As his producer tag says before every song, Josh Redmond, a.k.a JR Specs leaves his fans wondering, “HOW DO YOU DO IT JR?” His new song Getcha Geeked, dropped last Friday and released the corresponding music video for the banger yesterday.
JR, a Maine native and Uconn senior joined my podcast, My Parents Office this week to discuss the release of the song and the process of putting it together. He said that when the Young Thug song “OUT WEST” dropped in December of 2019, he was inspired to make a song that had the same style. In the interview, he did reassure the audience that he “was not Young Thug”.
On the show, he mentioned how he really went all in on this song with his management and promotion team. I myself was captivated by his promotion when he used an apricot, yes an apricot, as the focal point of his campaign. He had custom apricot sneakers, an apricot juice carton, and an orange towel that were put in every social media promo that JR put out.
When I asked him about the purpose of the apricot, JR said that “it’s random but, random doesn’t do it justice”. Specs mentioned how he wants to incorporate videos and short audio clips from his life into his music and said that the apricots origin is from a night where one of his close friends thought that apricots were dried out peaches. He didn’t realize that they were their own fruit.
The song has been out for less than a week now and Specs said that the feedback on it has been great and that he was super excited to drop the song. He has had it in his back pocket since his album drop but believed that Getcha Geeked didn’t fit the storyline he wanted to portray on ‘99 Daydream, which dropped last year.
Specs said that he has more projects that are essentially finished under is hat with other artists including one of my favorites, B.Aull.
The music scene in Maine has been tremendously fascinating to me and Specs could be the next guy out of Maine to blow up. When I have talked to Spose and Kristina Kentigian, they claimed that the young artists in Maine are putting lots of pressure on them to be better and to not stay complacent.
While artists like Spose and Amy Allen have been trailblazers for the Vacation Land, when you peel back the curtain, many smaller artists are on the rise and JR is one of them. Keep an eye out for JR Specs this year and all of the new projects he drops.