mynameisntjmack doesn’t like being called JMack. But why?
When choosing his artist name, the Yorktown, Virginia-born, LA-based rapper wanted to make sure it captured his true authentic self—so he faced the music, embracing the name he thought was “annoying” every time he was introduced.
Nevertheless, growth is the name of the game for Jonathan Mack (aka mynameisntjmack) at this stage of his career. He knows what it’s like to both succeed and struggle—and you wouldn’t be able to tell based on his down-to-earth nature.
On a dreary Chicago day where rain drops feel like icicles piercing your skin, Mack and co’s presence is warm and inviting, readying to open up for Tommy Richman’s nationwide “COYOTE Tour” at Avondale Music Hall. Shots of Casamigos go around the green room—there’s a birthday to celebrate. But Jmack and longtime friend, manager and producer Gutty take the time to sidebar, speaking on his new project BOOKMARK 2 and everything else in between.
His locs hang like drapes over his face, hiding a smile that ensnares every room he walks in; He’s as vulnerable as a person as he is an artist. We chat about how (and if..?) Nine Vicious is actually related to Young Thug, what he’s listening to right now, and how he and Tommy initially fostered a friendship through their mutual love of UFC, among other things.
But within minutes of chopping it up, the 27-year-old Mack gets real. He speaks about dropping out of college, checking into rehab and turning his life around for the better. These moments of adversity not only shaped the ethos of his debut album, mynameisnt, at the end of 2024, but displays the vulnerability he employs both in life and on wax. Ultimately, his journey is logged by specific BOOKMARKS, documenting his growth (both artistically and personally) in every song he records.
Chicago holds a special place in his heart too (he’s a huge D Rose fan), as you can feel the electricity coursing through the venue. Later on, we link up with Chicago rapper femdot. in the crowd, who’s featured on mynameisnt‘s “high kick” with Mick Jenkins. During Mack’s set, he takes the time to exclusively shout out Fem for pulling up to support him. In that moment, fans got a glimpse at the real Jonathan Mack: humble and blessed to be here doing what he loves most. Because at one point, it was far from a reality.
While many compare mynameisntjmack’s sound to Earl Sweatshirt, SABA, and other heady, jazz-rap savants, mynameisntjmack offers a layer of honesty that very few rappers are able to achieve. Songs like “Lemon/Ginger,” “02 sonata” and “putback” on BOOKMARK 2 put you directly into his headspace. But it isn’t all cloudy melodies and introspective rhymes. “chase” with Tommy is just a taste of his hit-making ability, finding motivation in the “chase” towards better days. It’s this constant growth and endurance that make mynameisntjmack’s words hold weight every time he speaks. The project’s cover art even depicts growth—a tree sprout replaces where his head would be. He’s thinking clearly now, this is his moment—bookmarking small wins that’ll lead to long-lasting triumph.
As things continue to fall into place, we caught up with mynameisntjmack prior to his opening set on Tommy Richman’s ‘COYOTE’ tour. Read the interview below!
Photos courtesy of Danny Pleckham
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
JB: Tell me a bit about yourself? Where does your name come from? Your name isn’t… JMack?
mynameisntjmack: “My last name is actually Mack, so I’m Jonathan Mack. When I played sports and when I was in college, I was introduced to people as Jmack and it kind of just became a thing over time that annoying. Like imagine you’re talking to a girl and your boy walks over, interrupts, and is like ‘this is my boy JMack.’ So yeah, my IG name for the longest time was ‘mynameisntjmack’… I wanted [my name] to be really authentic to myself.”
JB: Take me back to those days in college, you mentioned that you dropped out, what was your reasoning behind that decision? At that time, was it driven by the music or something else?
mynameisntjmack: “It was probably right after I dropped out that I was really hearing people tell me that I could [pursue a rap career]. But I actually dropped out to go to rehab. At the time, it was more so trying to figure out how to continue to make music as I was actively going through it. Even the people that I made music with, they were like ‘yo, you gotta chill out.’ I wasn’t sleeping much either. But it wasn’t until I met John, a musical director and guitarist that’s with us on tour, that really got things going. I reached out on IG asking him if he wanted to work when I got out of rehab, and we followed through with it. It was really just about finding my identity and finding myself again.”
JB: Being a product of the area, how do you feel like the DMV scene has evolved in recent years? As well as the rise of Tommy, Nettspend, Shaboozey etc..?
mynameisntjmack: “No one from the 757 is going to say from they’re from the DMV,” he clarifies. “I was three hours from Tommy… everything is so spread out. I would drive to UVA to go make music and then double back the same day… But I would say it’s gone through more like iterations or phases as opposed to an evolution. There were trendsetters and difference makers from Virginia long before we got here. The main thing I want to emphasize is how geographically separated it is and how if there was more infrastructure there similar to an LA or a New York, you’d hear a lot more music coming out of Virignia—like I said, I drove three hours to link up with Tommy to make music. Nettspend’s from Richmond. Tommy and Shaboozey are from Woodbridge, I’m from the 757, so there’s a lot of talent, it’s just all separated. Like I had never known this, but Masego went to high school right down the road from me, and I didn’t know that until I lived in LA. I get how people would have an adversarial relationship with Virginia, but artists who have been doing it for awhile are now seeing newer artists like Tommy and I succeed. It makes everyone realize how important it is to give back to Virginia and how important it is to build that infrastructure for the people there.”
JB: How did you find your pocket for YOUR sound with Viriginia-DMV being so versatile and so “separated”?
mynameisntjmack: “I was a real hip-hop nerd growing up, but I was always trying to branch out and listen to new music. I liked J. Cole but also loved Earl Sweatshirt and MF Doom, it was heady conscious rap. But as I got older, reaching out to R&B, finding Rock music that I grew up on [that I forgot about and re-listened], that really taught me how to become a better songwriter. Specifically in Virginia, the isolation from [the world] allowed me to evolve my sound. It forces you to not be locked in to what’s immediately surrounding you.”
JB: What was the mindset shift from ‘BOOKMARK 2’ as opposed to your debut album ‘mynameisnt’? They dropped a few months apart, were these songs from these sessions or somewhere in between?
mynameisntjmack: “The difference is work ethic. The biggest blessing to me is learning through discomfort. I’m a big Pittsburgh Steelers fan, and I heard Mike Tomlin say on a podcast one time, ‘growth through discomfort, you can’t grow if you’re comfortable.’ That stuck with me. I view the first BOOKMARK and mynameisnt as one collection of songs that were made over the 2-3 years I really changed and turned my life around when I moved to LA. With BOOKMARK 2, we have like 70-80 demos in the tuck now, and this is just 10 we put out because we felt like they are just really really good songs.”
JB: The project itself is really concise, you can really tell and hear the attention to detail and care you put into every track—as well as the entirety of your catalog—but it seems like there’s more on the way. Is ‘BOOKMARK’ going to be an ongoing series? What’s the plan with all this music you have stacked up?
mynameisntjmack: “I actually have a whole album dropping soon. We like to break up the longer, more introspective albums with really built-out concepts with these BOOKMARK tapes, so that we can have these stopping points (get it, BOOKMARK?)… But the next one will be a larger body of work that feels really existential as opposed to these momentary snippets you see on BOOKMARK 2.”
JB: What does it mean to be on the road with Tommy? How has tour been? What’s been the best and worst tour moment so far?
mynameisntjmack: “I can tell you that Tommy is the same exact person now as he was when we first became friends. We really genuinely live together on the road, back home in LA, that’s my brother for real, sh*t really makes me tear up, it all feels so surreal. Like 1% of people get to really do this with their best friends. That’s my favorite part of it, being able to see the country with my brothers.”
Best tour moment: “New York was great because I usually like being able to perform with a six-piece band, so we had a trombone, tenor sax, flute and guitar that we had on stage. I popped out in a suit.. it was on some real jazz rap sh*t.”
Worst moment: “To those reading this, don’t get fooled by the ghost tours in Savannah, Georgia. They’re bad. We were real excited to see some ghosts while we were there and then we found out there’s like 60 of these ghost tour companies… I’ll never speak on a man’s passion, but at the end of the day, you can’t hand me some meter that tells me ghosts are in front of me with electromagnetic signals walking through a backyard… like what?! What are we doing bro.”
Fun fact: “Savannah, Georgia has one of 32 remaining CiCi’s pizza locations in the country. And we found that out after we left. We’ve been trying to find a CiCi’s ever since. Buffalo Wild Wings has been holding us down on the road, though.”
JB: What are a few songs that are your favorite to perform off ‘BOOKMARK 2’ and what have you felt from the crowd?
mynameisntjmack: “So we start off the set with ‘cavalier,’ that’s such a great intro—it just hits different. It feels like Virginia, it’s gonna be the rap ‘West Virginia Country Road’ I know it. ‘olympic,’ ‘american spirit’ and ‘Lemon/Ginger,’ which is one my favorite songs I’ve ever made. I put so much effort into it. I’d like to shout out the incredible musicians (John, Trevor, Zach, Jacob, Drew, lim0, Gutty)… there’s a lot of people that make the music how it is, and on this project, nine out of 10 songs were live samples played by one of the guys. To be able to play it live with the people that helped make the record is special. It makes us feel like a band, I don’t feel like a solo rap act. It’s all of us.”
JB: The labels on the tracklist are so dope to look at, tell me a bit about the artwork and how that came together conceptually?
mynameisntjmack: “I have a creative director by the name of Ian, who came up with the ideas for the labels. We’ve been trying to get off this idea for the BOOKMARK projects to be this sort of vignette—how can we display these individual moments that these songs exist in. It was funny, because I was kinda iffy on [the labels] at first… and he was like ‘ok dude, here you go’ and sent me the most standard, like ‘f*ck you’ bland tracklist I’ve ever seen [he laughs]. I came around on it quickly, because if my friends are inspired by something, that makes me inspired. Like if I’m the only one in the room that likes a song we’re making, I feel bad. At the end of the day, he was right, the labels really display these vignettes the songs capture, so credit to him.”
JB: Tell me about how “chase” with Tommy came together?
mynameisntjmack: “Gutty sent me the beat, and I know it’s a good one when I get an ALL CAPS text from him saying, ‘WTF. B*TCH. AGH!’ It was one of those things where immediately ‘it was crazy.’ I had it for a while, and then Tommy came over to play UFC [they play this video game pretty religiously] one night, and I played it for him and he was down to get on it. But it didn’t really materialize until we were finishing his COYOTE project. So we circled back and he still really wanted to get on [‘chase’].”
JB: What do you have to say to those who just got hip to you? What message would you give to your new fans or people who have no idea who you are or your music?
mynameisntjmack: “I’ve tried to be more vulnerable with myself and in my music these past few years, because I genuinely thought at one point ‘yo, there’s an expiration date to all this,’ like one day, I won’t be able to write any more music. I don’t want to leave anything unsaid, and allowing that vulnerability to be exposed made me realize that this is kind of a calling card for me to fully express myself. It’s a level a self-awareness that I take pride in, so if I can say anything to anyone just tapping in, be prepared for the vulnerability.”
JB: What have you learned about yourself during times of adversity? You’ve mentioned rehab, how did that experience mold you into the person and artist you are today?
mynameisntjmack: “What I’ve learned about myself is that I get a lot of joy out of meeting people at their common ground. The most inspirational experience that I had while in rehab was meeting an older women who struggled with getting off of drugs, and she needed the drugs from the facility to get off of what she was on… it was intense. And then I’d be sitting next to a juggalo (like a clown) and those were the two people that I talked to every day. I realized that meeting people at their common ground, and being vulnerable, being open allows you to connect with people in a way you never knew. There’s no reason I should be able to connect with an 80-year-old woman battling a heroin addiction, and a dude from the South who definitely does not have my values, but I did. We became close, we spoke daily, and that experience has helped me not only in my life, but in my music.”
JB: And from that experience, you not only sought to display that vulnerability for yourself, but for others and their view on life.
mynameisntjmack: “100%. From the music and from my ability to pick pieces up from other people’s hearts or hear music that I might’ve not been a fan of before… I’ve really tried to be more open and understand people from their perspective.”
JB: What are you listening to right now?
mynameisntjmack: “A lot of Drakeo Tha Ruler, Skrilla, a few songs off the Carti album… Faye Webster… I’m a big fan of hers. She’s the only person I walked up to at Flog Gnaw and introduced myself to. I love her… just wait on it. The Sacred Souls, Brain Story, Homeshake… you need to listen bro. It’ll change your life. ‘Fresh Air’ specifically.”
JB: If you had to give a message to your future self 10 years down the road… what would it be?
mynameisntjmack: “Did the smoking really f*ck our lungs up? Or are we good? [laughs] But no for real, if I can say anything to the fans, it would be THANK YOU. It all still feels so surreal, even being interviewed right now talking about the music. 3-4 years ago, I thought this would’ve never been a reality; I was still very much in rehab, not sure what was going to happen with my life. I wasn’t someone that anyone wanted to listen to, and not even on the music side, but in life. So the fact that people hear me out like you guys, being interviewed about the music, is a true blessing.”
Check out my nameisntjmack’s new mixtape ‘BOOKMARK 2’ below!