Exclusive: Glambergirlblog Interviews Music Producer J2

Photo: David Livingston/Getty Images

Jay Singh, more commonly known as J2 in the music industry, is an established producer, composer, songwriter, DJ, remixer, and musician with a unique sound mixing inspiration from his ethnic background with some of today’s hottest music.

He’s the man behind Shakira‘s “Dare (La La La)” track, Jesse Medeles‘ “Viva” single, Cassie‘s “King of Hearts” and his music can be heard in many of Hollywood’s biggest films and television shows like: “Django Unchained,” “The Hunger Games” and Grey’s Anatomy.

I caught up with J2 and we talked about how he got started in the music industry, his producer name, working with friend of Glambergirlblog, Jesse Medeles and more! Check out the excerpts below.

On his musical background: “I’ve always been into music ever since I was a child. Music’s been in my family for generations, so people say it’s in my DNA. I never actually, it’s funny, I never actually studied music. I got into music DJing. My mother and father actually told me ‘you actually inherited the gene’ so it was something that came natural to me and I couldn’t understand why every time I would do music I became stronger and passionate about it.”

On his music name J2: “From DJing I got into the remix world. It’s a quick story. In England, all the clubs, when I use to DJ, all the club use to finish by 2 o’clock, that’s when they use to close the doors and if you know, that’s when you’re just getting warmed up, in the club at  2 o’clock, you’re like I want to carry on, where do I do. I was like we got to get a club and it’s gotta be called ‘2 AM’ and people were like ‘oh that name’s cool’ and I was OK, I’m going to sue that as my remix name. So I got into the remix world and started remixing records as ‘2 AM’ and my DJ project was 2AM project, that’s what I called it when I use to put records out in England and when I first came to America people were like, ‘oh what’s your producer name or remix name’, I said it’s 2AM and then were like ‘what’s your real name’ and I said of my real name is Jay and they were like ‘oh Jay 2AM that’s dope’ and I was like OK, and it kind of got Americanized. And being here in America, the name was too long, my management was like and my team was like ‘Jay 2AM, that’s too long. We need to either go with one or the other,’ cause I was still using 2AM and Jay 2AM for different things, then it came to a point where they were like ‘no, you need to stick to something which we can brand really easy, we kind of dropped the AM and just went with J2 a couple of years back.”

On inspiration for creating music: “My ethnicity, I’m a British Indian. My roots are, I was born in England but my parents are from India so I’ve got that whole Indian background in my blood as well. And you know I use to grow up watching a lot of Indian movies and Indian movies are very musical, very melodic driven, it’s a lot like Latin music. And being born in England, you know I grew up on radio, pop radio I’d listen to and there was only ever one station, which was the main station called Radio 1 but the difference between America and England, especially on the radio is in England is that they play everything from Country, to Rock, to Dance, to Hip Hop, to R & B, all on one station so you can listen to anything. And I think me having that experience being exposed to so many cultures, being open with my roots that kind of let me, experiment with different sounds. I never generalize myself with a specific genre of music.”

On meeting and working with Jesse Medeles: “Jesse is, he’s actually my artist, he’s amazing. You know he’s a super star period and this year is going to be great, we have so many things going on for him. And it’s funny, the way we met was a friend of mine kind of like, I was looking for a trainer, someone to train at the gym cause like when you’re in the studio, always sitting down, eating a bunch of junk, I needed to kind of change my lifestyle so he was like ‘hey I know this guy that I want to connect you with and he’s like an actor, he’s a model and stuff like that and he’s like really busy but he knows how to transform people’ so he kind of connected me with Jesse. Jesse was on a shoot, I think the “One Heart” movie but we were talking on the phone and I met with him once when he came back here to the gym and we became friends. We started training together and I had no idea that he did music. So he started to give me a diet and changing my lifestyle and I told him one time, ‘hey I’m at the studio, why don’t you come here, grab me, then we’ll head to the gym from here’ and literally he came and was like ‘I didn’t know you did music’ and that’s how we kind of bonded. We became friends, then like brothers, then we went into the music.”

On big plans for 2015: “My big exciting project is Jesse obviously, we’re putting his whole project together, we’re getting the whole album together by the end of March so we have a full album to put together, a few music videos that we’re putting out and we’re putting him everywhere getting him ready for the Latin Grammys this year. We have a new team on board so there’s a lot going on with him which is like my biggest focus. And I’m also working on the “Iconic Series” this is my trailer project which I just finished volume 2, which got picked up, I mean I landed volume 1 in the biggest video game trailer in the world, we ended up getting “The Hunger Games” with my collaboration with Lucas Vidal and now we got some big talks for some movies this year and I just put the final touches on volume 3 which are just some of the biggest songs ever that I had the opportunity to get a hold of which I just reworked into epic movie scores so that’s going to be out by March as well and I’m also working on my next trailer album which release date is the end of January AND I have a new sound that I’m working on that’s going to be called Indian track music, kind of crazy, it’s urban mixed with Indian. It’s super fresh and super unique.”

Read more about J2 and find out where you can follow him on social media at his official website, www.j2producer.com. Listen to his music on his SoundCloud page HERE. But before you leave this page, take a listen to J2’s “Iconic Series Vol.2 Promo” audio below and share your thoughts with me in the comments.

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