By Gary Suarez in Interviews — May 6, 2026

Cropping Up: JWords

The H31R producer discusses her new solo album +reviews of Fatboi Sharif & Child Actor; Starker

JWords. Photo credit: Kyla Mae.

CROPPING UP is an interview series designed to introduce CABBAGES readers to talented hip-hop artists on the rise.

For this edition, I caught up with JWords. The producer half of the avant-rap duo H31R, this New Jersey native turned Brooklynite is dropping her brand new solo album, Sound Therapy, this Friday 5/8.

Sound Therapy is decidedly more chill–meditative, I'd even say–than much of your previously released music. What led you down this sonic path as an artist?

JWords: I've done a lot of crazier production, when I was younger. I was doing a lot of modulator stuff beforehand, just crazy drum noise, and I was putting it together with my other synths. And now that I'm older, I'm chill; it's calmer. With this project, I was taking a calmer approach because it was where my head was at. And so the sound that I was creating, it was just more calmer, but still a little fast and chill, but not too many crazy modulated sounds, if that makes sense.

But I also got this new piece of gear called the OP-XY from Teenage Engineering. They had dropped this all-in-one sequencer. It has a drum machine, it has sampler, it has a synth engine, and it's a sequencer, so I was able to just create a lot of the beats on there, straight up. It was a lot of nice pads, luscious type of sounds. "LUSH" was fully written on the OP-XY, and also "Clarity" with Nappy Nina. I had wrote it when I was on my way to Chicago, like, I need to make a footwork inspired beat because I'm in Chicago. I added the little melodies, the leads, and it was just super calm, even though the drums are a bit fast.

The project was more like a therapy session for me because I went through a hard time in the past three years. I started making this album more so to calm my nervous system and just bring some calmness into my life. So these beats did that for me.

Nappy Nina is one of your most frequent collaborators, with 2021's joint effort Double Down a highlight. How did you two get to the single "Clarity" together?

She loves a faster BPM, even though she'll say that it's too fast for her. She's lying; she loves it. I felt comfortable with asking Nina to get on it, because I know the beat was her vibe. I know she would keep an open mind and to be a part of it and write about the topic I was writing about. She's one of my best friends, so I'm always going to either go to her or [H31R's] maassai, obviously, first with anything. I don't really collaborate with too many people either. Maybe I should start.

Were you writing these tracks with the understanding that you would be applying vocals to them or did they evolve into that approach?

I didn't know it at first that I was going to write lyrics to it, which is pretty vulnerable for me. I do not write lyrics like that. I had something to say obviously, but I'm not a freestyle type of person. I have to listen to the beat a couple times. I'll freestyle a little bit, but I won't do it in front of people. I'll write what I'm saying down and then I'll start writing more lyrics based on that. I won't say it's quick. It takes a while for the lyrics to come.

I feel like it has brought me my peace again. It has brought me a calm nervous system like I mentioned before. I was going through it so hard and I had hit rock bottom and it feels nice to be in the other side of it. And obviously I'm not going through it anymore. I've learned my lessons, I guess, that we're meant to learn in our late twenties. I found my joy again in a way, so I'm happy now.

You've put on some great shows with H31R in support of 2023's HeadSpace, touring the world even. As you worked on Sound Therapy, were you thinking at all about how it would work in a live context or how you might incorporate the songs into a set?

I've been practicing my set ever since the beginning of this year. And I also have cool transitional interludes in-between the songs that are more calming and peaceful. It's more ambient, which I love. I'm excited to showcase [them] to the world. They're not on the album, sadly. I should have added them, but I think it'll be cool.

I also been working on live coding visuals too. so it's like I've been working on building a world for the live performances. I thought it would be a great idea to incorporate that aspect as well to my music, because I've learned all these new cool things in the past couple years. It's going to be super cool to perform the album and to see how the audience responds.

You kept the features to a minimum on this, and notably maassai is not part of this project. We're two-and-a-half years removed from HeadSpace in terms of its release date, but is there more H31R in the works?

I guess the folks will hear it here first. We have an EP that we're going to release later this year. I mean, I would've loved to get maassai on this record. Since we have H31R, and she's doing her own thing too, I think a little bit of separation is needed too, so people don't always think that we're just doing everything together.

Not that she wouldn't have done great if I would've given her one of the beats for this album. It wasn't intentional not involving her; there was not an opportunity for it. We have a third album that we're thinking of working on already, so I think everything that's meant to be is going to happen the way it is.

Check out the all-new wrestling movie season right now.

Fatboi Sharif & Child Actor, Crayola Circles

(buy it / stream it)

Even as 2020s indie hip-hop continues to lean heavily into the one-rapper-one-producer mode, its contemporary adopters operate in the long shadow of the format's 1990s and 2000s benchmarks and peaks. That said, Backwoodz Studioz has made some of the strongest cases for newer additions to the canon's upper echelon, be that billy woods and Kenny Segal's Hiding Places or SKECH185 and Jeff Markey's He Left Nothing For The Swim Back. With Crayola Circles, a full-length pairing of the increasingly uncategorizable Fatboi Sharif and instrumental avant marvel Child Actor, the label has found the closest successor to Madvillainy yet.

Their sound doesn't mirror that of MF DOOM and Madlib, per se, but as with that duo's dynamic it absolutely represents the best version of the artists present. On hypnotic tracks like "Assassination Tapes" and "Chemo Crystal Ball," Sharif's furtively provocative verses hide in plain sight, immersed in the haunting, groggy production choices of his exceptional counterpart. Their communal comfort zone here comes from inducing discomfort, a characteristic that seeps into cuts like "Recognition" and "Saltwater Tantrums," the latter as unsettling as any A24 horror flick. And much like those sorts of artful genre films, Crayola Circles seeks to draw listeners in while simultaneously repelling them, compelling engagement on a conscious level yet also burrowing underneath the skin.

Starker, LTD Vol. 1: North Face Nace

(buy it / stream it)

One glance at the cover of LTD Vol. 1: North Face Nace has the power to transport you to a different era of New York, one when mixtapes were still sold hand-to-hand on the streets. But beyond the pitch perfect graphic design job, Starker pulls off this feat of time travel by dint of having lived through it himself. Though not exactly retro from a musical standpoint, the sharp-tongued emcee is nonetheless a product of his city and its hip-hop history, making heavy cuts like "Flipmode" and "Rondu" hit the way they do. Those who've followed his catalog thus far know his progressive, RRRapid-fire flows work even better over the so-called drumless instrumentals, evidenced early on by Nicholas Craven's "Questlove" beat and Foulemonk's one for "Pignoli." As strong as Starker sounds on his own, his rasp arguably gets enhanced when in contrast with frequent collaborator YL, who contributes to highlights here like "Buy You Jordans" and the rugged "Untitled."