The Breakaway Point

The Breakaway Point is a new group entering the music scene. Consisting of J-La and Magir they blend different elements of rap, acoustic, classical and jazz giving them the proper palette to tell stories, create imagery and invoke thought. J-La’s rapping is used to paint raw detailed pictures, while The Magir’s singing brings forth emotion. Their debut mix tape "Don’t You Want to Breakaway? Vol.1" started with the dream of making music solely based off self expression and ended with a product that was entirely produced, recorded, mixed and mastered by The Breakaway Point. So, only one question remains, don’t you want to breakaway?

J-La, born Jessie David Lapsley on January 8th, 1983 came into his love of making music later in life. Since young he was always a music enthusiast. He listened to music from the 60’s growing up, mainly, Michael Jackson and The Temptations which he lists as his largest influences because of their ability to connect with the emotion of a song. In 1995 he enrolled in a band program and took up the trumpet, (which he still plays to this day and has used it for recording this mix tape) and played basketball. In 2001 he decided to quit basketball and follow a scholastic path by enrolling in electrical engineering at the University of Manitoba.

In August 2006, J-La’s 6th year of engineering his long time girlfriend became pregnant, unfortunately she miscarried his child in November 2006. After this difficult time J-La felt as if his life was going nowhere. Mid-term of the winter semester in 2007 J-La dropped out of electrical engineering to pursue his dream of music as full time as possible. He took all of the money he had and invested it in what became the beginnings of his home studio.

J-La, with a humble home studio began learning as much as he could about production, recording and mixing. He spent many sleepless nights absorbing as much information as possible, reading manuals, tutorials, books and anything else he could get his hands on. After many brief alliances with other local rappers and producers J-La met up with and coming producer in August 2007. He was referred to as "Magir".

Magir, born Mark Edward Giroux on July 18th, 1985, like J-La, also realized his love for the creation of music later in life. He always had a deep appreciation for music. His major influences taught him that you can create pictures with music; they were Ludwig Van Beethoven, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Gustav Holst, Igor Stravinsky and Claude Debussy.

His love of classical music followed him throughout his life. In 1991 he started taking piano lessons. Even though he stopped 1998 he continued learning on his own until he was able to master difficult grade 10 pieces. Enjoyment persuaded him to pick up a guitar in 1995 and within a few years he had taught himself to play it by ear. He continues using this ability in the present. To date he has learned and recorded piano, guitar, violin, djembe, bongos, clarinet, flute and various other household items such as wine glasses and elastic bands.

He played instruments for relaxation and had his sights set on becoming a high school physics teacher. He received a degree in Physics from The University of Winnipeg in 2006 and was on his way to getting an education degree until August 2007 when he met J-La. They instantly began working closely together.

December 2007 was the beginning of the "Don’t You Want to Breakaway? Vol. 1", and the start of the alliance known as "The Breakaway Point". By day J-La makes pizza and Magir serves coffee, while not working there is nothing except music. "Virtually everything you will hear on the mix tape "Don’t You Want to Breakaway? Vol.1" is a real sound recorded by us. We journeyed through midi, through hardware and software, through recording, through mixing and through mastering. Almost everything is played by us, recorded by us, mixed by us and mastered by us. Our aim is honest self expression and we believe we have captured that on "Don’t You Want to Breakaway? Vol. 1". In the end it’s all about sounds, textures and depth. "

Stay Positive
J-La & Magir
The Breakaway Point