The MC: Russell Wardlow aka WayOfLife

DJ LIFE: What are your earliest musical memories – the ones that stuck with you and influenced the music you’re making now?

Wardlow: I’m relatively new to music, so I didn’t do anything besides playing around, free-styling at high school. My friends were the actual rappers; we used to do this concept and chorus that went like, “What would you do for a Klondike bar?” Then some beatbox and we rap that subject... I was sorriest!

DJ LIFE: Did you have favorite MCs and producers?

Wardlow: Lil Wayne, his song “I Feel Like Dying” was an ethereal moment for me… then, of course, his mix-tape craze. Cassidy’s smooth battle-rap-like punchlines, Jadakiss’ raspy delivery and metaphors, Lauren Hill’s everything, and fast-forward onto Chance The Rapper’s first SNL experience. I finally made sense of it. He put all of those people into one and added himself – to me, that made WayOfLife

DJ LIFE: At what point did you devote yourself to poetry, lyrics, and music? What motivated you?

Wardlow: In 2017, I asked my friend Katie [Cox]: If a man can become a monster, can that monster become a man again? I reflected on the fact that I could die in prison or get life in prison. I wanted something, so my sons could know who I am. Everyone told me I could write and rap, but I thought nothing of it. One day Katie asked me, “Russell, when’s the best time to plant a tree? Twenty years ago. When’s the second-best time? Today. What are you waiting for?” I became a poet, Kobe died, and I became a rapper. I rapped, “Even heroes can die while you’re alive, so I gotta make it all count…” so, Mamba Mentality! I put the work in and found many styles, keeping my sons at the forefront of all of it. Every line is me clawing my way to them, defying these walls.

DJ LIFE: Tell me about the process of putting this record together with Eli.

Wardlow: The process was more like a see-saw adventure – my turn, then his turn. Prison comes with many obvious complications, so Christie recorded all the vocals, and Eli and Taylor listened and composed/produced all the sounds to make the music. I’ve heard some early ideas and a couple finished products, but it’s mostly been a mystery, expected in my position, but a reality I have to accept in order to move forward and create.

DJ LIFE: What kind of artistic statement were you looking to make?

Wardlow: I wanted to show the entirety of different feelings of a prisoner and to transcend the limitations. We live in a world within a world, so we feel and hear everything, but see nothing – yet no one hears, sees or feels us.

DJ LIFE: In your songs, I hear lyrics that have deep regret, but there’s also hope. There’s love for your children. There’s self-determination. There’s a sense of patience, but there’s also frustration. It’s your life. Can you tell me about how these lyrics came to mind?

Wardlow: A convict is the embodiment of regret, hope, self-determination, frustration, and impatience at all times. We can’t separate ourselves from those concepts. We don’t speak them; we become them, and yet we manage in order to exist, survive and fight for something more – or succumb to just that. Internal and external turmoil is our soil and oil; it fuels us and we grow in and from it. I didn’t think the lyrics – they just came out, like air is exhaled.

DJ LIFE: How does your situation help or hinder your artistic process? Is there a time when you are most artistically focused?

Wardlow: Prison became college and a hyperbolic time chamber. It presented me the opportunity to become something more in my isolation, but it fights that evolution every chance it gets, forging it with a continual fire of obstructions. The phone can only do so much for delivery and nuance, and the limited time to reach out creates obscurity, but imagination thrives in darkness.

DJ LIFE: These days on the outside, there’s a lot of political hay being made about crime and what to do about it. Less effort seems to be made about actually preventing it or helping those caught up in the system. What do you say to people on the outside about people on the inside? What should they understand?

Wardlow: Crime can only flourish in a country so “great” and developed as America, if it allows for it, if its culture creates and feeds off of it. When education and resources come with disparities, crime is the variable. You can only do with what you know and what you have. Look in the mirror. We are exactly what you refuse to see and what you do see. One moment creates a conditioning of moments when true understanding and help isn’t given. Empathy shouldn’t be an incentive; it should be a condition of a person’s heart. We are hurting, and trying to heal. Isolation in the form of alienation and ostracism can never be an answer to develop a human’s heart and soul. It corrodes the mind and spirit and callouses the heart and emotions. The Constitution’s 13th Amendment must change and crime cannot fatten pockets for change to be real.

DJ LIFE: Thanks, and good luck – anything else you’d like to add?

Wardlow: This is only step one. I am many – that’s why my name is WayOfLife. This is the beginning of a Black Sheep Movement. We can’t keep being spoken for and believe we’re being heard; we have a collective responsibility to provide shoulders to stand on so more can be seen and therefore fathomed and dreamed. Emotional, relational and spiritual healing is our need. My sons Josiah “Juice” and Treyvan “WayOfLife, Jr.” spirit my motor, and even at the lowest and darkest, you can resurrect, rise, and become more.