There’s an energy running through Newark’s South Ward—a rhythm that pulses beneath the city’s chaos and history. If you listen closely, you might hear it in the music of Bernard T. Pearson, known to most as Lo’ki Plug. At 38, with a lifetime spent in the heart of New Jersey, Lo’ki Plug doesn’t just make music. He lives it, breathes it, lets it move through him like electricity.
Ask him what pulled him into music, and he’ll tell you it wasn’t some grand plan or childhood ambition. “What got me into music,” Bernard says, “is just the burning sensation it sends thru my spirit. I truthfully and seriously, just really, really love music. Rhythm, and I guess the power that sound has. Like… it’s bigger than me.”
For Lo’ki Plug, sound isn’t just entertainment—it’s a force, a kind of magic that can slip under the skin and rearrange the soul. Growing up in Newark, the city’s noise was always there, a complicated soundtrack of sirens, laughter, arguments, and dreams. Some days, it was sharp and dangerous; other days, it was warm, almost comforting. Music became a way of shaping that noise into something beautiful, something that made sense.
He remembers being a kid, tuning in to the radio late at night, headphones pressed tight so he wouldn’t wake anybody else in the house. “It was like I could escape,” he says. “Or maybe not escape, but connect with something that understood me better than most people ever could.” That connection never left. If anything, it’s grown stronger with each year, each beat, each lyric scribbled in the margins of a notebook.
But for Lo’ki Plug, loving music has always been about more than just listening. It’s about the physical feeling—the way a certain bassline can make your heart stutter, the way a melody can bring back a summer afternoon you thought you’d forgotten. “There are moments when I’m making music where I lose track of everything else. It’s like I’m not even here—just part of the sound.”
He laughs, a little embarrassed by how intense it sounds, but he doesn’t back away from it. “Some people chase money, or respect, or whatever. I chase that feeling. That rush. That burning sensation that music gives me.”
It isn’t always easy. The music scene in Newark can be rough, and the world tends to overlook artists who don’t fit the mold. But Lo’ki Plug has learned to trust the power of his own voice, and the depth of his own love for the craft. “I can’t force anybody to listen. All I can do is make something real, and hope it finds the people who need it.”
For him, that’s enough. Maybe more than enough. Because at the end of the day, music is more than a career, or a hobby, or even an identity. “It’s the thing that makes me feel alive,” Bernard says quietly. “That’s all I ever wanted.”