Juiceboxxx is a senior at Homestead High School in Mequon, Wisconsin, a suburb of Milwaukee. But his weekends, his posthomework nights, and his summers are taken up with the business of being the Juice, DJing–rapping, producing, and promoting the monthly all-ages Milwaukee dance party Get Wacky, now in its sixth month. While he could be just another precocious teen anxious to make a name for himself, Juiceboxxx has something beyond determination and kid guile, something most scene entrepreneurs twice his age would kill for: talent.
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“I’ve only DJed out, like, I dunno, under ten times. No, maybe exactly ten,” Chiaverina says. “Just at Get Wacky and some parties around Mequon.” This is hard to believe. He might be the best DJ to come out of the midwest since Tommie Sunshine. His familiarity and comfort with a breadth of genres–from German minimal techno to Chicago house to R & B hits from when he was in sixth grade–make Sunshine an easy comparison. But I ask him about his influences, and he’s at a loss: outside of what he’s read in magazines, his primary exposure to other DJs has been at school dances. At 18, he’s still too young to get into clubs.
“John has always loved music,” says his mom, Ginny. “In middle school he played in bands, so there was a lot of picking up and dropping off. I come from a musical family–my brother and his son are professional country-and-western singers–so I have always encouraged him to follow his passion with it. I don’t necessarily see him going far with Juiceboxxx, but I’m no hip-hop aficionado, I’m a middle-aged lady, so hip-hop is not really my thing. Whether he makes a living doing it one day is beside the point–I just like that he’s having fun doing it and it keeps him out of trouble.”
Then there are more Get Wackys, and a Chicago DJing gig is in the works. Juiceboxxx’s rep is spreading outside Wisconsin and even outside the midwest. “I think what Juiceboxxx is doing is so refreshing–it’s so inspired and unironic,” says San Diego-based DJ and music writer Anna Klafter, who wrote to me after I raved about Juice on my blog. “I first saw him when he was maybe 16. I was the tour DJ for MC Paul Barman, and Juiceboxxx opened for us in Madison. He had dancers–it was hard not to love him, he was so young and in love with music.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Mireya Acierto.
