The number you’ve dialled has not been recognised. JayWood – the nom de plume of Jeremy Haywood-Smith – is embracing new pastures having moved his music-making from Winnipeg, Manitoba to Montreal, and his new album Leo Negro chimes with a different tone as it looks to reconnect the self and grapple with one’s identity. Marking a moment of meaningful change where controlled chaos takes the lead, it philosophises on what it truly means to be an experimentalist building a multi-faceted world where genre is infinite through sounds braver, more playful, and truthful than he’s dared deliver before.
“It’s me at my most honest, but to approach the album like this I needed to write from different versions of myself. I’ve intentionally split the brain through each song which has made it more cohesive than my scatterbrain music mentality of just writing everything I’m into and expecting it to make sense.”
Leo in name, although less by nature, the 11 ‘Jays’ within feast on truth and uncertainty. Despite its astute sampling with layers of twists and turns, Leo Negro doesn’t showboat but roars in the presence of vulnerability as it considers one’s absolutes as a way of navigating the identity crisis. “Always looking for attention, I admit it, I can’t help it, I’m a Leo,” he reasons between vintage hip-hop scrubs on ‘Pistachios,’ recalling a childhood need to be the centre of attention then stepping out of the spotlight as a grown-up. “Leos are confident and sure about themselves, but this record isn’t that; so really, when translated, the title inspires ‘black confidence.’ It’s an uncomfortable, weird, and surreal term which bends the truth and embodies everything within.”
Leaning into the discomfort and disconnection of his new chapter, he grounded himself with a new routine and practice by writing his music as he would a journal, documenting through first-hand experience, the bric-a-brac of emotions others feel but are too afraid to face. Slowing down and tuning in, he’s taken in the tours of other musicians, the variety in nature’s landscape, street art, and (twice!) learned French, inspired by texts about the artist’s plight from Rick Rubin’s wise words to The Artist’s Way, and Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic. “To be an artist is to live and breathe artistically; you experiment, you try, you fail, try again, and keep going. I realised I needed to do that in every part of my life from how I dress, to how I talk to people; I want to keep experimenting in everything to unlock more about myself which others can connect to.”
Experimenting in both life and music, Leo Negro and its first cut, ‘Big Tings’ (feat. California, art-pop duo Tune-Yards) couldn’t be further from 2023’s Grow On EP and the previous year’s slick LP Slingshot. Moving with flow akin to D’Angelo with Toro Y Moi textures, its twinkling intro of whirling synth and playful approach circles back to Jeremy’s adolescence when he’d reverse, slow down, and speed up his favourite songs through the media player on his computer. “I love the idea of world building, making music away from reality,” he says. “This record is like a pocket experience; but maybe not rooted here.”
Whether connecting the dots with dial-up tones throughout the record or seeing how the room moves to his playlists as a DJ, he’s tamed the production of his craft into a revitalised art form with building blocks that push creative boundaries. Encouraged by his musical squad Will Grierson, Arthur Antony, Brett Ticzon, and enlisting his stylist and thrifter friends to capture the Leo Negro aesthetic, JayWood’s big ‘in’ for 2025 is collaboration, with the tight-knit crew of likeminded musical colleagues captured in session photo grins beaming from his Instagram grid. The tracks were laid down in Will and Arthur’s Collector Studios and they bounced ideas off one another to lasso Jeremy’s sonic imagination. “This record sounds like there’s a shit tonne going on because that’s what it feels like in my head,” he says.
Just as another inspiration, Gorillaz prove that nothing needs to stay the same, the album’s melodic personas spring to life through vocal expression and lyricism. ‘Palma Wise’ highlights truth through performance, channelling vocal manipulators like Marvin Gaye’s emotional vs melodic complexity; whilst ‘Assumptions’ brings Tyler The Creator’s energy with JayWood flavour as he adapts lyrical characters from hip-hop cut to ballad. In a final moment of cohesion, ‘Sun Baby,’ ignites an orange ombré of 60s production a la George Morton, as BBC symphony orchestra samples meander alongside mellotron. “It's a culmination of all things; its duality; all the melodies and identities within myself are all part of me and working together – they’re all real, they’re all me and that feels like a really celebrational moment.”
Nominated for Canada’s coveted Polaris Music Prize, it’d be easy to be the cowardly lion; to rinse and repeat what’s worked up to this point. But for JayWood, leaning into his natural ‘what if?’ curiosity to make up his own rules as he goes along (“I never really knew what they were to begin with”) and venture into honesty’s unsafe space to seek comfort, confidence and make even greater connections, really is the only option. After all, he can’t help it; he’s a Leo.