Keidran Kenmore Jones (born 15 April 1987), better known by his stage name Iyaz (pronounced ), is a

British Virgin Islands The British Virgin Islands (BVI), officially the Virgin Islands, are a British Overseas Territories, British Overseas Territory in the Caribbean, to the east of Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands, US Virgin Islands and north-west ...

singer and songwriter, formerly signed with the record label Warner Music Group. He is known for his singles " Replay", "

Solo Solo or SOLO may refer to: Arts and entertainment Characters * Han Solo, a ''Star Wars'' character * Jacen Solo, a Jedi in the non-canonical ''Star Wars Legends'' continuity * Kylo Ren (Ben Solo), a ''Star Wars'' character * Napoleon Solo, fr ...

", and " Pretty Girls". He released his debut album '' Replay'' in 2010.

Life and career

1987–2009: Early life and career beginnings

Keidran Jones, known by his stage name Iyaz, was born in 1987 into a musical family. He was born and raised on

Tortola Tortola () is the largest and most populated island of the British Virgin Islands, a group of islands that form part of the archipelago of the Virgin Islands. It has a surface area of with a total population of 23,908, with 9,400 residents in ...

in the

. Iyaz studied

digital recording In digital recording, an audio signal, audio or video signal is converted into a stream of discrete numbers representing the changes over time in air pressure for audio, or Color, chroma and luminance values for video. This number stream is s ...

at New England Institute of Technology. He was featured on the track "Island Girls" by Out Da Box Family, which achieved radio success in the

Caribbean The Caribbean ( , ; ; ; ) is a region in the middle of the Americas centered around the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, mostly overlapping with the West Indies. Bordered by North America to the north, Central America ...

Sean Kingston Kisean Paul Anderson (born February 3, 1990), known professionally as Sean Kingston, is an American former singer and rapper. Born in Miami, Florida, and raised in Jamaica, he signed with J. R. Rotem's record label Beluga Heights Records ...

found Iyaz through his

Myspace Myspace (formerly stylized as MySpace, currently myspace; and sometimes my␣, with an elongated Whitespace character#Substitute images, open box symbol) is a social networking service based in the United States. Launched on August 1, 2003, it w ...

page in 2008 and later signed him to a

recording contract A recording contract (commonly called a record contract or record deal) is a legal agreement between a record label and a recording act (artist or group), where the act makes an audio recording (or series of recordings) for the label to sell and ...

with Time Is Money/Beluga Heights. Kingston also introduced him to producer and Beluga Heights head J.R. Rotem.

2009–present: ''Replay'' and ''Aurora''

In 2009, he released "Replay" which peaked at number 2 on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 and at number 1 in several territories, including the United Kingdom. His second single "Solo" was released in February 2010, and peaked at number 32 on the Hot 100. He also took part in recording the Haiti charity single, "

We Are the World 25 for Haiti "We Are the World 25 for Haiti" is a charity single recorded by the supergroup (music), supergroup Artists for Haiti in 2010. It is a remake of the song "We Are the World", which was written by American musicians Michael Jackson and Lionel Rich ...

". His debut album, '' Replay'', was released in 2010, and he was also featured on Jake Zyrus’s single "

Pyramid A pyramid () is a structure whose visible surfaces are triangular in broad outline and converge toward the top, making the appearance roughly a pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid can be of any polygon shape, such as trian ...

". In an interview with

HitQuarters HitQuarters was an international music industry publication and contact database founded in 1999. It was noted for its in-depth interviews with industry figures, as well as its A&R and manager contact directory, free artist promo pages and song ...

, Rotem described Iyaz's creative perfectionism:

"Where as 'sic''">sic.html" ;"title="'sic">'sic''others might work on several songs in one day, he might sit there and work on one song for days. The end result that he gets is usually an absolute gem, so heartfelt and genuine."

Iyaz also appeared on the fourth season of ''Hannah Montana'', ''Hannah Montana season 4, Hannah Montana Forever'' and made a song with Miley Cyrus called "Gonna Get This", which is featured on the ''Hannah Montana Forever (soundtrack), Hannah Montana Forever'' soundtrack album. In 2011, Iyaz played his part in

Big Time Rush ''Big Time Rush'' is an American musical sitcom television series created by Scott Fellows that originally aired on Nickelodeon from November 28, 2009, to July 25, 2013, featuring the band Big Time Rush portrayed as a fictional version of th ...

's song "If I Ruled the World". Iyaz released "Last Forever" with

David Guetta Pierre David Guetta (; born 7 November 1967) is a French DJ and record producer. He has sold over 10 million albums and 65 million singles globally, with more than 30 billion streams on Spotify. Guetta was voted the number one DJ in the DJ Mag ...

as the producer, and its follow-up, "At Last". Iyaz was featured on

New Boyz New Boyz were an American hip hop duo consisting of rappers Earl "Ben J" Benjamin (born October 13, 1991) and Dominic "Legacy" Thomas (born October 12, 1991) They debuted in the spring of 2009 with their viral hit " You're a Jerk" taken from t ...

's single "Break My Bank" and

Akon Aliaune Damala Bouga Time Puru Nacka Lu Lu Lu Badara Akon Thiam (born April 16, 1973), known mononymously as Akon (), is a Senegalese-United States, American singer, songwriter, rapper, record producer, businessman, and philanthropist. An influ ...

's "My Girl". Later, Iyaz did a duet called "

You're My Only Shorty In Modern English, the word "''you''" is the second-person pronoun. It is grammatically plural, and was historically used only for the dative case, but in most modern dialects is used for all cases and numbers. History ''You'' comes from ...

" with

Demi Lovato Demetria Devonne "Demi" Lovato ( ; born August 20, 1992) is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. After appearing on the children's television series ''Barney & Friends'' (2002–2004), she starred in the Disney Channel short series ...

, which is from Lovato's third studio album, '' Unbroken''. He released a song with

Travie McCoy Travis Lazarus "Travie" McCoy (born August 5, 1981) is an American rapper and singer-songwriter. He is the co-founder and lead vocalist of the rap rock band Gym Class Heroes, which he formed in 1997 with then-fellow teenager Matt McGinley, afte ...

titled " Pretty Girls" and later in the year a song titled "My Heart Broke" surfaced. Iyaz uploaded a duet song named, "Christmas Time" featuring Sha Sha Jones on to

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

, A Christmas song which his grandparents requested. In 2013, a slew of tracks credited to Iyaz surfaced online, namely "Da Da Da", along with "Congrats", "What Is This Feeling" and "Too Sexy". In 2014, after leaving his previous labels the year prior, Iyaz signed with new Los Angeles-based independent record label Rekless Music, which is distributed by the

Alternative Distribution Alliance Alternative Distribution Alliance (ADA) is a music distribution company owned by Warner Music Group, which represents the rights to various independent record labels. ADA provides "independent artist and label partners with access to the resource ...

and

Warner Music Group Warner Music Group Corp., commonly abbreviated as WMG, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational entertainment and record label Conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered in New York City. It is one of the "Record label#M ...

. Iyaz made a cover of

Chris Brown Christopher Maurice Brown (born May 5, 1989) is an American singer, songwriter, dancer, and actor. A Pop music, pop and hip-hop-influenced contemporary R&B, R&B musician who works in a variety of genres, he has been called the "Honorific nic ...

's " Loyal" named "Comin' for Ya", followed by another cover months after of

Magic! Magic! (stylized in all uppercase) is a Canadian reggae fusion band from Toronto. Based in Los Angeles, the band comprises lead vocalist, guitarist/producer Nasri Atweh, guitarist/keyboardist Mark "Pelli" Pellizzer, and bassist Ben Spivak. Ac ...

's song "

Rude Rudeness (also called effrontery) is a display of actual or perceived disrespect by not complying with the social norms or etiquette expected within a relationship, social group, or culture. Social norms are established as the essential guidel ...

", which he shared on SoundCloud. Iyaz tweeted in December 2014 he would release a single titled "One Million", and released a snippet of the song on SoundCloud. Iyaz released "One Million" on

iTunes iTunes is a media player, media library, and mobile device management (MDM) utility developed by Apple. It is used to purchase, play, download and organize digital multimedia on personal computers running the macOS and Windows operating s ...

in Japan on 12 December 2014, the first single from his second album ''Aurora'', released exclusively in Japan on 8 April 2015. On 24 July 2015 Iyaz released the second single from ''Aurora'', "Alive", featuring Nash Overstreet of Hot Chelle Rae. It was produced by J.D. "Boy Rekless" Salbego, the President/CEO of Rekless Music, Iyaz's new label, and Stuart Hart. On 23 September 2015, MTV exclusively premiered the official video of "Alive".

Discography

Studio albums

Extended plays

Singles

As lead artist

As featured artist

Other appearances

Notes

Awards and nominations

References

External links

* {{Authority control 1987 births British Seventh-day Adventists British Virgin Islands singers Reggae fusion artists Living people People from Tortola 21st-century British singers