Taylor Hart from West Coast cannabis hip-hop site Respect My Region selected Thunderboy as one of the very best Northwest albums from 2020, saying:

Since entering the world of pop music, hip-hop and the art of rapping has become diluted in the mainstream. Lyrics are being recycled and formulaic songs have taken the forefront of the genre. J’von is the opposite of that. He is an incredible and highly original lyricist who packs a nauseating amount of wordplay into his verses.

To this day, I’m discovering new bars within his album, Thunderboy, that I didn’t catch on the first few listens. I’m even still picking up on bars from his 2019 release, Dream Surfer, which also happened to land on my list of the top 20 albums for that year. Between the animated beats and J’von’s smooth delivery, Thunderboy simply puts me at ease and that’s why it’s been one of my favorites this year.

Hmmm... There’s not a lot of information about this record in the museum encyclopedia.

This TOWN LOVE website was created in 2021 as a pandemic-era project. It was a volunteer-led effort to help document and celebrate the complete history of Northwest hip-hop between the years 1981 and 2020. This public archive we built is now available for free online for everyone to read and explore.

If you'd like to contribute, and you know something about this particular record--a story, a memory, or a favorite lyric--please email us a short write-up, and we’ll add your thoughts to the archive when we get the chance.

Thanks for your help in preserving the history of our scene!