Revolutionary Hip-Hop artist Jag Arreola gets personal on his latest album ‘Unmasked’

In a quiet Inland Empire suburb, Jag Arreola sits in a small backyard studio. It’s a humble workspace, its walls adorned with brightly colored art and paintings depicting a collage of graffiti lettering and Meso-American imagery. As he listens back to a new recording, the distant sound of roosters can be heard down the street as colorful hummingbirds zip by in the warm spring air amid the still-snow-capped San Bernardino Mountains. It’s hard to believe that back in 2023, on an early December morning, the tranquil, picturesque neighborhood was filled with San Bernardino County Sheriff officers and various other law enforcement agencies conducting an early morning raid on this humble, unassuming home, ultimately changing his life forever. 

For years, Arreola worked as an educator at Hardy Brown College Prep, where he taught middle school history and was respected as a beloved educator and longtime community advocate. However, outside the classroom, he was using his talents to teach through another medium, the art of Hip-Hop. For nearly a decade, he performed under the stage name Jaguar (eventually adopting Jag Arreola), as a solo artist and one of the underground Hip-Hop duo Kozmik Force along with bandmate and long-time friend Native Threat. Originally hailing from Fontana, California, since 2016, Arreola has made a name for himself as one of the most militant and politically outspoken artists in the region’s tight-knit but expanding local music scene. 

Crafting music rooted in fostering pan-Indigenous unity across the American diaspora, Arreola has used his talents to highlight militant decolonization and the push for liberation for all marginalized peoples by dismantling white supremacy from a Chicano-Indigenous perspective. Needless to say, Arreola has made politics a central component of his music, often touching on topics such as racism, immigration, class struggle, and even global issues abroad, including the struggle for Palestinian liberation. 

“I want to build a movement through my music and bridge that gap across the Meso-American diaspora with our Northern and Southern Native brothers and sisters,” Arreola explained. “I want to unite and have people come to an understanding that a large majority of us are Indigenous to this land. We are the first people on this continent. We can never be labeled immigrants; we can't be labeled foreigners by foreigners.” 

As his online presence grew, Arreola began donning masks while performing before eventually settling on a now iconic luchador motif, concealing his identity from his students, co-workers, and music fans. Initially, Arreola wore the mask for privacy reasons to separate his professional life from his artistic endeavors. However, as time went on, his regalia slowly evolved into a central part of his on-stage performances and identity. Arreola regularly incorporated numerous wrestling references into his music and stage act, and continually built a mystique around his persona on- and offline.

Through his clever use of social media and releasing a consistent string of high-quality music both as a solo artist and with Kozmik Force, Arreola would eventually amass a following of over 50 thousand followers on Instagram by the end of 2023. However, the revolutionary emcee’s life would be turned completely upside down when he was embroiled in a high-profile case known to many as the “Justice 8” case, when he, along with seven other unaffiliated individuals, were targeted and arrested during a series of early morning raids targeting on their homes in December 2023 during what law enforcement officials referred to as “Operation Accountability”. It was a nearly three-month-long investigation that surveilled a grouping of Latino activists and concerned citizens who individually attended demonstrations, live-streamed protests, and advocated for police reform and street vendor rights in Pomona, Victorville, and Fontana. 

Arreola and the other seven individuals were charged with various felonies and incarcerated without bail at the High Desert Detention Center in Adelanto. Arreola faced five felonies, including a conspiracy charge, and was held at the facility without bail until his attorney Dan Chambers successfully petitioned the court that he be released on a $40,000 bond. According to Chambers, over fifty character letters were submitted to the court petitioning for his release.

“It looked like a slave ship,” Arreola said, recalling the conditions within the High Desert Detention Center. “It’s just bodies stacked on top of one another,” he recalled. “But I was thinking about my art, always. I'm always thinking about art, especially when you’re in a 20-hour lockdown. I was always writing lyrics in my brain, in my mind, on paper. I'm always thinking about creating, I'm a builder.”

For over a year, Arreola fought charges brought by the San Bernardino DA alleging that he, along with the other activists, engaged in criminal acts related to several protests in the summer of 2023 in response to acts of police misconduct, anti-Latino racism, and discriminatory practices targeting street vendors. Arreola eventually had the four felony charges against him dropped. A diversion motion was granted due to there being insufficient evidence on the misdemeanor charge. Ultimately, all charges placed on Arreola had insufficient evidence, which led to Chambers securing a dismissal for the remaining charges

Although Arreola was eventually vindicated in court, the victory came at a great cost to both his personal life and music career. Although he was granted bail, Jag was fired from his job as a middle school history teacher at Hardy Brown College Prep. A court-mandated gag order also prohibited him from engaging on social media, the main driver and facilitating platform for his music, for over a year. In addition to the court order, Instagram deleted his longtime account shortly following his arrest. Meta, Instagram’s parent company, will take down or disable social media accounts at the request of law enforcement, but only if they receive a valid subpoena or warrant. Despite his best efforts, Arreola says that Meta did not respond to any of his requests to have his account reinstated, despite all of his charges being dismissed. As of this publication, Arreola has rebuilt roughly half of the following that he had at his peak at the end of 2023. 

Banned from social media and his teaching career stripped away,  Arreola quickly began to work on his sophomore album during the contentious duration of his court proceedings. The fruits of his labor and pent-up frustration yielded “Unmasked,” an intimate retelling of his incarceration and the police retaliation he experienced at the hands of the San Bernardino County Sheriff. “This project is based on the reality of being a Brown man, being a Chicano on this side of the colonial border,” Arreola lamented. “It’s the reality of what can happen when you are involved in social movements of change, trying to fight for your people, to survive and not be the targets of state violence. It's based on the true story of me being arrested, and falsely held captive inside the carceral system here in the county.” 

Jag released the 17-track album exclusively on the online music distribution platform Bandcamp, opting to delay its release on streaming platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube in order to earn some revenue from the project. Such a traumatic experience would have made many reconsider the content of their music or leave revolutionary politics altogether. Arreola, however, says his targeting has only made him even more defiant in creating art that challenges white supremacy and state repression 

“I've been through a lot, and I've been through a lot of injustice the last calendar or so,” Arreola said. “I got a story to tell, I can't have my enemies tell it. I can't have the colonizers tell it. I have to tell my own story. I have to write myself into history because they've already erased me out. They erased me out and labeled me whatever they want to label me, but I'm gonna write myself in to represent my people.”