José James is both conductor and conduit. Across 17 years as a singer, songwriter, bandleader,
and producer — not to mention co-head of the fearless Rainbow Blonde Records since 2018 —
he’s dived deep, over and over again, into genres, eras, scenes, and songbooks, exploring with
the verve of a reverent musicologist, and then churning it all up with the confidence of a master
practitioner. Blessed with a silken baritone that sounds classic against any backdrop, James first
turned heads on his 2008 debut The Dreamer by subtly swirling contemporary jazz with hip-hop
instrumentation. As it turned out, mixing those two fluid, frenetic, and frequently time-travelling
strains set off a deeply soulful discography that knows no bounds. There was his stunning Blue
Note breakthrough No Beginning No End (2013), recorded with fellow genre upsetters like Pino
Palladino and Robert Glasper. There was an album of standards, For All We Know (2010); the
rock-addled While You Were Sleeping (2014); and that time he ditched the bands and became a
modern R&B star for Love in a Time of Madness (2017). He’s also taken a Method approach to
covers projects — even matching his wardrobe to his subjects’ worlds — like 2015’s Yesterday I
Had the Blues (Billie Holiday), 2018’s Lean On Me (Bill Withers), and 2023’s On & On (Erykah
Badu). He’s released dynamic live LPs, a Christmas set, and a four-album series inspired by
hooky, funky, disco-dipped songcraft of the ’70s, culminating in his latest, 1978: Revenge of the
Dragon (2025). That last one is as immediate, unpredictable, and vibrant as anything James
has made, affirming the mantra in the lead single’s title: “They Sleep, We Grind.”
