Don't let the clean-cut style, wacky antics or funny name fool you. Pigeon John has been repping Inglewood, and more important, L.A. since high school. It all started at the infamous Thursday night open mic called the Good Life on Crenshaw Boulevard.
“I went there and totally fell in love with the scene,” explains John. “The people, the heightened skill. They came from different areas, from Watts, Oxnard, Riverside. There were gangster MCs, weirdo MCs, there wasn't just one style. It made me feel like there was room for Pigeon John, a dude that wasn't in the gangster or heightened artistic scenes. I'm a balance between both.”
It was here that John hooked up with B-Twice and formed the duo Brainwash Projects, which later joined with members of L.A. Symphony to comprise the eight-man collective. In 1999, L.A. Symphony released Composition No. 1 on Eartube Empire. The group followed it up with Big Broke L.A. in 2001 and Call It What You Want , which contained tracks produced by will.i.am and Prince Paul, but was never officially released.
It was around this time though that John started getting the solo jitters.
“L.A. Symphony came to an end in 2003 for me,” John explains. “I started doing Pigeon John stuff in 2001, so I started missing shows and getting busy. We all wanted to make a living doing music, and there was no way to just do L.A. Symphony and live off of it. We would all have to have [other] jobs. It got to a point where I had to do 100 percent L.A. Symphony or just do Pigeon John.”
John started looking for a major label solo deal. After two years he got as far as talking to the VP of A&R at Epic Records.
“All I was hearing was, we love your music but we have no idea what to do with it,” begins John about his label-signing setbacks. “He sat me down and said my song, ‘What is Love?' was a mix of Mos Def and Queen, and they couldn't sell that. But it was a bomb compliment.”
So John and a pal decided to spend their own $2,000 and press up Pigeon John Is Clueless . It sold 11,000 copies with no distribution and led to an indie deal with Basement Records for the release of 2003's Pigeon John Is Dating Your Sister and 2005's Pigeon John Sings the Blues .
Like the L.A.-based hip-hop group Living Legends before him, John is a perfect example of how the indie grind can work for some artists.
“Living Legends were the first dudes who were going to Japan off of selling cassette tapes,” he says. “Grouch, Murs, Eligh showed me. They set the example. When I ran into that wall with Epic, I thought let me do what my homeboys have been doing for five years. I'm going to give it a shot. I realized you can do it. I think that if you do what you love, you're rich.”
Though John's style of hip-hop is far from gangster, he can appreciate the current reemergence in popularity of gangster rap via Compton's the Game.
“I'm a huge fan of gangster rap when it's fantastic,” reveals John. “ Doggystyle is fantastic. I heard this one song from Snoop, from one of his side projects, where he shouted out Murs, 2Mex and the Visionaries, saying how the West Coast needs to support each other, whether it's gangster, underground, artistic, weird or eclectic. I think that there is a lot more love today. When Murs opened up for the Dogg Pound at the Whiskey. That's awesome because we're all the same.”
For now, John is focusing on promoting his current CD, Pigeon John and the Summertime Pool Party (Quannum Projects) and touring.
Sitting up straight, looking rather earnest, John shares: “I would be absolutely flattered to be a part of the soundtrack to people's lives.”
Pigeon John and the Summertime Pool Party is currently available. Pigeon John will perform April 27 at the Malibu Inn and May 14 at Henry Fonda Theater. For more information, visit www.pigeonjohn.com.
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