Artist interview ·
115JAI: THE COST OF DOING EVERYTHING YOURSELF.
The Columbus artist built his records around control. The next step has been learning what to hand over.
For years, 115Jai built records the way many independent artists say they want to: with control over almost everything. He writes, records, produces and engineers. He can keep adjusting a song until the drums, vocal levels and mix land where he wants them.
That control helped shape what he calls Midwest Alternative Hip Hop. It also made time one of his biggest costs. In his September 10 FVTV interview, Jai described studio days stretching from five to twelve hours and a hard drive full of unfinished decisions.
The story behind “Malibu or Venice” begins there. A song about being absent from the people he loved sat unfinished until somebody on his team heard a reason to get it out.
Control takes time
Jai does not always begin with a finished beat. He described recording vocals over a loop, then adding drums around the performance. That sequence lets him shape the record around what he has actually sung or rapped.
He traces part of the approach to working with Doobie. Jai said he spent years watching him build beats, learning production, mixing and ways to use his voice. The exchange mattered because it was practical: another musician sharing the tools behind the result.
His own process can still become a long day. Recording the song is one job; building the production and mixing it are others. Jai said a session can run five to twelve hours because he is doing all three. He values being able to make exactly what he hears in his head. Sometimes, he added, he would like to record and go home.
That is where the team begins to matter. Jai links the acceleration of his career over the last two or three years to people who can take on distinct responsibilities. His manager handles business, helps secure shows and makes sure the music is registered properly. His DJ helps the live show. A guitarist who also engineers can record him when he needs another person at the controls.
These are ordinary jobs with consequences. A missed registration, an unconfirmed booking or a session that never ends takes time away from the next record. Delegating gives Jai room to remain the artist without personally completing every task around the artist.
He said trying to force a team together had failed before. The relationships that lasted developed over time. For him, finding people who care about the work has been slower than simply finding people willing to stand near it.
Who gets the time back?
The hook for “Malibu or Venice” had been sitting for roughly a year and a half to two years, Jai said. It came out of a period when partners, friends and family felt he was not available. Last-minute travel and long studio nights made his schedule hard for other people to live around.
His explanation did not erase their frustration. He understood why somebody might not want that life. The question in the song was whether building a better future could justify how much of the present the work consumed.
Then his manager heard the unfinished record while they were going through the hard drive. Jai had considered adding a feature and had not settled on a complete direction. His manager pushed him to finish his own second verse, mix it and release it.
Jai called the result his strongest-performing solo single at the time of the interview. The claim is his; the more revealing detail is the intervention. Making more music had not been the problem. Another person recognized the song already waiting to be finished.
Perfectionism remains harder for him to shake than fear of an audience. He said he can hear something in the car after release and wish he had changed a vocal level, delivered a bar more cleanly or made another adjustment. Listeners may love the same passage without noticing the problem that occupies him.
Shows, messages, reposts and recurring listeners have made him more confident about the work. They have not made every production decision easier. The skill that lets him fix almost anything can also give him another reason to delay.
The single puts that conflict close to home. The hours needed to improve a record come from the same life the record is trying to describe. A team can help him finish the music. He still has to decide what finishing it is supposed to make possible.
The crowd is real
Jai remembers looking into a crowd and seeing children in 115Jai shirts. They had come with their parents. The moment changed how casually he wanted to talk about drugs and guns in his music.
He described it as a question of responsibility and imagination. What reaches a listener who is too young to understand everything being said? What kind of crowd does an artist invite into the room? Jai wants people to feel safe, enjoy the show and get home.
His view of the music is similarly demanding. He argued that easy access to recording and releasing has made strong work harder to find among unfinished songs and weak mixes. That is his criticism of the landscape, not a measurement of all hip-hop. It reflects the attention he gives his own records, even when that attention slows him down.
The sound he calls Midwest Alternative Hip Hop gives him space outside a narrow rap identity. He described rock instrumentation and grungier vocal textures alongside rap verses and hooks informed by R&B. Rock and rap were also part of how he learned English growing up. The combination comes from his listening history rather than a requirement to fit one category.
Independence is practical for him too. He is not opposed to a label deal in principle. He wants to know the obligations, what he would owe, what he would own and how he could leave. A familiar company name does not answer those questions.
His next-year ambition, as he described it in September, is to make music consistently support his life and take his own shows into more markets. He has stopped insisting on a precise follower target for every move. He would rather make the work as strong as he can and see how far it travels.
The records remain his. Learning to share the work around them may give him more time to live the life he is writing about.