Today we’d like to introduce you to Jeremy Lee Perry.
Hi Jeremy Lee, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I was born in Long Beach. A kid with big feelings, big dreams, and no map for how to hold either one.
Life took me off track early. Choices I made. Choices that were made for me. Eventually I ended up in prison. Not just the physical kind. The kind you build inside your own head until you can’t see the sky anymore.
For a long time I thought the way out was somewhere out there. A new city. A new job. Anything but the man in the mirror.
Then I learned the truth. The only way out is in.
That’s chapter four of my book, and it’s the door that changed everything. When I stopped running from myself, I finally started meeting myself.
I started writing songs. Twenty two of them. Then I built a book around them. Every chapter of From Prison to Purpose ends with the song that came first. The songs are the bones. The chapters are the flesh.
Today I speak. I perform. I write. I run a nonprofit called 16×16. And I get to tell people the same thing somebody once had to tell me.
You are not who you were. You are not yet who you are becoming. That middle ground is sacred. That’s where purpose is born.
That’s where I live now.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Smooth? Not even close.
The road has been more like a train off track. That’s the name of chapter three for a reason! There were years where I was just trying to survive myself. Trying to outrun the pain.
I lost my brother Justin. That kind of loss doesn’t heal. You just learn to carry it. You let it walk with you instead of on top of you.
I made choices that cost me my freedom. I sat in cells and stared at ceilings and wondered if the man I used to be was the only man I would ever get to be.
I struggled with love. With trust. With learning how to receive instead of always trying to prove. I struggled with silence. Being sober and alone with myself was the hardest room I ever had to sit in.
And even after the change started, the struggle didn’t stop. It just changed clothes. Growth has a price. Patience has a price. Purpose has a price. I wrote a whole chapter about that. A Price for Patience. Because nobody tells you that the middle ground is where the real fight lives.
But every struggle became a song. Every song became a chapter. Every chapter became a piece of the man I am today.
The road wasn’t smooth. But it was mine. And I wouldn’t trade a single mile of it. Because the man walking it now is somebody I’m finally proud to be.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
What I do is simple to say and takes a lifetime to live. I help people find the way back to themselves.
I’m an author. A musician. A motivational speaker and performer. But underneath all of that, I’m a translator. I take pain and turn it into language people can actually use. I take the middle ground, that messy space between who you were and who you are becoming, and I make it walkable.
My book, From Prison to Purpose, is the heart of the work. Twenty two chapters. Twenty two original songs. The songs came first. I wrote them in the fire, before I had the words to explain what was burning. Then I built the chapters around them. That’s not a gimmick. That’s the architecture of how I actually healed. Music was the first honest thing I could say. The prose came later, once I could look at the truth without flinching.
I speak to rooms full of people who feel stuck. People who think their past is a life sentence. I tell them it isn’t. I’ve been where they are. Not as a metaphor. Literally.
I run a nonprofit. I perform. I mentor. I show up.
What I’m most proud of is the man my daughter sees when she looks at me. That’s the whole scoreboard right there.
What sets me apart is that I’m not selling a formula. I’m not a coach with a checklist. I lived every word I say. When I stand on a stage, I’m not performing recovery. I’m carrying it. And the songs are proof. You can’t fake a song. A song will tell on you every time.
That’s what I do. That’s what I’ve built. That’s what I keep building.
Is there a quality that you most attribute to your success?
Authenticity. That’s the whole thing.
Not the word people throw around on social media. The real kind. The kind that costs you something. The kind that means you show up the same in every room, whether there’s a camera on you or not.
The turning point wasn’t when I got out of prison. It was when I stopped performing my own life and started living it.
Every song I wrote is authentic. Every chapter in my book is authentic. I didn’t polish the pain into something prettier. Because the second you dress it up, you rob somebody else of the permission to be honest about their own.
You can copy a message. You can copy a style. You can’t copy a soul that’s actually showing up as itself.
Authenticity. Everything else is decoration.
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