Today we’d like to introduce you to Luke Jenison.
Hi Luke, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
Your Mother’s Favorite Rapper here!
I started out as a freestyle rapper in Dallas, TX…which is strange for a kid who looked remarkably similar to Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone until I turned 20.
It was a skill I discovered I had after randomly attempting to rap over a Lil Wayne song while driving parents Honda Pilot. I proceeded to hone my craft at freestyle rapping (making everything up on the spot with no preparation) and become well known in my community for it. If I was at a party, sporting event, any sort of social gathering, people would crowd around and have me freestyle. Sometimes for as much as 100+ people (i.e. an overcapacity Whataburger post-high school rivalry football game, only the best of venues for this guy).
As. teenager I feel in love with hip-hop as a genre and culture. I’d spend my days onYouTube, iTunes, and DatPiff, consuming everything from Kool G Rap to OutKast to (at the time) upcoming artists like Mick Jenkins out of Chicago. It was when freestyling became a constant part of my life that I also fell in love with performing and with the art form as a participant, not just a listener.
So I go to work! In college I started taking music more seriously and began writing original songs, working with live instruments and full bands for production, and booking gigs (whether it was for a small music start up or opening for the DJ at fraternity parties). Wanting my parents to be able to listen and enjoy music with cringing at the sound of me dropping explicates left and right, I decided to become a completely clean artist. And thus Your Mother’s Favorite Rapper was born!
In 2020 I moved to Nashville and found many more performance opportunities. I began performing with live instruments or full bands only, never using beats or backing tracks at my shows. It was after moving to Nashville that I was fully able to realize by sound.
My career in Nashville is split between my solo work and my band work.
As a solo performer, my music spans multiple genres within Hip-Hop. Boom-Bap, Pop, Alternative, a little bit of everything. Very frequently incorporating live instrumentation in my production. But the heart of every song is always hip-hop focused and lyrically I keep the same tongue-in-cheek tone and delivery and self-awareness.
In my band, Lukey J & The Heartbreakers, we lean much more heavily into R&B and Soul, while still using hip-hop as the anchoring point of each song. Elements of jazz, soul, pop, funk, and are incorporated int our songs. Think Silk Sonic if Lil Wayne was their 3rd member.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I’ve had to level up a lot to get to where I am in my career now.
Everything is about taking risks and hoping they payoff.
I had very little performance experience even though that was the area of music I most gravitated before. I spent a lot of time at Dallas open mics to hone that skill.
Dallas didn’t have as many performance opportunities so I ended up moving to Nashville – another big risk in my career. It took a while but as soon as I booked my first gig I was able to impress the show organizers because of all the work I had done at the open mics in Dallas. That opened up a new world of possibilities for where and how frequently I could play in Nashville.
Same can be said for playing liver exclusively with live musicians instead of backing tracks and beats. I had to take a chance on the artists in Nashville and they had to take a chance on me. There were a lot of cold reach outs and messages I sent to people who were friends of friends or through Facebook groups. But now I have a core band and a large rolodex of musicians I can call upon for shows.
I made contacts and have a rag tag support team now, but I had to make all these decisions and over on my own with nobody else pushing me forward by myself. Keeping yourself motivated that way is a huge challenge, and I’m very fortunate fit the people I’ve met along the way and that the work I put in has paid off.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
Mainly I am an artist and performer. My live shows are mix of music and comedy with the songs and performances as the main attraction. My show is always a hip-hop focused event with a prominent mix of soul, jazz, and R&B mixed in.
I also operate as a music video director and producer. Aside from creating all my own videos, I am also hired by artists throughout Nashville (in country, hip-hop, pop, everything) to direct their music videos as well.
Oh! I am also an event organizer. I run Nashville Cypher, a freestyle hip-hop jam where artists can perform live with a 5 piece band all night long.
I am most proud of the community I’ve been able to build and be a part of here in Nashville. There are so many different circles and genres throughout the city, and I am proud to be accepted by many of them, and often a prominent a figure in them as well.
What’s next?
Lukey J & The Heartbreakers will be BACK with a new album next year 2027. I am very excited to spend the year developing, releasing, promoting, and performing this new material that truly leans into the unique blend of Hip-Hop/R&B/ Soul/ Jazz that we are known for.
I am also excited for the growth that Nashville Cypher will see in the future. We are looking to create a space where the entire hip-hop community can come together to collaborate, network, perform, and just have fun and connect on a monthly basis. And I see us achieving that goal in the near future.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://lukejenisonmusic.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yaboylukeyj/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@yaboylukeyj
