You know “Roses (Imanbek Remix).” Even in pandemic times, it’s omnipresent. The song, by SAINt JHN, is a smash, the kind that only comes once in a lifetime for some artists: peaked at number four on the Billboard Hot 100; almost 194 million views on YouTube; three million TikToks using it as a background track; more than one billion streams on Spotify. That billion requires some addition—combine the Imanbek remix, the remix with Future, and the other remix featuring J. Balvin (which hit number one on the Billboard 100), plus the original 2016 version of “Roses.”
That four-year-old version is a grim offering, with a video that shows a hospital patient being stabbed in a hallway. Then, in early 2019, a then 19-year-old Kazakh producer named Imanbek Zeikenov colored over the darkness by ratcheting up SAINt JHN’s echoed vocals to an unrecognizable pitch, keeping them afloat on buoyant synths. “It was an aggressive song that became just fun,” SAINt JHN says. “[Imanbek] made it accessible.”
Until then, his biggest hits weren’t really his. He’d written a legion of tracks for other artists, like Usher and Beyoncé, while waiting for the spotlight to swing his way. When “Roses (Imanbek Remix)” went supernova, SAINt JHN had a two-album back catalog that millions of new fans could sink their teeth into. Sensual R&B offerings, including a collaboration with Lenny Kravitz. Melodic hip-hop collaborations with artists like Lil Baby. With the 2020 release of his third album, While the World Was Burning (out now), SAINt JHN is still straddling the fence between the grimy and the gorgeous, the original and the remix. Instead of moving toward that billion-stream bubbly dance sound Imanbek created, SAINt JHN’s leaving it as a doorway for new fans to step into his complex world, offer his take on our collective experiences this year, through the sonic landscape fans have come to love from him.
As he talks about his new album, wearing a black tank top and a cross chain and sporting his signature black-and-blond locs, one hanging inches longer than the rest, he also talks about the success he feels is long overdue. A career that he built mostly to survive. And a creative energy that won’t be confined to music.
In his early years in the music industry, SAINt JHN twice attempted to land a song on a Rihanna project with no luck, but succeeded in writing for Usher, Nico & Vinz, and Jidenna. He cowrote and appears on the Black anthem “Brown Skin Girl” alongside Beyoncé, Wizkid, and Blue Ivy for Lion King: The Gift. Mostly, though, he credits his songwriting work with helping him to discover his own sound. When he wrote “Roses” in 2015 and had trouble selling others on the song, he decided he’d just record it for himself. In 2016, his album Collection One was filled with melodic tales of glamour and grit over synth-laden dance productions and woozy, borderline menacing trap beats. The project, like its creator, felt both accessible and unattainable. In the same way that, during our Zoom chat, SAINt JHN says he still does normal things, like driving his Ferrari to get his own groceries.
Bringing charisma to the job of survival is what got SAINt JHN here. Born Carlos St. John Phillips, he moved around for much of his childhood, splitting his early years between Georgetown, Guyana, and Brooklyn. At age 10, around the time he discovered a love for rap through his older brother, SAINt JHN had already started assembling a 10-year plan to escape the violence and poverty he grew up with. “It saved me from having a tremendous amount of sadness,” he says. “I was forecasting that I wouldn't be in a scenario that was violent. Where I wouldn't have to come home and duck shots. I wouldn't have to carry a gun to school. When music came into play, I inserted [it] into the dream and started to carve out everything around music.”
Collection One caught the attention of Kareem "Biggs" Burke, the Roc-A-Fella Records cofounder who had announced his retirement a decade earlier. Burke found himself listening to the album every day. “It was probably the first time I’d listened to music like that in years,” he says. “The cadence, the lyrics, the rapping, the beats...it cut through. Nothing at that time sounded like that, even now.” Burke eventually caught up with SAINt JHN (at a Pyer Moss fashion show), then hyped him to industry powerhouses, including singer Miguel and Hot 97 host Ebro Darden—though not in any official capacity. “I just thought that all the lights should be on him,” Burke says. Then came the official capacity: Burke came out of retirement to sign SAINt JHN to his management company, Circle of Success.
Some credit’s also due to Fallen, who has produced a majority of the artist's work. Still, if While the World Was Burning, the latest offering from the artist, sounds lighter than his previous releases, it’s because even amid a year of collective turmoil, SAINt JHN has had a good amount of success and joy. “Nigga got his roses while he living,” he raps on “Time for Demons,” nodding to his breakout hit. The album features both the Imanbek remix of “Roses,” as well as the version with Future. Lil Uzi Vert appears on angsty cut “High School Reunion, Prom.” JID (“Quarantine Wifey”), along with 6lack and Kehlani (“Ransom”), show up, but don’t chase away the darkness. The album opener and single “Sucks to Be You” chronicles the artist's struggles, from growing up in poverty to working at Brooklyn’s Hilton hotel. Track 2, “Switching Sides,” finds SAINt JHN lamenting that it’s “hard to crack a smile when the scars still remain.”
Over a billion streams and a new album mean SAINt JHN is now more selective about the songwriting work he does for other artists. “I’m only interested in writing songs for other people if it’s [an] idea that I think the world really needs to hear and it makes me better,” he says. “If the reach matches the idea, I’m interested. If it doesn’t, I’ll just keep it for myself.”
He doesn’t need the songwriting work, at least not financially. Burke says SAINt JHN is making more money from designing clothes than he is from music. His Christian Sex Club line features hoodies, shirts, sweatpants, socks, and more branded with the same skeletal imagery that appears on his album covers—though he rejects the idea of calling the clothing line “merch.” He pulls inspiration from growing up in New York. “When you’re poor, you’ve got to be a bit more expressive—or you have the desire to be more expressive. Because your options are limited,” he says. Now, he can’t slow down the expression. “If you go, ‘I love this shirt,’ by the time you say ‘shirt,’ I realize I got to make another one because I can't have you only loving one,” he says. Rugs, art prints, wallpaper, couches—they’re all in SAINt JHN’s new 10-year future vision.
And while SAINt JHN swears he predicted all this, he loathes when people from his past say they saw any of the success coming, a stolen valor he alludes to throughout While the World Was Burning. “A billion streams later, you’ll find thousands of people who are like, ‘I was there first,’ ” he says. “You weren’t. If you were there first, I would’ve been less hungry. I might’ve had a grain of rice to eat. People’s memories are really faint when it comes to the things they don’t care to remember.”
He continues: “Five years ago, I knew. Three years ago, I knew. Two years ago, I knew. A year ago, I knew. And today, I got a billion streams.”
Grooming by Ameenah Mohammed