J. Poww Interview: The Headliner and the R&B Business

Now when I interviewed Joi Marshall from Jade, she said that a nice thing with the Internet is it really empowers a lot of smaller artists to get their name out there and promote their stuff. So would you agree with that statement?

I would agree, but the image of what you're presenting on the Internet goes a long way. If you look local, you'll be treated local and I think that a lot of times, what people don't realize is, yes the Internet can be a great tool to be utilized to sell product as an independent and help you boost your promotion and just the awareness and exposure of the artist. But, that page and everything has to look really major labelish. You have to spend a little money to make sure your page looks good, to make sure the links that are on your page are providing all the necessary avenues to get you the necessary exposure and to get people to the site so they can buy your product.

I agree. I feel like it's really important to prove your legitimacy and a lot of people overlook that. Moving back to your own effort, what can we expect from The Headliner?

The album is basically feel good love songs. And that's actually a song on the record. It talks about what happened to real R&B, what happened to songs that made you cry, that made you feel the words. You know you can't have chalkbox and computerized music on everything. You gotta still have those well-written songs that people can really relate to. It does have a few chalkbox songs in it, which are some of the more uptempo things. Which because I'm also an emcee, gives you the best of both worlds so to speak.

So you can expect the majority of what I do as a balladeer and a writer, that's 90% of the record. But I do have some definite hot hip-hop features on the record. I have a few people that are on my label featured. Royce Da 5'9 who's from here who's had some success with the Eminem situation. So you can expect a good mixture of the best of both worlds. You've got some hip-hop features but it's overall, it's a good R&B record.

How would you compare it to your efforts to your past work with UNV?

I'd say it's a younger feel. UNV had kind of an adult, AC, contemporary sound. Some of it can be considered urban but my album is considered much more urban. When you have urban, you have hip-hop, you have R&B, so this is a much younger feel. Some of the ballads will be very reminiscent of UNV but it's just got an overall younger feel and I think people are going to enjoy that.

J.Poww has been gearing up for the release of his The Headliner album which will become available this Valentine's Day.

I saw on your site that you have a single "All Over Again" with Q Parker of 112 and you mentioned earlier that you did some work with Royce Da 5'9 on the album. Do you have any other collaborations and did you do any with UNV?

I did. UNV is featured on a song called "Y Can't She B U" which is the second song on the album. My brother and the other two members collaborated with that. My brother also did a remix of "Something's Goin On," on my album. I have a few other rap features that are on my label that are prospective new artists that are coming out in the spring of 09 as well. So a little mixture and I got the guys involved and the Q Parker happened out of mutual respect for groups. We respected 112, they always respected us and that is a record that Q actually wrote and submitted to me when I was soliciting records for my album and I loved it and he was like, let's make it happen. It's a collaboration and people are loving it. It's my single now and we're just over two weeks in with the record being serviced to radio and we have 27 radio stations committed around the country. So we're just gaining steam and I think we're going to have a hit record.

In the last few months, you've had an album with UNV come out, Timeless, your own solo album, where do you see yourself going from here in the rest of 2009?

I mean like I said, UNV is still able to perform and do shows, so we'll see what happens. There could be a possibility that we get together and do a new record in 09 as UNV. Right now I'm just concentrating on The Headliner album and concentrating on making that the biggest success I can do as an independent. Being self contained, I understand the importance of making things happen independently so I can have a major come in and give me a nice chunk of money cause my overhead is so low. So 09 I'm concentrating on touring for you know J.Poww The Headliner, as well as UNV because I'm going to be bringing them in on some shows to do some things as well. So I'm just looking at the big picture and just trying to keep it moving all year.

Thanks a lot J. Poww. A reminder to all those listeners out there: J.Poww's album, The Headliner is coming out Valentine's Day. Get it for your girlfriend, yourself, anybody. J.Poww, thanks for stopping by, I wish you the best of luck.

Absolutely man, I appreciate it. I appreciate all your R&B Haven viewers and listeners, so just look out for J.Poww The Headliner and UNV in 2009. We're back with a vengeance and here to provide great R&B music.

To check out J.Poww's solo work or to buy U.N.V.'s Timeless album, check out J.Poww's MySpace Page.