Pigeon John is a native and resident of Los Angeles, California. His lyrics defy and help redefine what west coast hip hop is and what hip hop is as a genre. On stage he has incredible stage presence which is a combination of his unique humor and off beat rhymes. Getting his start at the legendary Good Life Café with other artists seeking to define their style at their open mic nights, he honed his craft and style to what they are today. John, where did you grow up? I was born in Omaha, Nebraska. My mom moved to Inglewood, California and we stayed there for five years and then we moved to Hawthorne for five years. Then I moved to Downtown, Los Angeles; got married and now we live in the Valley. I lived in Paramount, hung out in Huntington Beach; so just every part of Los Angeles. Do you like Los Angeles? Yeah I love L.A. It’s the best city in the world. Why is that? Well, because I think you grow up in it so you get used to it. The food is good, there’s like hundreds of different cultures within a couple blocks. The music scenes, especially in hip hop… Man that car is silent! (Pointing at a Toyota Prius) Yeah you can get hit by that car. Jeez Bro! Especially with hip hop and jazz, Los Angeles has a certain vibe to it. It just inspires me. Downtown L.A. down to Venice beach is totally different but still the same city. I think that is the only city where I have experienced that, or have that different spectrum. Everyone is not the same. And you can get lost in this city very easily. People don’t take public transportation here I like that… (Laughs) When I first went to New York I realized why people were close knit. Because in the sub-way you have the model, the high school student, the very successful lawyer, the homeless guy, all on the same subway. So that is a different type of magic. It’s almost like a forced magic. Creativity can’t help but flourish in that scene. But in L.A. you have to find it! (Points to a normal looking house across the street) Houses like this you don’t know what is going on in there! Could be meth, could be crippled, and used to write for a soap opera… It’s a dense city. How did you get into music? I always liked music but I blame it on KDAY, this radio station in Los Angeles back in the day. Back in Nebraska there was no hip hop, just pop music and songs I liked. When I moved here in the fourth grade, hip hop was very young and didn’t know who she was or whatever. Everyone was into it but it wasn’t a scene really. I used to listen to KDAY and used to wonder “what is this stuff?” It was Houdini, Human League, Madonna, UTFO, all on the same station because there wasn’t a rap station yet. I think PWR106 was all like house music or party stuff. KDAY was what sparked my interest in rap and pop music. It was sceneless and wasn’t defined yet. Was this high school? No, it was elementary school… Which is crazy because when I think about the little kids and how grown up they are but they look like little children. It sticks with them the rest of their lives. So you knew you wanted to make music in Elementary School? No, I got into it but it wasn’t until high school. At the same time I got into skating and writing silly raps with my friends Btwice and Ernest red. I still kick it with Btwice who still lives in Inglewood. I think the whole skating scene was not yet defined or not normal yet. The rap scene in L.A. or the west coast hip hop that we raised on was different. The east coast was so defined I mean it was like “Long Island” “The Bronx” “Manhattan” We were like where is Inglewood? We were left out. When groups, namely NWA came out… I didn’t really relate to the harsh cocaine tales. When The Pharcyde came out I totally related. It was like reminding you of your cousin or that one black guy who skated with the white dude in Torrance. That’s Fat lip of the The Pharcyde. These were groups that I felt like related to me and I knew I wanted to do that as a living. My mom was so kind as to never put that down. She could have easily crushed that.
Your mom was very supportive? Never once did she criticize me and I did not realize how important that was until later on in my life. I wasn’t even confident; I just never second guessed it. It was as basic as “I want to become a teacher” “I want to become a mechanic” or something like that. It was just “I want to be a rapper” She really raised us with a lot of self confidence. When did you start honing your skill? At first it was just us guys making it without beat machines or turntables. We would just pause mix. We would sample off K-Earth or K-Jazz and we would loop the beat and rap to it. We would have one radio with the looped beat and one radio with the MIC and we would press record and press play. We would just freestyle. We made full albums with fake covers. Btwice and I would trade albums. That was training us for the beat machines, so when we did get them we already knew how to loop. We would loop two bars 150 times and that would be one song. We thought it was forward thinking. So when we got the ASR-10’s it was like cake. We were already doing it. Where did you practice? When I heard about The Good Life Café and the open MIC. It was the only open MIC in Orange County and L.A. It was on Crenshaw and 43rd. I worked at Walden books at the Hawthorne mall before it shut down. The first night I went it was only 8-10pm. No Cussing. So I showed up at 10pm and the whole parking lot was filled with dangerous looking people. I lived in Hawthorne and that’s only ten minutes from Compton but it was like a completely different culture, country almost. Even when I said I was from Hawthorne I would get laughed at. I thought I was pretty good, like around my friends. So I get in there with my work clothes and the first thing someone says to me is “you rap bro?” and I said “Yeah, I rap bro!” So I did my best verse, it wasn’t bad, but I noticed that no one cared. I thought to myself, “god! I’m bad!” so I told myself that I would keep coming until I got their attention. It took months before I found out how to make the ears perk up. Since then I never looked back. What was The Good Life Cafe like? It was a great open MIC for the community and got people into the arts and off the street. There was no cussing, no b-words. No putting down women or your MIC would get shut down. It was a weird place. Once again with the L.A. rappers you had hippy rappers, skaters, gang bangers from Watts, all in one parking lot. It was a very multi-cultural scene.
What was the energy like in that place? I read the Miles Davis biography and he described the Jazz club in Harlem where he would go. He was describing horn players riffing off each other. The energy was so condensed and small before it went down to Manhattan and kind of blew up and became really big. When I read that I thought that was exactly like The Good Life. The people were shaking off the whole N.W.A. Ice Cube gangster rap thing and wanted to define themselves. Separate themselves from New York, from gangster rap. But not because it was gangster rap, there were gangsters that were rapping there, but they were just trying to be real good. The synergy and energy was just Intense and Magical. Freestyle Fellowship were like Jazz musicians but vocally. They would follow the piano, without practicing, with his words. Will.i.am was there, The Pharcyde, Jurassic Five, but before they were Jurassic Five. Cut Chemist was the main D.J. There were no Latin people. It was all black people except Cut Chemist and a Latin dude. It was very supportive but you get boo’d off the stage if you sounded like anyone. They really encouraged creativity. How much of the audience do you keep in mind? I would say 75%. Especially at shows. That does directly come from The Good Life. I found out that when I let my guard down or I let myself be the Christian kid from Hawthorne, I really got them to look. Some people would really dis it, like “get off the stage!” Back then it was very Muslim and African pride. Christianity was the white man’s God bro. I knew that was what made them listen, when I became my self. I wrote songs about high school, girls, Walden books and made them say “oh that’s that Christian kid from Hawthorne”
What about performances now? I basically try to let down my guard as much as possible and pretend that it’s our last show. Your lyrics are not typical at all, how much does your imagination play into writing those lyrics? Like every artist, write what you know. That is huge. Writing intensely what you know. I would say also letting go and try to write it in a different way. Sometimes I don’t even know what I am doing. If I am laughing or crying when I am writing then I know I am on to something. It is not like Picasso, or God Inspired, but I really feel like, you know God created everyone, so when I get to that main vain I really feel like there is a commune between me and God when I write. Your music positive, but it’s not just positive. There is a dark humor to it, an undertone to it. Is that from your own humor? Growing up in high school and junior high I was not that popular kid but was not the nerd guy. I never really fit in until I was a senior, when I kind of embraced who I was. I was like “I’m dope” “I’m incredible” I did that for self defense because no one was going to do it and no girls were saying that. Almost to the point where it became ridiculous. I always picture the writer who is unsuccessful but thinks he is the greatest. I combine what I see around L.A. and my own stories in that way. What inspires your music? My relationship between man and god is a huge inspiration. Whether it is a fight or you know a communal relationship. I think it’s intensely important because the thought of God in the human existence and in all of history has always been there. Every culture had their dialogue with God, it was almost built in. I like movies, films, Charles Bukowski: the way he wrote about L.A. was the best.
How is your relationship with your wife? What do you think about the music scene right now? I think it is ultimately good. The web and how hip hop is now a huge situation. I think it is really healthy because the music is directly in the hands of the consumer. It is easier to make beats and write rhymes and put records out. Because it is so wide spread you have no idea who is into rap, you never know, and it wouldn’t surprise you either. When music is easy and accessible for the music’s sake it is really healthy. I don’t look at any of the downsides of it because the good stuff still sticks out. Even if it is like 1 out of 10, or if it is like 1 out of 20,000. New artists like the Cool Kids or Pactivision who mean what they are doing. What does Pigeon John do on a Sunday? Do you go to the supermarket? I do really normal things. We go to Northridge mall sometimes (laughs). We go see movies. I have a baby now, seven months old. Congratulations. Thank you very much. Now we are taking care of the baby. Going on walks and that sort of thing. What do you say to the kid growing up in Hawthorne right now, not just in terms of advice about hip hop but for the kid from the city that is kind of a behind the scenes kind of city? Well, I would tell him that Brian Wilson is from your town. The Beach Boys were the only band to challenge The Beatles. When I found that out, I was like “I am from Hawthorne, bro!” He was a Hawthorne kid man. Everyone was influenced by the Beatles and you live in the town that brought someone up that influenced the Beatles Secondly, I think Hawthorne is a beautiful town because it is part hood, part beach. That weird energy is kind of dope. MC’s like myself ,Korrupt, he lived in Hawthorne before he was slinging that Crenshaw stuff. I went to his apartment. There are a lot of good MC’s from that town. You have to believe in yourself. Listen to John's music here. |
