| Description: The music by the rapper JAY B, is a diverse blend of hip hop styles. There are traditional hip hop, high energy, crowd rock, socially conscious, and personal songs, as well as battle songs, and a love song all on the same album. |
| Biography: JAY B was born and raised in Santa Clara, California, in the United States. His real name is Jonathan Bell.
JAY B started listening to music in 1997, where he began to listening to pop and rock music. It was when he started listening to Kid Rock that JAY B was first inspired to rap. JAY B began writing rap in the early part of the year 2000, where some of his first lyrics were about the Barnes and Noble Cafe that he worked in. Writing about all the frustrations and aggravations of his cafe job eventually led to him doing the song, "Welcome to the Cafe" which became the 4th track on his 1st album.
JAY B's biggest influence, however, came in the form of Eminem. Fascinated with Eminem's clever multiple syllable rhymes, JAY B tried to write similar raps of his own. JAY B would eventually be criticized for trying to sound like Eminem...but what distinguished JAY B was his flow. By developing a rhythmic and nearly perfect flow, combined with clever rhymes, JAY B was able to create a style all his own. JAY B's other influences include Doctor Dre, Nelly, and Ugly Duckling.
Within only a few years, JAY B became good at writing rhymes. As he wrote rhymes about anything and everything he would think about, rap lyrics came to him more and more naturally. In 2003 he started attending an open-mike free style session every other Friday in a coffee shop named Cafecito. It was there that he started developing his performance ability, and after a year, started getting better.
Raised as a Christian, JAY B didn't swear much while growing up. That rubbed off in his rap music, where he coined the new terms "mother freakin'" and "mother freaker," to replace the commonly used, "motherfuckin'" and "mother fucker." JAY B still uses the 'f' word in his raps, but not heavily.
In 2005 JAY B released his first album, "3 AND 1/2 BOMBS." A unique variety of different hip hop styles. "For this album I tried to put a lot of dope rhymes and flows into it, but I also focused heavily on the music, and in the end, the songs came out tight....This turned out to be rather high quality for an underground album."
JAY B started attending West Valley College after high school where he got an AA in Liberal Arts in 2003.
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