JAE5

Jonathan Mensah, known professionally as Jae5, brings dubstep swagger to his Afrobeat-powered productions. Born in 1992 in Plaistow, East London, he grew up feasting on the broad range of music his older brother collected. As a result, he got exposed to Missy Elliott, Ms. Dynamite, So Solid Crew, and anything else interesting on the radio. He spent three years in his parents’ native Ghana as a child, and the sounds he consumed there—Lucky Dube, Celine Dion—also fed into the artist he became. He started messing around with beats during his time in Ghana and got serious upon his return to the UK. Through an uncle who was a rapper, Jae5 sat in on sessions with producers who made dubstep, reggae, and grime. His work with Gambian-British MC J Hus, which kicked off in 2017, is legendary for good reason. Jae5 found in J Hus a malleable artist as excited by non-traditional, genre-bending approach to music-making as he is. The UK-based producer has also made classics with artists such as Skepta, Rema, and NSG.