‘If a small-town girl from Hawaii can make it, anything is possible!”: How J.Lauryn worked to become a billion-streaming songwriter before launching a solo career.
J.Lauryn has co-written many of the most-played songs on Spotify over the last ten years. But as she plots out a busy 2024, she affirms that she’s focused on making her music for the foreseeable future.
Flashback two decades ago, and you might’ve found songwriter J.Lauryn chilling on a remote beach in the small Hawaiian town of Kailua. The artist, whose birthname is Jessie Lauryn Foutz, hails from a part of the world where the beating heart of the music industry felt distant, otherworldly, literally an ocean away – not somewhere she could easily find herself being a part of it.
Despite this, J.Lauryn was fired up from a young age by the reggae music she’d been introduced to. Even from her remote locale, she was inspired by this music to start learning the intricacies of songwriting.
In 2007, J.Lauryn moved to Los Angeles, where she began working as a professional backup dancer. She was good at it and even danced for Queen Latifah at one stage during the rapper’s performance at the 2011 People’s Choice Awards.
But she eventually began to shift her focus to writing and recording music.
J.Lauryn has taken a unique journey in the music world; her career has been split between writing her music and becoming one of the most in-demand songwriters for other artists. This has meant that, while working on her acclaimed debut album, Golden Year, she was also songwriting for music legend Ziggy Marley. His 2016 self-titled album, which J.Lauryn’s fingerprints are all over, won the Grammy Award for Best Reggae Album.
Since then, she has been balancing her music ambitions with being a sought-after writer for dozens of other artists. J.Lauryn has co-written songs by Post Malone, Young Thug, BTS, Blackpink, and French Madonna (to name just a few). A playlist of the songs she’s written gives you a sense of the scale of her achievements, with the songs here having amassed billions of streams.
But beyond her success in this side of the industry, J.Lauryn has chosen the last few months to work on propelling her music career to new heights. She dropped a series of singles throughout 2023, all frighteningly good in combining reggae, reggaeton, alt R&B, and pop genres.
Then, at the start of 2024, J.Lauryn shared perhaps her most lyrically solid track yet, ‘Who The Man’. More than just a ready-made hit, ‘Who The Man’ was also a clear statement about the direction the artist wanted to travel this year. She has confirmed that a new album is in the works, and now is when she’ll be taking her solo career to the next level.
Sharing thoughts on her new single ‘Who The Man,’ J.Lauryn added: “I hope this high energy filled single and future album makes my 808 ohanas proud. If a small-town girl from Hawaii can make it, anything is possible!”
Heard loud and clear, J. Let’s see what the album offers.
Photo Credit: @Royal Binion
Photo Credit: @Royal Binion
