Ray Jones
Image via Tiffany LeGrand
Ray Jones is a singer and rapper from Houston, TX. Around the age of 9, Ray’s mom bought him a CD player and a collection of about 200 CDs from a bootlegger. The collection included albums of artists from Michael Jackson to Nirvana, and it was being introduced to artists like these that truly marked the start of Ray Jones’ journey in music. Later on, Ray would pick up additional influences from artists like Missy Elliot, Babyface, Stevie Wonder, Drake, Kanye West, Pharrell, and J. Cole. Today, Ray Jones describes his sound as “2090s. It's a blend of everything [he’s] heard in [his] youth on Majic 102.1 in Houston, and in the late 2000s blog era.”
Ray Jones released his first project, Somas and Salem 100’s in 2015 around the age of 18. The project, which sounds like a lost OVO tape, is highlighted by “3 Am” and “Real To Me.” He followed the project up by releasing another two projects in the next two years with Only Time Will Tell in 2016 and Sophia’s Beach House in 2017. He then slowed it down a bit before releasing Acres Homes in 2019.
While Ray Jones currently is putting the finishing touches on his next album, he has given us a few singles since releasing his last project. Most notably, he released the songs “Benz” and “Down With You” in the second half of 2021 which may be his best two songs to date. Along with his upcoming album, another exciting thing on the Ray Jones radar is an unreleased collaboration with Bryson Tiller. Whether this will be on his album or elsewhere is unknown, but the anticipation is real regardless.
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