Artist Profile: Jaysanityy
Jaysanityy, the rapper and producer from Columbia, Maryland, has been making music from the time he was a child, and, through his years of work and the growth of his discography, has blossomed into an adroit and experienced songwriter, crafting tracks that push the bounds of his creative drive.
As a kid, Jaysanityy was obsessed with drawing, creating comics and pieces of art that helped him to explore his creative energies. Yet, it was always music, and hip-hop more specifically, that captivated his mind and artistic presence.
The first song he ever memorized was “A Bay Bay” by Hurricane Chris, the lone rap song on a CD of American music that his father, a Liberian immigrant, would play in the car.
As he entered middle school, he discovered artists like Joey Bada$$ and the rest of the Pro Era crew, and that cemented his desire to begin rapping.
He joined a collective, Ascending Kingz, and began making beats by compiling loops from the Internet, combining melodic samples with drum beats to create tracks that emulated his favorite artists.
His first projects on streaming services, Ain’t Nobody Better and Platinum Dreams, represent a more enhanced version of this sound: an East Coast-inspired, lyrically-driven brand of rap that, even in its infant form, still showed great potential.
However, it was upon his discovery of artists such as MIKE and Mavi, with the abstract leanings of both creeping into his musical consciousness over time, that he feels as though he truly found his sound.
“With the abstract scene… it was more vulnerable music, and I don't think I realized that you can actually rap about something and still have all of the other elements, but still make it your own and literally do whatever you want with your song.”
While the major boom-bap elements of his music still remained, No More Flowers for Remedy, his third full-length project, represented a marked shift in the way he approached his music, allowing for the uncommon sounds and mellowed-out bars that he loved to permeate his own tracks.
Moreover, his production underwent its own change shortly following this transformation of his sound. Over time, he realized that he preferred to avoid using samples, as he could achieve his desired results more effectively through creating his own sounds and re-sampling them. Although shifting from such a sample-based workflow was a challenge, ultimately it brought Jaysanityy the creative freedom he needed for his sound to fully blossom, resulting in projects as vigorous as tru to one’s nature and tha lone star.
“I think it's [important to have] a select amount of sounds that I genuinely like because, I'm not going to lie, it would always lowkey make me mad when I had gotten a used beat or somebody sent me a beat and I recognized a sample from another song… It used to be that I would hear a good sample and want to chop it…but eventually it became [that I would] hear a sample and want to make something like it or try to recreate it, put my own twist on it and then sample it.”
Now, as he continues to work with his re-branded collective, .outlyer agenda, and continues to branch out into producing for other artists, Jaysanityy’s creative drive continues to push him onward, fusing the abstract qualities of his sound with the rawness of his raps in an intriguing and dynamic manner.
