The new project is an eight track mixtape entitled ‘Free Mined: Psyde A’. There’s an anarchist streak bubbling beneath the surface of Juñor’s calm demeanour, he tells me this has always been the case as we sit down in his studio.
“I’ve always felt like I thought differently to other kids, especially on that whole ‘money is not real, experiences are real’ kind of thing,” he says. “When you’re on your death bed what’s running through your mind isn’t dollars in your bank account, it’s memories man – it’s memories and experiences that make up a good life, not dollar amounts.”
When Juñor was in Grade 6, his school implemented a program entitled ‘earn and learn’, aimed at teaching kids the values of business and monetary exchange for goods and services. All the kids started off with a set amount of fake cash distributed by the teachers and they were allowed to bid for different ‘businesses’ and build them up throughout the school term. The kid with the most money and assets at the end would win a prize.
“The first thing I did was bid and buy the couch business right at the start,” he laughs. “I didn’t want to charge anyone to sit on the couch, I didn’t want to make money or anything, I did it because I wanted to sit on the couch every fucking day.”
Not content there, Juñor went along and convinced the other Grade 6-ers to ditch money which wasn’t real and begin trading instead. Soon the car dealers were trading cars for ice cream and everybody was getting free couch sits which they traded for their own goods. Juñor unwittingly ended up with a whole bunch of fake cash and assets and the system eventually collapsed. 10-year-old Juñor effectively brought down his mini Grade 6 economy.
Juñor tells me he has always wanted to spread this message, the message of living life in joy rather than accepting rules which impose on that full potential for happiness – an urging for others to peak around the corner into a realm of what mainstream systems would label taboo. And it is through his music that he has found the perfect vessel to do this.
“My first project was very free minded, but a lot darker and psychedelic – very introspective,” he reflects. “But this new one, there’s a lot more talk about expanding your mind and spreading love and equality, but it’s sort of done in the way I like to live my life. I like to be smart and preach love but I also like to have some fucking fun as well. I like to have some experiences. So scattered throughout it is a whole bunch of jokes and experiences, but there’s also a bunch of dropping knowledge.”
The studio, built by Juñor and his older brother and fellow member of the R.E.A.L Music family Matthew Craig, is a childhood dream turned adult cubbyhouse for which to create dope shit. Juñor rolls a joint as my eyes catch the old school car carpet that every kid had – an element of youthful curiosity which he carries around and projects into the wealth of knowledge that comes with experience. The type of experience one gains when touring the country with names such as Seth Sentry and the Wu-Tang Clan, not to mention fellow rising star Ben Townsend, who you may know as Ivan Ooze.
The aforementioned Ooze has a sneaky feature on the third track Soul So Bliss. “I often write hooks with the voice of other artists in mind,” says Juñor. “For Soul So Bliss, I wrote that hook with Ivan Ooze’s voice in mind, so I hit up Ben and told him I had his sound in mind, he came to the studio and we tripped out his vocals – his voice was the instrument I had written into the song.”
The eight track mixtape, as Juñor describes, is an invitation to: “Free your mind from the dream of the planet and live your own individual dream bound by what’s within you. One person’s idea of beautiful is the next person’s idea of ugly. Therefore, either nothing is beautiful in this world, or everything is. You decide which way you want to look at it.”
“Free your mind, mind your freedom.”
BY DAVID ALLEGRETTI
