We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Egan’s Rats. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Gorilla below.

Alright, Gorilla J thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

As a musician and just an artist as a whole, my objective in music is to bring a little bit of every emotion in a project. Most of the time that is depression and or sadness. However, It could be humor or happiness. I like to use humor to combat the sadness most of the time, and you can really tell that by this band I’m in. These songs we have made lately have been some of the most emotional yet rewarding mentally for my self I know of course. I’m sure the same statement is felt throughout the band. We started off with just crazy wonky songs like Hi Mom. Then we got into the more real projects as seen in “Runaway”, “Upstream”, or even our newest single out right now “Man On A Mission”. Especially the latter, Man On A Mission was one of the tracks that came to me out of a place of pure readiness to get back out there and grind. This was at a point after covid had taken away a lot of our opportunities for expanding the band further. As we dropped our first album pretty much right before everything shut down. However we have bounced back tremendously and that is pretty much the plot of the song. Its just a man trying to find a way out of his current situation. If we can do anything as a band, We want to spread positivity and show that with a lot of hard work and grinding you will always come out on the other side. There is always a greener pasture. That’s what this song meant to me.

Gorilla, 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?

Gorilla J and dUb Flow met around 2009-2010ish through a mutual friend/fellow artist Antonio The Great. We would hang out at parties and freestyle into the wee hours of the night. Fast forward to 2017, dUb Flow and Gorilla J start the hip hop group Egan’s Rats, after the St. Louis organized crime street gang that originated in the early 1900’s, dUb heard the name on a local radio station, and pitched the name for the group. After a couple songs written, they incorporated Funco Creep, the drummer/producer. A few songs later and we had an album, Year of the Rat. The name of the album just felt right considering it was the year of the rat in the Chinese new year at the time. The album art displays a rat riding a barrel through a brown sea of liquor, further tying in with the name Egan’s Rats and the role they played during prohibition. Funco Creep produced the majority of the beats on that album, and plays drums over them as well. He has an eclectic taste and I think that translates through his production. It definitely helped our sound stand out amongst the masses. After the album we just started playing show after show basically. Trying to get our name out there to as many people as possible. Including shows with former mentioned mutual friend/artist Antonio The Great, that’s where we met our guitarist Magic Mike, or maybe he prefers to just be called Mike, but he does magic, and his name is Mike, so the name just kind of stuck. He was playing a couple shows with Antonio, and then we started collaborating, and we been jamming ever since. That’s basically the Egans Rats origin story. Our groups, not the 1900’s street gang. You can find us on all major music streaming platforms. We also occasionally have merchandise like T-Shirts and nunchucks for sale. I definitely feel our stage presence sets us apart the most, we are a fun group, and incorporate some choreography to keep the audience visually entertained, as well as audibly entertained. You never know what you might see at an Egan’s Rats show, from all of us dressed in absurd attire like hot dog suits or rat gas masks, homemade cosplay, and togas. We’ve done all those actually. Or maybe you’ll see dUb Flow bust out his nunchucks on stage and wow you with his dual coordination, well, most the time. He tends to drop them in states beginning with the letter I for some reason. But they’re foam, rest assured. Or maybe you’ll see Magic Mike throw a capoeira kick while beat boxing on stage. You never know. And that definitely sets us apart from others. We’re a party vibe. We’re proud of all that, as well as all the shows/podcasts/interviews we’ve done, and just being a hip hop duo turned band for past 6 years. We’re Gorilla J, dUb Flow, Funco Creep, and Magic Mike, and we are the Egan’s Rats. Check us out. Thank you for your time.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

As a Artist the most rewarding aspect is making art and or music or whatever your making while being your self. Alot of people will always try to stray you in one direction or another, but if you stay the course and keep doing what you love and putting out stuff that you love then most the time your fans will love you more for it. So stay original.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

They can just check them out. Buy they’re merch or things they create when you support someone by doing that it makes it easier financially for us to keep going which is usually the biggest hurdle for most people. Also make sure you do things like subscribe to our channels and just stay up with the artist. Go the extra mile by commenting something even if its something you feel should be better let us know. last but not least if you can take anything that we do to heart use it to start something cool for your self and create some art or music or anything creative. GO BE CREATIVE IN LIFE!

Contact Info:

• Website: EgansRats.com
• Instagram: @theofficialegansrats
• Facebook: @Egansrats
• Twitter: @theofficialegansrats
• Youtube: Egan’s Rats
• Other: Jeffgorillajwood on facebook