If you’re from the Orlando area, most likely you’ve heard of Jon Young. If you’re on MySpace, you could be apart of his 50,000 fans. With 5.8 Million total plays on his profile, and 1.7 million currently on ‘City I Luv,’ he’s defintely blowing up MySpace. Here today, Jon Young comes through with a very detailed interview, that gives y’all the first glimpse.
Who’s Jon Young? What’s Sky Skrapin’ Entertainment?
Who is Jon Young? Well I’m a lot like most people. I think that’s why so many can relate to what I’m saying. Growin’ up, my family was never wealthy but we lived comfortably. My dad worked for the post office and my mom worked part time off & on. They both put themselves through college so they always stressed to me the importance of being educated. I was always trying to learn new things anywhere and that eventually lead to learnin music production on my own. Music became an important part of my life early on. My brother was very into music, playing guitar and drums, so I guess it rubbed off on me. Since 2nd grade or so when I was first introduced to rap, I always had an urge to be involved in music in some way. I saw it as a way to express things i was feeling inside in a productive way. I started out listenin to groups like Kriss Kross and Another Bad Creation (A.B.C.) then later Snoop, Dre, Bone thugs, and 3-6 Mafia as I got older. The southern, westcoast, and midwest styles always appealed to me most because it felt familiar to me. Never growing up in a large city like New York made it hard for me to relate to east coast artists. But at the same time, I think that’s what’s most important in music, especially rap. Your surroundings and experiences should shape your sound and influence your concepts. And that’s exactly what I do, I write about what I’ve been through and seen. You might notice after listening to some of my material that there isn’t much mention of drugs or even violence. Although I’ve experienced it to a degree, I chose to distance myself from that lifestyle early on. I’ve seen it bring down too many people, people extremely close to me. I chose to focus my energy on other things like music, my girl, the car thing, etc.
As far as my name & where I got it, well me and my boy Wes Fif (myspace.com/wesfif) came up with the names together. They’re both based on major road names in Orlando, John Young Parkway and West Hwy 50. We felt it’d be a good way to rep our city and promote ourselves at the same time. If you live in Central Florida, you hear these names on a daily so it’s like free promotion 24/7.
Sky Skrapin’ Entertainment is kind of a recent thing. Up until a little while ago, me and J. Cash (myspace.com/officialjash) we were just putting out CDs without any type of label but we felt it was time to make things more official so went ahead and incorporated our own label. J. Cash came up with the label name based on one of our track titles, “Sky Skrapin’.” It represents Florida and us to the fullest. From the car thang to the fact that we built everything from the ground up. The name reminds us that the sky is the limit. J. Cash is CEO and I’m President of the company. We’re keeping it limited for now, not signing anybody else, but once things start poppin’ off, that might change.
Over 50,000 myspace fans, 1 million page views, 5.8 million plays, seems as you got something going on down there in Orlando, how’d you get started?
To be honest, word of mouth was the key factor in the rapid growth of my buzz. I dropped my song “City I Luv” almost 2 years ago and I just put it out anywhere I could, mixtapes, online, etc. And before I knew it, it was all over the place. Magic Mall flea market and West Oaks Mall in Orlando had it on alot of their mix CDs, and they were even selling it as a ringtone. MySpace blew me up like crazy. I signed up at the end of 2005 and I went through and added like a couple hundred people in the Orlando area and the rest was history. Folks started puttin my songs on their page and it just spread like wild fire. I don’t do any advertising other than post bulletins every once in a while about new songs or CDs I’m droppin’. My boy DJ White Boi Pizal once said “if you’re hot, then you’re hot.” And I feel that’s true, you don’t really gotta bust your ass promotin if you got a hot product. If one person gets ahold of it and it’s tight, they goin’ pass it on to somebody else, so that’s your promotion right there.
“City I Luv,” I’m feeling that. You kind of switched it up, you know from doing the same old same old. What made you rap about Orlando instead of chick?
Well I try to touch on as many topics as possible. Most of what I write about is based on actual experiences so it was only natural for me to write about the place I’ve lived my whole life. Prior to recording “City i Luv,” I had written other tracks with a similar concept but they lacked that mainstream appeal. My parents split up when I was about 8, so I was always going back & forth living in different parts of town so I’ve lived all over the city and surrounding areas. From Ocoee, Casselberry, Oviedo, Rosemont, Winter Springs, to Union Park so I tried to express that in the lyrics. I focused on the west side of Orange County in the hook because I feel that part of town accurately depicts what it’s like in Orlando and most of Florida. On the other hand, Florida has a lot of folks from all over the country, especially the northeast, so I do my best to make my tracks universally appealing while still staying true to my influences. I feel this is what caused the rapid growth of my buzz; I try not to limit myself too much by alienating potential listeners.
‘City I Luv’ is available, what can a listener not familiar with Jon Young expect? Lyrics? Beats?
My primary goal is to make solid tracks. So what you’ll get from me is well rounded songs and consistency. I do all my own production and writing so you get a cohesiveness that I feel a lot of artists lack. Most folks just do one thing so if they’re a rapper, they’ll have a variety of producers (and writers) which I feel can lead to an inconsistant album. Certain songs may feel out of place because there’s so many different vibes. Ofcourse there’s exceptions to everything. As far as lyrically, I’m definitely not a battle rapper or anything like that but what I’m speaking on is always from the heart and based on something I actually went through. I respect everyone in the game from the emcees to the producers because this industry requires a ton of creativity. And for my beats, they’re usually mid tempo and melodic. I try to reflect my personality and I’m pretty laid back and chilled out so that’s the feel you get when you hear my music… for the most part.
What’s up with the graphic design hustle? What made you leave that for rap?
To be honest, the graphic design thing was a result of the music. I needed artwork and web sites to promote my tracks so I started messin around with it. After highschool I studied graphic design for a little while but it wasn’t where my heart was. I liked doing it for my own projects but I’d get frustrated designing for other people ’cause folks can be picky so now I only do it occasionally.
The comparisons are going to come, do you think you’re anything like a Paul Wall or Lil Whyte?
I get the Paul Wall comparisons the most beacuse of the grill n what not, but nowadays who doesn’t have one? … I’ve been a big fan of Paul for a long while now and I have to admit that him and Chamillionaire inspired and motivated me a lot. Just seeing how they came up on their own and made a name for themselves was a big inspiration. It almost didn’t seem possible for me to even get known ’til I found out about them. They had their home town and the internet goin’ nuts before MySpace & all that so I kinda used it as a blueprint for myself. Our styles can be similar at times because we’re both from the south so we speak on a lot of the same things. I respect Lil Wyte as well, I’m not as familiar with his material as Paul’s but he’s definitely doin’ his thing, I just relate to Paul a lil’ more.
What made you use that sample of “Listen 2 Ur Heart?” It’s sick don’t get me wrong, but you know.
I was actually just working on a beat like I normally do, it didn’t have any samples or anything and I was on the phone with a friend and the chords I was playing were the same ones in “Listen to Your Heart.” So they were like, “oh that’s tight, you’re sampling that one song” and I said “umm, it’s not a sample” and they told me it was “Listen to Your Heart” so I got ahold of the track and sampled some portions of it and it fit right in the beat I was makin almost perfectly. So I just left it in there and I picked out the lyrics in the song that spoke to me the most and wrote based on what they meant to me.
What’s with the south being down with the Cutlass’s and Box Chevy’s? Seems as if everybody from the south is poppin’ off with at least one.
There’s alotta reasons them type of cars are popular down here. Back when bass music got started, folks were startin to put systems in their cars and naturally…if you want it louder, you’re gonna want more speakers. They started out being populer in the lower income communities…we can’t afford Beamers and Benz’s so we got the next best thing, older luxury cars. You get all the options, power windows, seats, locks, etc. There’s just a lot you can do with ‘em, you can lift ‘em and put big rims or juice ‘em (hydraulics). Older cars are pretty easy to find around here, and in good condition because of the mild weather conditions. Up north, older cars are pretty much rusted out from the snow. It’s a big part of the southern rap culture, and I think always will be. Music and cars go hand & hand. It’s basically just a a form of expression, you can let other people know what you’re about by what you drive and what you listen to.
Have you hooked up with any bigger artists that the more mainstream would know about?
I’ve done some production for other artists…the biggest names so far are Magno, former Swisha House artist and Big Sid outta’ Louisiana. I worked with Wes Fif a lot, he’s been my potna’ durin’ this whole thing since the beginning. You goin’ be hearin about him a lot soon enough if you havn’t already. I’ve been discussing possible relationships with some major labels recently so my credits should be expanding quite a bit in the near future.
Where can we get music from Jon Young?
The number one spot to get my CDs and check out my music is my web site: JonYoungMusic.com or on my MySpace page at Jon Young MySpace. My CDs are also available throughout Central Florida in Magic Mall & J Mart both located in Orlando. We’re working on gettin them in more locations and on Itunes soon.
