HHW: How did your first recordings sound, who were some of your influences?
MJ: To keep it a buck, I was writing some bullsh*t. I was rapping like Lil Wayne. He’s tripping now, but he was my favorite rapper back then. I remember the first time I recorded something on my computer, I took all the instrumentals on The Carter III and redid them all and made my own songs. The only people I let hear it were my little brother and my mom. I didn’t let anyone else hear that shit. But my family gave me the confidence to keep going. So I started finding more instrumentals to rap over. When I got to 10th grade, I started listening to what my older cousins were into, so I got into the underground. Before that I was just into whatever was playing on the radio. I didn’t know about Curren$y and Wiz Khalifa, all I knew was Wayne, Drake, Bone, Jay Z and 2 Pac. But when I saw people were making mixtapes, I got into that. I started burning my own CDs and writing my name on them with a Sharpie marker and selling them at school. I was selling like 30 of them a day, I was booming!
HHW: What were you doing between high school and releasing The Fall? That almost three years right there.
MJ: I was just dropping songs here and there, but not really doing anything. That’s why I came out to Florida. I was going to go to a regular college in Texas, but someone put me onto Full Sail University. They said I would always be in the studio. Plus I was going to be in Florida? Sign me up! I’m out! I wanted to get into music, be professional and polish my talent. I did drop a mixtape with some friends I made in Orlando in 2012 that circulated around the school. But between high school and The Fall? Nothing really. I dropped out of Full Sail in 2012 when I realized I didn’t really like it. I didn’t want to be an engineer, I just wanted to make music. I was still trying to find what i wanted to do. I wound up staying here in Orlando, don’t ask my why though. To this day, I still don’t know why I haven’t gone back home. But being in Orlando has been a blessing, I’ve met and worked with some dope producers, like Ayo the Producer. I met my manager here too. I I’ve stayed in Orlando because I didn’t want to come back to Houston empty handed. Orlando is melting pot though. A lot of the music made here gets overlooked because of Disney. It’s hard to get out of that Walt Disney shadow. But there is a lot of talent brewing here.
HHW: When did you start working on The Fall?
MJ: I started working on it late 2012, early 2013. I started making it when I dropped out of Full Sail. The project is based around the whole idea of my mom being disappointed in me dropping out of school and not coming back home. I was giving a brief description of what I was going through. In school I had financial aid, but when I dropped out, I had to get a job and music had to take a backseat. I was working just to live in a place I’m not even from. No family, no connections. So writing for The Fall, it was like therapy for me. I was basically talking to myself, saying everything was cool. When people said they f*cked with it, I wasn’t expecting people to go crazy over it. I was just trying to make a name for myself. People were telling me that I couldn’t do it, but I like proving people wrong. Even if I don’t know how to do something, I’ll learn it just to prove you wrong. I basically rapped about my life at that time. I rapped about my car and keeping my H-town roots, but I didn’t want to over do it by screwing every song or saying “trill” every other word. That’s not what Houston is all about. A$AP Rocky kinda got people f*cked up thinking it’s just about slow music and gold teeth. I grew up around people who really live the trill life. It’s really meaning behind that shit. People f*ck that word up all of the time.
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