Jel

by Marisa BrownAlthough the first instrument young Jel (born Jeffrey Logan) played -- much to his chagrin -- was the cornet, as soon as he had saved up enough money he bought his first (and only) drum machine/sampler, the SP 1200, when he was in high school. He began to dedicate most of his time to beat-making, and while at college he worked at the Northwestern University radio station, where he was eventually put in contact with MC Adam Drucker, or Doseone, with whom he connected instantly. Jel dropped out of school in 1996 in order to better focus on music, and two years later Dose's debut, Hemispheres, which featured two tracks produced by Jel, came out on Dose's fledgling Anticon label. The following year the duo released Them as the band Themselves, and both, as part of Deep Puddle Dynamics, along with Alias, Sole, and Slug, began working on the record Taste of Rain...Why Kneel? That album didn't end up being released until 2002, the same year that Jel's solo debut, Greenball, came out, with 10 Seconds following a few months later. In 2003 the Meat and Oil EP was issued, and in 2006, after Jel moved from Mush, the label that had released most of his solo work, to Anticon, Soft Money hit shelves.