Throwback Artist Bio: Jamiroquai

If James Brown had a baby with the Bee Gees, and he grew up in the back-stages of the entertainment business, it would be the vocalist and frontman Jay Kay from Jamiroquai. The English band formed in 1992 and would have many instrumentalist line-up changes over the years, but Jay Kay was the sound that remained constant.

The way they deploy the sounds of the synthesizer is nothing short of exquisite, accompanied by strong bass riffs and wild guitar blinkies right out of the ’70s, bringing with them all the get-up and go of any disco-tech.

The band made their debut under Acid Jazz records but subsequently found success under Sony with three of their albums charting at number one in the UK, including Emergency on Planet Earth (1993), Synkronized (1999), A Funk Odyssey (2001), and additionally their greatest hits compilation. The band’s 1998 single “Deeper Underground” was also number one in the country.

Canned Heat

Although Jamiroquai had only moderate success in America, they have sold more than 26 million albums worldwide as of 2017. Their third album, Travelling Without Moving (1996), received a Guinness World Record for the best-selling funk album in history. The music video for its lead single, “Virtual Insanity”, also contributed to the band’s success, and was named Video of the Year at the 1997 MTV Video Music Awards.

When that video came out it was the first of its kind and I don’t think we’ve seen a dance track that had a video that was as striking as this one was. The video featured the vocalist dancing on a treadmill-like evolving room that made you want to get up and get funky with your own living room furniture.

As a unit, the band would go on to produce eight albums to date, including the 2017 undersold, but still fire and gold album Automaton. In our opinion, this was the best album the band ever produced. We feel like a lot of the pressure to produce a particular sound is gone from the group’s work and they really got back to the essence of who they are as a band.

Diamonds are forever

Not only does the music go hard, so do the artists involved with this project. We know that Jamiroquai has faced many challenges over the years, but they have remained focused on delivering a vibe as the world has never seen before they came along. Dancing shoes never stood a chance against their vibe and as they get torn up and tattered we are forever grateful for Jay Kay and the rest for making a way into our hearts and knees. As a bonus, we are including this adorable video of Jay Kay we found spending QT with his daughter which just further proves this was a good dude, now and then.