Kim West, better known as Jah Locs, has probably loc’d your favorite artist’s hair. Actually, not probably. Her list of clients includes Lil Uzi Vert, Gunna, Juice WRLD, Roddy Ricch, King Von, and Lil Durk. She became a loctician full-time after she was fired from her job at a grocery store after graduating from college. She took her A Seat At The Table to tell us about her journey into entrepreneurship and take us inside our favorite rappers’ hairstyles.
How did you learn how to do locs?
I’ll be honest with you: I’m self-taught. I grew up in a household where I had my natural hair, and my sister would braid my hair. Over time, I just picked up on it, so I learned how to braid first. But it’s not like my niche, so to speak. And I’ve just always been good with my hands. And I’ll tell you a quick story. A friend of mine named Trent James planted the seed for me. He one day called me over. We were chatting and catching up; he hadn’t had his hair done in nine months–the duration he was in college. And he just randomly said, you want to do my hair, and I’m like me, and he just trusted me to do it. And I had, you know, coconut oil and some water, and I made it work. I gave him a detox, like, I don’t even know where it came from, but the result was beautiful. And he was shocked to see his scalp, and he was like, you should do this. He planted the seed from that day, and the rest is history.
What’s the most challenging part of your entrepreneurial journey?
For me, and many women, single moms, can relate, but the work-life balance for me is probably the most difficult. My superpower is being a mom and just being able to balance being an entrepreneur. In my case, I consider myself a mompreneur because I am a mother who doesn’t stop, that’s 24/7. The hardest part was the work-life balance; I made some sacrifices. Sometimes, you have parent guilt, like, I wish I brought my son outside today. I would be in the salon working till 1 am. I was just in there, you know. So that was the hardest part, and I still deal with it now sometimes.
How did you start doing Juice WRLD’s hair?
First of all, Juice WRLD is such an amazing and special individual, and being around him at that moment was surreal because I didn’t even think of it like ‘wow. Like, I’m doing Juice WRLD’s hair, but the way it happened was crazy. So I was at the studio to do Gunna’s hair. He was like my first artist, you know, that I was working with, you know, as my career went up, his career was going up. So, he’s the first client that I got to build with. And he said to me, as I was doing his hair, like you should do Juice WRLD hair, like he in here. He was like, he he’s going up too, like you should do him. So, Juice WRLD was in the studio; I even think Travis Scott and Future were there. There were a lot of people there that day. It was crazy. Anyway, he came in, and we were having a random conversation. We were talking about hair. He was talking about his hair. Again, we’re at the studio, I kid you not. It was probably like two o’clock in the morning. I didn’t get done with his hair until about 4 am. He was so tired, but he was chilling on the couch, and I did his hair and shampooed him. I don’t know if that was the first and only time he’s ever gotten his hair done, but he had his unique look. So I got done with it. He looked at his camera. He said, ” I like this, ” and he did a video for me. He was falling in and out of sleep, and I was doing it. I was tired. I’m like, let me not nod off. And your friend Ndoh took those pictures of me and Juice, too.
How did you start doing Lil Uzi Vert‘s hair?
Uzi, you know, came into the game. He always had different colors, and purple was his stamp. And then he, you know, he likes to switch his look up. Uzi is a person who likes to switch his look up; whatever mode he’s in, that’s what he’s gonna do. Um, so I’m the person that brought it back, yeah, so that look that he had, like, I brought it back, and I was so excited about it. I think he just DM’d me. But I brought that 2016 look back, that was his iconic look. I was not expecting the whole Uzi community to notice me. A lot of Lil Uzi fan pages started to follow me. They were reposting me on IG.
What’s your advice to that girl who doesn’t know where to start?
Just do it. It sounds so simple, but when I think about Nike and the slogan, I do it. It’s so to the point where you have to do it. Because what are you going to do? If it’s motion, some motion is better than no motion. Slow motion is better than no motion. You have to do it.
