Saint Jhn On His Personal Music: 'The Fractured Child Became A Whole Person'

You know "Roses," the song that catapulted Saint Jhn (who styles his name as SAINt JHN) into global renown, thanks to a pitched-up dance remix from Imanbek. Nevertheless you may not know the voice beyond that smash, likely because it's not actually Saint Jhn's usual voice.


To get to know the particular timbre of his vocals, try "Gorgeous," a gigantic flex from his upcoming album, While the World Was Burning, due out November 20. Or listen to Saint Jhn, the MTV Push artist for November 2020, tell the story of his upbringing bouncing back and forth between Brooklyn Guyana and why it abandoned him with a lot of questions about his very self.


"My time spent between Brooklyn and Georgetown, Guyana only sounds sexy. It wasn't super sexy Once I was growing up," he tells MTV before launching into a stream-of-consciousness encapsulation of why: "Because I had to calculate how to lose my accent, regain my accent, I'm Black, I'm not Spanish, my name is Carlos St. John, they're confused, I'm not Haitian or African, they don't know what Guyana is, South America, Spanish-speaking — it was the most confusing time in my life, although it was everything. It made the difference."


From not having Jordans to being barefoot, purchasing his first CD — Lloyd Banks's 2004 debut The Hunger for More — in Downtown Brooklyn and sharing his early childhood raps with companions, Saint Jhn's origins are just as key to his rise as his work ethic. By 2016, he'd released his version of "Roses" (which he'd originally hoped would be "an idea for Beyoncé") and opened for Post Malone on the West Coast; a couple of years later, his vocals on "Brown Skin Girl" mingled right alongside that of Beyoncé herself, along with her daughter Blue Ivy, and "Roses" had seen its resurgence.


2019 also marked another big milestone for Saint Jhn — occasionally nicknamed "Ghetto Lenny" — any time whenever he teamed up with Lenny Kravitz on the especially sensual cut "Borders." "Imagine your hero taps you on the shoulder and passes you the baton to keep running," he told MTV News then. "That's what it felt like."


Since then, he's lined up plenty of special guests for While the World Was Burning, including Lil Uzi Vert, A Boogie wit da Hoodie, DaBaby, Kanye West, 6lack, Kehlani, and more. Moreover to "Gorgeous," ahead of the release, he's shared the airy "Sucks to Be You," a track he calls "an autobiographical story" about "how the fractured child became a whole person."


"On this one, I want to introduce myself," he mentioned. "My name is Saint Jhn, and it also was fucked up. It was rough. It was crazy. So let me tell you how I got here."


Watch Saint Jhn introduce himself to you in both of the MTV Push interviews and performances above.