by, Benish A. Shah, Editor-in-Chief
Being adored by thousands of screaming fans on a regular basis can create an insurmountable ego in some individuals. With this idea in my head I walked into NEEM’s meeting with Jay Sean expecting a somewhat arrogant celebrity who would answer of my questions with no more than one-line quips.
Instead, what I found was: a sophisticated, incredibly sexy man with the politeness of an English gentleman and charm that rivals perhaps SRK himself, answering my questions with poise and thoughtfulness. Within 5 minutes, Jay Sean managed to impress us as a person, adding 5 glowing stars to his already brilliant reputation as a talented artist.
Having made headlines as a South Asian artist signing with Cash Money with chart topping work, we wanted to talk to Jay Sean about his ascent and his experiences. His music speaks for itself, his talent being apparent to even the untrained musical ear. We wanted to know more about him. And in a true gentlemen like manner, he was happy to oblige.
In an effort to understand Jay Sean as a man, we had to start by understanding his process as an artist. His newest album steers away from the “Indian” sound of older albums, giving rise to a lyrically smooth sound that is quickly becoming his staple. “I don’t want to be a gimmick artist, I want to be the artist that people listen to 10, 20 years from now and think ‘wow that song sounds really fresh still,’” he notes. “With the Indian thing I used to do on my first album, it became a gimmick.” Instead, he pushed forward to develop songs with deeper understanding that can sound new each time you hear them. “I want people to go back and listen to it and go ‘my god these are great songs …those are well structured and well written songs.’”
So… how does one come up with these songs? We were curious as whether this lyrically smooth artist had a regimented approach to his work or whether his songs were developed in a less-scientific manner. For Jay Sean, the process of writing is a song for his albums is more than a scientific understanding of beats, lyrical placement and individual notes. It’s an organic process that this artist revels in. “I can’t wake up and say ‘today I will write a top ten single and it will be about this and it will be at 187 bpm.’ You go to the studio, chill out, vibe out, mess around put some music around It’s not like that. It’s gotta be a fun process and if it doesn’t come to me, I forget about it. Scrap done. Move on. It’s gotta be a fun process.”
With this method in mind, we discovered that his favorite song on his current album is also the album’s namesake: All or Nothing. The title has a double meaning, one for the song and one for the album itself. “I wrote [the song] when I was thinking about the relationship between myself and say… an ex. Isn’t it funny that you can be with someone everyday and they become your all and then you break up and you know nothing about them anymore. How can one minute they be your all and the next they are nothing.” From a different scope, he looks at the name of the album as a description of his relationship with music. “I love music so much. I love it so much that if I don’t get it all I don’t want any of it.”
He talked about the industry and the obstacles he faced as he rose as a South Asian artist in England. “Being Indian who was doing predominantly black music in a predominantly white country…” he mused, “They don’t know where to put you. It’s like ‘can we put him on the cover’ … ‘will people think he’s a terrorist’ – they aren’t’ saying it but they are thinking it.” The ignorance and the stereotypes made it difficult for a man that believes so fully in music itself. He couldn’t understand why these industry persons were not focused on his songs and his music, “I [thought], ‘What’s wrong with you, listen to the songs. Its about the music… you listen to the song on the radio you don’t care what color the person is, how old the person is, what their religious background is. You just listen to the song. So why all of a sudden is [all of that] so important when you are putting a song on the radio?”
The stereotypes didn’t end just because he moved to the United States in January 2009. In many ways he finds that the people in the United States know less about South Asian culture than the people in England where South Asians are a sizeable minority. “[It’s] not because they are ignorant or because they want to know less but because we are such a minority here in America. America is so vast and the only areas that South Asians are more prominent are in the big cities,” he notes. He noted that people in middle-America may not be as familiar with South Asians because there may not be that many in more secluded areas, “There is a lot to learn about South Asians [in America].”
Yet even in a country with a smaller South Asian population, Jay Sean has proved the naysayers wrong. His music has soared to new heights with his new record label and his fan-base continues to grow, crossing any ethnic boundary lines. Jay Sean can no longer be classified just as a “South Asian artist,” he has moved beyond that and into the plan of being simply called, a talented artist without an ethnic attachments forced upon his work.
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