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Jada Freeman, ‘Vibe With Me’ - Single Review

/ By Doug Phillips
Jada Freeman, ‘Vibe With Me’ - Single Review

Last year’s 'Vibe With Me’ is a seductive, inviting and playful single from Jada Freeman. The track has hugely diversified her style and expanded expectations for her work ever since. 

Brand new to Jeeni, Jada Freeman is an exhilarating producer, singer and songwriter from East London. Although she thrives in the world of RnB, Jada casts a wide net of styles and approaches to her music that will catch you off-guard in the best possible ways. Jada has contributed all of her singles so far to Jeeni, including her successful track, ‘Illusions’ which has nearly 10,000 listens and is only available on Jeeni and Soundcloud. Check out her Jeeni showcase to listen to all of her music: https://jeeni.com/showcase/adkcmyfeevyu/  

The first thing ‘Vibe With Me’ plays you is a creeping, mischievous bass line that darts around the beat and contains a lot of personality for a bass part. Underneath the bass is a warbling synth which acts as a sort of bed of sound and comfort. The flickering low-pass filter on the synth gives the entire track a relaxing, under-water tone which entices the listener in, hence the apt title. The beat is so fitting for this tranquil, yet alluring track. Alternative, new-age percussion is used to provide the beat instead of just kicks, snares and hi-hats. This choice makes the track entirely more interesting and stylistically layered than many other artists in this corner of contemporary music. 

The more obviously captivating component of this single is Jada’s vocal talent. Occasionally conversational like her named influence, Lilly Allen and other times soulful and staggering, Jada’s voice is a powerful tool in carrying her creative intentions and in ‘Vibe With Me’, that weapon is in full force. Jada also makes an experimental use of her voice as backing vocals that echo the welcoming title. Pitch-shifted both up and down at the same time and synthesised, Jada makes her voice into an entirely different type of instrument to emphasise the title and sentiment of the track throughout; a genius production device from the upcoming artist. 

Check out this brilliant track on Jeeni here: https://jeeni.com/vibe-with-me-jada-freeman/ 

How can Jeeni support artists like Jada Freeman?

JEENI is a multi-channel platform for original entertainment on demand. We’re a direct service between creatives and the global audience. 

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• We give creatives, independent artists and performers a showcase for their talent and services. And they keep 100% of everything they make.  
• We empower our audience and reward them every step of the way.  
• We promise to treat our members ethically, fairly, honestly and with respect.  
• Access to artist liaison and a supportive marketing team. 

18
Jul

LOCKDOWN OPERA GOES GLOBAL

Ten years ago Pete Wyer won the Best Composer Award for his work with the English National Ballet and London Symphony Orchestra. When his celebration concert was performed in Liverpool, it drew crowds of 60,000. But today, because of Covid restrictions, he can't find a venue anywhere in the world to stage his latest work. SPRING STREET is a new opera, composed, rehearsed and performed during lockdown. The multinational stars and musicians have never even met, except on Zoom. But now they are turning the whole situation to their advantage, and Wyer has decided to release everything for free globally, using social media.  He says, "It's been a very happy experience, and we're reaching out to a world-wide audience far bigger than any performance any of us have ever achieved before." Pete Wyer has teamed up with the Jeeni network, who specialise in putting performers in direct contact with their fans. "If a performer sells one T-shirt to a fan on Jeeni, they can make more in a minute than most performers make in a month from streaming services like Spotify and the rest. Jeeni is run by the artists themselves, and that's what appeals to me."  SPRING STREET stars Japanese Netflix heartthrob Heday Inoue as The Caretaker, and triple-GRAMMY-Award-Winner Maren Montalbano as The Watcher. SPRING STREET will be premièred throughout the day on Saturday 24th July 2021 on jeeni.com/springstreet and simultaneously released across all social media by a network of thirty-four thousand fans of opera, jazz, poetry and rock music. contact: Shena Mitchell FOUNDING DIRECTOR, JEENI t: +44 7703 567 196e: shena@jeeni.com

10
Jun

Global Music Match unites 14 Music Export Programs for a world first!

96 artists from 14 countries are taking part in what could be the largest online matchmaking of musicians ever undertaken. Created in a world first collaboration between founding partners Sounds Australia, Showcase Scotland Expo and Canada’s East Coast Music Association (ECMA), along with 11 other export organisations and showcase events from around the world, Global Music Match is a pilot initiative created to continue raising the profile of local artists in international music markets within the challenging parameters of the COVID-19 pandemic. The program is a unique response to the limitations imposed on the music industry, that makes use of one of the only available platforms – social media and peer-to-peer collaboration – to increase networks and exposure for export-ready artists internationally. Breaking artists into a new territory or country is a challenging process, exacerbated by the pandemic as traditional international showcasing opportunities reduce. This programme aims to develop new audience bases for artists in a range of international locations, providing a groundwork for future international touring development. The programme will also support participating artists to upskill their social media activity, as well as encourage cross border artist collaboration by connecting musicians from around the world. Each week, one band/musician from each country will ‘introduce’ another artist from a different country, engaging with them on social media to cross promote to their audiences. This is reciprocated for everyone involved, meaning that participating artists will be presented via social networks across a range of participating international artist’s online audiences. For the pilot edition of Global Music Match, artists are steeped in the acoustic, folk, roots, traditional and world music genres. Lisa Whytock of Showcase Scotland Expo, one of the founding organisations said: “The idea came about on a zoom call between myself and Millie Millgate of Sounds Australia several months ago. We have since seen it grow to include so many export organisations and all of us have been meeting regularly to develop the initiative. It's great that we can all still connect through social media and we are really looking forward to seeing how all the artists work together. Most of them will never have met and many never have toured in the other countries, so it really is going to establish new international connections”. Search for the hashtag #globalmusicmatch to see some of the examples of the content each act shared during the pilot initiative – or head to globalmusicmatch.com to learn more and see examples. Global Music Match is supported by the following export organisations: Catalan Arts (Spain), East Coast Music Association, ECMA (Canada), English Folk Expo, FOCUS Wales, Folk Alliance International, Iceland Music, LUCfest Taiwan, Music Estonia, Music Finland, Music Norway, Puglia Sounds (Italy), Showcase Scotland Expo, Sounds Australia and Spectacle vivant Bretagne (Brittany, France). --END OF RELEASE--For more details, please contact your local export organisation listed above, or reach outto info@globalmusicmatch.com

01
Jul

Zeeteah Massiah - ‘Bad Guy’ Single Review

Zeeteah’s newest release is a genius reggae reimagining of Billie Eilish’s breakthrough hit, ‘Bad Guy’.  Jeeni ambassador and long-term supporter, Zeeteah Massiah has now provided Jeeni with 21 individual pieces of her unique brand of jazz and reggae, all of which are available at her showcase. Her husband, Paul Caplin acts as both songwriter and producer for Zeeteah and the two of them have released two albums together, ‘Juice’ and ‘Maybe Tomorrow’.   A certain level of musical depth and understanding is needed to undergo a stylistic transformation of an existing song. To some, it’s merely a process of downgrading the intensity and presence of the piece to a slow, acoustic setting. However, in a lot of these cases, the essence and arrangement of the pieces are largely unchanged. On the other end of that spectrum of effort and passion, you’ll find artists like Zeeteah Massiah who listened to the ‘Old Town Road’ dethroner and heard a hidden stylistic potential held in Billie’s hit that she knew would effortlessly make sense to any listener.  Zeeteah set out to not just echo Billie’s Grammy-winning hit in a slightly different accent, but instead, wanted to transpose it into a completely different musical language. The result is a rejuvenated and refreshing take on ‘Bad Guy’ that has a vivid coat of Caribbean-styled paint applied to just about every element of the source material. Where the original was dark, somber yet playful, Zeeteah’s keeps just the playfulness for her rendition. The slow, creeping tempo compliments the lyrics and performance from Zeeteah in a way that could make you think that this might actually be the original. This almost sinister embrace of the villainous title is enhanced by the harmony that dips in and out of jazzy minor chords that keep the listener in a subtle state of unsettlement, and curiosity.   As is to be expected from Zeeteah and her artistic proclivities, bright and colourful instrumentation commands the tone of this arrangement. Being the first component heard; a classic reggae drum roll makes the genre-shift immediately apparent. This Caribbean staple is then joined by its good friends; short offbeat guitar stabs and deep, bouncy basslines. In this introduction, we also hear a brilliant alteration from Billie and Finneas’ original arrangement. The quirky, recognisable synth melody heard after Billie’s isolated ‘Duh!’ is instead taken up by a muted trumpet, heard before the vocals even enter. This is a clever embrace of the fact that Zeeteah’s choice of cover is of course a colossal hit, so there’s no sense in shying away from its most recognisable moments. That melody is also expanded on later for a phenomenal trumpet solo towards the end of the cover that acts as a sort of replacement for the sudden shift in pace, heard at the end of the original.  Considered a part of Billie Eilish’s brand as both a performer and a person, her vocals are often intentionally sleepy and low-energy, something that Zeeteah decided not to adopt for her interpretation. The vocal performance here is mischievous and rebellious to the core as opposed to Billie’s more disinterested and indifferent approach. Zeeteah also uses next to no effects on her voice compared to the first version, which is just as well because it would be a shame to distract from the raw talent and personality held in Zeeteah’s performance on ‘Bad Guy’.  This task of reinventing one of the biggest hits from the last 10 years was a tall order, however, unsurprisingly, Zeeteah Massiah’s ‘Bad Guy’ is nothing but a triumph.