The latest artist that I have come across (by accident) and have enjoyed listening to is Jon Bellion. Jon is a product of Long Island, New York, and is an American rapper, singer, songwriter and record producer, with songs typically classified as hip hop or R&B. His career is still rather young, having started his career in just 2011 and releasing just four mixtapes and two albums. I first heard of him back in 2016, when he released his huge hit song “All Time Low” which has garnered over 350 million+ streams on Spotify alone. Now, some of his other popular songs have tens of millions of streams, and he has about 6 million monthly listeners (on average). After initially hearing “All Time Low”, I hadn’t fallen in love with the song and never decided to further research into Jon as an artist. However, after recently listening to music on YouTube, a video of his popped up into my recommended list of videos and I decided to watch it. Little did I know that Jon’s video would actually resonate with me and that this video would catalyst a binge of all of his videos and songs.
The video of Jon’s that had motivated me to research him further was called “Jon Bellion – The Making Of Luxury (Behind The Scenes)”. As the title of the video suggests, Jon shows behind the scene clips of the creation of his song “Luxury”. What captured me with his behind the scene clips was the amount of passion and energy he had while in the studio recording. He seemed so happy and focused and energetic, his positive aurora seemed to rub off on my self. He was constantly smiling, laughing, and genuinely interested in making impactful music. Besides the fact that he was so engulfed in his process of producing and singing, the song itself was actually good as well, speaking about how Jon tries to stay humble even though he is finding success in the music industry.
An example of Jon’s message of staying humble in his song Luxury:
Money the jealous type, I always knew it
I knew she’d come around if I only sweat the music
But I’m starting to believe it, that’s a problem to my health
Cause the size of half these checks
Could make me vomit on myself
But I give it up to heaven cause it isn’t Jon
The chorus an instrumental, oh you think it’s odd?
I don’t have to give you lyrics cause I know it’s God
That’s why I get emotional when the chorus drops
After watching this video, I watched the rest of his behind the scene videos for producing other songs. Again, his passion in his music was invigorating and was perfectly exemplified in his video “Jon Bellion- The Making of Stupid Deep“. What Jon also demonstrated beside his intense devotion and enjoyment with his music creating process was his compassionate and kind heart. Towards the end of the video, Jon brings his sister into his studio (who also sings, but hasn’t achieved the level of fame that her brother has) to lend her vocals to Jon’s song. After she finishes singing her lyrics for the song, Jon is visibly ecstatic with the results and goes on to rave about how his sister has some of the best vocals he has ever heard, and how he is so lucky to have her as his sister.
It is these positive and passionate vibes that radiate off of Jon that makes him so infectious to listen to. After watching the behind the scenes of the making of Bellion’s songs, it is evident to the watchers that he devotes all of his efforts into producing exceptional songs that will have a profound effect on his listeners. From instrumentals to his vocals, to the features on his songs, Jon wants to do everything right to guarantee the best possible product for listeners. The amount of excitement and devotion that I see in Jon is something that I have seen in few other artists before, and I am so glad YouTube’s recommended video algorithms blessed me with the opportunity to get to know Jon Bellion better as an artist and as a person.
I urge all readers (if you are interested in hip hop/rap/R&B music) to check out Jon for yourselves, as you may find him as refreshing and talented as I do!
Jake from Statefarm 