Jonwayne starts all his recent interviews with a request. “I’d much appreciate it if we focus on the music itself, rather than the personal story,” he says. “I think it’s actually a much better story, the actual making of the album.”



He is asking not to recount the night of 25 May 2014, when he nearly drank himself to death. The first time he told this story publicly was in a typewritten letter posted to Facebook in December. Its opening paragraph describes how he woke up with his throat burning, on a hotel bed covered in vomit. He then explains how he initially thought stepping away from music was the answer.

“In the process I alienated friends and allies,” he writes. “Opportunities and security slipped through my fingers. Bridges were burned. Momentum screeched to a halt. I was scared. All which I’ve spent my entire adult life building seemingly came crashing down on me.

“And in the silence of settled dust, the irony of my situation emerged through the fog and tapped my shoulder. It almost seemed tragic, the one thing I could turn to in the midst of all that: the music.”

In the version of events he tells on his new album, the one-time Stones Throw signee – he was barely in his 20s when founder Peanut Butter Wolf took notice – was on tour and in disbelief. “This is how I make my life, but how I almost died,” he raps on the track Blue Green.

Later this year, an interview series with journalist Max Bell will expand on the timeline of events leading up to Rap Album 2. “Not to say any of that is interesting or that it’s interesting enough for a book,” Jonwayne says, “but essentially we did it this way so I don’t necessarily have to talk about it again.” But for now, consider the title of his latest full-length – how matter-of-fact a mission statement it is. It dares you to ask why we’d want anything more of him.

This attitude toward his music isn’t new. Rap Album 2’s predecessor, 2013’s Rap Album 1, was recorded after two of Jonwayne’s grandparents died within a 48-hour time span the year before. As a result, he does remind himself of his mortality, though mostly to further justify taking an artisan’s approach to hip-hop: “I’m living every day like yesterday was my last/ This undead kid will live forever and then some/ Find me in the future, you can live in the past.” Masked rap villain MF Doom was an obvious influence when Jonwayne first began navigating LA’s underground music scene, both because of his deft lyricism and decision to be enigmatic.

“It’s like people feel the need to know the emcee as a person in order to get into the music, on some soap opera shit,” he said in 2011; back then, he was a frequent performer at Daddy Kev’s beat music epicenter Low End Theory. (The first label he ever signed to was Kev’s Alpha Pup, which is distributing Rap Album 2.)

Last summer Jonwayne released the song Wonka, where he mentions his departure from hip-hop label Stones Throw. “No, I’m not on Stones Throw, I thought you’d know that by now,” he crows. Never mind the role that the crate digger-friendly label played in his formative years, from when he first heard Quasimoto while playing Tony Hawk’s Underground on PlayStation. Until his interviews with Bell arrive, that line is all he has to say about his departure, including why he left or even whether he left on amicable terms. “I prefer not to talk about that,” he says. “I mean, I’m not offended by you asking. I’d just rather talk about the music.”

To be fair, this is for a good reason. A reference point for Rap Album 2 was Sun Kil Moon’s Benji, in which Mark Kozelek’s native Canton, Ohio, comes alive with each lyrical reference to restaurant franchises and relatives who died in freak accidents. Jonwayne’s latest isn’t as obsessive with detail, though it is his rawest work yet – proof of how an artist can sometimes best articulate himself through his art than he ever could in conversation.

He mentions his mother and nephew among the loved ones he abandoned for work – rap – because he thought he’d be better off left alone, a common refrain from anyone dealing with depression. The album comes alive each time he mentions his regrets, the sips of Jameson to combat his fear of flying while touring and times when he catches his own sobering reflection before his recovery. The one instance he tries to shift to default braggadocio mode (The Single), he leaves the booth cursing himself out.

Jonwayne spent nearly two years writing Rap Album 2. So many songs got scrapped in the process, though he kept on drafting because from day one, he knew the point – to relay “the angst or frustration we feel toward the rest of the world because we feel like we’re being misunderstood”.

“It was a very interesting exercise, when I sat down and said, ‘OK, I’m going to stick to this overarching narrative when I write these songs,’” he says. “A lot of the songs that I initially wrote weren’t very good, or they just felt incomplete or they felt forced because I was trying to stick with the narrative. But I stuck with it. And it forced me to become a better writer in terms of being able to manifest my imagination but still stick with a prompt or feeling. I always felt before that, I was sacrificing one for the other.”

One of the standout tracks on Rap Album 2 is Out of Sight. “And on the way I know I gave away some friends/ And every day I wish that we can speak again,” Jonwayne raps, his voice lilting, to a music box melody, “but every time I want to make it right, I freeze up/ in the visions of the shadows of my demons/ who went out of sight.” What motivated Jonwayne to become this vulnerable was this realization that his words can serve a greater purpose.

“The two things that are most important on the record are the feelings of apathy and loneliness – and at the same time, the angst or frustration we feel toward the rest of the world because we feel like we’re being misunderstood,” Jonwayne says. “I wanted to show the importance of friendship and how when we go through these things, we go inside ourselves instead of seeking out compassion within others because we feel like they’re doing a great job, or they’re fine, when in reality we’re all feeling that way.”



“Having those intentions,” he adds. “I think that it’s important that I be as vivid as possible.”

Rap Album 2 is out Friday on Authors Recording Co/The Order Label.