‘It’s insane” is how Jason Aalon Butler describes the chain of events that led to him fronting America’s hot new protest rap-rock group. After his old band, Letlive, split, the singer was “hustling vegan cookies” to grocery stores in Los Angeles, when he had a chance meeting with Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker’s goddaughter, a Letlive fan. As Butler tells it, one thing led to another and the next thing he knew he was in a kitchen with Barker and mutual friend/producer John Feldmann, discussing the state of music and the country.
“I told them I had an idea for a bi-racial, rap and rock band,” Butler says. “They both said music needed to be more challenging, more confronting.” As he tells it, the trio got so fired up that they wrote We’re Coming In – a response to police shootings of black people – within days. “And that’s how it started.”
“It” is Fever 333, the band Butler now fronts with similarly disaffected, mixed-race guitarist Stevis Harrison – previously in metalcore band the Chariot, who Letlive toured with – and former Night Verses drummer Aric Improta. With Feldmann producing and Barker – Butler’s “Blink-182 punk rock developmental hero” – making guest appearances and acting as their biggest cheerleader, the rap-metal-activist trio are heading up a new wave of protest music in response to the Trump administration.
“I feel weird, emotionally, giving any credit to the man,” muses Butler, “but of course that was the final straw. The way our country is and how it affects the rest of the world is frightening. If there has ever been a time to speak out, that time is now.”
Equally, perhaps Butler has waited for this moment all his life. The son of a black Milwaukee father – a musician, before “terrible deals” left him broke – and a Glaswegian mother, he grew up in Inglewood, Los Angeles County’s majority black and Latino city, “on welfare, surrounded by project housing”. When his parents got him a permit to go to school out of the area, he was shocked by the disparity. “When you’re shown the glaring inequality in wealth and resources as a child, you either walk the other way or you inform yourself,” he says. Rage Against the Machine, Public Enemy, NWA and Linkin Park provided education; Bob Marley – “a mixed-race revolutionary who came from nothing” – a role model.
Butler was political in Letlive, but admits that “asking people to join me at protests and put themselves in physically compromising positions was a lot to ask”. Fever 333, meanwhile, have demonstrated outside the National Rifle Association building and launched themselves via a guerrilla gig outside Inglewood’s iconic Randy’s Donuts. They lasted three songs before police arrived, but Butler wanted to reach people in his old neighbourhood directly. “Nobody knows anything about Inglewood apart from crime and drugs. Gentrification is displacing people from their homes and culture. I had to go back and tell them that if they choose, they can exhibit their power in a place they call home.”
The untapped strength of community is one of Butler’s main passions; 333 refers to the third letter of the alphabet – “the three Cs – community, charity and change” – and a percentage of all their live fees goes to charities or local youth groups. Butler’s big issues are inequality, “socially engineered class warfare”, gun control, global warming, gender equality, representation of minorities, empowerment and hope.
His band – think Prophets of Rage meet Bring Me the Horizon – will not appeal to everybody, but have real crossover potential and make potent use of slogans. Where Trump boasts of making America great again, Fever 333’s songs retort with catchy soundbites such as: “We are the majority” or “No more excuses, we must refuse this”.
“You have to fight the power with the power,” says Butler, who explains that songs start from studio conversations, such as “‘I want to feel more hopeful for my son’s future.’ Then we come up with an idea and I shape it as poetically as I can.”
Having confronted the US’s race issue with this year’s Made an America and its much-discussed video, Butler’s worldview forms the title of the forthcoming album, Strength In Numb333rs. “I’m not here to speak for anybody – I’m here to speak with them. I am very much like the disenfranchised. I come from a disaffected place.”
• Strength In Numb333rs is released on 18 January 2019 on Roadrunner
