Meet YNGBABYJEZUZ; Boston's latest punk
- gerardmullin32
- Feb 25, 2020
- 4 min read
With rap music pushing boundaries and genre lines, punk aesthetics and sounds have become increasingly prevalent in the hip-hop scene. YNGBABYJEZUZ, however, is without genre through his personal mix of raw vocals over heavy punk-based instrumentals.
The persona of YNGBABYJEZUZ is one all of its own, with the music being only a small portion of what he brings to the table. Entering the world of YNGBABYJEZUZ is a three-dimensional experience, one that can only be fully-comprehended through delving into his two Instagram accounts, music video catalogs, and his outrageous performances.
YNGBABYJEZUZ is authentic to himself. His beginnings in skateboarding can be heard in his music through a vehement fuck-the-world attitude and general disrespect to authority. A scroll through his alternate Instagram shows a bloodied JEZUZ following a drunken fight at a funeral, an MBTA mugshot, and troll videos of him screwing around with suits in the financial district of Boston.
Recently, YNGBABYJEZUZ has just released his project, POSER, entirely produced by fellow Massachusetts artist, DJ Lucas. At twelve songs and twelve minutes of utter insanity and riotous delivery, YNGBABYJEZUZ sounds like he has a bone to pick and lets it out through his music. Consistently pushing the distortion of his vocals to the point of clipping, JEZUZ uses tracks like “Psycho B*tch” to let loose about his feelings of losing himself and needing a girl in his life to match his insanity.
In January I had the pleasure to sit down with YNGBABYJEZUZ to discuss his music as well as his roots.
***This interview has been slightly edited for brevity.***
GM : How did you get the name YNGBABYJEZUZ?
YBJ : "That was just an Instagram handle that I had throughout high school. But I got it from Talladega Nights, where Will Ferrell is praying with his family but he’s kind of a clown in that movie so he’s just playing with the name baby Jesus a lot, pissing off his family."
GM : Are you from Boston?
YBJ : Yeah, I was raised in Dorchester.
GM : What was your earliest introduction to music?
YBJ : "Growing up my uncle was obsessed with Joe Strummer from The Clash. He would show me a bunch of punk bands all the time when I was around twelve or thirteen; I got introduced to ska and punk music really early on. I wasn’t really listening to it but as I got older, around 19, I realized my uncle was really cool. I started making music when I was 21, I was very into Soulja Boy and the Based God, and you know how that "based" sound is, they don’t give a fuck what they’re saying. That was a big influence to me. It’s just hard. That was a big influence at first, my first song “Dirty Dan” was just a troll but I thought it sounded good so I put it out after a while."
GM : Your album is entirely produced by DJ Lucas, how did that come about?
YBJ : "We met through my videographer Goldbloom; we kept it cordial, we didn’t talk about music at all. We both performed at the Thrive one year show, his set was right after mine and he came up to me after my set and told me I did a good job and he would be down to make music. And then he invited me on his tour that we did in August. So I went on tour with him and that's where the idea of making music came from. He made the “Fuck You Up” beat. He took the sample from The Strokes, while he was working on the beat, I came in the room just because it sounded good, it was just natural, that’s the best part. From there is when we came up with the idea to make an album."
GM : Twelve songs, twelve minutes, is that something you wanted to do?
YBJ : "Yeah, that's how a lot of punk songs are; I wanted to apply that formula to it. I don't wanna rap. I just want sounds. He helped me a lot curating that, the way he produced that its very genre-blending, the distorted beats."
GM : What's up with the interlude on there?
YBJ : "He recently moved to a village in the sticks, and it’s on a mountain. For some reason at night when the fire department has a call, the alarm goes off, it’s creepy as fuck. So it’s 3 AM and we were working on the album. There’s a snowstorm so I’m just locked in working on music. I heard the alarm going off and with the wind, it just sounded cool and I recorded it."
GM : How come some songs are no longer on YNGBABYJEZUZ? You have like an alternative ego, almost like Mac's Delusional Thomas, high-pitched and drugged-out.
YBG : "Yeah, that's a good way to put it. At this point I think I have a sound, and I don't want to put something out officially and people to think I'm doing it seriously. I do take the yelling/distorted stuff seriously, not with the lyrics but for my energy at shows. That’s why I want to do this, for the shows. I’m a hyper kid. I love skateboarding.
I’ve seen some clips of you skating, is that something you take seriously?
Skateboarding is what gave me my confidence, I started skating when I was 12 and I took it seriously right away. Me and my friends would be going into the city squadded up, skaters love doing that. It got to a point that we met up not to just skate, but just to fuck with people,. My first memory of us doing stuff like that, we would come out during the wintertime. It didn’t matter how cold it was. We would wrap up newspapers into balls and then go to the financial district, cause we loved messing with people like that, and skate by them and throw the freezing newspapers at them. That's why I get a kick out of messing with people, like with security guards. I've calmed down a lot since then, not gonna pick a fight with someone."
Follow YNGBABYJEZUZ on Social Media
Comments