Jordan I. Garrett
Jordan I Garrett, or J.I.G. LeFrost, was our first interview for this issue. There is always that feeling before knocking on the door or calling to let someone know we’ve arrived, where you get bursts of doubt, the feeling that you haven’t prepared enough, or thought of the most accurate questions. With Jordan, as soon as he opened the door, that all melted away. He opened his home and his soul to us in a way that still to this day moves us when we read this interview. Some people were born to tell stories, and we believe Jordan is one of those people. We sat in his living room watching the sun pass through his stained glass windows as Jordan told us all about his life with laughter, immense loss, and most stunningly, his complete and absolute openness in seeing the world for the beautiful mess it is.
How did you find music?
I was on the poetry stuff early on, I started drumming when I was in the sixth grade. Rapping started because when I started high school at Branson, I always really wanted to do JTS (Junior Talent Show) be- cause in my eyes, every year the headline performers always looked like they... can I curse a little bit?
Say anything you fucking want.
It looked like the guys who closed always got all the bitches. So sophomore year I was like, I gotta get a good routine, I start- ed talking to all my friends, saying “What are we gonna do?” We’re sophomores, they’re telling me to chill, the year goes by, I’m still pressing about it. And then over summer, I go “alright, guys, what are we gonna do?” And they said, “We are going to be glow in the dark stickman. We got costumes, we’re doing these crazy fuck- ing dances.” They’re sending me videos of them, I go, “Oh shit, that’s gonna be crazy. When do I get my costume? You know, I’m a little wider than you guys. I’m gonna need a special fit.” And they go, “We already got our routine and everything... What are you gonna do for JTS Jordan?”
Damn...
I thought that those guys were gonna hold me down.
Yeah.
What the fuck am I gonna do, the option was being a techie or coming up with a performance. And I’m an egotistical piece of shit. So I’m performing. I think, Oh, they’re gonna swipe me? I’ll blow you out of the fucking water. So I went on YouTube and took a beat and started writing to it. And I wrote and wrote, and a week before the talent show I showed my Dad, and he just said, “Son, this is the worst shit I’ve ever heard in my life.”
No way! [Laughing]
[Laughing] He was like, “Yo, you suck.” My Dad was very fucking honest. Especially because it was a very white school.
Yeah, probably 90% white right?
Exactly, I was the biggest black kid at the school. So he was like, “If my son gets up on stage and raps like this? I can’t go back.”
Oh my god, yeah.
And I was like, “Ahh Dad fuck off this is al- right.” I did the audition, and it was terrible, I didn’t remember any of the words, I was reading off the phone. I was super scared, it was my first time performing in front of people. Afterward, the teachers, they’re looking at me saying, “Alright, very good job.” And I thought I did pretty terrible. So later they announced the line-up, and they put my ass last.
You’re the closer! So, you thought this was your moment?
No... I was like, What the fuck did I do? I gotta do this in front of the whole school?
I went home, I told my dad that I was going to be closing the show. My Dad was like, “With that, oh, God...” So he sat me down and he went bar by bar with me and showed me how to structure a song. My Dad does not make music, he didn’t rap or anything. But he showed me, “Alright, this is structure, you have to have this repeating refrain here, you need to do this here...” I rewrote it a bunch of times and then got something kind of decent out of it. Then the day of the show was when I actually memorized it...
I was on the poetry stuff early on, I started drumming when I was in the sixth grade. Rapping started because when I started high school at Branson, I always really wanted to do JTS (Junior Talent Show) be- cause in my eyes, every year the headline performers always looked like they... can I curse a little bit?
Say anything you fucking want.
It looked like the guys who closed always got all the bitches. So sophomore year I was like, I gotta get a good routine, I start- ed talking to all my friends, saying “What are we gonna do?” We’re sophomores, they’re telling me to chill, the year goes by, I’m still pressing about it. And then over summer, I go “alright, guys, what are we gonna do?” And they said, “We are going to be glow in the dark stickman. We got costumes, we’re doing these crazy fuck- ing dances.” They’re sending me videos of them, I go, “Oh shit, that’s gonna be crazy. When do I get my costume? You know, I’m a little wider than you guys. I’m gonna need a special fit.” And they go, “We already got our routine and everything... What are you gonna do for JTS Jordan?”
Damn...
I thought that those guys were gonna hold me down.
Yeah.
What the fuck am I gonna do, the option was being a techie or coming up with a performance. And I’m an egotistical piece of shit. So I’m performing. I think, Oh, they’re gonna swipe me? I’ll blow you out of the fucking water. So I went on YouTube and took a beat and started writing to it. And I wrote and wrote, and a week before the talent show I showed my Dad, and he just said, “Son, this is the worst shit I’ve ever heard in my life.”
No way! [Laughing]
[Laughing] He was like, “Yo, you suck.” My Dad was very fucking honest. Especially because it was a very white school.
Yeah, probably 90% white right?
Exactly, I was the biggest black kid at the school. So he was like, “If my son gets up on stage and raps like this? I can’t go back.”
Oh my god, yeah.
And I was like, “Ahh Dad fuck off this is al- right.” I did the audition, and it was terrible, I didn’t remember any of the words, I was reading off the phone. I was super scared, it was my first time performing in front of people. Afterward, the teachers, they’re looking at me saying, “Alright, very good job.” And I thought I did pretty terrible. So later they announced the line-up, and they put my ass last.
You’re the closer! So, you thought this was your moment?
No... I was like, What the fuck did I do? I gotta do this in front of the whole school?
I went home, I told my dad that I was going to be closing the show. My Dad was like, “With that, oh, God...” So he sat me down and he went bar by bar with me and showed me how to structure a song. My Dad does not make music, he didn’t rap or anything. But he showed me, “Alright, this is structure, you have to have this repeating refrain here, you need to do this here...” I rewrote it a bunch of times and then got something kind of decent out of it. Then the day of the show was when I actually memorized it...
More From Issue 03
I still remember it dude. It was notorious, I was a freshman, it was probably a month into school, and you closed it out with every- one surrounding the stage. Was it from that day on, a star was born? “I’m a rapper?”
I had friends who had recording studios in their homes. After that performance, they would say come over and record. I would try to coordinate with them, I would show up at the house and be waiting for two hours, and they would be just drunk or high. I’d wonder why they weren’t perform- ing the way I wanted them to. They’d be so out of it, and at that point, I was like “This is bullshit.” And I would tell my dad, “I want to focus on music, I want to do this.” He always said, “Why don’t you work with the people who are taking you seriously?” I didn’t understand they were high, so I just thought they wouldn’t work with me... and you gotta know, I was an innocent child, I didn’t grow up drinking, I didn’t grow up doing drugs. All that stuff was surrounding, but I didn’t participate in any of it. I was in an education program called “Making Waves.” The program was every day after
school from fifth grade to the end of high school, I came in to study, do homework, and learn SAT words. From three to six during the week and on Saturday, from ten to two, I would just be in school or the program always, so I didn’t get the opportunity...
To get high after school, or to mess around, there was so much structure.
Exactly, so I didn’t have time to meet friends or collaborators or anything. For me, everyday was waking up and working, and then coming home and sleeping. So I barely saw my Dad.
What was your Dad doing when you were growing up?
My Dad is an entrepreneur. I got to grow up watching him my whole life, he was a software genius. Self-taught. This was when computer’s first dropped — I’m watching him read software books every night. He started a company called Vianovus which was a project management system. They managed multi-billion dollar budgets for construction projects. My whole childhood was just watching him code and watching real business. Then he had to sell his business in 2008 because I broke my leg. He was about to sign the insurance papers when I broke my leg, but he never did so he had to sell his company.
What happened?
I can be hyperbolic in my expression, but I like to think that it’s fun. But, that led to the staff not believing me as a child when I broke my leg. I was playing basketball, absolutely just uber-confident, the whole gym looking at me, I’m talking shit. I planted my foot to go to a reverse layup, and my knee muscle ripped off a piece of my bone. Instead of going up, I just col- lapsed. Everyone is laughing, “Ah, Jordan fell, that’s hilarious.” And I was sitting there just thinking, Oh shit, this doesn’t feel right. I was trying to get up and I couldn’t put weight on it, I couldn’t walk. So they call my Dad and they tell him I’m being dramatic, so my Dad didn’t sign the insurance papers because he’s thinking it’s nothing. When he came to get me, he saw I was just dragging my foot. He was like, “Are you okay?” And I was like, “I broke my fucking leg, nobody here believes me.” So he took me straight to the hospital, and they do scans but still don’t believe that I broke it.
You’re kidding me, the hospital didn’t believe you?
Finally, they call a specialist who comes the next day. I had to stay in the hospital overnight. The specialist came in just like “Wow, that’s so broken.” We didn’t have insurance to cover it and they did surgery on my leg. I was in there for I think a week and the bill came out to something crazy, like $600,000.
Holy shit.
Yeah. So my Dad had to sell his company
to this bigger company. After he sold it he started working for UC Berkley, paying
for my school, paying for fucking living somewhere, you know, food, and I think it just came out to nothing. Even though we’re supposed to be middle class, it was a signifi- cant change from how I grew up.
Yeah, how do you think that changed you, or the way you saw yourself?
I always grew up idolizing entrepreneur- ship and business, and I grew up watching him run business meetings, writing himself checks. He never brought girlfriends around or anything, so for him, it was all work. That was how my brain was conditioned,I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur, and the University of Oregon had the best fucking entrepreneurship program in the country, like, top five or some shit. I applied early. I knew that’s where I wanted to go and when I got in they gave me the out of state tuition cost. It was $60,000. I tried scholar- ships and everything but eventually, I was talking to my Dad just saying, “I don’t know how I feel about spending a down payment on a house to learn how to buy a house.” Once it became clear I couldn’t do it, I start- ed applying to a bunch of different schools, I just kind of went to University of Santa Cruz. While I was in Santa Cruz I started doing more music and music just amount- ed to a lot more than anything I was doing academically. And my Dad always would just tell me, “Whatever you do, don’t go into fucking debt.” And then the first quarter of the sophomore year it was just getting tough financially. I wouldn’t even have money after my scholarship. So I just said “fuck it, this isn’t the place, I’m done.”
I had friends who had recording studios in their homes. After that performance, they would say come over and record. I would try to coordinate with them, I would show up at the house and be waiting for two hours, and they would be just drunk or high. I’d wonder why they weren’t perform- ing the way I wanted them to. They’d be so out of it, and at that point, I was like “This is bullshit.” And I would tell my dad, “I want to focus on music, I want to do this.” He always said, “Why don’t you work with the people who are taking you seriously?” I didn’t understand they were high, so I just thought they wouldn’t work with me... and you gotta know, I was an innocent child, I didn’t grow up drinking, I didn’t grow up doing drugs. All that stuff was surrounding, but I didn’t participate in any of it. I was in an education program called “Making Waves.” The program was every day after
school from fifth grade to the end of high school, I came in to study, do homework, and learn SAT words. From three to six during the week and on Saturday, from ten to two, I would just be in school or the program always, so I didn’t get the opportunity...
To get high after school, or to mess around, there was so much structure.
Exactly, so I didn’t have time to meet friends or collaborators or anything. For me, everyday was waking up and working, and then coming home and sleeping. So I barely saw my Dad.
What was your Dad doing when you were growing up?
My Dad is an entrepreneur. I got to grow up watching him my whole life, he was a software genius. Self-taught. This was when computer’s first dropped — I’m watching him read software books every night. He started a company called Vianovus which was a project management system. They managed multi-billion dollar budgets for construction projects. My whole childhood was just watching him code and watching real business. Then he had to sell his business in 2008 because I broke my leg. He was about to sign the insurance papers when I broke my leg, but he never did so he had to sell his company.
What happened?
I can be hyperbolic in my expression, but I like to think that it’s fun. But, that led to the staff not believing me as a child when I broke my leg. I was playing basketball, absolutely just uber-confident, the whole gym looking at me, I’m talking shit. I planted my foot to go to a reverse layup, and my knee muscle ripped off a piece of my bone. Instead of going up, I just col- lapsed. Everyone is laughing, “Ah, Jordan fell, that’s hilarious.” And I was sitting there just thinking, Oh shit, this doesn’t feel right. I was trying to get up and I couldn’t put weight on it, I couldn’t walk. So they call my Dad and they tell him I’m being dramatic, so my Dad didn’t sign the insurance papers because he’s thinking it’s nothing. When he came to get me, he saw I was just dragging my foot. He was like, “Are you okay?” And I was like, “I broke my fucking leg, nobody here believes me.” So he took me straight to the hospital, and they do scans but still don’t believe that I broke it.
You’re kidding me, the hospital didn’t believe you?
Finally, they call a specialist who comes the next day. I had to stay in the hospital overnight. The specialist came in just like “Wow, that’s so broken.” We didn’t have insurance to cover it and they did surgery on my leg. I was in there for I think a week and the bill came out to something crazy, like $600,000.
Holy shit.
Yeah. So my Dad had to sell his company
to this bigger company. After he sold it he started working for UC Berkley, paying
for my school, paying for fucking living somewhere, you know, food, and I think it just came out to nothing. Even though we’re supposed to be middle class, it was a signifi- cant change from how I grew up.
Yeah, how do you think that changed you, or the way you saw yourself?
I always grew up idolizing entrepreneur- ship and business, and I grew up watching him run business meetings, writing himself checks. He never brought girlfriends around or anything, so for him, it was all work. That was how my brain was conditioned,I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur, and the University of Oregon had the best fucking entrepreneurship program in the country, like, top five or some shit. I applied early. I knew that’s where I wanted to go and when I got in they gave me the out of state tuition cost. It was $60,000. I tried scholar- ships and everything but eventually, I was talking to my Dad just saying, “I don’t know how I feel about spending a down payment on a house to learn how to buy a house.” Once it became clear I couldn’t do it, I start- ed applying to a bunch of different schools, I just kind of went to University of Santa Cruz. While I was in Santa Cruz I started doing more music and music just amount- ed to a lot more than anything I was doing academically. And my Dad always would just tell me, “Whatever you do, don’t go into fucking debt.” And then the first quarter of the sophomore year it was just getting tough financially. I wouldn’t even have money after my scholarship. So I just said “fuck it, this isn’t the place, I’m done.”
READ THE FULL INTERVIEW IN ISSUE THREE
