I am the Harvard Law School rapper

Justin Ko just finished Harvard Law School and is now working for a think tank in Hong Kong – but he’s also an accomplished rapper.

J.Ko, as he styles himself, is an up-and-coming artist and a graduate of one of the most competitive law schools on the planet.

He’s already released some incredible tunes like Believe, Balance and Dear Mama and remixed tracks by Drake, Eminem and Kanye.

We spoke to the hottest name in law school rap about his two careers.

Hey J. Ko! Thanks for talking to us here at The Tab. To start off, can you tell us your hometown, your age, what you majored in, and your full name?

My name is Justin Ko, I don’t have a complicated stage name, it’s just my initials. My hometown is Vancouver, Canada, very close to Seattle and I’m 24 this year. My major was English Literature, not at Harvard, I actually went to college in Canada, at the University of British Columbia. I went to Harvard for Law School.

Was Harvard Law School always the goal?

That’s a good question, uh no, at the time I was studying English and I originally thought about going to academia and becoming a professor. I was surprised I got in to Harvard Law School, I literally got in off the wait list after I had already finished my last exam. At the end of the day, Law School attracts many different kinds of people and it works out for some of them and for me it worked out pretty well.

In your manifesto, you talk about once you secured your job after the summer, you began to question if that was really the path for you, how did that come about?

You know, one regret I have is that I had no work experience before law school. So when I first worked at the law firm, I was aware work was kind of dry but truth is that law graduates have a hard time getting a job and so I didn’t want to be ungrateful nor greedy and at the end of the day I was content.

Summer ended, I went back to school and I started thinking a little more and I was like, you know what, I am grateful but it’s still not the best option for me. A lot of the work was business or corporate related, and nothing against them, but I didn’t really enjoy myself – I’m more of a creative guy, I like writing, reading books, different types of literature. Having said that, there’s a lot of creativity that comes into play.

From the music videos I saw that you tend to focus on aspects of school. For example I saw Believe, can you tell me where you got the inspiration for the video?

That was me goofing off, I’m basically a bookish guy most of the time. Most of the people were surprised I was making a rap music video and I was just having fun. The lockers are actually those underneath the Law School, I mean you’ll certainly recognize Cambridge landmarks.

My videographer thought the scenery was cool, especially inside the Law School, and I thought well wouldn’t it be cool to shoot the video by the lockers? In the ending we decided to change the location so we took the Red Line to Chinatown and we wanted to show that part of the city. At the end of the day, I was trying to have fun and it was somewhat of an inside joke with me and some other classmates since it was shot at the Law School.

What’s the response you get when you tell people that you graduated from Harvard Law School and you’re also a rapper?

I intentionally put it on my website, makes you think about two worlds, like how can you put those two together? But at the end of the day, Harvard is a really big community and the hip hop community is way bigger than that. It doesn’t sound intuitive but many of my classmates are huge hip hop fans and they’re invested in the culture way more than I actually am. Interest in that culture is huge everywhere, even at Harvard. I was a literature major and I would always be reading books about poetry, Shakespeare and whatnot and at the end of the day, it’s all subjective – there’s so much to the lyrics and it’s up to you if you find it worth studying.

You talk about negative portrayals of Asian Americans in your Manifesto, what do you mean by that and how does your music seek to address that?

That’s a good question, in retrospect I should have fleshed out a bit more within the blog spot. Within the Asian-American community it’s a highly discussed topic and for the broader audience…well, what do you mean by negative? It’s true that these days, depictions of Asians are depicted as the foreigners, the others, one example was The Interview.

The movie caused a big fuzz, I watched the movie and in my opinion it was very racist against Asians. Most people say “Oh, it’s against North Koreans”, but I can’t really see it like that because all other actors are not even Korean. You’re including a bunch of Asian-Americans that act in these roles and I can’t see it as “Oh no, they’re not making fun of me, they’re making fun of North Koreans”.

Asian Americans have been part of American history for hundreds of years and you never really hear about that. If you want to be in hip hop like me, there are really no role models for me, even in literature, that I can relate to or say, “I want to be like that guy.” At the end of the day, believe me, I have no illusions of grandeur or anything, but it would be really cool if someone saw my videos and was motivated to follow their dreams like Jeremy Lin motivated me to be different and to not be like the one Asian face in the room. Just do your own thing.

Are there any future plans for the rap career?

One reason I came to Asia was because I admire many of the rappers here. And since I’m looking for role models and people to emulate here in Asia, I’m more interested in rap now. The plan, long term, is to hopefully go back to rap someday using multiple languages so I can speak to different audiences cause the truth is, I make music that is kind of personal and if people don’t share my background, I’m not going to blame them if they don’t think they’re getting much from my music and that’s totally fine.

Since I’m not doing it for money, I’m kind of just doing for people that can relate to my message and it turns out more people here understand my message than back in America. Right now I’m in a pretty good spot, I’m working in a think tank, I write articles on politics and stuff which is really cool. At the end of the day, music is always going to be a part of my life, it can take many shapes and forms.

Which one of your tracks is your favorite and who would you say is your biggest influence?

My favorite is actually Dear Mama that just kind of makes everything worth it. It’s all dedicated to my mom, she did a lot of things for me, she inspired me and has always supported me being myself. There’s a stereotype from a couple of years ago, a former Harvard graduate now Yale Law professor, Amy Chua, who wrote something about the Tiger Mom or some shit like that about Chinese moms being strict.

At the end of the day, my mother was not like that and so this is kind of me expressing gratitude for that. I cried after recording the song at the studio, it’s different hearing your story through a song. I showed it to my mom, she’s even in the video and she liked it and that meant so much to me.

As for the second question, all my songs are covers, this one being one of Tupac’s original, one of my favorite songs. Dear Mama is his song and it really opened my eyes since it showed a more sentimental side of him. No way can I ever look at rap the same after that.

In terms of influence, Kanye West is probably the biggest influence. He came from a middle-class background as well, his mother was a professor and all of his initial albums were about education or education-themed. He talks a lot about art and design, and I respect people that go to school for that reason.

Growing up, his music showed me a different style of rap, it’s a diverse group and genre. When he was coming up, no one thought he was going to make it and well it’s all different now. He was so inspirational for me, he’s probably been the biggest influence as to what I’m trying to write, and I’m not trying to be presumptuous or anything like that, but still I can find room in the hip hop genre to express myself.