Two Worlds
JEY-J doesn't do halfway.
Born in Hawaii, raised between two worlds and forged in Tokyo, he's the bilingual MC who took his native flow to Japan and never watered it down. In Japan they called him American; in America, sometimes Japanese. He stopped trying to pick a side and bet everything on rhythm and sound.
Self-Made
He came up freestyling in Hawaii bars, then put in the years on Tokyo's club circuit. He runs his own gear, edits his own tracks and co-founded his own label, Burns Records, to keep every step of the process in his hands.
The studio résumé speaks for itself: Grammy-winning producer Ryan West in New York, two-time Album of the Year Grammy nominee Mike Bozzi in Hollywood, and Sterling Sound veteran Chris Athens.
The Disorder
In December 2017 it all came together on The Disorder, his full-length debut through Universal Music Japan: seventeen self-produced tracks, more than a decade in the making. His bars go straight at the hard stuff, from social issues to who people really are underneath, and he's never been afraid to play the villain to say it.
The run that followed put him on stages alongside Afrojack, Taboo of the Black Eyed Peas and KOHH, at the Jingu Gaien Fireworks Festival and beyond. He directed his own video for “Tearin' Us Apart,” a track later picked to open the movie Rikekoi.
What's Next
“At first, I made music just for me,” he says. “Now people feel it, and that means everything.”
Next, JEY-J is taking his sound past the limits of hip-hop, and bringing as many people with him as he can.