Jay Warren’s Seamless Blend of R&B, Funk, and Pop Is Up Next
Jay Warren is the newest artist making the waves on nearly every editorial playlist out. His style is a unique blend of the best elements of R&B, Hip-Hop, and Pop. With an extensive background in all aspects of music, Jay is a rare breed in today’s game. We sat down to talk a bit about his new and old music, along with his writing and production process, his Caribbean heritage and its impact on his music, and plenty more. Introducing, Jay Warren.
Let's talk a bit about your background in music. How'd you get your start?
Let's see. I've been making music or at least singing for as long as I can remember. I grew up singing in school choirs and church choirs and I think second grade is kind of my earliest memory of realizing that I could sing. It was just a little school show and the kids were singing to the parents and that kind of thing.
I did a solo of ‘You’re My Sunshine’. That's when I realized I could sing. And since then it's been teaching myself piano in high school and starting to write music. I was in a band my freshman year of college and we were not good at all, but it was a lot of fun. It was a ton of fun. And then I just began to figure out who I am musically. And now we're here, I guess!
With you having a musical background, was becoming an artist a natural progression?
Yeah, absolutely. I think it was something I always wanted to do. I remember in high school, not knowing what a producer was and thinking that I had to be able to play all of the instruments in order to create a full song. So I was like, “Dang, like I have to be in a band. I don't want to be in a band”. Well, then a few years later I learned what a producer was. Being an artist was always the desire.
You have a background in writing, production, singing and performing. What would you say comes the most natural or easiest for you?
I think the most natural is performing. Being on stage is the most addicting part of it all for me. And then I think second to that would be the writing aspect. I love writing stories and trying to lyrically represent an idea. So yeah, I'd say performing and then probably writing,
Which of those would you say took a bit more work to get good at?
Oh, writing for sure. Performing comes super naturally to me, but writing is something that you're always developing or at least I am. I'm always trying to figure out new ways to say something or better ways or just different ways. So, I think performing certainly came easier.
Who would you say your musical influences were growing up?
Both of my parents are from the Caribbean. My dad was born and raised in Jamaica, and my mom was born in Trinidad and Tobago, and then came to the states. So, I was a first-generation American and the only three American artists that I knew growing up were Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, and Kenny G, the saxophone player. It was a lot of Michael Jackson growing up. I would say he was certainly number one.
And then most recently, I mean, this isn't a recent artist, but Lionel Richie. Let's see. Who else? Frank Ocean, I listened to a ton of The Weeknd, like his early stuff and then the more recent stuff as well. Oh, and on the production side, Kanye for sure. You know, he's going through whatever it is he's going through personally. But, on the music side, like in terms of production, I think he's a genius. He influenced an entire generation of music.
Especially with the sampling!
Absolutely. Like his use of sampling and then even like his, just his use of the human voice as an instrument.
Right. We weren't really seeing a lot of that before Kanye. For example, with ‘Through The Wire’ he completely changed the game.
Yeah, absolutely. Using that just as an instrument. It was just like, ah, that's so cool.
Being on stage is the most addicting part of it all for me
Tell me a bit about the process of writing and recording your single, "Closer".
"Closer" was written at my mother-in-law's house sitting down at her piano. I was just messing around with some chords. And then the very first line that I came up with is actually the first line of the song. “How could I expect you to wait for me like lovers do” I wrote that and then I took a step back from the piano and I just tried to think, “What is the story that this sentence is from? What, what's the greater picture?”.
I came up with this, I won't say movie, but just kind of like a play in my head of, this guy in a relationship, but he's not completely emotionally available because of whatever it is that he's struggling with. And he knows that he needs to be closer to the person that he's in this relationship with. I then wrote the song about that story that I had come up with.
That was the story of writing the song and then recording it. I recorded that at Chance Cliff’s house, a sound engineer here where I am here in Utah. I had my friend Nate Wait play guitar on it. The only thing that I knew I wanted in terms of production was that vocoder. I knew I wanted that. And then the rest, I was like “Chance, Nate, you guys kind of figure it out.”. It’s certainly like one of my favorite songs I've ever written.
What does your writing process typically look like?
It's different each time. If I'm starting a song on my own, it begins on piano. That's the instrument I've always played. So yeah, I'll just sit down and kind of start messing around with chords and humming things. And then sort of re-writing the song from there. Sometimes it will be writing to a beat or an instrumental that producers have already sent me. Typically in terms of lyrics, it's always thinking of some story in my head, whether that's something I've actually lived or an experience that I could see playing out. Lyrically it tends to always revolve around some sort of story.
We could talk a lot about production just because you have that immense background in production. What does your production process typically look like?
For the most recent album I'd write a song and, and then I would take that into Logic (Pro X) just because it's super easy and I don't get so distracted with all of the things that you can do in Pro Tools. I write in Logic and then once I finish writing a song, it's typically just like piano and vocals and then I'll start on tempo.
Sometimes I won’t end up writing the song in the tempo that it's actually going to be in. Typically all of my songs start out really slow and then I'll decide whether I want to speed them up. So then I'll decide on tempo and I tend to always start with drums just to find the rhythm and personally, I'm not the best at finding the right sound, but I can always find the right rhythm. I always know what feel I want.
So I'll use kind of whatever stock sounds just to get the rhythm and then it's pads next. And then I'll send that over to a friend of mine, Nate who played guitar on "Closer", he also executive produced this last album. He'll do the heavy lifting on the production to where he'll swap out the sounds and then really get into the nitty-gritty of, of you know, sound design and things like that.
Do you end up producing most of your stuff or at least starting out the production for most of your songs?
The songs that I write, I definitely do start out the production and then the other ones that people already send me are obviously for the most part already completed.
Let's talk a bit about your latest release, "Give Love". What did your state of mind look like when creating that project?
It's interesting. I was very consumed with what would happen after the album came out while I was writing the album. It was interesting. I've never really had that experience where I was really focused on the marketing plan for this album, and how we’re going to make sure that this release goes well and X, Y, and Z.
So outside of that, I think when I was actually writing the songs, it was “How do I communicate the idea of love without being too cliche or too corny?” But also without cheapening what I think love actually is. The album is really just about true, real, genuine love. Hence, the title "Give Love".
How long did it take you to finish the project?
Ooh. It was probably about nine to twelve months. The reason being because we started some of the songs and then we took a break. I can't remember why, but we ended up taking a break from writing and then came back to it. I guess once we really started recording vocals, like final vocals for everything, that process was probably only about three to four months.
What was your favorite track to record from the project? And tell me a bit about the process of actually creating it.
Ooh, good question. So it's funny. It's actually the one that I didn't have much to do with on the production. "Beautiful Disaster’" was my favorite. Writing that song was just a lot of fun. The idea of the song is, a relationship that you're in with someone that’s beautiful. It’s great but it's also a disaster at the same time. It's this whirlwind of emotions that I think a lot of people can relate to. So lyrically, that was just fun to come up with different, weather related analogies to romance and relationships. Once I had written it, I sent it off to Nate and it was the last song that he produced.
He wrote me back like a week or so later. And he was like, “Dude, I don't know where to go with this. Like what direction do I take this?” That’s when I sent him Calvin Harris’ remix of "The Weekend". And I was like, “Dude, like try something like this, in this direction.” And then he was like, “Oh, I know exactly what to do.” And a few days later, he came back with what "Beautiful Disaster" ended up being.
Let's talk a bit about "Go Slow". It's easy to hear this Afrobeat influence within the track. And with you mentioning that your parents are both from the Caribbean earlier, was that your intention? Talk a bit about the creation of that one.
"Go Slow" started as a mistake actually. Well, not a mistake, but I was writing another song on the album that sounds completely different. And I was struggling to come up with another chord progression for that song and it felt repetitive.
I was messing around with chords and I was going back and forth between, you know, I can't remember what it is. I think it's like F major and C, but I can't remember what it was. I was going back and forth between these chords and then I started doing it rhythmically and in time and I was like, oh, that's kind of dope. I like this. And so I closed that session, opened a new one and started laying down kind of the beginnings of the production for "Go Slow".
When I first started playing around with it, that rhythm was in my head. I was also listening to a ton of Afro-beat at the time, like "Joanna". I think sonically in terms of genre, that track sticks out from the rest of the album. But I was like, as long as it's fun, let's just put it on, even though it sounds a bit different than everything else that's going on. I think one day I would love to either re-release that song with an Afrobeat feature or just write a song with Afrobeat. That would be super dope. That's a fun song. It's fun to do live as well.
‘Give Love’ dropped late last year. Have you already begun working on your next project?
Absolutely. We're kind of working on two things at once. I have the music team and then I have the business team, if you will. And so the business team consists of myself, my manager and my lawyer. And with that team we're actually working on a pitch that's for a showcase. It's actually happening tomorrow. And we're pitching to potential investors.
So the showcase is, it's kind of like a liberal showcase. I play with my backing band, we do a few songs and then my manager will get up after that and keep our pitch kind of on what we're proposing for investors. And then we go from there. So that's happening tomorrow and that's what the business team has been working on.
And then on the music side we've definitely started working on kind of what's next. I have a private SoundCloud playlist of instrumentals that producers have sent and then I’ve been sitting down and just kinda starting writing again. But yeah, I'm very excited for whatever the next album or set of releases will be.
What have your studio sessions for that looked like?
It's been interesting because of COVID. We haven't really been in the same place. We've all been working from our home setups. It's really just been a lot of me in this room writing on my own and then emailing and sending stuff back and forth between Nate and Mike. There really hasn't been very much in studio collaboration which is interesting.
What’s the plan with the sound you have going for on the project?
One of the things that we want to incorporate a lot more is writing for the live set. Making sure that the songs that we're writing will translate super well live. It's a lot of upbeat stuff. It's a lot of danceable music. I'm still staying true though to like what I naturally write, which is more down tempo ballads.
There's a song called "Better" that I wrote for my son about essentially always trying to be a better version of myself for my kids. But when you listen to it, it doesn't necessarily sound like, “Oh, this is a song he wrote for his kids.” There's some downtempo stuff for sure, but we've really been concentrating on the up-tempo kind of mix of like, I dunno, Bruno Mars and Calvin Harris.
Do you plan to have any features on the project?
Yeah, actually that's another thing that we're, that we're pitching to investors is this plan to bring on an investor for a song and then use the bulk of that money to to land a decent sized feature and I don't know if it's the next five or six songs, but there's like five or six songs I’d like to land some really strong features on. Because that's not something that I've used in the past. Like there's one feature and it's somebody that I knew on the album "Give Love".
If you could collaborate with any four artists, who would they be?
Ooh, that's a good one. The first one that comes to mind is PJ Morton. For the longest time, I didn’t know that he was the keyboard player in Maroon 5. I didn't even know there were any black people in Maroon 5, haha. There's an artist named Kevin Garrett, who's really cool. Let's see. Who else? Like big, I mean, obviously working with Drake would be cool just because yeah, it's Drake. That would be cool.
I actually really like Justin Bieber since his ‘Purpose’ album. I've really liked the decisions that he's made musically, so yeah. Justin Bieber would be a cool one and yeah, I think Calvin Harris would be dope as well. And like his production team, that would be really cool. Cause they, they come up with some really brilliant stuff. I guess that's perhaps a short list.
Lastly, when can fans expect your next project?
Oh gosh, that is a great question. Certainly this year. The showcase is coming up and that's been really front of mind because that's securing funding. From there to now it's just hitting the ground running with writing and releasing a lot of content. So yeah, certainly this year.
Thanks for talking with me today!
Thank you very much!
