Interview By Nicole Ndlovu
“Even though I wrote the album and I like that other people enjoy it, it was really mainly for me to get out my feelings and everything.” 18-year-old Jordan-J.K.- Kristine Seamón reveals about her first full length album Identity Crisis.
The record home to 10 tracks explores the feelings of loss, love, reminiscence of the past that occurred throughout 17-year-old Jordan’s point-of-view. With the album name being Identity Crisis, listeners already get a hint as to how much involvement Jordan had in her own record. When asked about how it felt to have full creative input in towards their album Seamón gushes;
“It was amazing, it was so so so cool! I highly recommend to any musicians, artists, creatives just in general, if you can take the time to make something and have full creative input in it- and even if you don’t release it or anything it feels good for your soul, it’s very therapeutic. It was really important for this album especially because this one was really personal to me.” “So it was really important for me to be able to take control and tell people where I wanted everything to be and I’m really happy that I did because it came out exactly the way I wanted it to. I mean honestly even better than I wanted it to so it’s really great.”
The urban-pop album is filled with multiple tracks that represent different entities and personas: the one for me. embodying the bubbly and fun side of JK whereas songs such as the keyboard notes of 2years 2late introduce you to the RnB side of J.K. Fellow artists Hasani Vibez and NickkThaGxd feature on the album as well on tracks for you. and CONTROL.
There’s no easier way to say it; being a teenager is tough. The constant struggle and pressure that weighs in on us as we navigate through life and relationships often leaves us with unanswered questions. J.K. speaks some of her own personal questions aloud on Identity Crisis and when asked whether they had found answers to them she began to articulate;
“I think that now I’m a little bit older, because I wrote it in 2019 and I recorded and released it in 2020. So I think now, 2021 18-year-old Jordan definitely has answered some questions, but there are a few on there, a few songs that I had questions in that aren’t fully answered I would say. I’m still learning, I’m still growing, I’m only 18. We’re so young we have so much time. It’s fine!”
When listening to albums, people often find that a few months down the line they’re replaying tracks that they hadn’t originally played as frequently in the beginning. Our feelings towards songs change over time as we find that they tend to resonate and stick with us for a certain period of lives. After pondering, on this with her own album, J.K. came to a conclusion;
“I would say the song that I resonated a lot with when I was younger was ‘thnx.’. It was the very first song that I wrote out of the entire album. And it was really really important to me because it was based on things that I was dealing with at the time. And it really really resonated with me for a really long time- I would say pretty much from 2019, through like all of 2020. But now, I think now I don’t resonate with thnx. as much because thankfully I’ve moved on from that situation and I feel a lot better on how I’ve dealt with that situation and everything.”
thnx. serves as the 6th track of Identity Crisis, the minor key working to enunciate the lyrics which are filled with words of longing and heartbreak. For Seamón, she found that she’s grew from 2020 to 2021.
“Maybe Good & Bad (resonates most now). I really just love that song and I didn’t appreciate it as much when I first wrote it because I wrote it in a day! Like I wrote it the day before I had to go in to record it. I’m a big procrastinator and my producer was like ‘Okay we need one more song! Tomorrow!’ And I was like ‘Okay!*laughs* Let’s go!’. You’ll be able to see the whole writing and creative process in the documentary for that song- and all of the songs which will be fun! I think people will enjoy it.”
The documentary The Making of Identity Crisis dropped on Valentine’s Day (no correlation to the loved-up holiday, Jordan reassured), can be found here. Without saying too much, the 57-minute long documentary shows an insight to how recording these tracks was like as well as guest appearances from We Are Who We Are, teen drama directed by Luca Guadagnino, cast-mates and people who also took part in the production of the album.
The intro intro song as it’s referred as- ‘To My Wives’ marked the beginning of Identity Crisis. Filled with giggles and conversations, fellow castmates that Jordan refers to as ‘The Brits’ (solely because of the accent), prompted me to ask about what it was like having that type of support system while creating this record and Seamón gushed;
“It was amazing. So so so good. I can’t begin to tell you how amazing just 3 girls are. They are like my favourite people ever- ‘The Brits’ I call them solely because of the accent. They’re really amazing people, everyone- thankfully- that helped me with this album are such great people. My last two years of my life have been filled with endless amounts of support and love and appreciation and it feels so good.” “It’s definitely been amazing and ‘To My Wives is like my favourite track on the entire album because it’s -like you said- really genuine and I didn’t even- at the time when I was recording it we were all joking and it was the last day on set and I was just like ‘How funny would it be if I recorded this just to listen to this again!’
Then I listened to it back like a few months later and was like you know what, I want this on the album. Like I want this to be the very first track because I feel like when you listen to the album- even though it is supposed to be very genuine and you’re getting to know me.”
“I wanted to have something, a track on the album, that showed you just in general how dumb I am. I feel like people listen to my music- or will watch me act- and will put me on this pedestal and think that I’m this very mature, or sensitive person I’m like no…I still watch cartoons, I paint on my walls, Peter Pan ‘I will never grow up’, and I feel like ‘To My Wives’ was a really easy way of showing people that- that and the documentary. Ndlovu: A good way to remind people ‘I am 18, I’m still growing up. This is me.’ Seamón: I am a child! A child!”
Whilst still on the topic of Identity Crisis, the urban-beats and heavy melodies were also partially influenced by fellow musician and We Are Who We Are cast-mate Kid Cudi whom Jordan expressed as being one of her main influences in music in general. “Clearly we all know he is very talented musically and I think my mum, one day on set, sent him my music? Like, I wasn’t going to because I was like no I can’t do that! It’s stupid! But of course my mother was like ‘Oh yeah! I’ll send it!’ She sends him my music, he listens to it and he comes to me on set one day and he’s like ‘Yo, that song was really good’- and this is a song that I made like years ago that I thought was trash! I was like this songs sucks, no one can ever listen to this song, we just can’t talk about it anymore! At that point I didn’t have anything else new, so she (Jordan’s mum) sent him that and he was like ‘I love it! Did you write this yourself?’ and I was like ‘Yeah…are-are you sure?’ ‘I love it it’s great!’ and I’m like ‘dude! this is sick thank you!’” Very wholesome.
“But he inspired ‘Drugging U.’ a lot, I took a lot of inspiration from just his general vibe- but the minor key, sound of it, how it’s really dark and has a lot of little scary undertones. I would say definitely Scott (Cudi’s first name) inspired it - that and I was listening to a lot of Billie Eilish at the time and the Netflix tv show ‘You’ definitely inspired the album.”
With an album title as bold as Identity Crisis, the character of Caitlin played by Jordan in the show We Are Who We Are comes to mind. Caitlin Poythress goes through many changes in herself and in her relationships with the people around her; all whilst trying to make sense of her own identity. Identity Crisis as a whole is an album of self-exploration and whether or not they both correlate to each other? Jordan explains;
“Oh yeah definitely. Calling it ‘Identity Crisis’- I didn’t come up with that until mid-2020 so like the whole time I just didn’t have a name or a title for the album at all. I was just like ‘I’m working on something! I don’t know what to call it, but it’s coming!’ So for a long time I just didn’t have an idea of what I wanted to call it. And I thought about what in general the album was supposed to represent and what I had gone through in the past year, being on set for the very first time and playing this monumental role, for me at least, that changed me so much and helped me learn so much about myself. And well, it was kind of self-explanatory just to name it ‘Identity Crisis’ because I felt like I was just having a whole crisis the entire time. I think that definitely the album mirrors a lot of not what only I was going through personally but what Caitlin was going through during the episodes, and I think naturally a lot of my experience when writing the album came from me just learning much more about myself while playing the character of Caitlin so naturally I think the album just mirrors the show a lot. It mirrors! They’re similar.”
To keep it short, J.K.- Jordan Kristine Seamón- is a name that should be remembered. The Musician, Actress, Artist, Co-Author and Entrepreneur (just a few titles really) is a creative in the industry that should not be reconned with. Her growing popularity is all due to her persistence and versatility in her abilities. As for what to expect from her in the future: “I definitely plan on making more music, I’m literally writing a song right now, so that should be fun whenever that comes out! I hope to do more creative stuff, more stuff with young people especially. I know this pandemic has been hitting our generation really hard so I wanna hopefully continue to make things and work with people that will allow me to help young people and people of all ages, I just wanna help people. I hope in the future that I’m still doing what I’m doing and I’m just happy. Just doing good!”
J.K.’S WORDS OF ADVICE FOR FELLOW YOUNG BLACK CREATIVES:
Stay true to yourself in whatever craft that you make.
I feel like I have mentioned this multiple times but I feel like a lot in the industry that I’m in or just in being a creative, once you develop and hone in on your craft, I feel like people will try to change you and change what your craft is and what not and I think that it’s really important to just stay true to yourself.
Continue to be genuine person.
Be that genuine person and really put in that feeling that you put into whatever you create because people can sense that and that’s what makes people gravitate towards you.
Get yourself a good support system and stay true to yourself.
I highly recommend finding a team of people that want to support you and that’s hard as well, that’s really difficult, but I think it’s something that’s very very essential and important. Having people, whether it be friends, family, people just in your life, that support you and genuinely want to see you succeed; that makes it so much easier I promise, it really does I don’t think I would be able to do or survive the last two years of my life without my friends or family , they’ve been with me through thick- mostly thick and thin and I appreciate them.
J.K.’s ‘Identity Crisis’ is out on all platforms.
Interview by Nicole Ndlovu for Gen-Blk Magazine.
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