it comes to the newer artists is that this is just a game of demographics, a lot of artists find their target demographic and rock with them until you get big enough to dabble in other demographics, as most artists nowadays do. But how important is it to you for an artist to stick to their roots?"

J: "Of course, being middle class I was never in the streets like that. My main thing is being authentic, you see a lot of people nowadays don't rap about what they live. They might have seen it though someone else, but they've never seen if for themselves. When it comes to me I try to play it as the middle class dude that can still throw down if he needs to. My life was never that crazy, no guns no violence. You know, middle class people, people that really don't be in the streets go through things as well, it may not be anything like the hood but it's a struggle nonetheless. With me, I just try to keep it 100 from the jump with my fans, if you don't then it's gonna come back to get you in the end, so you might as well just stay true from the beginning."

R: "Let's go ahead and get into the music, you just recently dropped a couple remixes to some Meek songs."

J: "Yeah that Meek album is crazy, I play it everyday. I remixed Coldhearted, thought I could do my thing on em, on Meek album that one track really hit me and I really wanted to get on that. Everyone knows that 24/7, [Ella Mai] killed that hook so I had to hop on it real quick, just a couple freestyles before the EP."

R: "Perfect, that was a great segway into the next topic, so there is an EP coming out of the works yeah?"

J: "Yeah, the EP has been done for about a couple months now, just had to make sure we got all the levels and the mixing is done right. That's gon come out early January, probably a couple weeks into January. We trying to get a music video done for "Elevate" get some visuals for that to help with the rollout. What I like to say about this EP is that it's a mix of songs from 2018 and some new stuff for the new year. I got about 3 or 4 tracks that no one has heard before on it. After this one it's on to the next one."

R: "So I'm sure you want to make a bigger name for yourself out here in Arizona, but how do you feel about the overall rap scene out here? Me personally, I feel we're on the rise slowly but surely but how do you feel?"

J: "The real ones are gonna survive. There are a lot of artists out here putting on, you got Hercc, [E.III], Teriq that really take the craft seriously, then you have the ones that are just playing around with it. Like you got a nice beat and you rhyme a coulple words, and based on connections you viral, and that's cool, but there's probably only like 5 or 6 true artists out here to put out city on. We have a lot of different cultures out here, you got peolpe originally from Chicago, California, Louisiana, Atlanta, and they come out here and we wanna create our own style with it. I definitely would love to collab with the real ones you know, but it's survival of the fittest, and we're gonna see who's here in the next 5 years."

R: "Aiight so earlier we touched on a couple influences in your music when you were coming up, but what are some other influences in music that helped you morph your craft into what it is today?"

J: "Gotta put Drake in there. You and I came up in a great era. People look back at like the 90's and 80's as the golden era, they gon look at that 2010 mixtape era. Drake was coming out, J Cole was coming out, Kendrick was coming out, all those dudes were pivotal. Meek was coming out. I'm a huge Hov fan, huge Rick Ross fan."

R:"Hov really don't get the love he deserves out here."

J: "He really don't, and its crazy. But definitely him, throw Wale in there, even some of the new guys like Isaiah Rashaad are all definitely guys I take inspiration from."

Be on the lookout the "THE EP" dropping in January!!