We were lucky to catch up with Jae Cabrera recently and have shared our conversation below.

Jae, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.

The first time I knew I wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path, was when I was 6 years old. My parents liked to play music in the house. Everything from The Beatles and Elvis, to Michael Jackson, The Commodores, Air Supply and more. I remember watching Motown 25 with my family and seeing Michael Jackson perform “Billie Jean” for the first time and then witnessing him doing the moonwalk for the first time. It was that moment, when I said, “I want to do that!”

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My bio:

A Singer / Songwriter who infuses both R&B with Pop music creates songs that reflect many artistic forms. Soulful and energetic are only a few words to describe the style of Jae Cabrera’s music. A veteran to the music industry, Jae’s music not only reflects today’s trendy sounds, it keeps his listeners wanting more, and that’s what keeps Jae motivated and excited about writing music that his fans can enjoy.

As an artist who has grappled with many sounds and written many songs, his determination and perseverance as a recording artist throughout the years has shown his passion, patience and his continued success as he continues to work on creating new music with his production team that will resonate with everyone.

Singing since the age of 5, Jae decided to try his hand at making his passion his living. He answered an ad in New York’s Village Voice for a male vocal group. He set out with the goal of being apart of this newly formed group. He auditioned with a song he had written himself, and was made a member the next day. Being in a new boy band, came with many opportunities, which allowed Jae to meet various industry people. Through this, Jae met producer Angelo “DOC” Velasquez. The two soon collaborated and began writing music together, eventually turning their collaborations into Jae’s songs: “I Don’t Mind”, “Don’t Break My Heart”, and “Girl in My Dreams”. Jae was then signed to an independent label, where he spent two years working with the label. As time progressed, Jae left the label and began booking his own shows and promoting himself anywhere he could.

Performing one night at a NYC bar, Jae caught the attention of Nemesis Records CEO Kingmin, who immediately approached Jae about working with the label. With years’ worth of experience and songs under his belt, Jae was more than ready to bring his music to a broader audience and had finally found a label that was ready to move with him. Nemesis wasted no time and quickly got Jae on the radio in NYC and launched a website for the singer so fans could keep updated with what Jae was doing.

Jae continued to build a name for himself through the underground music scene, and recorded music for his debut EP on Nemesis Records. His single I Don’t Mind, got some well-deserved radio play at major R&B and Hip Hop station WBLS 107.5 and was being requested at other local stations.

With a couple of singles that lit up New York commercial radio, Jae was then approached by Kristine Sa to co-write for “Hopeless Romantic”. By doing this, Jae put his own project on hold to pursue other music projects, which helped him gain further notoriety within the music industry.

Through Jae’s progression within the music industry, he was writing lyrics that quickly became gelled into full blown songs. These songs were in collaboration with expert production by Kadis & Sean (G-Unit) and Dave Liang (The Shanghai Restoration Project, Carl Thomas). Jae reintroduced himself to the music scene with now a different flare on such songs as “For You”, and “What’s It Gonna Take”. From here Jae then continued to re-collaborate with Angelo “Doc” Velasquez, and King Patrick, at Invite Only Studio (Mary J Blige, Russ, Alicia Keys, Anderson.Paak), in which they produced a slew of new material, including his singles “Show Out” and “She Wants It All”.

Upon Jae’s move to Canada, he collaborated with Knockout Entertainment Music Management Group Inc. and his production team at Invite Only Studios in NYC to embark on an anti-bullying tour called Conquer the Fear. The following year he was a part of the Stand Against the Fear Anti-Bullying Tour with EMG Canada raising awareness against such an important cause affecting young people today. Furthermore, Jae’s music and work did not go unrecognized as his single “Show Out” was nominated for a Toronto Independent Music Award.

2020 saw Jae launch his indie artist highlight livestream series on Instagram called “Friday Night Hour w/Jae”. Working of the creative energy of this project, Jae successfully released 5 singles in 2021, “Turbulence”, “59Fifty”, “Love Tomorrow”, “Gravity” and “Lounge Americano”. To kick off 2022, Jae launched his internet radio show, “Indie Vibin’ w/Jae”, on indie1015.com & jamz953fm.com , again focused on highlighting his fellow indie artists from around the world, and released his 7th single “Think She Wanna”.

As Jae’s popularity grows and more people are exposed to his music and brand, there is no doubt that Jae will resonate with everyone within the industry and the world.

What I’m most proud of, is not giving up and trying to stay as consistent as possible always looking to help my fellow artists and creatives.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

Music is universal and has the ability to make us feel – something, regardless of what language its in. I think that keeping an open mind to new music, especially from independent artists is key. If you like what you hear, download, stream and add our songs to your own playlists. Or better yet, share our music with your friends and family, and on your social media. Any little bit helps and goes a long way for the artists and creatives putting their time and effort into their passions. Trust me, we truly appreciate it!

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

It was towards the end of 2016, I was in a bit of a creative funk. As the new year was approaching, I was trying to think of something that I could do daily on Instagram to try and build an audience. I thought about posting clips of me singing cover songs and originals. At the time, IG would only allow 1 minute clips, so i thought this shouldn’t be too hard. I came up with a hashtag first, #onesongadayfor2017

Nothing came up, so I decided this would be a good one to use. So I started to post a 1 minute clip of me singing each night, covers and originals. You can search the hashtag on IG if you want to go down that rabbit hole! LOL. It was definitely harder than I thought, because it would take roughly 3 hours for each 1-minute post. I loved doing it though, so the amount of time it took didn’t really bother me. At the start of 2017 i was somewhere just under 1k followers, and by the end of the year I had grown my audience to over 10k. I carried that momentum into the following year, and by the end of 2018 I had grown to almost 30k. In 2019, I took another creative break and only posted 9 times. Needless to say, my audience dropped to under 20k by the end of the year. In 2020, amidst the start of the pandemic, I got the creative itch again. I started my weekly IG livestream series “Friday Night Hour w/Jae” (as of writing this, currently 130 weeks deep) and in 2022 launched my daily 2-hours independent music radio show, “Indie Vibin’ w/Jae” on indie1015.com

My main advice to those just starting to build their presence is to be yourself, and be consistent with your content.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.jaecabrera.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/jaecabrera
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/jaecabreramusic
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/jaecabreramusic
• Youtube: www.youtube.com/jaecabrera