J-Zone

Westchester-bred, Queens-based rap artist J-Zone (né J. Mumford) began his musical quest when he picked up and mastered a variety of instruments before he even made it out of elementary school. Growing up in suburbia, he specifically dreamed of a career playing bass guitar in a raw urban funk band and would scour record stores for hours to dig up old funk LPs just to mimic the bass lines. Surrounded by hip-hop culture and a now-significant vinyl collection, inspired by "Yo! MTV Raps," and influenced by the likes of the Bomb Squad, Marley Marl, DJ Premier, and local beatsmith-made-good Pete Rock, however, J-Zone had mostly put his funk fantasies on hold by the time he reached high school--where he also earned his pseudonym due to the same zany, zoned-out personality that would eventually manifest itself on his recordings--to concentrate on his emerging skills as a rap producer and DJ, while also occasionally dabbling as an MC on the side. It wasn't until a friend hooked him up with Vance Wright, Slick Rick's longtime DJ and producer, though, that his career officially began to take off. On the basis of J-Zone's home demos, Wright brought him into the neighborhood studio he owned as an intern, and the teenaged Zone eventually worked his way up to head engineer. By the time he had mastered the studio, the fledgling producer was also ready to attend SUNY Purchase in New York City, where he majored in Music. His senior project, in fact, also turned out to be J-Zone's unintentional debut album, the long EP Music for Tu Madre, pressed and released in 1999 on his own slapdash record label, Old Maid Entertainment on vinyl and cassette only. Always considering himself more of a producer than a rapper despite evidence to the contrary, the album also introduced the "Old Maid...