For Jay 305, smelling good is holiness. A trail of musks, resinous woods and creamy flowers follow it like an orb of protection. But true flexibility, the endless search, is smelling like no one else. At Scent Bar DTLA, the specialty perfume boutique with locations on The Row, Hollywood and New York City, the south-central rapper picks up perfumes and puts them on his nose in short succession, leaving a collection of bulbous bottles and angular in their awakening. He is looking for something that will stimulate him almost reflexively, as will a fragrance that is truly meant for you. Jay arrived with a list of potential contenders written in his Notes app, which he does often: Layton by Parfum de Marly, Oud for Greatness by Initio Parfums Privés, Black Afgano by Nasomatto. Beast mode fragrances with an air of mystery or spirituality. The kind of perfumes that make a presentation for you. “Scent is like your brand,” says Jay.
Jay has been coming here at least once a week for the past few years. He always goes to the DTLA location, usually after going to Smorgasburg LA. He is also a regular customer of Frédéric Malle in Melrose Place, where he stocks up on one of his favorites, Carnal Flower. At Dawah Bookshop in Leimert Park, he blends his own perfume oils, and at Dover Street Market, where everyone knows him by his first name, he has recently been drawn to Edward Bess's perfume collection. At Scent Bar, we jump from the “incense” shelf to the “male cult” shelf, smelling everything that David Aguirre, an artist who has worked at Scent Bar for years and is often Jay's point person, deftly pulls out. from the “oud” or “floral” shelves behind the counter. Aguirre has taught Jay the correct pronunciation of many French perfume names and has included it among all-time favorites, such as Jeroboam's Oriento, a jammy patchouli of roses with a bright top note of saffron.
“Scent is like your brand,” says Jay.
Born Jay Cummins, he has grown accustomed to his personal interests defying the expectations people have of him based on where he grew up, his time behind bars, or the experiences he raps about in his music. Jay's discography has become the stuff of Los Angeles legend: neighborhood anthems, strip club classics. It was 2012's “Youzza Flip” that put him on the map, something that was only further cemented with his work on Dom Kennedy's label Other People's Money, aka OPM, throughout the 2010s. He's been making music ever since, finding hits with songs like “Why You So Nasty?” with Travis Scott from his 2017 album, “Taking All Bets.” But he is also a certified perfume addict, has been vegan for 10 years, is sober, and has lived a life with complete dedication to health and wellness after suffering a car accident in his early 20s, and a doctor He told him that if he didn't make him lose weight his knees wouldn't heal. He is a Virgo and often reminds me of the superiority of the sign. He dabbles in dirt bikes on a quest to find freedom, which is like first met. And he is a fashion enthusiast, something he has felt entirely free to express in recent years through a personal style he has dubbed “ghetto couture.”
Today, he primarily wears New Bedstuy, a brand designed by his friend Johnnie Davis who is known for making subversive basics, and Margiela. Sitting courtside at a Lakers game recently, Wiz Khalifa called Jay “the best dressed in the West,” he says proudly. He's also sort of the unofficial mayor of Los Angeles, with friends who span the city's worlds of music, art and fashion, casually mentioning everyone from Kendrick Lamar and Rita Ora in the same breath. Almost a year ago, I ran into Jay at a TOMBOGO film screening for Los Angeles Fashion Week. The smell of him hit me immediately and I compulsively asked the question: “What are you wearing?” Jay knew he wasn't talking about his vest, his shoes, or his hat. He looked at me, with a twinkle in his eye and a satisfied smile: “I have my own mix. “I can’t tell you what.” We immediately agreed that we should go to the Scent Bar, our mutual happy place. (And for the record, I guessed at least one perfume in this mysterious blend just from the first smell, which was when Jay knew I was a real one.)
Jay's latest EP, “Don't Wait Until I Die,” made in collaboration with rapper and producer Hit-Boy, takes a page from the deep, oily, enveloping aromas that have become his signature.
Jay's latest EP, “Don't Wait Until I Die,” made in collaboration with rapper and producer Hit-Boy, takes a page from the deep, oily, enveloping aromas that have become his signature. The record, which dropped in May, is complex and addresses issues of legacy and mortality. “Pieces,” a sort of summer hit made with Dom Kennedy and Hit-Boy, serves as the flip side of “Devils Happy In LA,” an album in demon mode that reveals the dark side of the city. In “Pray 2 God Is Real,” Jay raps about begging a higher power for safety and understanding for his people. He has been using ouds as part of his creative process when making the EP, one of the most expensive (and divisive) notes in perfumery known as “wood of the gods.” “It's darker in tone, but it's still spiritual, it's still healing, which is what 'Don't Wait Until I'm Dead' is,” he says. “Don't wait until I'm gone to remember my smell.”
Fragrance people are a different breed: obsessive little monsters who get carried away by their senses and fall in love with things that are invisible. Real bosses can reflect for hours on the construction of a perfume, the feelings and ideas it can provoke. We've gotten to the point in our Scent Bar journey where Jay and I are talking a mile a minute, rolling our eyes every time we smell something special, going from corner to corner. Nothing makes sense and everything is beautiful, flying high in the ecstasy of the perfume.
I walk in with the intention of buying something and I make Jay smell the perfume I've been considering for the past six months five times in a row (indoors and outdoors) because I'm actually crazy. And he must be too because he never once rejects me or questions me. It's called Ma Nishtana de Parfum Prissana, with notes of incense, labdanum, saffron, rose, smoke and leather. It's the kind of fragrance that is so animalistic and intense at first smell that it makes you nauseous, with a drydown that becomes strangely addictive, comforting and warm. There is an understanding between Jay and I that this is what one must do: talk, think and smell the perfume incessantly to understand it and find something that reflects the person he is or the person he wants to become. .
Scent Bar is the kind of place where, if you love perfumes, it seems almost illegal to be inside. There are so many things at your disposal, so many things you've never smelled and too many things you'll want to smell forever. Jay often comes here on a date to demonstrate his knowledge (“It's what you taught him, not what you bought him,” goes one of his many mantras) to get an idea of whether the smells will repel a person. potential partner. Likes. “If he's a good person, that's how he finds out,” he says. How is that? “Because that's when you find out if she's on the dark side or the light side. If she comes in here and [can’t stand] the smell, something is wrong.” For Jay, scent is directly rooted in spirituality, self-love, and respect for others.
“It brings out emotions,” Jay says of the fragrance. “Smell and taste are the most important things you remember from when you were a child.” Growing up in a black Caribbean household in the '80s and '90s (his mother is from Jamaica, his father is from Barbados), smelling good was the law. “If you have a suit on, but you don't have cologne or you don't smell good, do you even have the best fit? “What’s the point,” he says. It was after his grandmother told him he was moldy in front of a girl he liked when he was 9, that Jay swore he would never be caught slipping up again. His first fragrance was Davidoff's Cool Water, a cult classic men's marine fragrance with notes of rosemary, seawater and ambergris. (The perfumer behind the fragrance is Pierre Bourdon, who would later create fragrances for one of Jay's favorite houses, Frédéric Malle, including French Lover and Iris Poudre.) His journey jumped to Nautica Blue and then Versace Dylan Blue. (Apparently all the “men's” fragrances popular in the '90s were named after the color blue.) Over time, he began to venture into Le Labo and then Byredo, which opened him to the world of specialty perfumes.
Perfume is part of Jay's ritual every morning. A daily baptism that comes after a workout and a shower. His spray points include behind the knees, lower back, shoulders and beard “depending”. About what, I ask? He laughs and doesn't respond at all.
“Smell and taste are the most important things you remember from when you were a child.”
—Jay 305
We stroll down The Row to place a takeout order at Pizzeria Bianco while blowing on blotters soaked with our potential perfume picks. Jay and I have similar aromatic tastes: we want to smell moody, mystical, like we just came out of a temple and know something you don't, with a hint of spicy spiciness or weirdness. We gravitate toward scents that are polarizing. “There will be something for everyone,” she says. “It's like making music, like making art. “Some people won’t understand it right then and there, but someday, it may come to them.”
He's encouraging me to look for Ma Nishtana, probably because I won't shut up and maybe because our nostrils are charred right now. When we return to the Scent Bar, I run to the counter where I left the bottle of Ma Nishtana, and next to it I notice a simple, cylindrical bottle of a perfume I've never seen or heard of, called Papyrus Oud by Parle. Moi de Parfum. Something compels me to open the magnetic lid and the moment I inhale the smell of the slightly golden liquid, I feel my eyes fill with tears. I know. I know in that immediate way that you know when a perfume is right for you. To me it smells like burnt paper, Smarties candy and leather. Notes range from ginger to orris root, white cedar and vetiver. This perfume catches me, this perfume is me. No doubt. I make Jay smell it and buy it immediately.
Jay orders samples of Terroni by Orto Parisi, a delicious, dank, smoky, wet earth and raspberry fragrance, and Bois d'Ascese by Naomi Goodsir, a perfume that smells like whiskey alone around a campfire. He promises to come buy one of them to celebrate when “Do n't Wait Until I Die” comes out.
As I sit in the car, the smell of Papyrus Oud fills the space, I feel so full; maybe it's the dopamine hit of just spending $150, but mostly, I think, finding a fragrance that feels like a self-portrait. I remember something Jay told me that same day about the perfume: “It's like the Earth,” he says. “The Earth only gives.” It's at that moment that I realize that I accidentally left with the samples that Jay got for him. The good thing is that he will be back next week.
