Jay Kim is a 23 year old korean multi genre artist from North Carolina and he has been releasing music since 2016. Check out the exclusive interview below:
1. Can you tell us a bit about where you come from and how you got started?
Jay Kim: I was born in South Korea but moved to Maryland at a young age, then around the age of 8 we moved to a small town in North Carolina called Kernersville. I consider this my hometown and itโs where my first experiences with playing and writing music took place.
2. Did you have any formal training or are you self-taught?
Jay Kim: When i was really young in Maryland my mom tried to get me to take piano lessons but i really had no interest in it and it didnโt work out. Then when I first moved to North Carolina my family started going to this church and the church had a music program. I started learning the trombone as a main instrument and guitar as an elective. Thanks to one of my guitar instructors I became obsessed with the guitar. This was in like fourth grade where I came home from school everyday and all i did was watch youtube videos to teach myself guitar, learning songs and even startingย to write my own.
3. Who were your first and strongest musical influences and why the name โJay Kimโ?
Jay Kim: Early on i remember hearing and watching the music video for heartless by kanye west after school one day and iโm pretty sure that changed the course of my life because after that i realized how cool music could be. Up until then i was mostly listening to stuff like linkin park, paramore, all american rejects, and pop punk bands. So by the time elementary school was over i had a strong fondness for melodic hip hop and rock/pop punk because of people like kanye and hayley williams who i looked up to. ALSO Lady Gaga has been one of my idols since i heard Just Dance on my ipod nano in like 2008. My original artist name was jay2thekim and then i decided to change it on a whim to my real name Jay Kim.
4. What do you feel are the key elements in your music that should resonate with listeners, and how would you personally describe your sound?
Jay Kim: So up until recently i didnโt produce most of my stuff because i was more confident in my songwriting and relied on friends or youtube for beats. So for that period I think a key element in my music is my beat/sound selection. I think having strong taste, knowing definitivelyย what you like or dislike in music is really important for an artist. I think a kind of ethos i keep for myself is โ make music that you desperately wish existed but doesnโt yet โ for me that means take in a multitude of different ideas from sources that inspires you and forge something from that.
Jay Kim: Definitely, in high school when i took making music more seriously i was recording and engineering songs that sounded like travis scott because thatโs an artist whose sound i was obsessed with with the time. Honestly I think iโm still in this process because my taste in music shifts pretty rapidly, things get stale quick for me so iโm always searching for songs that really hit for me. That being said sometimes i find an artist or group that sticks with me as an influence and i think as i piled those on to the core of what i had my sound became what it is. One example is when brockhampton dropped saturation in the summer of 2017 i was driving back and forth from home to a summer camp i was working at. I really loved what they were doing at the time and i think they were vital in me getting to where i am today. That process continued with artists like 100 gecs, ericdoa, brakence, and probably a lot more.
6. Whatโs your view on the role and function of music as political, cultural, spiritual, and/or social vehicles โ and do you try and affront any of these themes in your work, or are you purely interested in music as an expression of technical artistry, personal narrative and entertainment?
Jay Kim: Music has led to me meeting some of my best friends and people i look up to. Itโs also led me into a online community with people who have similar tastes or interests to me. I think itโs the sickest thing ever when a love for music can create this space where people can connect and grow with people like them. In the community iโm in we literally made songs about bell pepper lovers vs haters. Very silly but things like that make me appreciate this group of people iโve met through liking and creating music in a similar vein. When iโm writing songs i think the subject matter tends to be personal but that doesnโt stop it from bringing people together.
7. Do you feel that your music is giving you back just as much fulfilment as the amount of work you are putting into it, or are you expecting something more, or different in the future?
Jay Kim: Most of the time the answer is yes, especially after homegrown. In late 2020ย I had a handful of songs that i loved like they were my children and decided I was going to make and release an album independently. Afterย a year and a halfย of writing, mixing, and mastering the songs, creating somewhat of a rollout, designing a shirt and physical cd, then releasing everything i felt more accomplished than i had ever felt in my life. I remember waking up the day of the album release, march 4th and thinking this is one of the most important days of my life. The following 2-3 weeks i felt more fulfilled than ever because i set out to do this and worked viciously hard for it and it was done. I think iโll keep chasing for feelings like that in terms of feeling fulfilled from my music.
8. Could you describe your creative processes? How do usually start, and go about shaping ideas into a completed song? Do you usually start with a tune, a beat, or a narrative in your head? And do you collaborate with others in this process?
Jay Kim: 99% of the time
it starts with a melody, up until now iโve been relying on producer friends for my beats so once iโve found a beat or melody i like iโll start crafting vocal melodies by humming or freestyling then put words to them and go from there. I had never actively collaborated with someone in person until I went to LA last year to get some studio sessions in for the first time. My second studio session ever was with Aaron Shadrow and we started working on this song based off a bpm i liked from another one of my songs. We crafted the song together feeding off each others ideas and i had never had an experience like that before but it had to be Aaron because i feel like we get along socially and musically so well. That was the only song on the album recorded in a studio and not my bedroom and it was โ dance w me โ.
9. What has been the most difficult thing youโve had to endure in your life or music career so far?
Jay Kim: I think choosing to pursue music as a career was a difficult journey in itself because itโs not a stable for sure thing. I saw most of my peers go to college to get good jobs while i dropped out my first year even though i had a 4.0 gpa because i knew that i was wasting time and school wasnโt going to get me where i wanted to be. Working a lot of jobs, continually justifying to yourself and others that this is something that will work out is one of the most challenging things for me as an artist. Self doubt,ย physical and mental health, family stuff, financial stability are all things i personally struggled with and continue to struggle with. I think everything outside of the process of making music carried some of the most difficult challenges for me.
10. On the contrary, what would you consider a successful, proud or significant point in your life or music career so far?
Jay Kim:ย Two things iโm really proud of was playing my first show at have u heard festival in raleigh last year in august. (thank you Aditya and the whole team ily) That was a crazy time i got to meet my longtime internet friend Curtis Waters and a lot of other cool music people. Performing some songs off the unreleased homegrown and seeing people enjoy and feed off my music was one of the best things iโve ever experienced. Then releasing homegrown was definitely the proudest moment of my career and life just because i everything i had into it i knew that when everything was said and done i had executed it as well as i possibly could have. Just the music, the cover art, the amount of people that connected with it and reached out to me, yeah definitely the highlight of my life so far.
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