Joyner Lucas is a Grammy Award nominated musician who knew he wanted to be a rapper before his tenth birthday. But was he ever in the military?
Joyner Lucas has never been in the military and began pursuing a career in music from an early age. Though he’s never had a military career, in the music video for his song ‘ISIS’ he and Logic wore U.S. Army gear and held weapons, surrounded by other men in army uniform.
Read on to learn more about Lucas’ career beginnings, his song ‘ISIS’, and his feud with Logic.
Young Rapper
There’s no evidence to suggest that Joyner Lucas was ever in the military, with music his passion from a young age.
Lucas was born in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1988 to a father who was a music producer. It wasn’t long before Lucas knew what he wanted in a career and he told Rolling Out, “I found my niche at, like, seven or eight. That’s when I knew I wanted to rap,” adding “I was born in the studio”.
As a kid, Lucas dreamed of joining a major label, but he needed to put in the groundwork first. As a teenager he rapped under the name ‘G-Storm’ but switched in 2007 to the name ‘Future Joyner’. Neither name would last, and he circled back to his birth name eventually.
He recorded his first track aged 10 and released a mixtape as part of a group called ‘Film Skool Rejekts’ in 2007.
Solo mixtapes would follow and he originally released his music independently, but acknowledged that taking that route can mean success is a long time in the making.
He realised his dream of signing with a major label when he made a deal with Atlantic Records in 2016, though he’s since left.
He’s incredibly honest about how he measures up to some of hip hop’s biggest rappers, asserting that Drake, Eminem, and Kendrick all surpass him in one way or another.
What’s important to Lucas is finding an “emotional connection” with his fans and in an interview he said, “I’m not here to be the best or feel that I’m the best or I’m going to be the best over the whole rap world”.
Nevertheless, he’s found critical and commercial success. Lucas attributes this to his willingness to open up about his life in his lyrics and said in an interview, “I just stay true to myself,” adding “not a lot of artists do that nowadays. I think that’s what sets me apart from other people and gets me respected at the end of the day.”
‘ISIS’
It seems that the closest Lucas has come to a military career is in the music video for his song ‘ISIS’. Released in 2019, the song references attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, which Lucas was diagnosed with as a child.
It also features rapper Logic, and publicly represents an end to a feud which began a couple of years prior and saw the rappers diss each other through their music.
The song, which addresses mental health, is Lucas’ third single from his 2020 studio album ‘ADHD’ and received critical praise.
In the video, the rappers act as soldiers on a U.S. army base, decked in army gear and brandishing guns. As the song gains pace, an enemy is captured and surrounded by soldiers. Whilst the rappers continue to rhyme, the enemy is targeted by the weapons.
It seems that donning some army gear for the video is the closest Lucas has come to being in the military. But as he’s been reaching for a rap career since before he was ten, that’s no big surprise.
Watch Joyner Lucas’ single ‘ISIS’ in the YouTube video below.