Today we’d like to introduce you to Jon Goodyear.
Hi Jon, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I started off freestyling in the car in high school and just kind of rapping dumb shit when I was smoking weed with my friends. I was freestyling one day, and someone said what’s your name? I said it’s JG, take it and flip, and call me J-SKEET, and that just stuck. I thought of my alter ego as a bit villainous maybe, like J-Skeet is my mirror image. I started actually getting kind of good and then I went through my first rough breakup, and that was the motivation I needed. I was hurt and just wanted to be heard. From there I was motivated from a standpoint where I was like you know what you’re going to have to hear my music all the time, you’re gonna remember me.
My boy Cody, or Truth, who I went to highschool with, and rapped with had went to the Navy. I was working at Cingular in South County Mall in St. Louis, and my coworker Denny introduced me to this guy Opie, or Jason in the mall, who I’d later know as LB. I wind up exchanging numbers with LB, and set up a time to go work on some music and hang out. We did a song that day and I went home with a CD of a song that I had just made. We recorded an absolutely terrible song called 2Much which, yes, I still have to this day. Cody wound up coming home early from the Navy after LB and I recorded our second song. I was mid breakup at the time, and we made the song that was the first real sign that we could have something here, which was Now Baby. Very heartfelt song about the situation I was going through and what my ideal resolution was going to be. The song didn’t get the girl back, but it did make all her friends fans overnight. I’ll never forget the first concert we threw, just knowing that she was at home, all alone, because all of her friends were rocking out withe to songs about her. That’s when I knew.
As far as Dirty House Wreckordz and HuSTLmo Ent are concerned, they were born as organically as you could imagine. Once we were really kind of figuring things out we knew we wanted to start a label and we were trying to come up with names for different things and I’ll be jokingly said fuck it dude, let’s just call it dirty house records since we’re in this dirty ass house all the time. My parents were hoarders, got divorced, and I was living in the fallout. They didn’t want me to get rid of everything, so I improvised, moved it all to one side of the house, set up a full studio, and made history. Literally the day after lb made that joke truth came home with an image of what the record label could look like. At first we were calling it dirty house records with like just regular records with an r. But then we found out that there was another label. So since we wrecked tracks, we made it dirty house records wreckordz.
Around this time is probably when I’m at jelly Joe through Nick d. So Nick d or later. Nick Diesel was someone that came over. I recorded his like first song in my house once I had met LB and had my own little USB mic setup. Obviously we didn’t have like a full studio set up. He then turned around and met jelly Joe and actually started making some like real music with like cool edit Pro and getting like a real mic, and mixer and stuff. That’s where my game kind of really went up is after I met Nick and jelly and I kind of learned about music and mixing it, how to record, and like how to make an actual song and put together things properly. From there we all just kind of made music together. There were several different groups of us that were always throwing concerts. We had a place in South County lockdown called the crescent room. We used to have big concerts there all throughout like downtown St Louis. We expanded through the Midwest and then 2004. We were getting pretty big. At least what I thought to be pretty big and I was like I don’t know if dirty house records is going to be like universally accepted. So that’s when we came up with huSTLmp and I had the idea of combining the hustle meant with STL, MO for St. Louis. I drew a rough logo, that Truth perfected. Then I recorded Rubberbands. I knew I had a hit as soon as I had the hook done. Truth was out of town or something out of commission. I don’t remember what he was doing but Alby came over heard it and was like yo. I need to get on that and I was like yeah definitely. That’s why you’re here so we put out an absolute classic later. Truth came back and put a verse on it as well. But I mean the song was already out at that point like I already had. I think like a thousand like listens or something on my space at the time I was like all right. Yeah if we’ll put it out too. But you know this is already something going that wind up being the first song that I had on the radio. We went down to 100.3 the B in St. Louis which was like the local underground station. They interviewed us on the radio which was dope. From there things just really kind of kept going. We kept doing shows and you know traveling a little bit making a lot of music and at some point I wound up once lb and Truth kind of went off and did their own things and started. You know kind of working on their own personal lives. I stayed doing music fully and wound up starting another group with jelly Joe and Nick Diesel called Million Dolla Musik, and recorded and released and group album. That was latter half of 2009. Then, early 2010, Grammy nominated producer Wyshmaster calls us and asks us to come to California to do some writing. He had just gotten a publishing deal, and wanted us out there. March 2010, we made the move. We were sleeping on Wyshmaster’s couch for a month, Jelly Joe, Joey Notez, and me. We wound up with a 2 bedroom apartment in the NoHo Arts District, and set up shop. But, because things in music didn’t take off right away, I took a job at Verizon. Settling in and realizing my fan base didn’t follow me to Cali, I decided it was time to change my name from J-SKEET. Everyone at worked already called me JFG, cause I’m Jon Fucking Goodyear! After a year of grinding on and off the clock, I got promoted and took a role down in OC. Shortly after, I met Jen, the mother of my children. I would up moving full time down to OC, and music went on the back burner. In 2018, I decided to release music I’d been sitting on for way too long. At that time I decided i probably wasn’t going to “make it”, and realized that I had to give up that dream. That is, until another heartbreaking situation put music back in my life. In 2026, I started recording and releasing music again, started designing and bringing back HuSTLmo clothing, and am working on a beef jerky company.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Definitely not. Too many… Being a white rapper in the early 2000s was tough. The biggest issue though, was timing. We were in a very competitive, and drastically changing time for music. It was going from CDs to digital in real time. Myspace was huge for us, but that didn’t translate to YouTube and iTunes automatically. We were digital kids in an analog world, or vice versa. If I had all of the tools and resources available today, back then, Dirty House Wreckordz and HuSTLmo would be as big as No Limit or Cash Money, and Phat Pharm or Fubu in their prime. It’s never too late though. That’s what I’m learning.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I guess what I’m most proud of is creating things to share. I make music for people to relate to, that can touch them, inspire them, and help them. I make my music for me though, it’s an outlet that I need. My music, I’d say is a no genre style of music, where I draw inspiration from everything around me. Music, movies, comedy, life, whatever. I think just being true to my unique self is what sets me apart. I also am a foodie, and a craft cocktail enthusiast/ mixologist, along with being an aspiring entrepreneur.
What are your plans for the future?
Biggest things are releasing a lot of old and new music, launching HuSTLmo.us website and clothes, and getting my beef jerky company off the ground. Maybe a move back to the Midwest…
Contact Info:
- Website: https://hustlmo.us
- Instagram: @jfgmusic
- Youtube: @jfgmusic
