by EMILY BEZERRA Social Media Coordinator
The music industry is encountering an arrival of multiple young, up and coming r&b artists. Trevor Jackson and B Smyth each released their first hit singles recently with Jackson failing to impress me, but Smyth succeeding in making a catchy r&b song.
Sixteen-year-old Jackson released the music video for his first single “Like We Grown” on February 25.
Although Jackson is now trying to make it as an r&b artist, he began his career in the acting industry. Jackson was cast as Young Simba in Disney’s three-year tour of “The Lion King,” as well as appearing on screen in “Harry’s Law”, “Cold Case”, “Austin & Ally”, and “Eureka”. The 16-year-old was cast as Kris McDuffy in the hit movie “Let It Shine”, which won number one movie of the year in the 6-11 age group.
The “Like We Grown” video was nothing but your typical r&b music video – a boy singing to the girl he likes. Being that Jackson is only 16, the video was kept PG-13 with nothing but a hug at the end and no explicit lyrics.
Jackson’s “main girl” in the video was Disney co-star Zendaya. Being that Zendaya is a professional dancer, the choreography in the music was impressive. Aside from that, nothing about the video was particularly remarkable.
You could say Jackson is a wanna-be Trey Songz, with a very similar voice and style of music. Unfortunately, Songz has the upper-hand in this comparison.
Smyth is a 19-year-old r&b artist who recently released his first single “Leggo,” featuring famous rapper 2 Chainz.
Smyth started his r&b career off with his YouTube channel where he uploaded covers of himself singing hit r&b songs. He received millions of views on his covers of “Thinking About You” by Frank Ocean, “Seperated” by Avant, and “Sure Thing” by Miguel. After recording multiple covers, Smyth is more than ready for the world to hear his original music.
Although the tacky title “Leggo” earned my immediate negative judgement, after listening to the song, I was impressed. Not only is it very catchy, but it has a rhythm that will have most listeners singing and dancing along.
Smyth’s voice bears an uncanny similarity to Chris Brown’s, it is almost weird. Nonetheless, his voice is beautiful and he is quite attractive, which should aid him in appealing to female audiences.
The music video for “Leggo” was a bit generic, but the dancing was very impressive, along with the wardrobe. Having 2 Chainz featured in his song helped Smyth out due to his large role in the music industry.
Jackson and Smyth have two things in common- they are both attractive young boys trying to make it in the music industry. Unfortunately, Jackson’s first single failed to keep me interested. However, Smyth shows a lot of potential with his catchy song. Both are artists for which to keep an eye out.