10 Things You Didn’t Know about Pi’erre Bourne

Pi’erre Bourne is the stage name of Jordan Timothy Jenks. He has been an audio engineer. However, Bourne tends to be much better-known because of his music career as a rapper, a songwriter, and a record producer.

1. Belizean-American

Bourne is Belizean-American. For those who are unfamiliar, Belize is a small country situated between Mexico and Guatemala in Central America. It is rather unusual in that it is the one country in the region that has English as an official language, which can be explained by the fact that it was once ruled by the British Empire rather than the Spanish Empire. Having said that, Belizeans are often multi-lingual because the country is inhabited by a wide range of people from a wide range of backgrounds.

2. Born to a Military Family

It is interesting to note that Bourne was born to a military family that can trace its roots to Queens in New York City. As such, he was born in Fort Riley, which is a U.S. Army installation that can be found in the state of Kentucky. The place was founded for the purpose of protecting travel over the Oregon, California, and Santa Fe trails, which was much less safe in the mid 19th century than in the present time. Since then, Fort Riley has seen numerous changes in use.

3. Grew Up in Columbia, SC

Although Bourne was born in Kentucky, he was raised in South Carolina. To be exact, he was raised in the city of Columbia, which would be the state’s capital. Amusingly, said city bears the nickname of the Soda City. However, this isn’t because Columbia has a connection to a well-known soda brand. Instead, the city picked up the nickname because Cola was once a popular abbreviation for the name Columbia.

4. Became Interested in East Coast Hip Hop

As a child, Bourne would visit his grandmother in New York City in the summertime. There, he became interested in East Coast hip hop, which emerged in the Bronx of the 1970s and 1980s. Initially, East Coast hip hop was hip hop. However, as hip hop artists emerged in other U.S. cities, it became more and more recognizable as a distinct part of a wider movement.

5. Inspired By His Uncle

Regardless, Bourne was inspired to a considerable extent by his uncle Dwight, who was a rapper as well as a graphic artist. It is thanks to said individual that he started making his own beats. Something that was made possible by FL Studio on his uncle’s computer. Said software is a digital audio workstation that was released for the first time in 1998. Since then, it has managed to reach a lot of people, with the result that it has managed to establish quite a user base. As such, Bourne isn’t the only musician of note who is known to have used FL Studio at one point or another. Other examples include but are not limited to Avicii, Deadmau5, and Soulja Boy.

6. Related to Musicians of Note

Speaking of which, Bourne isn’t the only musician of note in his extended family. He is related to Mobile Malachi, a Belizean reggae musician who uses the English-based creole language called Belizean Kriol that is widely spoken in said country. Furthermore, Bourne is a cousin of the rapper Papoose, who got started in the music industry quite a while before he did.

7. Studied Graphic Design and Then Sound Engineering

It is clear that Bourne is interested in more than one kind of artistic endeavor. After all, he studied graphic design for some time before dropping out of school. After which, his uncle gave him the encouragement that he needed to make the decision to study sound engineering at the SAE Institute. Thanks to this, Bourne actually has a fair amount of experience working as a sound engineering after graduating. He didn’t stop doing so until 2016, which was when he decided to quit for the purpose of focusing upon his music career.

8. Has Been Involved in Production From Almost Every Role

Bourne has released his own music. However, he remains best-known for his work as a record producer, which has contributed to a number of well-known hit. Thanks to this, Bourne has been involved in making music from almost every role. Something that is very unusual because of his young age but is nonetheless very beneficial because it provides him with extra insight into everyone he works with.

9. Works in a Diligent Manner

Different people work in different ways. As a result, there are some artists who are either famous or infamous for creating when the inspiration strikes them, which is something that can make for a very uneven output over time to say the least. In contrast, Bourne is one of those artists who are diligent when it comes to their artistic output. Simply put, he is committed to making a set number of beats on a daily basis, meaning that he is creating on a steady basis. At the same time, Bourne isn’t interested in doing too much in too short a period of time because he has an understandable concern about burn-out.

10. Took Some Influence from Video Games

Musicians can take influences from a wide range of sources, with Bourne being no exception to this rule. To name a perhaps unexpected example, he has been influenced by the hip hop soundtracks of video games. As the story goes, he and his friends used to play a lot of Street Fighter when they were young. As a result, Bourne eventually downloaded the soundtrack so that he could study it in further detail without being distracted by the video game itself. In his opinion, video game soundtrack sometimes have a lot of interesting things about them, which don’t get noticed much because most people are focused on the gameplay. Street Fighter wasn’t the only soundtrack that Bourne would go on to examine in this way.