Justin Mohrle drives through the streets of Sherman Oaks, California, Snoop Dogg playing faintly on the radio as the sun begins to set. The 23-year-old Garland native—JT to his friends—is behind the wheel of a rented high-end Hyundai sedan he definitely didn’t pay for. His last job, at Macy’s, barely paid enough to cover his rent. Riding shotgun is Thomas Biggars, his best friend and personal videographer.
It’s Biggars’ second night in town from Dallas, but Mohrle has been here since earlier in the summer. That’s when he was summoned to California by Dr. Dre.
Dre had heard a demo the young rapper made with the help of Dallas hip-hop legend The D.O.C. Now Mohrle is in a spot previously occupied by Snoop, Eminem, 50 Cent, and Kendrick Lamar: under Dre’s wing. Since making what he calls an “indefinite” move to the West Coast, he’s been spending marathon 13-hour writing and recording sessions at Record One, the cutting-edge studio complex in Sherman Oaks that’s been Dre’s second home for much of the past decade. As far as Mohrle is concerned, that means Record One is his second home now, too.
Tonight is a rare night off from the studio, and Mohrle and Biggars want to make the most of it. It’s almost 9 pm, but they are determined to get in a little sneaker shopping. Mohrle says he’s kind of starting to learn his way around, so he’s pretty sure we’ll make it to the mall in time. When we get there, however, the mall is closed.
Mohrle admits he doesn’t remember the last time he was at a mall. “Seems like the kind of thing you take for granted,” he says.
It reminds me of an old Kanye West interview, where he talks about standing on an escalator at a Virgin Megastore just before his career took off, thinking he might never get to enjoy a moment of public anonymity like that again. I ask Mohrle if he’s felt like that lately.
“Yeah, sometimes,” he says. “With the situation I’m in, Dre could decide to drop a track tomorrow, and then I might not be able to ever go to the mall again like this. Just us. By myself.”
He’s earnest about this, but it seems unlikely at the moment. A week before I arrived in California, Dre’s camp went into lockdown. Mohrle has been heavily coached by his management as to what he can and cannot discuss with me. He can tell me whom he is working with, but he cannot tell me the nature of that work. He can tell me that he’s working with buzzed-about rappers BJ the Chicago Kid and King Mez from Raleigh, North Carolina. There is a photo on his Instagram page (@officiallovejt) of him with Gwen Stefani—captioned “Working with Gwen Stefani. Amen. #nodoubt”—but he can’t tell me any more. He can tell me that he’s spent nearly every waking minute since he touched down at LAX two months ago writing lyrics in the studio. But he can’t tell me whether it’s for a project with his name on it, or anyone else’s, for that matter.
But The D.O.C. can. He has worked off and on with Dre since the West Coast rap icon brought him out to California from Dallas in the late 1980s. If it goes like he says, then maybe this really will be the last time Mohrle is just another anonymous white kid at the mall (that’s closed).
“JT and I worked on a couple songs; Dre fell in love with the songs; Dre stole the songs from the kid, because he wanted to put them out as a unit,” The D.O.C. says. “That’s the way this house is rolling. We’re all putting our energy toward building another classic for The Good Doctor. Then he’s going to take his time to help us build a classic for the youngster.
http://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/2015/february/justin-mohrle-dr-dre-newest-discovery
nikkas getting replacements for Future and Drake now
You know the game fukked up when Dre ain't even innovating anymore!!!!
the next Eminem
needs to stop. People aren't even that excited about Detox anymore. fukk is he doing?
