K'Jon

Detroit-born singer/songwriter K'Jon has seemingly come out of nowhere into the R&B spotlight, but it took years of hard work to become and "overnight success." 

K'Jon was singing in his native Motor City since he was eight years old.  But even as he continued to polish his craft as a tenn and young adult, he never got a major break. Then, his song "Miami" was featured on the soundtrack of the movie 2Fast2Furious in 2004, and the exposure won for him gigs opening for acts like Ne-Yo and Raheem DeVaughn.  He also began releasing his own albums independently, building a slow burn.

One day, stuck in a Los Angeles hotel room, K'Jon poured his emotions into a song: "I was sitting in that room, wondering if writing songs was worth being away from my daughter. I was really going through it." He wondered if his ship would ever come in, and that metaphor became the inspiration for the song "On the Ocean."  K'Jon recorded the song in 2008 and began pushing it independently as part of his album Ballroom Xplosion.  It began gathering an audience slowly, but kept building until nearly a year after its release, "On the Ocean" hit #1 and brough Ballroom Xplosion to the top of several independent album charts.

In 2009, K'Jon signed with Universal Republic Records and prepared his major label debut album, I Get Around.  It was a moderate hit, but K'Jon and Universal parted ways as he worked on his follow up disc, Moving On, which was released by Shanachie Records in 2012. Moving On didn't do as well as its predecessor, and K'Jon soon began working on another independent release, slated for a 2013 release. The first single from that new album is "Tell You Why" 

By Chris Rizik