J-Bird has identified with hip hop since he was a shorty in Waukegan. It shows in everything from his speech to his mannerisms–he sounds like a Bronx teen and gestures with his hands like a laid-back MC. The 24-year-old J-Bird (aka Jason Cook) has just launched a new zine called Caught in the Middle, a 55-page bimonthly that’s Chicago’s answer to the myriad hip hop zines published on both coasts.
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Cook thinks Caught in the Middle can change all of that by focusing exclusively on Chicago’s hip hop scene. He says the $2 publication is following in the footsteps of Seattle’s Flava and San Francisco’s The Bomb. Its dizzying layout features resident DJs reviewing local albums, illustrations by hometown graffiti artists, and Chicago radio personalities interviewing local MCs and break dancers. “The whole thing is to get Chicago out there,” Cook says. “People out of the scene need to know what’s happenin’ too.”
Cook says he started to DJ during the summer after eighth grade. “Initially, everybody was breakin’ [dancing], but I couldn’t break that good,” he says. “So what else could I do? DJing. Half my mom’s living room is records, CDs, tapes. And we live in a trailer.” Cook credits hip hop with keeping him out of gangs.
Some take exception to a bald white boy promoting a hip hop mag, but Cook remains unfazed. “I’ve always gotten the white thing,” he says. “I couldn’t say I know totally what it’s like being a minority. But I’ve always hung around blacks and Hispanics, and I’m the minority. I see how they’re treated, and I’m treated the same way because I’m with them. I hear people say, ‘Yo, he’s white, he’s jumping on the bandwagon.’ I don’t go about this trying to prove anything. If people respect me, they respect me. If they dis me, they dis me.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Randy Tunnell.
