Jesse Boykins III has a timeless sound. He shares a point of view that crosses all genres, generations and cultures. Every note and each word in all his recorded works, to his live performance is skillfully crafted evoking emotions that can move any listener across the world to examine and acknowledge those feelings within themselves.
Jesse who was born in Chicago on February 20, 1985 spent most of his childhood in Jamaica and Miami before spreading roots as a teenager in New York City. In his youth Jesse spent most of his time outside of school learning valuable life lessons from his family. His aunts and uncles taught him the value of setting goals for himself; his grandmother a respect for spirituality; his mother a sense of passion and the importance of staying dedicated and focused in order to reach his goals and from all of them was grown an adoration and reverence for music.
Jesse’s own musical creations began in the 4th grade. He developed a talent for hearing sounds in his environment and using them as a guide to create melodies that he would record on his karaoke machine. It was around this time that he began to seek out music outside of what he had been exposed to growing up. He sought out soul artists such as Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye and Donny Hathaway; enigmatic artists such as Bjork, Sade and Pink Floyd and realizing from them the impact of words in their songs he began to delve into the writings of Shakespeare and Langston Hughes. From them he learned how to create depth in his lyrics. He studied their use of metaphors and imagery, and examined how they used these techniques to create stories and worked these methods into his own personal style.
Artist biography from Last.fm