James discovered punk rock through an older foster brother and attended concerts by seminal hardcore punk bands Black Flag, Agnostic Front and Millions of Dead Cops. He was arrested for the first time at 12, and by 14 he ended up in juvenile hall. There he rejected the pacifist beliefs of his parents (who had marched with Martin Luther King Jr. and became Freedom Riders), and began studying the writings of Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael and Huey P. Newton, fusing them with aggressive punk ideals.