Iyaz

Virgin Islands native Keidran Jones, who performs as Iyaz, quickly cultivated an enthusiastic grassroots audience on MySpace through fresh takes on the reggae-infused, melody-driven soul that defined early-2000s work by Sean Paul and Sean Kingston. While assembling his Time Is Money imprint, Kingston discovered the singer online and made him the label’s inaugural signing. The debut single “Replay,” a track co-written with Jason Derulo that weaves classical and electronic touches into island-flavored pop while name-checking the iPod, climbed to number two on the Billboard Hot 100 in November 2009, topped charts in the United Kingdom, Australia, and Switzerland, and earned multiple platinum certifications stateside. Although the follow-up “Solo” peaked at number three in Britain and achieved more modest results elsewhere, it paved the way for the album Replay, issued in June 2010. Following extensive road work and a label shift, Iyaz issued Aurora exclusively in Japan before resurfacing in 2017 with the Timaya-assisted single “How Many Times.”