Jay Mumford was closing in on 40 when he reached the last in a long line of final straws with hip-hop. He was on stage at South by Southwest, wearing a ski mask while playing drums and rapping for Super Black, a new group playing its first show. He was performing as his alter-ego, J-Zone.
“We were getting booed,” he said.
A wet tissue was thrown on stage, landing in a most sensitive spot: Mumford’s rap career.
“”The common denominator of my unhappiness,” Mumford said, “was I was known as a hip-hop artist.”
That was J-Zone’s last show.
Jay Mumford, however, was just getting started, and while this story began as an examination of what happens when someone ages out of hip-hop, it’s what Mumford did next that’s even more inspiring.
Before we get to how Mumford became a funk drummer sought out by Grammy winners, you need to know a little bit about his rap persona.
That would be J-Zone, an exaggeration of some of hip-hop’s most ridiculous trends. He was comically profane, oozing confidence and spitting punchlines – and the fact he never so much as winked at the audience is what made it work. He rapped about his fur coat “that look like I killed the whole Bronx Zoo” and how “you better lock up the Bacardi at your party when the ‘Zone rolls through.”
As J-Zone, Mumford had a loyal fanbase that was large enough for him to make hip-hop a full-time job. His fourth record, 2004’s “A Job Ain’t Nuthin’ But Work,” was featured nationally at Tower Records, but J-Zone never had a breakout hit.
He was more like your favorite rapper’s favorite rapper. Cee-Lo and Danger Mouse of Gnarls Barkley loved J-Zone. In fact, they hopped on stage at one of his shows in 2007, performing for a crowd of maybe 1,500 people at a time when they were selling out arenas because of their chart-topping hit, “Crazy.”
Dante Ross has been involved in hip-hop back since the late ‘80s. He first worked for record labels like Tommy Boy and Elektra before becoming a producer. He worked with De…
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