We were lucky to catch up with Justin Sherrod recently and have shared our conversation below.

Justin, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?

Right now I am working on my first debut album titled “Thank You Juzi”. It is exclusively produced, recorded and mastered by me. I have been working on this album for about 2 years and I am happy to say that it is about 80% done. As of right now there are about 16 tracks that will be on the album but that is all subject to change. This album means a lot to me because it is all the music that I have been too afraid of in my career to make. It’s the music that I truly wanted to make for myself and for my happiness and not particularly made for the sake of the others. It’s a really scary feeling to me to make the music I like to make because I am afraid of no one else liking it or even wanting to listen to it. I had to overcome that fear and realize that I need to make this for myself and for no one else. Making music is my way of therapy and that is something I fell in love with, it’s my way of expressing myself and I learned that in order to make the most authentic music I need to be the most authentic version of myself.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Justin Sherrod but many know me as Juzi. I am 23 years old and originally from the Bay Area but I am now based in Los Angeles. I have been making music for about 8 years now. When I was in 8th grade I started writing poetry to try and help with my emotions. I never really shared any of my poems with anyone until I was a freshman in high school and when I did a lot of people told me it was really good. That motivated me to keep writing poems. I realized that people only really read poems once and then they move on but people listen to songs over and over again. I took my poems and tried making songs with them over beats I found on youtube. The main issue was that the beats never really worked the way I wanted them to, so I decided to learn how to make beats myself so I can make the beats how I wanted them to sound. I started off making beats on my phone on garage band and everyday I kept working and learning. I got a laptop and downloaded FL Studio and from that point I kept on learning about music. I want to thank my brother Eric for always supporting me on my music journey. As long as I could remember he was my biggest supporter and he is one of the main reasons why I do music today still. Every-time I wanted to quit he would always push me to keep going and I am glad that he did. I then met BigTreeSteve on instagram and dmed him asking for a feature and from that point on we just became a dream team. We both moved down to LA together and met a-lot of people and networked and now we are both being managed by Todd Bergman. I think what sets me apart from others is my production. My production of my songs to me is just something that I am very sure many people have not heard of before. I always try and think outside the box and that is reflected in my sound. I am very hard on myself and honestly I am a perfectionist and that is something that I want people to know because if I am working on something with someone else I will not stop until I know it’s perfect and just the way that I want it to sound in my head and I will give my all to the project at hand.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

There are so many different rewarding aspects of being an artist/creative. One of them would probably be making a song, a beat, or a music video and truly being proud of it. I am very critical of myself along with many many other creatives and artists and when I can finally make something that I am happy with, it’s probably the most rewarding part of making something to me. The other rewarding part of being an artist is also having the ability to make others think and make others feel the music that I make and have it resonate with them in their own ways. Being able to make someone feel something just by having them listen to my music or watch my videos really is an incredible experience to me.

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

The goal of my creative journey is to make myself proud. That’s something I have always had issues with. Making myself proud may seem like one goal but to me it’s many goals wrapped up in that one. What will make me proud is being able to have my music change my life and change the lives of those I care about. I want to make myself proud by taking care of my parents bills, taking care of my brothers, making sure my brothers musical talents are shown to the world as well. Making sure all my friends are taken care of too and just trying to better the lives of all the people I care about.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://fanlink.to/juzi
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_juzi_?igsh=ZDE1MWVjZGVmZQ==
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/_juzi_?s=21&t=UfGDkThv2GdL0oKX6PW0tw
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@_juzi_?si=SSoWoR8DEQZ2Teau
• Other: apple music: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/juzi/1463703557 spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/0gekX2hCyiAj6iwVvxiwj7?si=CSim6EOaQp25vjT2dfQs1g soundcloud: https://on.soundcloud.com/HW756ZyqqViEknVZA

Image Credits
Jean-Claude Cubias- IG @jc.cubias