J$PH

What are some of your influences?

I have two parents from completely different worlds. My mom is from a small town in Virginia and grew up in a Southern Baptist church. My dad is from South Central LA from Hoover Street. He grew up with the LA activities in the 70’s and 80’s when it was really happening. I was going to church with my mom every Sunday hearing Kirk Franklin, and then being with my dad, playing basketball and riding in the car with him, listening to Dre and Tupac. So that juxtaposition was crazy. And obviously being in the South, you’re influenced by what's being played on the radio too. That's where my inspiration was. 

When I started making music, it was for one purpose. I had a moment where I feel like Jesus reached down to me and he met me where I was at. I was at this real broken place. My mom was really sick. We were broke. I was in college trying to play ball. When I picked up music, it was like, okay, I've had this experience. I don't know if my homie's will want to have it, or if  they are  gonna walk in the church. But maybe this music thing could reach them. You know what I'm saying? And it took a long time to find my way in that, to being comfortable with being myself and speaking how I want to speak.  It took a long time, I feel like I'm able to walk in my purpose in the way  Joseph is supposed to do it. You know what I'm saying? But it's, uh, you know, here we are a decade and I feel like we really just hitting our stride. 

In what ways did 2020 play in the manifestation of your latest album?

I view myself as a craftsman, so it takes me a while to live life and then create the music. It’s usually like a year, 16 months, 18 month process. I put out an EP called, Pray for the Homies, which was directly inspired by watching how people were impacted by everything that was going on. Depression was hitting, losing jobs, it was bad. I felt like I was saying the things that everybody was thinking at the time in communication with God.

It started in January. God was like, “All right, enough is enough. Like, look like it's time to get back on purpose.” And He shut all rivers down, everything, all the plans that I had with my former team. He shut it all down. Nothing was working. I literally quit music.He started just tearing me down, tearing me down, then He started building me up and He restored our family. So it was like all this work that was going inside of me and Focus Your Aim was the culmination of everything. It was the musical manifestation of what was going on in our life.

What is your view of the Dallas creative scene? How has it grown? Has it shifted? What ways does it need to be better? 

The difference is that it's not one thing anymore. For a long time, it was just two: dance and street music. But now it's opening up to where there's a lot of different types of artists. Arlington's always been like that. It's a melting pot. It's always been like that because of the General Motors factory. I just think there's more variety now. You can find whatever you want here.