The Music behind Jaye Newton

By: Kayla Hughes

Have you ever met someone and thought to yourself, this person is entirely beyond their time? Then you speak to other people who are from different aspects of their life, and they all share the same sentiment as you. That is Jaye Newton. Standing at about 5'8, with beautiful thick, coarse hair, and a beard to match, Newton is a humbling African American man just trying to be a catalyst for generations to come. Newton, the young Ellenwood native, has been composing compelling music for quite some time now. He uses his experiences and personal struggles to create musical masterpieces in their own right. His career is progressing at a rapid pace, but the man behind the music remains to stay humble. So who is Jaye Newton, and what does he have to offer?

Jaye Newton, born as Jeffrey Wallace, was born in Atlanta on January 10, 1996.

“The dynamic between my parents made me want to find ways to express the situations I was going through,” said Newton.

He spent the majority of his childhood with his mother in Ellenwood and shared many weekends with his father. Jaye, being the oldest of five children, grew up with a personality that some would describe as shy, but soon he would find positive ways to express those feelings.

“I saw my mother struggle, we experienced moving from home to home and financial disparities, whereas, my dad showed me something different,” said Newton, “… we would have dinner at the table and go to church; it was very traditional.”

With both of his parents seeming to live in two different worlds, one thing has remained the same… the music. Jaye described his parents as being musically inclined and exposing him to artists that were musical leaders in their own time. He did not tap into his craft until fourth grade. While attending elementary school, he was encouraged by his friend to enter the talent show; much to his surprise, he won. The thought of making music his career would cross his mind now and then, up until a few years later. At the age of nine, Newton began to make pen and paper his lethal weapons. He started to write about the emotions he was feeling at the time, and it was therapy for him.
When he was in middle school, he recorded his first song. The song was a diss track to his teacher, and it became prevalent among the students.The hype over the song was an eye-opener for Jaye. He started to take writing and his music more seriously, even at this very young age.

Jaye Newton’s career flourished at Kennesaw State University after graduating high school in 2014. He began meeting the people whom he would soon call family and started to build a musical consortium that is known as 8.O. Ape. His team consists of Producer Bossman, Musical DJ Cleatrappa, Engineer JaqueBeatz, Visual Director UV Lifestyle, and Artists CJ Wallace and Akil Shaw. The name came from a playful group message between three men, but a solid friendship built the foundation.

“Almost everybody within our collective kind of started with someone else in our collective, we took all the aspects of our artistry, put it together and made 8.O Ape,” said Producer Bossman.

Before attending college, Jaye had a list of performances under his belt, but 8.O Ape would further help him reach depths in his career. These artists, producers, and engineers, also known as APE, helped Jaye Newton build the promotion, the hype, and the many projects we listen to now.

“I could be playing with piano chords, and we could be just talking about something, and we start creating… it’s very organic,” said Bossman.

In late 2017, Jaye Newton came out with his first album called, Real Men Wear Pink. The album was in honor of his grandfather, who gave him his name.

“My grandfather told me I reminded him of Huey Newton… an activist back in his time, and that stuck with me even after his passing,” said Newton.

Everyone attended his grandfather’s funeral dressed in their best pink outfits to represent his favorite color, and the outcome was an album that Jaye put his personal touch on. The album blew up on campus, and Jaye’s name began to ring bells around the streets of KSU.

“I tried to make a project that touched every demographic, every emotion, and made a compilation of songs I felt would touch and move people,” said Newton.

He performed at a plethora of events on campus. He opened during homecoming three times, he set the tone for many social events on campus, and he has completely transformed the artistry of music on the Kennesaw State grounds as a whole. This change at KSU was well needed, and Newton is partially the cause for it. His girlfriend, Dasia Jones, described Jaye to be someone who is always using his musical platform to make these vast differences.

“The first time I ever saw him perform was my freshman year, 2017, and he did a protest against our former President for the discrimination that he placed upon the Kennesaw cheerleaders and the ADS program at school,” said Newton’s girlfriend, Dasia Jones.

Jones explained that he had all this opportunity to use his platform to be selfish, but he decided to put something else at the forefront of the conversation.

“I needed to prove to myself that I could be an artist, but also succeed in school,” said Newton.

He later graduated in 2018, from Kennesaw State University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Communication and Media Studies. This was a new chapter for Jaye, and he began to flourish in ways unimaginable within his career. While his career was starting to reach new heights, there were mental blocks he was having and in need to face.

“After Jesse got shot, it was the worst summer ever,” said Newton.

The summer of 2017 would always replay back in Jaye Newton’s head. That summer, Jaye attended a house party with a few others to celebrate their accomplishments.
“We were all having a great time, my friend Jesse was expressing how excited he was about graduating, getting closer with God, and going to college… not even a few minutes later, someone shot him,” said Newton.

Soon after the death of his good friend, he began to fall into a “dry” spell, as he would say. He needed to take a step back and analyze everything that was going on around him. He felt like he was watching those close around him succeed in many ways, and he felt stagnant. The constant battle of trying to make rhythmic music for his supporters but also facing his past struggles was starting to affect Newton, so he did what he does best he wrote and created.

“One thing I cling to is perception and recognition. If I didn’t have that I felt disposable as an artist,” said Newton, “It made me envious, it made me subconscious; this was a defining moment for me, and I wrote myself out of that situation,” said Newton.

Jaye began to reach out to a friend/producer, Bossman, to help him out with his next project. He wanted to make an album that expressed the emotional and mental struggles he was having. Jaye wished to speak on his depression and wanted to show how that truly affected him in the form of songs. He explained that his guide to recovery was not an easy one, and he is still working to better himself as an individual and an artist.

Jaye took to his music as a form of therapy to relinquish his emotions. He began to piece together a project that would be a rhythmic masterpiece, but also a musical treatment for himself.

“I named the album Just Pray for Me because when I was going through my hard times, my friends as well, whenever we would see each other, we would always say ‘just pray for me,’” said Newton.

The songs on his album were a complete outline of the past couple of years of his life. The songs explain his joys, his happiness, his fears, and so much more.

“I had used a soundbite from the video clip that was taken of Jesse the night he was killed and put it in my song, No More Parties in Atlanta, I wanted to include that single moment of his happiness in my song,” said Newton.

That moment sparked the transitions within his album and the mixtures of the highs and lows in his songs. He and Bossman vowed to create something that would mostly be groundbreaking. Newton not only was improving as an artist, but he was also trying to better himself and his community at the same time. After experiencing graduation and being recognized as an alumni at his school, he later got racially profiled, which in his eyes allowed him a new way to step up in his community. After this incident, Newton and Jones held a Town Hall meeting. The meeting began with Jaye giving a presentation on your rights when being pulled over by the police. The rest of the meeting consisted of an open discussion about the discrimination that happened earlier in the year to a former black KSU student.

“Everything he does is so strategic; Jaye will outline how he will influence others and how he will hold that influence for years rather than just for a few minutes, and that is what makes him different,” said Jones, “… He wants to show people his authentic relationship with God in a way that inspires others to be closer to God, and he also takes this approach with activism.”

“Jaye Newton is human, and I go through every single emotion. I’m being used by God to show that you don’t have to go the normal route, you can take an unconventional route, whether it’s with school, artistry, and religion, and you can still achieve longevity in life,” said Newton.

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