STUDENT SPOTLIGHT: JANSSEN BURNETT RHEA

from SS December 2022

STUDENT SPOTLIGHT: KENNETH BAUMAN

STUDENT SPOTLIGHT: JBR

JANSSEN BURNETT RHEA

In the intimidating heights of New York City, there’s a radical intimacy in ‘finding your place’. The cracks between skyscrapers contain hidden thrills: cafes, clubs, and speakeasies abound. No less thrilling are the people that traverse its streets. They’re ants, ants with personal lives, with embarrassing habits, with great American heartbreaks. Almost all of these pass by undetected.

Janssen Rhea, a junior at the University of Michigan, was one such person. An Upper West Side native, Rhea spent his adolescence among the greats. A regular at the Red Rooster, he’d frequent their open mics, then watch the prodigious talents that shared that stage. What began as education at the Harlem School of the Arts turned into occupation; Rhea was hired as a talent recruiter after graduation. In tandem, he’d run in the city’s jazz-drumming circuit since high school. His vinyl shelves run the gamut from Miles Davis to Mac Miller to Joey Ramone. Now, under the name JBR, Rhea takes a page from every book.

JBR’s music is tinged with a crackling intimacy. His upcoming EP, slated to release in early December, has the atmosphere of an old photograph: glossy and nostalgic, with the thinnest layer of dust. The tracks are peppered with affectionate phone calls, love translated through static.

Rhea calls his music a form of “people watching”. This is a gross understatement: after all, he’s done more than just watch. His 2020 EP “3”, for example, gathers three different perspectives on love, tales from meandering down Manhattan. His stories were gathered at the feet of random passersby. Strangers received the prompt: “Tell me about your experience with love”. In a city that’s seen everything under the sun, Rhea faced many a cold shoulder. But those that laid down their cards– those who divulged their most tender emotional wounds– made for fruitful inspiration.

Craft does not develop in a vacuum. To improve one’s writing, so the saying goes, living comes first. Even in strangers’ stories, Rhea’s self-narrative comes through– the sensitivity, the visual attention, the swing of his jazz roots. It can’t be helped. A creative’s idiosyncracies just leak out of their pores.

His musical practice is equally specific. In processing his loves and losses, the album cycle becomes a ritual. The goal is to bottle authenticity– a night to remember. The room’s atmosphere must be just so. He sets candles; he dares not make them flicker. To “catch the vibe” of the night, Rhea records vocals in one session, denying himself sleep until a demo is scratched out. After months of playback and careful tweaking, JBR lets his projects loose– or, more accurately, he sets them free. If he doesn’t ship it out, so he fears, those emotions will face neglect, collecting dust on a hard drive.

Art is a multisensory affair; a creative is a creative, no matter the stripe. To Rhea, fashion and music are common interlopers. Crossovers between artists and designers abound. Look around at today’s cultural

landscape: Kanye’s Yeezys. Mid-decade Supreme fever. The ubiquity of the late Virgil Abloh. At the end of the day, be it an album or a clothing line, it’s collections all the way down.

The throughline of JBR’s ‘collection’, as it were, might best be described as ‘elevated authenticity’. He’s a stalwart fan of Japanese Denim, which undergoes quality treatment to create a worn-in look. In the studio, his outfit projected that same refined grunge. Between the cathedral landscaped on his jacket and the tested blue of his jeans, Rhea clearly knew the value of careful distress.

JBR takes this design ethos to heart. Commemorated in song, universal stories become larger-than-life. He buries his speaking voice in effects– but deeper, grainier, and modified as it is, that voice finds its way in. Heartbreaks and setbacks get the pop-production treatment. Under the glitz and glamor, there’s a seed of reality. His music is airbrushed but earnest.

It’s no surprise, then, that Rhea would adore the Super 8 camera. It’s emblematic of what he wants to achieve: grainy realness, to look at others like cinema. On the studio’s monitor, he pulls up VHS footage from California. Scenes of domestic life, a random happy family. Youthful freeloves grinning at the lens. Beaches whose sand has made every castle. Visions of another life. They fade into stills.

In Rhea’s hometown, eight million people slide past each other every day. In every city since, still more live in mutual ignorance of each other. We bow our heads to thousand-foot buildings. We secede to the frenetic rhythm of modern life. Whether physically or through the wire, JBR’s work is cold water to the face. Soothing but confrontational, Rhea coaxes listeners into newfound appreciation. Like Japanese Denim: pull the right threads, and the story unravels beautifully.