J Angel returns with positivity

Many people are familiar with the voice and name Jenelle “J Angel” De Leon. The former Arima radio personality, singer and songwriter is returning to the music industry after an almost four-year break.

Her focus is all on positivity. Come next year, she also plans to have a soca song offering her positive contribution to the Carnival period.

She also recently released two singles, Strap and Friend Killa, sharing her brand of positive local dancehall music.

Although strap is often used to refer to having a gun, in her song, J Angel sings that she is strapped with her bible on her desk.

She is not only focused on music but also has several business ventures she is working on. One of them is her brand of coconut water, Just Ah Vibe, currently on supermarket shelves across the country.

She began selling the product out of the trunk of her car, at car parks of various supermarkets, before she got it on the shelves. This was also during the height of the pandemic.

J Angel spent about a decade on Slam 100.5 FM and resigned in 2018.

“I decided I wanted to work for myself. It is not that I cut off working for media entirely but I really wanted to pursue being an entrepreneur and focusing a bit more on the music.

“I had a really good run and I told myself even though radio is my foundation and start-up in terms of entertainment, I always wanted to have my own,” she said.

Coming from a business-oriented family made her drive to do this even stronger.

It was not easy making the transition from radio to entrepreneurship, especially navigating through the pandemic.

Even before covid19 it was challenging but she managed to go back to school and become a licensed cosmetologist as well.

While she sees nothing wrong with someone being employed, she thinks that the company will always belong to the employer.

“Working for someone, that was someone’s dream and they built their dream but what about my dream?”

She is currently an independent artiste, managing herself and while this presents with its own unique set of challenges, it gives J Angel ownership over what she creates and releases.

She has many business ideas for the future but knows that it will take some time as each venture requires a budget.

For her, there is no blueprint to success and everyone’s path is different.

She plans to release her first album next year.

“People are now getting to understand me as an entertainer, singer and songwriter. My audience is now getting the chance to feel me out and hear me out.”

Before her latest releases, J Angel had songs like 2013’s Wine Up.

When she resigned she took the time to observe the industry and its trends.

Although some have tried to dissuade her from her positive approach, saying that was not what was trending in the local music industry, she believes that positive music lasts from generation to generation.

“Now I understand that the positive, conscious, realistic approach to the music does not have a large category because music in Trinidad and Tobago has changed so much and so drastically over the years.

“Now we have Trinibad that is reaching a more global market than soca. The places Trinibad reach soca is yet to reach into spaces.”

J Angel said she is focusing on positive music because music is a way of life and she wants her life to be positive.

“For me, music being my way of life, I try to be a very positive, hopeful person in this negative world.”

J Angel said artistes who achieved long-standing fame did so largely with positive music.

“Positive music never dies. There is music that is popular, music that is trending and music that lives on from generation to generation. Bob Marley is a perfect example. Generation come and generation go and everybody knows his name. Up to now, Bob Marley never sang any sexually explicit lyrics, any over-sexualised lyrics or music video.”

She has other business plans but was reluctant to share them just yet, saying it would make people "beautiful."

Referencing the Broadcasting Commission of Jamaica’s (BCJ) recent decision to ban audio and video recordings that promote illegal drugs, scamming and illegal guns, J Angel said, “Some people tend to think because you’re an entertainer and you are expressing yourself, you don’t have any influence on the youth and parents have to teach the youth, but that is a very wrong mindset.”

She wants to show youth that there is another option musically and one does not have to sing about sex, guns, drugs and/or scamming.

Artistes can sing about a number of things as people were going through a lot in life, she added.

She believes there are a lot of people in TT who appreciate positive content still.