Sharks In The Water: J.R. Cruise
Meet J.R. Cruise, the 25-year-old LA artist making music we can all ride and live to.
Vanice: Let’s take it back a bit, tell me about your upbringing.
J.R. Cruise: I was born and raised in Los Angeles, California! My childhood was pretty regular, I just liked being outside and playing sports. I was big on basketball, I played tennis, skateboarding and shit. I was just always outdoors with my homies, nothing out of the ordinary.
How long have you been making music and how did you get into it?
I've been making music my whole life. Like it's not some overnight shit for sure, for sure. I grew up around music. I got family that’s been in The Temptations, Ice Cube is my second cousin, and my pops used to always play DJ Quik for me. I played the drums when I was a kid too, so yeah, it’s not some overnight shit.
Tell me about how your new project Seeds came about?
I’ve been working on Seeds for three years, it pretty much came from everyday life, planting seeds daily. I feel like it's something that everybody can kind of correlate to their own life. Like everybody plants seeds, whether you work a job, you're out there hustling, making music or whatever it is -- every day is a seed. Every line on here is the truth. It’s about about going out, being out here in LA and having fun but at the same time, dealing with everyday life and trying to come up through the ups and the downs.
At the time, I used to do like my little shit with the weed, growing it. My pops used to grow weed so he was actually teaching me how to grow weed at the time. If you listen to the project, it's like a little excerpt from my pops and in this particular conversation and he was talking about how everything starts with a seed. It’s something that resonated with me and I never forgot it. So I knew from that point on, about 3 years ago, I’m going to call my first project Seeds because everything starts with one.
My personal favorite song from Seeds is “Samuel” at the moment. Can you give some insight into the backstory behind that record?
It’s crazy because I’m seeing “Samuel” receive a lot of love and that song wasn't even on my project originally. I literally put it on Seeds like two days before the release. I took one song off and I substituted it with “Samuel”. But when I recorded it, the homie Haze who produced it played me the beat and I just fucked with it and just started rapping on the shit. It wasn’t really a concept for it, just some freestyles and some cool shit. I got a homie named Samuel that’s kind of on his little nerdy shit so I dedicated the song to him. I recorded it at Hit-Boy's studio and he was one of the first people to hear the song, he walked in when I was recording it. But it’s crazy how it turned out because a lot of people fuck with that song and it wasn’t originally on Seeds.
The cover art for Seeds is really tight. Who came up with the concept for it and photographed it?
I pretty much came up with that concept. I wanted to shoot it in my cousin Tina’s backyard and depict the concept for the project. So if you notice, a bunch of photos spell out “Seeds”. They’re photos of just everyday moments that I feel like led up to this, so it’s just life experiences that my project is based off of. My cousin Tina is one of the heads of the lowrider club, Supernatural, and she introduced me to a lot of good people like Curren$y, I love her and she always comes through for a nigga if I ever need anything.
That’s her Caprice but I’m big on cars and got my own shit. I got a ‘64 Cadillac and ‘72 Buick so you get to see what I’m in to a little too. My homie Matt Kaplan who just got off tour with Rae Sremmurd not too long ago shot the cover and helped the vision come to life for sure, for sure. But yeah, it came out cool.
Is there anything that you want people to know about you and your work?
Shit, that’s a good question. Um, you gotta excuse me because I’m off a couple margaritas right now. But yeah, I feel like I gave a good representation of the sound, a good representation of what to look forward to, and there’s always going to be growth on the next project for sure. I have a Manager but I’m doing this on my own, you know.
I want whoever is tapped in with me now to grow with my music at the same time. A lot of times you never really see the growth with artists and you just see the finale. But for me, this is the start-start and it doesn’t get any earlier than this.