Zomb: So let’s kick off light, tell us your name and where you’re from? 

J-Ferr: Whats up Zomb, i go by J-Ferr. I'm from Halifax Massachusetts. A small town in the south- shore actually.

Zomb: We love the east coast around here, tell us a little bit what it was like growing up there? What were your early years like? 

J-Ferr: I wouldn't trade it for anywhere else man. I moved to Halifax when I was turning 5 back in the summer of 2004. Believe it or not, we actually were moving from the first house in the United States with refrigerated milk…. It was in a Whitman wicked old house probably back in like the 1800’s or early 1900’s whenever that was but that’s what they told my parents when they bought the house. The place was haunted as shit too, anyway Halifax became the best place I could have ended up man. I met all my best friends right next door. Ended up moving right onto a street with mad other kids my age. So I lucked out, well we all did and essentially grew up together went through it all with the neighborhood and I wouldn’t change a damn thing. It’s such a small town and we knew nothing but making trails and party spots out in the woods and basketball in the driveway, running a muck in the neighborhood, we did it all. I would hope every other kid could grow up how we did in Halifax. Without them and growing up where I did, I really don’t know if I would be who I am and be an artist. When I think about it, it molded me to exactly who I am now as an artist. So, it’s hard to picture everything being the same if I was to be elsewhere.

Zomb: I really enjoyed the way you described that, some people will never understand that and it’s important to appreciate it when you look back on it. I couldn’t agree more with you, extremely well said. So solid childhood and solid upbringing, tell us about early music you enjoyed? What music were you listening to growing up or what were your parents listening to that influenced you? 

J-Ferr: Yeah man, i could tell you some funny ass stories about us but damn man it’s actually funny my early influences were not rap at all, it was all rock & roll. My dad is a musician himself, he plays guitar & bass and just loves music so it was always a constant in my house. No matter what everyday he was playing on his amp or was listening to one of his hundreds of records he has. So I remember being like 6-7 years old buying AC/DC, Kiss, Green-Day CD’s ect. I fucked with Green Day so hard I can’t lie. I played American idiot on repeat on my little blue boom box radio thing I had the cred popped in their with my door closed jamming the fuck out as a little kid in my room haha what a trip. Yeah so in my early years I was influenced by rock & roll heavily. I even started taking guitar lessons back when I was like 10. My teacher was actually Doug “Kid Bangham” from the Thunderbirds band in the 90’s…at Carver school of music. He was cool and my sister took piano there with me too. I couldn’t keep up with it. I wanted to play baseball instead. The thing was with baseball I was actually good at it, guitar not so much. I didn't have the patience or coordination to learn at the pace I was hoping for. Around 9-10 is when I started getting into rap though at the same time. I started listening to Lil Wayne. He was like eye opening as the biggest rapper in the world at the time. So he made me fall in love with rap and then I was listening to a lot of Eminem, 50 cent too. My mom had the “Get Rich or Die Trying” CD that she gave so that's been one of my favorite albums of all time. No debate. So I started getting the bug for rap as a listener when I was like 9 or 10 with YouTube starting to pop off at the time for music. So I would sit in my kitchen on a red laptop and listen to endless lil Wayne and Eminem shit. After that the next year when I turned 11 is when I transitioned to actually start writing music myself…. I was so heavily influenced by Wayne’s lyricism at a young age it made me start to come up with my own witty punch lines. Then, those punch lines turned to verses. & actually I would write verses in the flow or tempo of another song like a lil Wayne song i would base my flow off of and write in that manner. Well not write, but type into my notes on my phone and that's where my early beginnings really started around 11 with writing music myself then everything built from there.

Zomb: Honestly our parent’s influence on our music taste early on is one of my favorite things I realized over the last 3-4 years. It’s funny you mention rock because it was definitely the same for me and how it leads into diving into rap eventually. You mention a lot of great names and artists there for sure, that was my next question actually was about when the initial interest in your own music happened. So picking back up around 11 years old and getting the groove of things, at what age did you actually get the chance to start recording? 

J-Ferr: I didn’t start actually recording until I was about 16. So, that 5 year period from when I started writing when I was 11, I was writing every single day at least a verse or a whole song, sometimes multiple. I was on a strict schedule with myself without anyone actually knowing for a while. I would come home from school, do my homework, get that out of the way , chill with the neighborhood , come home, eat dinner then write in my room for the rest of the night until I fell asleep pretty much. There's thousands of verses and songs that are gone that I wrote from all the years of breaking my phone & not saving them or writing them down… but as we got into middle school and freshman year of high school. The neighborhood & I would do these rap battles In my boy Bobby's basement and we would mess around but low-key I took that shit seriously. I was tryna bar up haha. That was all jokes then we started writing serious raps together and me and my friend Zach & Dylan had a little group. I forget what we called it but we would write together. I almost got most of the neighborhood to start writing actually when I think about it. That's awesome to know I got almost all of them to try to do this shit with me too so love those guys. As we got into high school and we started to party, that's when one of my friends had me freestyle for them when we were all smoking in homie chases barn, god rest his soul. That's where the first verse of my rapping for people out loud in all seriousness took place when I was like 15. My homie Luke scal gave me all the confidence. He posted it on his Snapchat story & then people thought it was fire. Then every party we went too for the rest of high school I was getting begged to freestyle haha. It was cool but after awhile it was like okay can I just enjoy myself Im way too drunk for this or they would start asking when it’s not the vibe. I hate that actually, like no one wants to hear a freestyle right now bro she's puking. Once that started to catch attention and word of mouth my other homies would post videos of my freestyling and one of the videos caught sway in the mornings attention & he followed me at 16 years old and still does, we have tapped in with each other a few times so it was crazy to have a hip-hop legend that I have dreamed on going on his show to follow me at young age stay along with me on the journey from afar that shits cool. Shoutout sway for that, yeah so at this point I was like I need to actually learn how to record and make songs. So my dad bought me a mic & cakewalk recording software for my 16th birthday. He had no idea how to use it, but one of his singer friends used it and recommended it. He told me to figure it out so I taught myself how to record, edit & mix enough my first 20 ish songs were done on that all recorded mixed by myself . You can hear the progression as each one dropped. My first attempts at recording were so bad man, delivery-wise and mix-wise. I was literally whispering my verses into the mic thinking I'm spitting and had it way too loud or way too quiet so thank god I never put those out. I emailed them to all my homies thinking they were so fire. So laughable now, yeah I didn’t release my first song for a couple months until the first day of school of senior year.  I dropped my first song with a music video called “The Entry” It was all strategically done to garner the most attention with all the buzz from my freestyles anyway coming from the small town. I remember it got 1000 views on the first day I think if I’m not mistaken which was crazy at the time. There was real anticipation so I appreciate everyone that believed in me then. I deleted it a couple years ago cuz of how cringe the video was but I wish I left it now haha. Senior year was when the recording and releases started and it was a song a week for most of the year until I started doing shows.

Zomb: Everyone has that freestyle lore. It's so crazy, it’s like you either freestyled or knew someone who did. That’s such a sick journey though huge shoutout Sway. We got the mic and daw, then you released your first song. Did you initially go by J-Ferr then or did you have a different name? 

J-Ferr: So, actually it was almost J. Ferreira… but then I realized no one’s gonna be able to spell that correctly. This was before I released so I still had time to decide but junior year one of my homies in class started calling me “J-Ferr” for short and I was like “bro you have no idea but you just gave me my rap name”.  That was it, short and sweet, flows off the tongue and can spell it easily to search me up. Shoutout to Mike Melanson for that, great kid & he gave my rap name so thanks bro if you are reading this.

Zomb: Wow yup that worked out perfectly for you, I love that. You’re releasing singles and still pushing yourself but you mentioned you started doing shows pretty early on, tell us about that. 

J-Ferr: My first show ever was actually February of senior year & 2 other local rappers were opening for ScruFace Jean and they hit me up asking if I wanted to open up on my own set. I couldn’t pass it up. It was at this venue in Boston called “The Spot” it was affiliated with UMass Boston College. So I built up a lot of hype around the show, it being my first ever live performance. I ended up selling the most tickets out of everybody. It was crazy I had every single person there screaming the hook to “the entry” back at me. It was kind of a complete take over, I was so amped & prepared for the moment. I had everybody there and the crowd at command so much that when my set was over, Scru didn't let me leave the stage, he said “you gotta stay out there with me they lit for you right now” so I ended up rocking the stage with Scru for his whole set and was technically his hypeman. The vibes were insane man everybody was jumping we had that place lit for the little venue that was and me being only 17 my first show ever it couldn’t have gone better bro. Once the set ended, Scru pulled me in & said “you're meant for this shit bro I mean that “ & he proceeded to ask to go on tour with him in the spring. I had to finish school and I didn’t have the money to travel. I didn't even have a car yet I don’t think haha. Man I wish I did that so bad and to top it all off the venue came to me at the end of the show and asked me to sign papers to book my own headline show at the venue in April a few months down the line. It was surreal bro my homie came to me and was like we gotta do it man so we didn’t hesitate, so my first night performing ever i got to open & rock the stage for Scru face Jean & book my own headline show the same night with the venue. Shit was out of a movie man. Then the shows just kept piling on from there from opening up for Kyle Bent from Boston in Somerville , doing my headline show opening for some other local guys & then Scru & I circled back in 2017 and threw another show down in Wareham at the venue ”3065 live club” I don't know if that venue is still a thing but we shut that down that was both Scru & I’s show that was crazy we had a bunch of local acts pop out. I really got to love performing. I never got nervous, never doubted it always felt right. 

Zomb: Shows being successful early on is so rare, that’s such an honorable experience for sure. Huge shoutout to everyone in the crew that always helped make it happen. So by that time it was inevitable that you were going to take music seriously I assume, or was there a different point in time after that where you knew you wanted to take music seriously? 

J-Ferr: No I knew from that point there, I was meant for it. I mean I always had this belief in myself even when I was writing before anyone knew it at 13 years old. I just kinda worked behind the scenes and manifested it for myself at the time, really. Then to hear from accomplished people like Sway & Scru like that and have a lot of people from my hometown supporting me, saying I'm meant for it when my shit wasn't even radio ready yet or anything but they saw something in me so I wouldn’t be anywhere without any one of my friends family or my supporters from the very beginning. 

Zomb: Absolutely my friend, extremely well said, completely agree with you. So following the highschool years what was your next step knowing you were going to make this a serious career? Did you keep releasing singles and what year was it at that point? 

J-Ferr: Yeah, so the following year of high school I was working on a lot of new sounds and styles moving away from YouTube Beats/SoundCloud releases. I wanted to get on DSP’s and start making shit from scratch. So I ended up getting to know kids from the school next town over in Pembroke through parties. A couple of the kids from Pembroke rapped at the time so I ended up linking with them. I got real tight & built this crazy chemistry with my homie Tom Walsh from Pembroke, extremely talented edm producer and all types … plus he a rapper too when he wants but yeah we started cooking dropping singles back to back together producing writing recording mixing everything ourselves at his crib when we were like 18-19 & then my homie Chase passed away due to a bad car crash & that took a huge toll on me and I couldn’t create write make anything for most of that whole summer. I had to regroup. So all us friends got so much closer during that extremely dark time and kinda partied our way through it in honor of him at the time because that's what we always did together. So once I came out of that funk I started to release some singles with Tom and started dropping my own stuff again and for the year anniversary I finally was able to make song to honor my friend chase and based it off our time together as friends and told our story & the real meaning behind the song was for me to to never stop “chasing” my dreams and fulfill those goals we talked about late night in the car together a week before he passed & honor him in the most positive way I could , not a sad vibe song. A banger & uplifting as he would have liked. Something to slam on his subs. From there, I was focused on dropping a real studio debut album. I wanted to take my sound to radio level & make connections with some bigger artists in Mass. I wanted to become more prominently known, not just in my small town. I wanted to take my sound to the professional radio level, no more basement mixes. That was my next step to grow.

Zomb: Rest in peace to all the homies we lost, it’s fantastic you were able to pick yourself up after something like that. You continued to improve and progress your sound along with your regular releases which brings me to my next question, what was the first song you noticed a significant improvement of your sound? 

J-Ferr: Well I’d probably say once I started going to the real studio at PHX-Down Studios in Sommerville. That's the place to go man. The connections & talent that has been bred from the place is insane. It changed everything for me at the time. I recorded 3 or 4 songs in my first session. I think the first song I recorded was “Nectar” featuring Gio Dee. One of my favorite artists from Boston so it was crazy to get him on a track for my first album and it too come out like that. I actually made the connection through the engineer , Josh Schuback. Who know actually just finished working on Asap Rocky & Kanye’s new album. He mixed most of my debut album & my first singles recorded there leading up to it. He's crazy man, he had me working at lightning speed too, mixing it as we went. I remember, I had like a half-hour left of my session. And I didn’t want to start another song and not finish it… and he was like nah bro you will finish it you come ready I knew you got something so I ended up recording this track “ So Stoned” in the last 20 minutes produced by homie Tom Walsh too. So yeah he pushed me to work at paces i never have and also make the best sounding music possible at the time. That's where it all changed for me right there in that first session at phx down. 

Zomb: Those good local connections can matter so much sometimes, it’s awesome you took advantage of them. Big shoutout to all the homies that made it happen back then. So pulling up to the recent years into 2025/2026, how long does it usually take you to fully create a song ready for release? What is your creative process like? 

J-Ferr: So now everything I do is all from home or shall I say in the car… I don't live in my car,  but believe it or not that is where I have been recording for the past couple months . It’s funny cuz from a quality standpoint, you would never be able to tell, it’s not all about having a fancy ass nice studio. Yeah that would be great but I don’t have that set up right now and my current situation it’s hard to have my own quiet space. so I like to go to my car to know Im in own area. The sound is secure. I have my mic levels set correct.  Big pointer too, I don’t have my car running. Only because you will hear that snd vibrations so turn the car off. Yes, I die in there when it’s hot and have to take breaks sometimes to open the door for fresh air. Anyway so the process is . Get my keys, bring the laptop, interface & mic thats all. Oh also gotta pre-set the beat and recording on garage band before I go cuz I’m going to lose Wi-Fi when and if I leave. Sometimes I record in parking lots or at home but I used to record in our old apartment too and had my little set up. It's not much but one day we will have a real studio. Nowadays man thank god for my engineer Chris. He’s the goat. Every song I have made in the past 2 years since recording from home has been mixed by him. He’s from Kitchener Canada. The records and catalogue we have together stands for itself. He has turned some of my shitty old recordings into beautiful songs man. This is home cooked but in-studio quality. I don’t have all that fancy mics and stuff. He knows what he’s doing. We started working together actually only because I won a free mix from him on twitter by retweeting a post …ever since we've been locked in man. He did such a good job with my first song and was so patient and did so many annoying revisions cuz I didn’t know what I was doing at the time so he really has held me down for the past 2 years so shoutout to Chris aka the wizard for making my music sound consistently fire from home, all remotely. So it’s chill bro my process now is so much more comfortable now at home on my own terms not having to drive an hour and half into the city & paying $300+ when I can do this from home, working with all different producers from around the country and building organically pumping more out while tryna make a living and pay bills/ rent at the same time making due with what I can financially.

Zomb: Those DIY studios can really get crazy, I’ve totally heard of people even recording with Iphone headphones and still sounding so crispy. Sometimes it’s all about how you set it up and not exactly where. With all of that in mind, what is your favorite song or feature you’ve created so far? Can be released or unreleased. 

J-Ferr: That's a hard question man haha I never can pick favorites…. There is something for everybody but for me personally it might be “sometimes” i dropped that last year that was standing at #1 on my most streamed for awhile since it dropped. It's just so catchy and I knew the moment I wrote the song it was going to be a hit. I tweeted about it actually saying something like “I think I just wrote my best song yet“ something like that. That's the song I was talking about. My manager is a long time supporter of everything I've done. Dan always sends me videos of him bumping that in the truck, even today sent me a screen shot. That song hits man, it's a vibe and has a real meaning to it.

Zomb: I love that choice out of you but you’re absolutely right there’s definitely something for everyone in your catalogue. We’re just about in the halfway point of 2026, so what are your plans for summer and the rest of the year? 

J-Ferr: yeah it’s hard to pick for sure but appreciate you saying that. But half way through the year I got 5 singles out so far this year all different styles. Im exclusively telling this here but 2 of the songs I started the year with are actually from 2019… from the vault. Written and recorded mixed everything by Tom & I. We are working on new things over this past year coming soon and wanted to give a taste of what we can do and thought they were still fire 7 years later… & now The latest being my recent banger “FIEND” produced by VYPR Beatz & my most personal yet universal song to date, “Never Giving Up” produced by Grand Rapids own, West-T. That song is something you might want to go listen to if you want to not only hear but feel the real me and what I want to do for people. It’s about not giving up on your loved ones or people close to you struggling with addiction , no matter how much it negatively affected you and your family. It’s so raw and vulnerable because I took my own actual experience & bottled up thoughts and let it all out to remind everybody to never give up on your people. So that record was really important for me to release this summer because that's also going on West-T’s album which focuses a lot on mental health and the struggles of life. We’re definitely going to need to shoot a music video for that track. I have visions and big plans to actually help people and addicts to help get clean and inspire others with this song. So, I’m glad I can do my thing on that beat. It's beautiful with the guitar riffs and all. So those last 2 releases from the past couple weeks are building up for the heavy-hitter feature I was honored to be a part of on the hardest boom-bap album of 2026, ‘Raw II’ produced & hand picked artists entirely by Flipz.  It’s a follow-up album to the first one which had the same hard old school classic hip-hop type sound. He wanted to double down on that so I essentially blacked out and lost my mind lyrically on this shit so I'm super stoked for this album to come out. It’s being released on vinyl too so that's gonna be wild. It's dropping July 14th so rolling in just a couple weeks… Then after that I got all sorts of more singles coming with all different producers from all over the map and locally. Be on the lookout for more from me and Westgate Cam too. That project is still in the works as we speak so expect nothing slowing down over here man. We got a lot more work to do and I'm just excited to see where all these connections and collabs lead to man.

Zomb: The passion is leaking out of that response. I love it. Sometimes those vault bangers come in clutch you know? I’m very excited for the rest of your 2026. Who are some artists you’d like to work with in the future? Can be underground or mainstream. 

J-Ferr: Hell yeah man it’s gonna be a good year just going to let the music stand for itself. But, shit… I would love to work with a lot of other dope Mass artists man, I wanna get another track in with Gio Dee again & I would love to get a joint in with Michael Christmas too… would be dope to get that off the bucket list. Me & all the homies grew up bumping his shit with Mac and saw him live at Mac’s show too so that would be full circle to get one in with him this year. But other artists I want to work with from Mass are Rello, Hes from north shore Hes a great lyricists with all flavors. Joey Mayer, also his freestyles & bar work is insane you gotta see his daily freestyles. He’s gonna blow up. No doubt. Another dope singer from Mass is Evan Haze I saw potential in him right away so I been following his journey too we could make some impactful stuff together I think. But other big cats from Mass like Millyz , Exit Fame , Joyner , Token I want my name to be in the same conversation as them. Eventually. Also but for other artists around the map Im gonna collab with Joey-Y Hes been dropping a song a day all year Hes going crazy too. The collab list could go on but those guys are who I got in sight right now for the most part & if something bigger arises I’ll be ready.