Students showcase their musical projects
By Jessica Skaggs
Phil ‘Lowkeezy’ Jones, student, is a DJ for ECAV Radio, as well as a local underground hip-hop artist who has performed in several places throughout the United States, including Las Vegas and Salt Lake City.
“Music in general has always been in me and it’s just something that I’ve always done,” he said. “When you’re going through something you don’t really have to hold it inside, you can just write it down and make art out of it.”
Lowkeezy has gained popularity not only in the United States, but throughout the world as he has sold CDs in Italy, Germany and Japan. Although he has had quite a bit of success, he said he had his first experience of fame was while performing in Salt Lake City.
“I had a song that was called “Ball Out, Ball Out” and I performed it and before, everybody was just kind of sitting down and then all of sudden before we knew it, 30 people were on stage with us,” Jones said. “Security started having to put people off the stage and girls were trying to grab my microphone and it just got crazy. I almost fell off stage because there were so many people.”
With the success Lowkeezy has already reached, he is satisfied with where his music career is at for now.
“To a certain extent I feel like I already have kind of made it big,” he said. “So I am content right now, and I really don’t know if I want a record deal just because when you’re independent you have so much more say-so and you keep all the money when you get shows. You don’t really have to worry about anybody else and no middle man. It would have to be a nice amount of money for me to go mainstream because I like being underground.”
Although hip-hop is Lowkeezy’s main genre, he also identifies and gets his inspiration from other music genres, including soft 80s rock.
“I grew up on Michael Jackson,” he said. “He was just so artistic and such a weird person, but when he came on stage that was like the only time he was comfortable, and it was like he found himself by getting lost in his music.”
The underground culture is Lowkeezy’s main audience, as he feels there is more value given to local artists.
“[The underground culture] is cool,” he said.”It’s like they respect you more because they see you out riding and hustling trying to get your music heard, so a lot of people respect that. There’s a variety of people that just listen to underground music because they feel it’s not watered down and mainstreamed.”
Lowkeezy’s next peformance is April 17 at the Granada. His music can be found on iTunes, SoundCloud, Spotify and YouTube.
Article by Jessica Skaggs, managing editor, jskaggs4@jccc.edu.