Conversations with Jamal [INFJ Kenzo] Hansen

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jamal [INFJ Kenzo] Hansen.

Hi Jamal [INFJ Kenzo], can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I suppose my story begins when my mother’s drug dealer ex-boyfriend shot her in the jaw. She then drove herself to the police station. She’s yelling out loud that she got shot, but they don’t believe her. Until she starts to spit up blood on their laminate tile. Then they finally took her to the hospital.

I would rather be tough as nails, but would sooner lead with my heart, is how I would describe her. No matter how good or bad our situation was, she always helped others. Even when she got burned, she always saw the good in others.

She is a woman who got caught up in the crack epidemic but somehow climbed her way out. She always fought her way out of the darkness, I learned to admire that trait. I naturally followed her path and was fortunate to get out.

Our life was like some premium cable. At 12, I knew I wanted to write, but those schools were so dark and ugly that I could barely show up. We lived on the line of neurotic chaos and a little order with welfare, food stamps, thefts, domestic violence(Once the cops shot my dog), overnight road trips, and parties.

After graduating from North Polk high school, I played two years of college football at Ellsworth CC in Iowa. It was a great experience, but it took a toll on the body as the mind started to break. The prohormones and alcohol started to act out a lot of rages, I became especially violent. Eventually, this melancholy bit me and I refused to leave my room and would sit in the solitude of darkness watching CSI. Even though I had success, I left.

Life punched me hard and I fell harder, I got an OWI and my modeled moral worldview of myself imploded. The same night I lost one of my good friends from high school. Years later, I wrote the song “Better Angel”, for him.

I strumbled around, starting cooking & waiting tables. I put down the whiskey and picked up cocaine. It sounded healthier as I stopped playing football at 280-300lbs. I lost 80lbs in four months from the cocaine making me become bulimic and I was well ingesting large amounts of drugs & alcohol every day to keep up with 2 jobs.

I stubbed my toe again, waking up in jail with my 2nd OWI at 21. I wanted nothing more than to stay there, but my family and friends worked to bail me out. Next, I tried to walk too straight by going all in on work and that failed. Stuff was super cheap back in 2017 and I made a lot of money for a 21-year-old, close to $60,000 grand and it all went up my nose and in my belly.

I had a few disagreements with my tyrant boss and ended up being intentionally insubordinate. I got demoted, it broke my heart, and I quit. For a few weeks, I blacked out pretty hard on Xanax and Cocaine. I was able to go back to one of my old jobs, but I still felt stuck and unfulfilled.

When the pandemic hit, I went on a 2-week drug binge. That year in 2020, I started watching podcasts, one night I watched Joe Rogan talk about Dinosaurs and the next thing I knew I read all night about dinosaurs for over 8 hours. A couple of all-night mushroom trips later, I was enlightened.

I’m dyslexic and I have severe ADHD so I’ve never been much of a reader. However, I ended up reading The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People by Dr. Steven Covey, and I was glued to it, I couldn’t put it down.

The pandemic was the first time I ever stopped and really wondered about my actions, where I’m from the sun doesn’t stop and neither do I so sometimes it can be hard to think about the future. Now I live in the future too much. Through my contemplation, my imagination began to swirl with limitless possibilities in ways that I had not imagined since childhood.

One night my landlord’s son’s 16-year-old girlfriend overdosed after taking fentanyl-laced pills. As I gave her CPR and watched this little girl almost die and I realized yet again the fragility of life and that I don’t belong there.

The next day I called my friend to ask her if I could move out to Huntington Beach, she said yes, booked a one-way ticket for three weeks later, and on May 1, 2020, I was gone. Before I left, I spent every day attempting to rewire my brain and focus on who I was meant to be.

It was the hardest thing in the world to leave everybody that I loved, but it was the best for me to do. The fresh start allowed me to regain my emotional control and overall vitality for life. I lucked into some real estate in Huntington Beach and Life has been good to me and I hope that I’ve been good to life and to others.

When I landed at John Wayne it wasn’t easy, I got kicked out of my friend’s place after 2 weeks and hopped from Airbnb to Airbnb, all the while keeping faith that it would all work out for the best and everything keeps working. I got a lot of help from a lot of people, and I will always be indebted to them.

Nowadays, I’m in my senior year at Concordia University, finishing my English Literature Degree, preparing for the release of my album The Wage Of Better Angels on October 27th, Getting ready for a show at the Club Bahia on October 20th, and Launching OTAON x Streetwear, which serves to inspire, educate, and remind courageous, brave souls that they need to become what they are meant to be, and the more that happens, the more humanity wins.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
My greatest struggle was not my turbulent childhood, it wasn’t school, it wasn’t college football, and it wasn’t any of the many intermediate setbacks and disappointments that I’ve had along the journey. The hardest daily obstacle is the inner critic. That voice is undefeated. Each day I pick up my sword and fight it, and more often than not I don’t win. But that doubt is what drives me the greatest.

I’ve heard this quote from both Gary V and Tony Robbins “Most people tend to overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.”

The most challenging part is investing in your future when you don’t know what you want because I had to try a bunch of stuff before I figured out the plan to execute, and it’s going to be a long haul, but I am fully committed to making this all come together. I’m most afraid of having regret, and I don’t allow my life to be in somebody else’s hands. That’s plain and simple. Let’s go take action in the world and make it a better place.

Another challenging obstacle is playing well with others. My whole life, I’ve questioned what’s right and wrong. I’ve done a lot of wrongs and I’ve done a lot of rights; I have a good grasp of both, I don’t follow stupid rules, and I know a lot of people who do. For me, this is the biggest flaw of humanity, when individuals negate their Individual morality to institutions. There is nothing I would rather not be around than people who don’t have a sense of what’s right and wrong. The individual moral question comes up in books like Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland by Robert Browning and Fear and Trembling by Soren Kierkegaard. I don’t think a lot of people care to do what’s right, it’s more about preserving the self and I say that cause I used to be like that until I read those books and asked myself that same question.

Regardless I act with love and trust and continue to build relationships everywhere I go. I take charge of what I can control, myself to the best of my abilities and I try to be forgiving and keep moving forward.

I’m also too emotional and sensitive, I tend to care about others way too much. I’m currently working on letting go of invading other people’s lives. There are not me and I’m not them. What doesn’t make sense to me is not going to necessarily make sense to them and vice versa.

There have been a lot of difficulties, but all we can do is keep pushing through and never give up. Life’s weird, the hardest thing I ever had to face was looking at the sun that day. To balance work and our interpersonal relationships in life is challenging but rewarding.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I am Music Artist/Entrepreneur. My Brand is OTAON x Streetwear, which stands for One Thousand and One Nights. The Arabian Tales Book, Aladin, Alibaba, Sinbad, etc. It’s all imported from Portugal, Designer material for premium prices, and it’s gonna do some great things in the future.

My Artist name is INFJ Kenzo, which stands for my Myers-Briggs personality and Kenzo is an inside joke between me and my investor.

It’s Pop/Rap, I tried to go darker with it, but the more I let out the happier I become. It’s melodic, B.O.B., Eminem, JuiceWrld, relatable sound, and material. It’s heavily focused on faith, drugs, sex, desire, and love.

What sets it apart is my English study, I go all in on the literary references to abstractly tell these similar stories. Robinhood, Peter Pan, and Great Gatsby. I allude to a lot of literature, science, and faith-based texts.

I’m most proud of the artist representing the Individual facing certain truths of life and that people get to walk that journey with you. As a whole, my debut album project The Wage Of Better Angels: A Treatise To The Truth, was a long project but it’s 22 tracks(70 mins) of music and I’m proud of how much work I put into it and how much creative collaboration that it took to make this happen, I’m indebted to a lot of talented artists they made me look better than I am and I cannot wait to share it with the world on October 27th, 2022.

If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?
My tale is as old as time. The creative kid desires to fit in and stop getting beat up. He stops creating and thus becomes an angry adult. I was really shy but also really outgoing. My whole personality is the extreme contractions on both sides of the spectrum, I’ve always been really open to experience so I’ve always ended up in diverse groups of people. I’ve done a lot of sports and a lot of creative things, but when we started moving around, I stopped doing a lot of stuff.

I was a bad goalie in Hockey. The defensive tackle in Football. The clown in Tennis. The 4 by fat in Track. The benchwarmer on the state championship Baseball team. The slow kid in basketball. The kid punching on the Wrestling mat. Jiu-jitsu humbled me well. I’m a bad drummer. Was a good singer in the honor choir until the girls came along and I ran away. Shooting airsoft guns, drinking, smoking, and I had an obsession with knives and swords and blow-dart guns. I couldn’t the guy was selling that sh*t to an 11-year old lol. I was never that big of a gamer, but I did like sports games a lot. I spent a lot of time outside in nature playing and fishing for the most part. But eating was and is probably my favorite interest.

I’m pretty much the same. I like to try lots of things.

Pricing:

• 10/20 Show @Club Bahia $13
• The Wage Of Better Angels CD $30
• OTAON x Streetwear Designer Hoodied Sweatshirt $120
• OTAON x Streetwear Designer Longsleeve T-Shirt $70
• OTAON x Streetwear Designer Sweatpants $120

Contact Info:

• Website: https://kenzoinfj.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/Infj_kenzo/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/infjkenzo/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/infjkenzo
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCACMW6sD9-8hA0lD5i8nKJw
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/infj-kenzo-los-angeles-2
• Other: https://koji.to/Infj_kenzo

Image Credits
Lauren Scott Huntington Beach And Wearing Robert Graham and OTAON x Streetwear.