"I just didn’t feel like I was being of use to my community from behind the xylophone; I feel like I can make more of a change with arts administration and through rapping."
For Atlanta native Jordan Carter, music isn't just a hobby that he stumbled into; it's been a foundational part of his identity for as long as he can remember. In high school, he dabbled in rapping with his friends before band practice, and later began pursuing a rap career in earnest while studying percussion performance in college. Today, he has a lot to be excited about: in just a few days, he'll be graduating from Columbia University's Arts Administration master's program, and today, he's celebrating his 24th birthday with the release of his second album My Favorite Things 2.
It goes without saying that balancing a music career with graduate studies at an Ivy League school is a near impossible feat, considering the dedication that each pursuit individually requires. "It’s just a bunch of highs and lows, and it all comes down to how bad you want it," he reflects. "People make time for what they wanna make time for... and with me not having to balance school and music anymore, I can’t imagine what I’ll be able to get done."
After ditching a stage name as a way of presenting a full picture of himself as an artist, Carter released the first My Favorite Things in the fall of 2017, coinciding with the beginning of his studies at Columbia. He was inspired to create the varied collection of tracks after listening to Lil Wayne's freestyle mixtapes like No Ceilings and Dedication, and chose to name the project after one of The Sound of Music's most beloved songs because he believes the film's score is "what music is supposed to sound like," and touches on all styles of music with his rap. When he reminisces on the project now, he appreciates it as a perfect introduction of himself as a rapper, with each track demonstrating his rap abilities in different ways.
My Favorite Things 2, Carter says, is a more mature project with "much more social commentary" than his previous work, and was inspired in part by the identity he's formed over the last two years. "I feel like in undergrad I learned about myself and what I did and didn’t think was cool, but in grad school I learned more about how I can use myself and put myself in different places to make change and make money... so this album is more so about me talking about what needs to happen and what I am doing right now to make change."
In "Now They Beggin' On the Curb," Carter celebrates being seen as "cool" after people "used to say I was a nerd." "It’s so cool to be who you are, and to just be unapologetically real," he says, "and I feel like that's me creating a new norm of what 'cool' means." He later discusses this shift in perception, saying "I'm not the typical rapper; I'm kind of a square! But at the same time, that’s cool because it’s validating to everybody else that’s like me. I know there are more people like me in the world than people doing some gangster ass shit that they listen to." Because of this, Carter says he often opts to create videos for most of his songs to present a visual, real version of himself to his fans, and show them that he's (in the words of Cardi B) a regular-degular-shmegular guy too. "There's more people like me than the Migos. I can validate those people, but they gotta see me to do so," he says. "They gotta see me in some khaki pants and my beat-up Cortezes."
"Petty Crimes for Clementines," a reflective piano-driven track, is "the realest song" on the album that Jordan says divulges some of his deepest feelings about his family. He begins by shouting out his mom and "the things I know she sacrificed," and paying her back with his dedication to his craft ("That’s why I had to stay down in the band / 'cuz that was my ticket to go and expand"). His younger sister Nia—a soon-to-be graduate of Wake Forest University—has emulated his success by following the example he's set for her and using the motivation that he's given her ("I might not be rich but I got a plan / to set a good example for my little sister / used to be so mean so further I pushed her"). Jordan saves some of his most appreciative words for his dad, ending the verse by expressing his gratitude for everything that his family has given him and his determination to pay it forward.
More than to his family, Jordan aims to pay forward everything he's been blessed with to his community at large. His short-term plan: continue building his rap career in New York for the next few years before making his next career move, which will combine his passions of bringing wider access to the arts with his love for creating music. "I’m gonna move home to Atlanta and start up an arts center and arts program in southwest Atlanta, and once that grows for like 7 or 8 years, I’m gonna run for some type of office." He toys with the idea of running for president, if anything to act as a catalyst "to get somebody black to be the head of the UN," saying "I have a martyr complex, where I'm trying to do it for the people." He continues, "I’m just trying to start at a micro level to build up to that type of thing, and I feel like running for president might be something that I have to do to make sure that the right person gets on the top of the UN."
For now, Jordan Carter can bask in the new glory of the "M.A." after his name, and is setting his sights on making the tangible changes in arts that he was destined to make.
My Favorite Things 2 is available everywhere now.
Videos directed by Simon U. Bryant
