We recently connected with J.Street and have shared our conversation below.

J.Street, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Are you happy as a creative professional? Do you sometimes wonder what it would be like to work for someone else?

I would like to say I am happy as an artist/producer. It has it’s ups and downs though if I’m going to be completely honest. On one hand you feel blessed to be in the music industry and on the other hand sometimes you’ll feel like you have been running in the same place with no progress. We live in a social media era and if your numbers are not high on social media then it really doesn’t matter how good your music is, nobody will take you serious. These algorithms will drive you insane if you let it. Someone once told me consistency is key but from my experience I will say that statement is 50% true. I believe its consistency mixed in with a little bit of luck. In the music industry somebody has to be willing to give you a chance and sometimes those chances don’t come everyday and even if the chance does come around it might not be your time. I’ve been put in many situations at the studio I work at to where an opportunity might come around but you have 15 other people in the same building who believe in their self the same way I believe in myself. Sometimes there are too many hands for the favor. I try to tell myself to be patient but one thing I do know is closed mouths don’t get fed. One thing I never want to do is go back to having a regular job. When I used to have one people used to call me Justin. Now that I am in the music industry people call me J.Street because they respect what I do. I never want to go back to having a regular job and that’s why I go so hard with my music. I feel like I am talented enough to make a living off of what I do and I am just waiting and praying for my opportunity.

J.Street, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I started making music in elementary school. Back then my older sister Tia had E-40’s cd “In a Major Way” and that CD had a heavy influence on me growing. I remember I tried to pass that same influence on to one of my other friends who was doing music at the time so I let him borrow the CD. I never got that CD back and my sister Tia ended up passing away from cancer when I was in the 5th grade. I always wanted to tell my friend how much that CD meant to me but I never did, even to this day I don’t think he knows. It kind of still hurts when I think about it. I remember at that age every time I would watch the news someone was always on there because they passed away so when my sister passed away I thought that they would put her on there. I remember watching the news all night long and they never said anything about my sister. Something on the inside of me changed since that day.

Fast forwarding to middle school I still kept the same love. I wrote a lot in middle school. Not even just music, I wrote a lot about the types of pain I was having after losing my sister. There was a guy who used to live in my neighborhood who used to have studio equipment and sometimes he would let us come over to record. He didn’t let us come over a lot because he was working on a lot of his own material (and I don’t blame him) but it was enough for me to develop a different type of love for music. Being able to put words that I had in my head on to a track was mind blowing. It probably wasn’t even good but just being able to do what other artist I looked up to were doing was huge for me.

Now going to high school I started to take music a lot more serious. As far as the subject matter of the stuff I was writing and to even getting my name out there. I remember I used to walk in random class rooms before class would start and write J.Street on the chalk board and walk right out. Some teachers would yell at me but I made sure I only did this to teachers that I was kind of close to. They did not make a huge fuss about it but I got yelled at a few times. I always looked at it as free promotion that I could not pass up on. While I was in high school there was a guy who opened up a studio in a mall right by the food court. It wasn’t really a studio, more like a recording booth and an engineer right outside of it. This was a game changer. He really did not charge that much either. I remember in high school me and a couple friends would skip school to go record music. We would all meet up at school and when we got there we would figure out a good time for all of us to leave and go record. We would set up a time and then meet up at my car to go make that trip to the mall and record. We were crazy for doing that but I’m sure we were not the first artists in the world to start doing that. Towards the end of high school I started to make a focus more on to making beats.

When I started college I had bought some recording equipment and a keyboard. I had Pro Tools so I used to record artist myself to bring in extra income. I stepped away from me actually recording music and started helping people with their own music. I got better at making beats to the point where some of the beats I made for myself for personal projects were being bought by artists who heard the beats and really liked them. It got to a point to where people were coming to me strictly for beats and me rapping was a thing of the past. To be honest I actually liked making beats because it felt like I got to tell a story with the artist without me actually saying a word. It’s crazy because I do not remember recording any of my own music while I was in college.

After college I started to get back into writing music. I was helping one of my childhood friends on his project and one day when we went to the studio he had a song that he wanted me to rap a verse on. This was the start of me getting back into more writing. I was still making beats but every now and then I would still write. My mom heard the song and told me that I should start rapping more because she really liked the song and the way I delivered my verse. At the time I did not take her advice and kept making beats because it was so hard being a rapper. Making the music was easy but promoting the music was a headache. It seemed like nobody would give you a chance.

In 2016 my mother un-suddenly passed away. It was a regular Sunday and we were having a conversation and out of nowhere I hear her breathing really hard, I asked her was she ok and she said she was fine and just wanted some water. I called 911 but by the time they got there it was too late. This destroyed me. My mom was my best friend and the pain of losing her still hurts me. I’ve prayed and recently started going to therapy to help but I don’t think there is anything that will bring happiness back into my life like having her around. Some people can look at me and tell that I have changed. I am not the same happy/joking person I once used to be. After my mom passed away I stopped making music in general. I stopped making beats and writing. I focused on getting a regular 9-5 job.

In 2020 during covid and working that regular job I would randomly go to the studio that I used to work at just to see what was going on. There were new engineers and tons of new faces. I felt like something was missing inside of me not creating music so one of my friends convinced me to record a song. I really wanted to get back to recording because I knew that was what my mom wanted me to do. Since I started back recording a big artist from Detroit named Boldy James heard one of my songs and decided to add a verse to it. This was big for me because it let me know that my music was good enough for the music industry since a well known major artist wanted to feature on it.

Fast forwarding to now, I have one musical project out and a bunch of other songs. I slowed down on recording music because it’s not easy to promote it. I feel like there is something I am doing wrong and I want to figure out what that is before I release another song that only gets 30 views when I post it. I feel like I need to promote the music that I already have out now and build my fan base up before I release anything new. I could be wrong but I don’t have many people I can go to for advice about things like this, I really just working off of trial and error. I do have unreleased music that I have recorded but like I said I want to build my fan base up first because I don’t think too many people are looking or waiting for me to drop new music and if they are they are not letting me know or letting it be shown.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

I believe the best way to support an artist now is to support them on social media. We live in a world where social media is everything. If you like an artist go give them a follow on all of their social media platforms. Blow up their notifications with likes and comments. I create content everyday, even when I don’t want to. I rarely get people who I personally know to go and like a bunch of stuff on my page. I will have people that will watch my story but don’t support my content. Even family. Imagine having family who knows what you do and don’t support it. It will have you feeling like you are wasting your time. That’s why you really have to love creating music because you will have so many reasons to stop doing it but you have to have a vision and faith. Pressing that like button on one picture will go a long way and I don’t think some people realize that.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

My main goal with my music is to make my mom proud. Even though she is not physically here, I still live my life like she is. I know some of my music might be a little wild but I am from Detroit, Michigan and trying to gain a fan base is not easy. I’ll try any type of music to get my name out there even if the language I use is not always rated PG. I promote a lot of my music on Facebook and I am friends with a lot of my moms friends and even different family members who probably look at me with the side-eye every time I make a post but music is how I get paid. If I don’t make music I don’t eat and I have to eat. I don’t ever want to go back to the life to where I have to work a regular 9-5. My goal is to do what I have to do to be successful and take care of myself.

Contact Info:

• Website: linktr.ee/whoisdatjstreet
• Instagram: instagram.com/Whoisdatjstreet
• Facebook: facebook.com/whoisdatjstreet
• Twitter: twitter.com/Whoisdatjstreet
• Youtube: youtube.com/channel/UCryqaq33eLAF4zFoPVs6O-Q

Image Credits
DJ DDT