INTERVIEW | JA MIC DISCUSSES NEW ALBUM ‘EXISTENTIAL’

By Rishma • On Interviews

Indi­ana based rap­per Ja Mic releases his brand new album ‘Exist­en­tial’. We catch up with him to dis­cuss Hip-Hop, the industry and future plans,

What or who got you into Hip-Hop, and when did you first real­ise you could rap?

A shout out to my guy El Dor­ado and anoth­er buddy of mind in school. See­ing my buddy do his thing free styl­ing and par­ti­cip­at­ing with got me ini­tially star­ted but my broth­er EL really motiv­ated me with his style of writ­ing and gave me the urge to excel and get in depth with meta­phors and rhyme scheme and hav­ing fun of express­ing myself. Eminem’s first 2 albums of story telling with rhyme schemes and meta­phors was anoth­er big factor that inspired me with cre­ativ­ity. I can’t remem­ber per say when I could rap, cause I couldn’t rap at the begin­ning (lol) but always been a poet and cre­at­ive writer. Music runs in my blood and fam­ily. (Hi Lesley).

You have been a part of the Hip-Hop scene for over 20 years, how have you seen it change over the years?

As tech­no­logy became more rampant I’ve seen an over­sim­pli­fic­a­tion pro­cess evolve the scene. Some catchy and unique some det­ri­ment­al as far as mumble rap scene took hold. I love the fact that being heard became easi­er and dis­trib­ut­ing your music with social media and dis­tri­bu­tion. A neg­at­ive to that is it became a little tough­er to make money as free mix­tape era came in ten years ago. I do like how online has countered that with streams, online sales, and ads.

Tell us about your new album Exist­en­tial? What themes do you cov­er in it?

Well it’s mean­ing is all about com­ing into exist­ence. So I diver­si­fied that with some horror/fantasy along with real life scen­ari­os. I do have sev­er­al polit­ic­al related themes with inform­a­tion war­fare along with true life exper­i­ences I been through in the past year. I was able to whip this album togeth­er in 5 months with all of writ­ing, self pro­duc­tion and engin­eer­ing aspect. So it came togeth­er pretty quickly and built off each song with same momentum and themes that led to another.

Have you got a par­tic­u­lar track that is a per­son­al favour­ite of yours from the album? If so, why?

The two songs that hit home for me is “Para­dise” and “mon­sters”. Para­dise cause I love, love and I like trop­ic­al feel, so I com­bined those both and is a fun sing along for me. Mon­sters hits home cause it takes me back to early days and is a big ana­logy of how I feel I became a beast at what I do. Then the amaz­ing Alein­ad, who I reached out to, topped it off with the hook I wrote and blew it away. I want to shout her out, and check out her tal­ent. She’s amazing.

Tell us about the pro­duc­tion on the album… how would you define the style?

I would define it as me. I pro­duced all the tracks on the album and wanted a main­stream but mod­ern hip hop feel. As I like to diver­si­fy with dif­fer­ent genres cause I love all types of music. I would have to define the style as Ja Mic sound. I’m one of kind and incomparable.

What is your writ­ing process?

Once I get a title or an idea for a song I think of sev­er­al dif­fer­ent themes that per­tains to the title. As I build on top I like to use com­plex rhyme schemes or meta­phors to inter­twine with it and build a story as I go. I put a lot of thought and time into each verse or chor­us I craft as I am a per­fec­tion­ist. If I’m not happy I scrap or redo it.

What oth­er music or col­labs are you cur­rently work­ing on?

At the moment I’m focused on the pro­mo­tion of this album. I put a ton of time and effort into this with­in the 5 months of cre­at­ing, record­ing, and mix­ing I am step­ping away from the cre­at­ive pro­cess to get a break in. How­ever, I am look­ing to do some work with Yung Shade, pos­sibly some pro­du­cing with El Dor­ado, and I had such fun with what was cre­ated with Alein­ad that I would love to do more work with her. But these aren’t set in stone. Am open to do fea­tures or work with new artists who reach out.

Where can we fol­low your music?

Ja Mic on Face­book. Jamic_ent on IG. Also I have lots of mater­i­al on Sound­Cloud. And of course cop any music on all major digit­al down­load plat­forms. I’m a deep intel­lect who can dis­cuss the world, logic, love and love to chat it up with any­one. If any­one of the fans or artists out there want a col­lab reach out. If you’re a big fan and just want to talk I love put­ting time aside to do that. I want to thank I Am Hip Hop for hav­ing me and giv­ing me a plat­form for my music, ideas, and thought pro­cessing. Much love.

Exist­en­tial is Out Now

Listen Here

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Rishma

Edit­or / PR Con­sult­ant at No Bounds
Rishma Dhali­w­al has extens­ive exper­i­ence study­ing and work­ing in the music and media industry. Hav­ing writ­ten a thes­is on how Hip Hop acts as a social move­ment, she has spent years research­ing and con­nect­ing with artists who use the art form as a tool for bring­ing a voice to the voiceless.

About Rishma

Rishma Dhaliwal has extensive experience studying and working in the music and media industry. Having written a thesis on how Hip Hop acts as a social movement, she has spent years researching and connecting with artists who use the art form as a tool for bringing a voice to the voiceless.