JIREH In Conversation: Music, Influence & Life Between Baton Rouge and NYC

We sat down with JIREH ahead of his new album “ROPE BURN”. He talked about his upbringing, and how music has surrounded him his entire life, with his grandfather being a jazz musician, and his dad and brother rapping as well. He explained how seeing his brother make a song on Pro Tools changed everything for him in terms of accessibility.

“My first time in the Stu was in the house. Like, I saw my brother pick up a mic, go on Pro Tools and rap, and I was like, “oh s***, n***** can do that? You ain’t got to be f****** rich and famous?””

On how the passing of his grandmother is what really made him step into that “artist” role:

“I think when she passed…like by that time I knew I loved music and it was something that I wanted to do, but by that time, I decided that that’s what I was gonna do. It kind of, you know, gave me a different perspective on like, what this is, and what all this s*** really means…I think I’m still becoming the artist, but I definitely made leaps and bounds in that time.”

On what became clearer with time while creating:

“I had to figure out how to like, say what I’m trying to say, not how it makes sense to me in my f****** head, but how it’s going to make sense and translate to the most amount of people as possible. So on some technical s***, just being able to like, come up with my own ism, you know what I’m saying? Come up with my own lil talk.”

On moving to New York:

“I knew what I wanted. I was telling myself what I wanted this whole time, but I had to finally take responsibility for getting myself there…So I had to look at what the case was and do what I f****** could. And what I could do was save up a couple bands, bring my ass out here and hustle up somewhere to stay, hustle up somewhere to eat, you feel me? And lay my head, and a year later, we good.”

Giving further context to the name of the album and it’s contents:

“It was some shit that happened on the train…if you listen to ROPE BURN, the actual title track, I kind of went into detail on it or whatever…but you can still get hemmed up by the same police, well not the same police, because these is n***** up here and they white at home…But it’s that same powerlessness. It’s the same disempowerment, you know what I’m saying? Like that was the thing that was stuck in my head, like even if you get free, them motherf*****s still got you…and that’s where the Rope Burn come in.”

Above all, he just hopes that his album and music resonates with people, and he closes out the interview with one last quote:

“I hope so, s***, yeah, man. I wouldn’t be doing this s*** if I ain’t feel like I had something to say, or if I felt like this wasn’t the only way to get people to listen sometimes.”