So it comes before that album and it kinda explains the story of how I got to that place to end up there. Jaden: Yes, so it’s kind of like the prequel to my most popular album, which is SYRE – it’s a prequel to that album. Music Feeds: You’ve suggested that CTV3 is the completion of two trilogies – your album trilogy and your mixtape trilogy – but it tells a story as well. This is an album that I’ve really been working on for a long time.
So it’s super-exciting to talk to you about CTV3: Cool Tape Vol 3. Music Feeds: You were in Australia not long ago. He typically eschews flossy producers – although the UK’s BURNS, heavily involved in Lady Gaga’s Chromatica, helms the boho single ‘Cabin Fever’. Notably, Jaden’s curation feels personalised.
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Plus he has another song with Raury, ‘Endless Summer’. Jaden reconnects with Justin Bieber on the romantic Motown jam ‘Falling For You’ – the pair previously cutting 2010’s ‘Never Say Never’. Jaden’s lyrics are simultaneously eccentric, nostalgic and unnerved – CTV3 capturing the zeitgeist. Now Jaden is promoting CTV3: Cool Tape Vol 3, his most imaginative project yet (with a spin-off EP SURF’S UP) – coasting through avant ‘n’ B, Fresh Prince-mode jazz-hop, and surf-pop. Mid-2019, Jaden dropped the sequel ERYS – a darker, harder, trap-leaning excursion featuring his BFF Tyler, The Creator and KiD CuDi. However, the Roc Nation signing arrived as a rap auteur with 2017’s narrative debut, SYRE – revealing guests such as Raury, the Atlantan “indigo child”. In 2012 Jaden aired a mixtape, The Cool Cafe: Cool Tape Vol 1, with input from DJ/producer Marc “MK” Kinchen. (Mind, he did surface in Baz Luhrmann’s Netflix hip-hop drama The Get Down.) Jaden is also an environmentalist, devising JUST Water, a sustainable water bottle company.
Eventually, Jaden followed his younger sibling Willow (of ‘Whip My Hair’ fame) into music – and, in later years, this has been the focus. Initially, he was a kid actor, co-starring with Dad in 2006’s blockbuster The Pursuit Of Happyness, which generated Oscar buzz. The son of actor/musicians/mega-celebrities Will and Jada Pinkett Smith, Jaden grew up around Malibu, California.