That, of course, is directly tied to a much bigger beast: the oppressive capitalist system against which Jason is actively waging a war. It’s a system that, by its inherent nature – limitless growth from finite resources – is completely unsustainable. It’s also causing the destruction of the planet, something we’ve been witnessing more and more in real time in recent years.
That’s something that’s been on Jason’s conscience so much that there’s one song on the new record that’s “directly about climate change, asking yourself as a parent, ‘How would you feel if you could live to see your children inherit a world that’s falling apart and know that you didn’t do anything about it?’”
For Jason, the key to all of it is understanding how interconnected everything is – that climate change and capitalism and music industry bias and systemic racism and white supremacy and police brutality are all products of capitalism. It’s why Jason has spent so much time railing against those power structures, and why he’s doubling down his efforts to do so.
With FEVER 333 and 333 Wrecks, he hopes to upend the hierarchy of the music industry, while as a parent, he wants to overthrow the whole system so that there’s actually a world left for his children to enjoy. It’s a very tall order, and one that at times feels futile, but he’s not backing down.
“This all sits on the fucking footing and pillars of a very racist and capitalist system,” Jason says. “And they’re intertwined. It’s not like we have capitalism over here and white supremacy over here and tilted policy over here. They’re all the same thing. And I don’t think a successful bridge that we can cross has been built yet, because we’ve created this enemy that we’re not willing to fight. But the one thing that kept giving me inspiration to continue trying for this fight was knowing that maybe, just maybe, there’s other parents out there having the same conversation. I teach my children about consumerism, about overconsumption, about – in a very, very, very low level – Marxism. And at the end of the day, when I’m teaching them, I realise how simple it can be. Everybody deserves to be housed, everybody deserves to be cared for, and everybody deserves an opportunity to fit somewhere.”
While those are the values he wants to instil in his children, it’s also what he wants those who listen to and go see FEVER 333 live to understand. Because against all odds, Jason – vehemently recalcitrant and anti-establishment – has infiltrated the industry in a way that he wasn’t supposed to. And, because he actually practices what he preaches, he’s now using his platform to try to affect change on a systemic level, both within the music industry and beyond.
“Because I’m light skinned, I think this industry was like, ‘Oh, well, we’re in this time of change and he’s a little bit lighter and he could speak to black people and white people,’” he says. “They thought I was a safer bet, and so this industry took a little gamble on me. And then when they saw they couldn’t control my ass, they was like, ‘Oh, no…’ They wanted to try to Elvis me, and they’re going to try to Elvis a bunch of us – take what we did and put in white face. But we’re not going to let that happen.”
Then, the final word.
“They underestimated me.”
FEVER 333 play Reading & Leeds on August 26 – 28. This article was originally printed in the May 2022 issue of Kerrang!.