Jessta James

Jessta James, a country singer-songwriter, spent his early years in Bozeman, Montana. Classic outlaw country reached him first during childhood, followed by Southern hard rock while he attended high school. After graduation he entered the construction trade, where hip-hop entered his listening habits. Only at age 24 did he complete his first song; already aligned with hip-hop, he assembled a home studio and began shaping tracks from beats layered with his own freestyled verses, taking any available stage to perform. A move to the West Coast deepened his immersion in that scene, though he continued listening for a unified sound that would merge every prior influence, frequently threading country textures into his hip-hop productions. Producer Dan Hannon proposed reversing the equation by placing hip-hop elements over a country foundation. The adjustment crystallized the vision, yielding James’s debut album, Time to Get Right, issued in spring 2013 on Brash Music.