Jhameel Kim is a 30 year old alternative pop artist from the Bay Area known for his signature sharp black face-paint. Born of Korean, Japanese, and Mongolian ancestry, provocative, androgynous, multi-faceted , he grew up in a sleepy town in Minnesota.
His skill in 14 different instruments, his unique and untamed style of dance, and his minimal yet gritty approach to writing and producing internet cult-pop hits.
While still in high school, he entered into the U.S. Army’s Reserve Officer Training Corps program.
The program allowed him to attend the University of California, Berkeley, but with the caveat that he would have to commit four years of his life to the military, a concept that grew increasingly problematic as his social and political worldview expanded, due in no small part to the university’s noted liberal environment.
Jhameel eventually quit the program before signing an irrevocable contract due to personal beliefs about U.S. presence in the Middle East. , and within two years, had graduated summa cum laude with a degree in Arabic, changed his name to Jhameel (he refuses to release his birth name). Now, alongside his closest friends, Jhameel intends to help spread love and make sense of the uncomfortable, difficult truths of life through music.
Inspired by Prince, Michael Jackson, and the high-energy, mercurial, electro-pop of bands like Phoenix and MGMT, the singer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist self-released his eponymous debut album in 2009, followed in 2011 by the Dance EP, and his sophomore full-length The Human Condition. A second EP,Waves, arrived in 2012.
“Balanced asymmetry,” Jhameel Kim demonstrates, as he lines up the edge of a teaspoon with the handle of his coffee cup. “I’m OCD. I’ve gotta have things symmetrical, but what I realized a couple of years ago is that you can satisfy that tick in your brain by accepting asymmetry and keeping it balanced, accepting the imperfection.”
His main message nowadays is that it’s OK to be flawed — or asymmetrical, as he calls it — as long as beauty can be found in that flaw.
He says “I feel like if we just accepted the circumstances that we’re in, what we’re given, and make balance and beauty out of that instead of trying to strive for something that’s completely not you, our energy is better spent,” he says.
Music was a constant presence for Kim growing up. His father, a professional violinist, met his mother, a classical composer, at a music school. In their home, his father would regularly practice violin; Kim, who initially found interest in trumpet, eventually started playing the guitar, drums and a dozen more instruments.
“Whatever I had around, I would just play it,” he says. “It was relatively natural to me.”
His album, a two-year effort that saw the light of day in May, debuted a “Game Of Thrones”-inspired music video for “Lion’s Den” that has Kim in face paint, a recurring theme in his productions. That, too, is a metaphor for seeing beauty in imperfection, he says, as well as a representation of a fantasy element he wants to bring to his music.
“The motivation has always been imposing fantasy onto my personal and friends’ life experiences,” he says. “Exaggerating reality. [My music] is dramatized. It’s more interesting that way. It’s like Hollywood, based on a true story — but you’re not going to tell the completely true story.”
Listen to his music at :
9xm.tv | Spotify | Hungama | Gaana
Visit his profile at :
Talentsofworld | Instagram |Facebook | Twitter
