The Journey of Jbee: A Rising Star

Words by Ben Tibbits @tibbitsben

Once a new musical style achieves widespread success, a period of experimentation tends to ensue, with a fresh wave of artists eager to tamper with the winning formula in an attempt to augment the provenly sellable sound. We’ve witnessed this with drill over the past 12 months, with a more melodic and gentler strand of the hypnotically popular genre emerging. Whatever you call it - Tik Tok Drill, Lo-fi Drill, alternative drill - one thing is certain - JBee is one of its frontrunners.

A strikingly assured lyricist, whose narrative tales bleed authenticity and introspection, JBee recently invaded Tik Tok’s trending with his hit single ‘4AM’. A savvily sampled instrumental, heartfelt yet hard hitting bars, and subtly dominant delivery sets ‘4AM’ apart from the endless stream of UK drill flooding the UK music pond, with the 19 year old rapper illustrating his thirst to break generic boundaries and not just follow the countless cap-rappers.

The hit track succeeded a series of silky cuts like ‘Bissaka’ and ‘Talk of the Town’ that established JBee’s sonic creativity and marketable sound, but ‘4AM’ was the rapper’s breakthrough single, with the track amassing over 19 million streams on Spotify alone. Following its sizzling success, JBee was invited onto Mixtape Madness’ ‘Next Up’ series, an episodic feature that promotes hotly tipped young rappers with a Metropolitan backdrop. JB came through with one of the most emotionally potent drill performances you are likely to see, delving into inner thoughts and feelings over the two melodic and sampled instrumentals. Showing no sign of slowing down, JBee is set to support fellow young stars A1 x J1 at the O2 Islington on 16th Feb, and has a remix of ‘4AM’ coming with a big name star.

With the ‘drill’ genre becoming more and more commercialised and mainstream friendly, don’t be surprised to see JBee’s undemanding, affecting and sentimental sound become more than just a Tik Tok phenomenon.