School is back in session. Today, ChinaShop features J*DaVeY‘s Brook D’Leau, the sixth and final artist in our series highlighting former students of LA’s Pilgrim High School who have become integral parts of West Coast hip-hop and DJ culture. Check the links for features on DJ StoneRokk, Busdriver, Project Blowed co-founder Abstract Rude, Brooklyn’s DJ Icewater, and international hip-hop star Roscoe Umali.
I went through a lot of old yearbooks pulling photos for these various features, and I’ll tell you right now, there wasn’t anything as fly as the photo below. Like my sisters, Brook graduated from Pilgrim in 1999, so our paths didn’t cross as much, but he was always one of their favorite people to hang out with.
Since 2005, he and Miss Jack Davey been steadily making music as J*DaVeY, a group whose sound has been tagged with almost ever single genre that iTunes has to offer. Back in 2007, when I interviewed the group for Filter Magazine, I asked Brook if, given their kaleidoscopic influences and futuristic R&B sound, we were on the verge of a Parliament-style musical revolution. He said yes…”minus the crack.”
After a string of EPs and singles—and a split from Warner Brothers after a series of creative differences and unreasonable label requests—J*DaVeY released their first full-length studio album via their own ILLAV8R imprint in November of last year. New Designer Drug features collabs with producers, songwriters and vocalists like Thundercat, ?uestlove, Greg Wells, Dave Sitek and more, all anchored by Brook’s next-level beat-making. Watch their Red Bull “Rehearsal Room” Studio performance of “Queen Of Wonderland” below, download the latest “Mistape” EPs from their Bandcamp page, then check the interview.
You graduated in my sister’s class, so later than most of the other guys I featured in this series. Did you have much of a relationship with any of them?
Brook D’Leau: The only person I had a relationship with on any level was Jeret Black. He was a year or two ahead of me when I first started at Pilgrim, and I remember he’d play this game called “You Don’t Want That.” (Laughs) Basically everyone would be outside eating a snack during nutrition or whatever it was called and Jeret and his friend Jason would run around and slap food out of everybody’s hand and be like, “You don’t want that!”
You came from a musical family, but were you pursing music at that age?
Brook D’Leau: I was always interested in music. My father is a musician so it was always around me, and I took piano lessons for a short period of time before I got to Pilgrim. I started doing production around the time I was 15—my freshman or sophomore year—but it was more of a past time than something I wanted to really do. I didn’t decide to seriously pursue it until my freshman year in college.
How do you feel you’ve changed from back then, and how have you stayed the same?
Brook D’Leau: I think I became a lot more content as I got older with not having to be a part of any sort of collective or crew. Even though it was a smaller population at school, I still kept separate. Not like I was ever really an eccentric kid, but I’m more comfortable in my own skin. How I’ve stayed the same? Because it was a small community, I’ve always kept a very small amount of friends and people around me; just genuine connections without there having to be a large number of people in my life.
According to the rest of these guys, golden era hip-hop and what was going down from a pop culture perspective is not only what fueled everyone’s creativity back then, but really effected how everyone came together socially. Would you agree?
Brook D’Leau: For me, personally, that was the biggest influence for me wanting to be in music and being able to share the love of that with friends in my class. I didn’t take part in any of the musical stuff that was going on at Pilgrim. I was definitely a bit more introverted with it. If anything, I was more influenced by the art classes. Even if I wasn’t physically creating music, I was creating art on some level. There being such a small amount of kids at that school, I think it allowed more room for imagination.
Words by Rich Thomas (@TheLandfill). Lead photo by Moses Mitchell.
