Curbside Jones bought a cheap mic from Best Buy in 2005 and subsequently recorded his first song at the age of 15.
He burned his maiden track – based on the instrumental to Eminem’s “Soldier” – to a disc and gleefully replayed it incessantly. Hooked by the thrill of recording, he’d lay down verses before hastily catching a bus to school, then write more rhymes after returning home. A steady stream of compact projects – which he doesn’t specifically label as albums or EPs – over the last decade demonstrate the sustained presence of that voracious appetite in his life. But a search through the Buda-based multi-hyphenate’s Bandcamp reveals a sizable gap between March 2022’s Jigga With the Grill and August 2024’s Nigo With the Skully.
Jones, born Jerry Manning Jr., and his wife welcomed their first child, Amir, in January 2022. His new project, the DøøF-produced ALAKAZAM, arrived last week. A note on its Bandcamp page dedicates the effort to “active dads who need encouragement to pursue their dreams.”
Adjusting from many years of artistic freedom to juggling fatherhood, marriage, and work proved challenging for the new parent’s creative ambitions. He even transformed his music space at the couple’s old two-bedroom apartment into a room for Amir, whom he lovably calls a “giant.” He offers an analogy for the lifestyle change: “You know how when you break something, you’ve got to go through physical therapy and everything and learn how to use that muscle again?
“That’s what it felt like. That was very frustrating to me because I had come from just working on music whenever I wanted.”
So much so, he contemplated retirement until friends convinced him to keep making music.
“That’s where Nigo With the Skully came from – just me being more intentional or [saying] I’m going to take this time,” the 35-year-old says over the phone. “There’s going to be times where I got to step away from the family, and that’s okay. I show up enough, I can step away for an hour or two to record a verse. Or I can step away for however long to work on [a] beat.”
FEEDTHEFAM
Jigga With the Grill and Nigo With the Skully marked a deviation from Jones’ previous, more personal work. On both projects, he raps technically well over cool beats, but there’s not much introspection or off-the-wall themes. Returning to form, he mulled over how to lyrically incorporate his experiences as a father. “I wanted to do [Amir] justice by making sure when I did talk about him in the music, it was good,” he says. “Like undeniably good and it wasn’t corny. I didn’t want people to look at me like they [look] at Will Smith.”
Named after the character from his favorite anime Pokémon: Indigo League, ALAKAZAM wastes little motion within its brisk runtime. Curbside Jones elevates his ethos of combining sharp lyricism and authentic subject matter into a thoroughly appealing five-song, 15-minute package. He initially envisioned the tape as having a more “abstract” and “off-kilter” sound to loosely reflect Alakazam’s high intellect until he heard the 80-plus beats DøøF, who also worked on the title tracks to Jones’ previous two projects, sent over to him. The Virginia producer-rapper provides soulful, sample-heavy instrumentals that serve as a fittingly warm backdrop for Jones’ reflection.
Impactful opener “MEGASTONE” turns the effort’s title character, who is known for bending things telekinetically, into an extended metaphor about cooking and providing for his family (“In the kitchen with two spoons, hoping I don’t leave too soon”).
The track also features one of Jones’ favorite lyrics: “Watched Amir shed some tears when Simba lost his father/ Can’t let the king deal with Scars as I look down like Mufasa.”
“My son watches The Lion King and he cries,” he says. “I think about when I’m gone, I’ve got to set him up to where he’s not dealing with people like Scar. I’ve got to make sure I set him up right before I’m out of here – and who knows when that will be? I’ve got to cherish every moment and make sure I’m coaching and teaching him. Those kinds of raps started coming more naturally and then that’s how we ended up with ALAKAZAM.”
“Yeah, parenthood is about sacrifice, it’s about providing, being present, but at the same time you can still follow your dreams because if you follow your dreams, it lets your kids know they can follow [theirs].”
“Prince, Royalty, Leader, Destined to Stand Out”
The project’s most personal track, “ZIMZALABIM,” sees Curbside Jones and blog era rapper sydneyintheory offer meaningful bars about passing on principles to their children. Rather than pepper his lyrics with allusions to anime or movies like Harry Potter, the Japanese culture aficionado reins in the references to get his sentiments across in an uncharacteristically direct manner. Jones goes all-in during his verse: he touches on seeing his parents slowly age while aging himself, breaking generational curses (“the genes don’t fit the same when you change the wash cycle”), and remaining true to yourself when people come at you. He ends “ZIMZALABIM” with a message of encouragement toward active dads, which echoes the quasi liner notes left on the tape’s Bandcamp page.
“ZIMZALABIM” plays like a parting voice memo because it was initially the tape’s closing track – and it’s a message to Jones’ son. “I wanted to make sure that I put it all out on the table before everything closed up and kind of strip away the witty references,” he says. “I want him to play this back when he gets older and be like, ‘My dad was trying to leave me with some gems.’”
That powerful track and its closing remarks are dear to him because he’s witnessed friends forfeit their own musical aspirations once they became fathers. In his view, pursuing your dreams is one of the best ways to foster the next generation’s aspirations. “It’s like people that played football in high school and then high school is over and they reminisce on the ‘glory days,’” he says. “And I’m just like bro, go pick up the mic. Go, get on the mic, do something. They just throw it all away because they feel like their dreams aren’t important anymore.
“That’s a real dangerous spot to be in: when you discard what really makes you, you. Yeah, parenthood is about sacrifice, it’s about providing, being present, but at the same time you can still follow your dreams because if you follow your dreams, it lets your kids know they can follow [theirs].”
Diamond in the Rough
Curbside Jones is rarely mentioned among Austin hip-hop’s best (I, too, wrongly left him off a list I curated for the Chronicle several years ago), but ALAKAZAM is one of the local scene’s standout rap projects this year. There’s a palpable, unequivocal hunger on the five-song tape to leave an assertive statement. It’s also simply refreshing to hear a reference to Pokémon that offers more than hackneyed lines about Pikachu.
Still, he hesitates to affirm the title of “Austin’s best kept secret” and clarifies that that line on “Flat Earth Theory,” off Jigga With the Grill, was actually in reference to other people calling him underrated. After some long thought, he finally gives himself some well-deserved praise. “Once you get into it and you see all of the work that I’ve done and all of the other stuff that I’ve done, you start to question – where has the light been?
“Not to toot my own horn, but when I look at my catalog, or look at all of the aspects that I do, there’s not many that do what I do on the level that I do it as consistently as I do it,” he says.
Though exclusively releasing music on Bandcamp since 2018 probably limits his reach, the 15-year Bandcamp user – who pays for zero digital streaming platforms because he actually purchases music – won’t be uploading his music to “predatory” DSPs for the foreseeable future. Listeners can stream the album for a limited amount of plays before Bandcamp prompts them to purchase it.
“Some people say that’s not a good idea because it’s not accessible to everyone, but at the same time, I don’t need it to be accessible to everyone,” he says. “I need it to be accessible to the people that I know that are tapped in and if you like it enough then yeah, you’re going to tap in.”
Harkening back to “MEGASTONE,” he credits his “carefree, happy” son for reminding him to not stress so much about not only the minutiae of music creation, but life as a whole. “Hopped out of depression with the help of my son’s hands/ There’s light in every lesson, hope my confessions give you a sun tan,” he raps on the ALAKAZAM opener. Those lyrics signify his completion of a goal he made on the 2020 track “Terrace House Flow”: “Telling my kids I loved myself when I made them.”
“I always tell people that my son helped me stop and smell the flowers – literally,” he says. “Not everything needs to be so fast-paced and it’s okay to take a break to appreciate things. We don’t have control over a lot of things in life, and you experience that daily with having a kid. Sometimes you just have to let things happen and worry about the consequences and results later.”
