Stoopfest returns with Jahshua Smith anniversary set

This week, Lansing-based emcee and hip-hop educator Jahshua Smith contributes a guest column about his upcoming set at Stoopfest, which features a long list of artists from a variety of genres. Here’s what Smith had to say about his performance: 

“When Huff said this year was feeling like ‘The Final Season,’ I started praying up to God to find what I believed in.”

That’s the first line of a song I named “Can’t Seem to Find It,” placed purposely in the middle of my first full-length LP, “The Final Season,” to represent the crossroads I found myself at 10 years ago when the album was released. 

After some success performing under my prior moniker, JYoung The General, I felt very dissatisfied in many areas. I didn’t like the name anymore, I was falling out of love with the music I was creating, and I was overwhelmingly stressed by most facets of my personal life and career.

“The Final Season” was my liberation song. I struggled with self-worth for a long time, so using my given name as my stage name was a statement. It was also the first time I could channel all my thoughts and create something deeply personal and emblematic of the social issues and resulting dialogues I shared with some of the brightest young Black minds in the city around that time. 

It remains the only project that involved every solo performer in the BLAT! Pack Collective. I take pride in that reflection of an era where I was heavily connected to a group of the best lyricists and musicians in the city.

Whenever I hear my name come up in conversations about great performers in Lansing, I think of “The Final Season” providing me with the necessary structure and urgency to perform several songs that are deep within the album and round out my set. “Butt,” my most enduring hit, is energetic and playful. “Ghost of Medgar Evers” is poignant and allowed me to pay homage to one of the most important heroes of the civil rights movement. Even a deep cut like “Off The Couch” that doesn’t get as many streams is a crowd favorite that instantly makes my set better.

My 10th-anniversary performance of “The Final Season” at this year’s Stoopfest feels like a celebration, final exam and comeback all rolled into one. COVID-19 robbed me of what I felt were the last gasps of a “prime” in my career, so I’ve spent the year preparing a 45-minute experience that I hope will either remind fans or acquaint them for the first time with the idea that there is a very short list of rappers in Lansing that can match what I do on stage. My mission is to share the journey I embarked on a decade ago, have some fun and bring out my BLAT! family as guests. I want to show everyone that life is truly cinematic, and one year can capture insanely high peaks and incredibly dark valleys to create a beautiful story.

I am incredibly thankful to be able to take festivalgoers on another intimate ride with the album that changed my life. Bless. 

— Jahshua Smith

Visit stoopfest.org for the full lineup.