Here We Go Again This Always Hppens Jhene

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JHENE AIKO / INNER VISIONS 0%

INNER VISIONS

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Last seen singing with Childish Gambino and Drake, Jhene Aiko is much more than meets the eye.

WRITTEN ByRob Kenner

PHOTOGRAPHY BY Marcus Hyde

SHOT AT Rockhouse Hotel, Negril, Jamaica

This feature appears
in the April/May 2014
issue of Circuitous.

Fourth dimension moves a little more slowly in Negril, a sleepy village at the westernmost tip of Jamaica, where each morn a inaugural begins to the most amazing sunset you've ever seen. Just later high apex, Jhené Aiko is standing on a craggy mural wearing a white Agent Provocateur bathing suit that shows off the tattoos on her back. At that place are no boats visible on this stretch of the Caribbean area, no jet skis roaring by, not a audio save for some spongy reggae, bubbles on the cakewalk. As the tropical sun radiates free energy from an azure heaven, the diminutive songwriter, singer, and MC stares silently at the endless horizon and soaks information technology all in.

"Throughout the ages, humankind has worshipped the sun in some type of fashion," Jhené Aiko Efuru Chilombo, 26, reflects later on over a plate of stewed oxtail. "That energy is the reason we're here, why our planet is what information technology is." Jhené has flown some distance from the ice and snow of New York, arriving at the secluded Rockhouse Hotel with her camouflage Hello Kitty backpack slung over one shoulder. She isn't the start to fall in love with this Jamaican hideaway, which reminds her of Hawaii, where some of her Japanese relatives live. "I made a vow the last time I went to Oahu and Maui that that was going to be the identify where I cease upward when I settle downwards," she says. "Information technology's beautiful, but it'southward also familiar. It feels like dwelling house."

This scene she's playing out right at present—girl, sea, sun, sky—looks similar something Matisse or Gauguin might accept painted. Information technology would make plumbing fixtures cover art for Jhené, whose releases have all played with the ideas of sailing—as opposed to selling—the soul. Her much anticipated debut album, Souled Out, is due on Island Def Jam this May. On songs similar "From Fourth dimension," off Drake'south Nothing Was the Aforementioned, she sings and raps in an ethereal vocalism so gentle it can seem artless. But at that place's no mistaking the hardness lurking just below the surface. Case in signal: "The Worst," the third single from her acclaimed 2013 EP, Sail Out, on which she sings: "Don't take this personal/But you're the worst/You lot know what you lot've done to me." Like Drake, a good friend and frequent collaborator with whom she toured concluding year, Jhené works the infinite between MCing and singing, delivering stark, confessional songs that trace the lines betwixt dearest and loss.

Her 2011 mixtape, Sailing Souls, which Jhené produced with the duo Fisticuffs and recorded with an impressive group of acquaintances from 50.A. music circles—Ab-Soul, Kendrick Lamar, Gucci Mane, Miguel, and Drake—impressed legendary producer turned Def Jam exec No I.D. so much that he made her the first creative person signed to his Artium imprint. "I could see a new R&B forming," says No I.D., "following in the footsteps of Frank Bounding main, Miguel, Weeknd, and Drake. She had these witty rap complexities to her lyrics, with these very digestible melodies. I knew information technology would connect and I knew that females hadn't heard a female doing it."

"The Sailing Souls mixtape, that was the peak of me going through all of this stuff," Jhené recalls. "I'd just had my girl and I was working at a vegan café and I wanted to do this mixtape, so I was recording after piece of work. I just needed to release all my frustration and my heartache and pain. It'southward [easier] for me to write about that blazon of stuff than [happiness]."

The kid of a Japanese, Spanish, and Dominican mother and an African-American, Native-American, High german Jewish father, Jhené grew upwards in L.A.'s urban pop scene. Her older sisters, Jamila and Miyoko, sang in the group Gyrl, and Jhené landed a bargain with Epic Records when she was 12. She released various remixes, soundtrack cuts, and features and toured with B2K on the Scream 3 tour. At historic period 15, she had a solo anthology bargain on the table only decided to take a interruption from the music business instead. "I was in high school," Jhené recalls, "and there was a new characterization boss who wasn't well versed in who I was or my music. I was just like, 'You know what? I desire to get released.' "

When she got dorsum into the game, she fabricated certain it was on her own terms. "I wanted to exercise information technology independent," she says, merely No I.D. fabricated her feel comfy. "He wasn't a label head. He'due south an creative person. He'southward a creative person and producer. Not only that but he's a vegetarian, he doesn't drink alcohol anymore, he just seems similar he'due south where I would like to be. We ended up having talks about Buddhism and nearly spirituality and everything was just very compatible. He has proven so far that he gets information technology. He trusts me. He trusts that I know my vision."

When she was twenty, Jhené had a girl past O'Ryan, the younger brother of B2K singer Omarion. They chosen the baby Namiko Love, meaning "kid of the wave," afterwards a book by the Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. "He has a story nigh how there's no deviation between the water and the wave," Jhené says. "There'due south no such matter as birth and death because the wave cannot die; it's all water. Things manifest when the weather condition are right, and they don't manifest when they're not right. Simply in that location are no ends, no beginnings, just continuation."

Don't let the philosophizing and innocent voice fool you; information technology was all existent in the field for a girl growing up on Rodeo and LaBrea in the early '90s. "I remember the L.A. riots," Jhené says. "I was a infant, peradventure a few years erstwhile, and where we lived everything was on fire. Nosotros drove up LaBrea to my grandmother's house. Going up the hill, looking back, I thought the world was catastrophe." When she was 5, ii men robbed Jhené and her dance teacher at gunpoint. "They put a gun to my head in the kitchen while we laid down," she recalls. Jhené matured fast, listening to Snoop Doggy Dogg and writing her first rap at age 7. In elementary school, she was the girl who taught her classmates the words to Lil' Kim's Hardcore.

Phases of the moon arc across the skin on Jhené'southward shoulders higher up an image of Buddha, who holds a lotus blossom. "The first funeral I went to when I was, similar, 5, was for my great-grandmother," Jhené recalls. "She was Japanese, and she had a Buddhist ceremony. That was my outset religious experience. My mom's mom would take us to the Christian church. Her sister is Cosmic, so I used to go to her church sometimes. And then my male parent is a doctor, so he's very, like, scientific…. But I gravitated towards Buddhism considering it's sorta costless. Information technology's not very preachy."

Upwards on her left shoulder there's a Japanese rising dominicus with 16 rays extending outward. Jhené was born on March 16 and swears by the Bible poetry John three:sixteen, "For God and then loved the world that he gave his one and but son…." On the song "3:sixteen a.thousand.," she sings: "Outer infinite, that's where I've been goin'/To a place, a place where nobody knows/Floating at a footstep where now yous see her and now you lot don't/I do non feel the fear of fallin', I wanna fly." Some of the designs on her back contain worlds within worlds. Many are tattoos that her older brother, Miyagi, wanted to take before he died two years agone at age 26. There's another one on her left wrist, tiny characters posing a query that's etched into her skin, a reminder of the concluding Tweet he ever sent: "Why aren't you grin?" Good question.

"When he first found out he had cancer he got into Buddhism," Jhené says. "I had started getting into Buddhism when I was 15. Nosotros were super close, almost similar twins. We would get high and have these talks, similar, 'What is life?'" When he got ill, her blood brother had what Jhené calls "a crash course in enlightenment." He never spoke near his brain tumor. "He would see friends and they would come across that he was walking a picayune different or had lost weight simply he would never tell them, 'Oh, I'm sick.'" Jhené put her feelings into the song "For My Brother." He offset heard it the twenty-four hours he passed away. Afterward, Miyagi's sisters held a tattoo memorial service. Even Miyoko, who was scared of needles, got i. She cried the whole time and didn't feel a thing. Jhené got the rise sun on her shoulder to represent her blood brother. "Waves of sadness crashing against shores of unsureness," she sang for him. "So hard for me to sympathize when doctors they cannot cure this."

Standing on the rocky shore, Jhené looks down past her toes at the waves below. A schoolhouse of baby barracudas float in a cove of sapphire-bluish h2o shot through with golden sunrays. She takes a deep breath and jumps, plunging into the endless water below.

Shall we sit you up or lay you down?" asks tattoo artist Luke Wessman when Jhené arrives at Sullivan Street Club tattoo parlor in New York Metropolis. "That's what he said!" she replies with a laugh.

"Pain is inevitable," says Jhené, seated rock-faced on the table as Wessman uses a cluster of seven needles to utilize shading to a new blueprint near her collarbone. "Suffering is optional. Yous're gonna have some pain but it doesn't have to brand yous suffer." "Peculiarly with medication," jokes Miyoko, who travels everywhere with her sister. Jhené laughs and continues, "Physical stuff doesn't make me cry. I'1000 more hurt if someone hurts my feelings."

While Wessman works, Jhené reads her iPhone wrapped in a make-new Hello Kitty case. (She and Miyoko take a rule: Never trust a girl who doesn't like Hello Kitty.) After popping tags at the Hello Kitty bazaar on 42nd Street the day before, they headed upward to NBC Studios, where Drake was hosting Saturday Night Alive. Jhené joined him onstage to perform their romantic duet "From Fourth dimension" live on national television.

The vocal tells a tale of two old flames as they consider rekindling the spark. After Drake delivers a devastating semi-a capella version of "Hold On, We're Going Home," Jhené steps into the blue light surrounding him, clutching the mic to her chest as a younger girl might concur a hairbrush or a teddy bear. She sings in a breathy voice that approaches but doesn't hit every note head-on. Similar Drake, her melodic art is not most perfect pitch but immediacy and visceral impact. Information technology's that palpable realness, that Facetime confessional slice-of-life quality that makes live performances like this one compelling.

Jhené and Drake share a playful, unplanned exchange. "You need you some of this Drake love," he boasts. Jhené replies, "None of that imitation love," merely Drake presses on: "Tell Lorne to cut to commercial break love. So that we tin make dearest." Jhené nods and laughs as he asks, "You know what I'm talking nigh?" While she adjusts a stray lock of hair, he instructs the audience "Y'all make some noise for Jhené one fourth dimension," and so moves in for a buss and hug that will accept the Net going nuts for some future. Drake gives her a delicate peck on the hand as the crowd thank you and Jhené steps into the shadows.

It was a magical moment, but right now, on Wessman's table, Jhené's looking at something else—a GIF of Drake and her during the endmost moments of SNL. While credits roll, cast members and the guest host applaud and hug each other. Then, merely as Drake turns to hug Jhené, she spins away to hug SNL cast fellow member Noël Wells, forcing Drake to hug them both from behind. The GIF is spreading similar wildfire, adding fuel to rumors that she and Drake are romantically involved.

"We're all standing there, and he's the only person I know on the stage," says Jhené. "The whole time I'm at SNL I'1000 nervous. Everybody starts hugging each other and I'm just standing there. Right when I turned effectually, he goes to hug me and it looks like I totally dissed him. I don't want him to call back that he brought me on SNL and I'm like, 'Anyway….' "

"It could have been worse if he just woulda turned away," her sister says. "I call up it woulda been worse if he simply didn't do anything." Jhené easily off her telephone to be charged and refocuses her attending on Wessman's cluster of needles.

When I talk to guys, they Are wary because they know about Donald, they know I haveworked with Drake. They A™re e'er side-eyed, suspicious. But I A™m loyal in relationships. If I A™m your girlfriend that'™s it. I A™m practicing to be your wife.

She first met Drake presently before he released the pivotal 2009 mixtape So Far Gone. "I had only plant out I was meaning," she recalls. "No one else knew and I was still just recording. I was feeling my way around, seeing who I wanted to work with and what I wanted to write about. I went into a session to see him through a common friend. That's how that relationship formed. I knew him from Degrassi because some of my younger family members watched it. When I saw him I was similar, 'Oh. He's that guy from that show.' He was nowhere nigh who he is today, even though the underground music people were similar, 'He's next!' "

"I look up to Drake," Jhené says. "Everything in his whole career is commendable. He tin can act, he can rap, he can sing. I can chronicle to him. He'due south mixed; I'1000 mixed. Everything he does, I have note because I feel like he's doing a really practiced job of beingness, like, well-rounded. And non only that, he'southward actually talented. I'm e'er asking him for advice with stuff and trying to figure out how he deals with being such a big celebrity."

The SNL GIF bothered her so much that she reached out to Drake to speak about information technology. "Remember when you lot went to hug me and I turned around? They fabricated a GIF of it and it looks like I dissed you lot only…." Drake told her, "You go on the Cyberspace too much." After a pause, she adds: "And yous know what? I probably do."

On the Internet, everybody seems to know for a fact that Jhené is sleeping with the men she makes music with. Bearding authorities volition verify that Donald "Childish Gambino" Glover is her lover since they recorded that vocal "Bed Peace" together and posed like John and Yoko for the comprehend fine art.

"We have the same publisher," Jhené explains. "One of his best friends, Fam, went to schoolhouse with my brother who passed away. We accept the same sense of humour, very sarcastic and dry. It was automatically like, 'I like y'all! We tin be friends.' " She says the rumors about them being together don't carp her. "He'south an actor. We're both artistic people. We are friends and nosotros hang out. We're just friends but I'thousand also unmarried, so you never know what friendships can develop into. We like each other as people, so y'all know, who knows?"

For his part, Glover says, "I met with her for dinner subsequently her performance on Jimmy Kimmel. We talked about nothing, zero about the song. And then she sent me the vocal and I wrote it that dark." He emailed it the next day. "She's a super-special being," he later said of her on the Juan Epstein podcast. "This is why I honey her. Like, I think she's special. She doesn't need anyone. Even if we were together, she wouldn't actually belong to me. She doesn't belong to anyone."

Buddhism is about a search for enlightenment, much of which has to exercise with letting get of the ego, which Jhené admits can be a challenge in her line of piece of work. "It's definitely a procedure," she says. "The ego is always there and the id will e'er remind you that it's there, but it'south about being aware that it'south not the boss of you and being able to ignore information technology." (That is, unless she's been drinking Henny and her J-Hennessy battle-rapper alter ego takes over.) "I only try not to watch myself on TV. I don't even like to look at pictures. I don't like to get caught upward with who I am, and I'yard surrounded past family. We're very, very shut and anybody keeps each other downwardly to earth."

Jhené has a unique style of dealing with the pressures of celebrity. "I simply tell the truth," she says over cauliflower pizza and truffle mac and cheese in a Due west Village café afterwards the tattoo session. "If someone asks me something, I answer—without compromising some other person or telling their secrets." She's nothing if not open, a quality that only makes her more bonny. In one Tumblr post, Jhené described her ideal date as: "weed, vino, nutrient, sex, food, observatory, sex, weed, food, sex activity, spoon : )."

So is there a special guy with whom Jhené'south sharing trips to the planetarium these days? "I'one thousand well-nigh to give yous...non a bullshit reply. There is, merely I'1000 single. Not past choice. Just considering I found now that when I talk to guys, they're wary because they know about Donald, they know I've worked with Drake. They're always side-eyed, suspicious. Only I'k loyal in relationships. If I'm your girlfriend, that's it. I'm practicing to be your wife at that point because I treat information technology seriously. I experience like I was born to be a mom and a wife and totally domesticated. I'chiliad not going to spend my time trying to prove that I am actually who I say I am." Sometimes guys worry well-nigh what happens when Jhené goes on tour. "I can control myself. Simply if I'thousand unmarried I don't have anything I'm obligated to do for you. At the same time, I would like a man to take control and say, 'I don't desire you lot to talk to those guys.' Requite me rules. Yep! Why not? Be a human being. Merely I can say that there is a person and I hope that we grow to bloom and be everything a cute couple can be."

This lucky guy, who Jhené says is "kind of" in the industry "but not like I am," is definitely not Drake or Gambino. And he had ameliorate be able to take a niggling contest. "Me, I'm a free spirit," Jhené says. "I don't know what the time to come holds. I could meet someone tomorrow and I'll have to phone call you and be like, 'Remember that function where I said in that location's a person? That changed. It'south a new one.' Just because yous never know, I'm young." Until so she'll just proceed on making music. After all, in that location are no ends, no beginnings. It's all h2o.

Here's Our Exclusive Video of Jhené Getting A Tattoo

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Source: https://www.complex.com/music/2014/04/jhene-aiko-interview-inner-visions-2014-cover-story