J.I.’s Journey In ‘The Rap Game’ Is Coming Full Circle (Exclusive)
Jadriena Solomon: Followers turned conversant in you as a contestant on Jermaine Dupri’s Lifetime rap competitors sequence, The Rap Sport.’However the world got here to know you after the discharge of your breakout 2019 single, “Want Me.” The official music video at present sits at 143 million views, and your profession has been constantly rising since then. As we speak, you’re a platinum-selling artist at 21; how does it really feel?
J.I.: Generally I’m nonetheless embracing it, you recognize — God has his humorous method of nonetheless hitting me with little glimpses of actuality. For instance, it didn’t actually hit me till I went on tour in Europe. I used to be in Eire, and folks have been stopping me on the street. I’m like, ‘Yo, they know J.I. out right here? Like, oh, we international now, it’s over!’
So the tour was a complete expertise for me as a result of once I go on tour, my actuality turns into totally different — being on the highway, seeing my followers, and going to totally different edges of the world that I by no means thought I’d go to — it’s loopy.
Jadriena Solomon: Your breakout single arrived in 2019, simply forward of the COVID-19 pandemic, which might have been extraordinarily difficult for a more moderen artist to face up to — being unable to do dwell performances, appearances, and many others. However you excelled by way of that point, constructing your fanbase to achieve hundreds of thousands; why do you assume that’s?
J.I.: I really feel just like the world has its frequency and folks select what they need to faucet in with. It’s humorous as a result of The Rap Sport was filmed in Atlanta. So I had the prospect to be in Buckhead to shoot that and I assumed that was my glimpse of it — I assumed that might be like, my peak. I didn’t know what was coming for J.I.
And I nonetheless don’t know what’s coming for me. You may see me in a film subsequent yr — you by no means know what’s deliberate. However I’m grateful for it. And such as you stated, throughout COVID it was so difficult as a result of the entire world needed to brace themselves for that. We didn’t know what COVID was and we didn’t know what the end result could be.
On the time, I didn’t know what the frequency could be — if individuals nonetheless wished to hearken to what I needed to say. So you set the icing on that cake loopy. I didn’t even take a look at it like that. I had a bunch of odds stacked up in opposition to me — any artist that got here out at the moment did. They’d admit that it was sort of arduous. However as soon as covid lifted it was a wrap, there was no holding us again.
