Jesus first came to the United States at age 6 with his parents in search of a new life with better opportunities, but due to some circumstances his family was forced to relocate back to Mexico. While back in Mexico, Jesus’ father became more involved in the local music scene and it was only a matter of time that young Jesus would follow. The lead singer of the band, “Sentimiento,” which his father was a part of, noticed that Jesus had such tremendous ability for playing drums that he actually asked him to join the band. Being that he was only 10 at the time, he was too young to take such responsibility. Instead, he joined the band as an auxiliary percussionist, assisting the set player by playing congas and other percussive instruments.
Though it was an amazing experience, his time with the band was short lived due to his family wanting to move to the United States again, and this time it was for good.
Jesus was enrolled at Barnum Elementary in October of 2000. He quickly began to make friends and grew accustomed to life in the United States. Ten months after he moved to the U.S., Jesus would have to face the most difficult moment of his life. After a week-long visit to his native Mexico, Jesus found out his parents would end their marriage of 13 years and his father would not return to the U.S. “I was so close to my dad and to find out that I wouldn’t see him on a regular basis was devastating,” says Jesus. In the midst of all the pain and negativity surrounding him, Jesus would find the one thing that gradually healed his hurting: MUSIC. After his time at Barnum, he continued on to Rishel Middle School where he began learning the foundations of music. In his time at Rishel (2001-2004), he was involved in the school’s state mentioned jazz band as an all around percussionist and participated in many jazz festivals, including the Vail Jazz Festival and the Mile High Jazz Festival. In the spring of 2004, his middle school band director introduced Jesus to the world of marching percussion. Mesmerized by the activity, he set his mind to become a part of a program that not only involved marching percussion, but also excelled at it. Prior to enrolling at West High, he auditioned and made the Denver Citywide Marching Ban, which consists of the top musicians in the Denver Public School district. Jesus quickly began climbing the ladder of success in the marching activity reaching a spot on the drum line as a mere freshman.
While at West High School, Jesus became attracted to the hip-hop scene. “I’ve always been a fan of hip-hop since I arrived to the States, but when I saw dudes freestylin’ and saw what a ridiculous buzz they would get during lunch, I fell in love with it. I wanted to be more involved with that.” Soon after, Wvalle teamed up with a good friend to form a little group known as “Black Shadow” and would jump in on the West High freestyle battles. “I remember laying at night writing a bunch of punch lines for that next day’s battle. I also remember how terrible they actually were, but we didn’t care as long as we were involved,” says Wvalle as he reminisces his battling days.
But hip-hop and his love of music almost took a turn for the worst. He decided to quit his marching band career to pursue rap. As he continued on this track, he gave in to his friends’ influences and began experimenting with drugs and alcohol at the age of 15. “I really got soaked up into that whole scene and really didn’t care or cared to realize how much harm I was doing to myself. I got to a point when all I wanted to do was smoke and drink, so we would organize ‘ditching parties’ and just wouldn’t give a shit about anything.”
This lifestyle quickly caught up to him and he was expelled from West High School due to an excessive amount of absences and was forced to transfer to a different school district. “I was more angry that I wasn’t going to be able to drink with my friends than anything else,” expresses Wvalle.
In the summer of 2006, Jesus began experimenting with keyboards and drum machines. “I figured that I know how to play instruments, why not try to create my own music?” That same summer, Jesus met Steven “Image” Garcia (at the time known as G-gautte) who in real life is cousins with Steve “Ikon” Sanchez from The CO.Alition. Jesus along with Sanchez (who also married Jesus’ mother) and Garcia formed the group that would be SOS Records in 2006. Jesus’ role was to be the group’s producer since his writing skills weren’t his forte. “At this point I was hooked on making beats and I tried to create the musical foundation of the group” As Jesus became more comfortable with beat making, Garcia introduced him to the digital audio workstation software, Fruity Loops. “As soon as I saw everything the program could do, I was immediately hooked on it.”