José James

Born in Minneapolis in 1978, José James has established himself at the crossroads of jazz, soul and R&B, firmly rooted in the tradition of African-American jazz singing and with songwriting informed by hip-hop. After studying at the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music he settled in New York and emerged in the early 2000s on club stages and through the network of independent labels, notably with the albums The Dreamer (2008) and Blackmagic (2010), which placed him in a hybrid register between jazz ballads, soul grooves and beat-influenced productions. His move to Blue Note marked a new phase with No Beginning No End (2013) and While You Were Sleeping (2014), where José James developed a more electric sound oriented toward contemporary forms of R&B. At the same time he explored the repertoires of major figures in African-American music with Yesterday I Had the Blues: The Music of Billie Holiday (2015) and Lean on Me, dedicated to Bill Withers (2018), while Love in a Time of Madness (2017) and No Beginning No End 2 (2020), released on Rainbow Blonde Records, continued his work as a singer-songwriter. With On & On in 2023, a reworking of Erykah Badu’s songbook, José James pursues an approach in which standards, covers and original compositions revolve around a voice with a supple phrasing, between jazz improvisation, soulful melodic sense and urban influences.