For JGrrey the past couple of years haven’t been a refresh as much as a complete reinvention. Having first caught attention with her viral rendition of Don’t Fade on the Colors platform in 2017, she went on to rack up millions of streams on breezy & soulful tracks For Keeps and Growing as well as opening for Billie Eilish on her European tour. This isn’t a story of the global pandemic halting an artist’s momentum, though. If anything, the enforced pause gave JGrrey the chance to finally reckon with who she was as a person, a partner, a daughter, and an artist. Jen to her friends. It had started to feel like the person and the persona were drifting apart. It’s been a period of coming to terms with a set of truths Jen could no longer deny, and one that set her onto a path of feeling more self-assured than she’s been since stepping up to that Colors mic five years ago.

JGrrey is finally at a stage where pursuing music not only feels good again, it feels exciting. “I’m excited to carry on and there was a time that I didn’t know if I wanted that,” she says with now trademark honesty. She knows the next step is writing her debut album, citing storytellers like Biggie, Erykah Badu, and Tierra Whack as rule-breaking inspirations. “When I release my debut album I want to shed light on my experiences and my expectation of life,” she says. “If you listen to it you’d say ‘Yeah, that’s Jen.” Finally, the gap between JGrrey and Jen has been closed and she has the stories to tell.