José James

José James' music is rooted in jazz, but with lots of other sounds blended in. Instead of letting the music press describe his sound, he came up with his own tagline: "A jazz singer for the hip-hop generation." "I quickly learned that if you don't shape the conversation around yourself as an artist, then other people will do it for you," he said on the Songfacts Podcast.

James is from Minneapolis but was signed to a British label called Brownswood, which released his first two albums. His debut album, The Dreamer, got some attention in the UK, with favorable reviews from The Guardian and the BBC. In America, most of his coverage around this time was in jazz publications. As his career progressed, he got more mainstream coverage.

Regarding his ethnicity, James' mother is Irish and his father is Afro-Panamanian. "It's kind of a strange identity," he told Songfacts. "I straddle many, many worlds and I feel like I don't fully belong in any of them."