Juvenile, Home-Design Wizard
When the pandemic hit, the Cash Money rapper picked up a new hobby: building custom furniture using his own designs.
JUVENILE GRINS WITH PRIDE as he pans the phone around his backyard in a St. Louis suburb. “You know
I gotta let you see these pieces,” he exclaims over Zoom. The chair he just hopped out of was built with his own hands, as were the cabinets, sofa tables, and stools that surround him. Many of them contain hidden electrical outlets or compartments for wine bottles, but it’s an assortment of four humanoid light fixtures that hold the most special place in his heart: “It’s the Hot Boys,” he says, indicating the figures that represent himself,
Lil Wayne, B.G., and Turk, the members of the charttopping rap group he was part of in the late Nineties.
Two decades later, Juvenile is still making music —
Just Another Gangsta, his 2019 reunion with Cash Money Records co-founder Birdman, was a late-career highlight — but when Covid-19 struck this spring, he found he needed a new hobby. Home-furniture design fit the bill. “My stepfather is a carpenter,” says Juvenile, 45. “I’ve always been around building stuff as a kid. He was teaching me then how to do measurements, different woods, and stuff like that.”
Juvenile sources his own materials (“I just bought two pieces of walnut wood from a guy that my sister-in-law got off the internet”) and creates his own designs, which he carries out at workspaces in St. Louis and his hometown of New Orleans. “I used to cut hair back in the day. I like to draw,” he says. “So I’m pretty good with a straight line and color schemes.” He’s thinking about setting up a website to sell his creations, but first he wants to make a sofa to go with the rest of that backyard set: “I got to have one of the best upholsterers ever, ‘cause the ideas I have are so unique.”
Working on furniture brings Juvenile a deep satisfaction. “It’s so great to start from nothing and have a tool in your hand,” he says. “To make something that’s going to be here for years after I’m gone . . . I can’t even explain it. It’s no different than making music.” CHARLES HOLMES
Juvenile with some of his custom light-fixture designs in New Orleans, September 2020