Short Profile

Full Name: Jhameel Sam Kim

Alias: Jhameel

Birthday: 01.09.1989

Blood Type: A

Height: 1,78 m

Speciality: Excellent at cooking and origami

Favourite Artist: David Bowie

Favourite Food: Fresh Sashimi

Favourite Drink: Mango Smoothie

Favourite Color: I am colorblind, but I suppose black

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Interview Questions

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1. Does your alias „Jhameel“ has a special meaning?  
   
   I had my name legally changed to Jhameel a long time ago.  I was having a lot of self-image and identity issues, and I felt like I needed a fresh start.  The name means "beautiful" in Arabic and is a reminder for me to go beyond accepting the things that I hate or find ugly in the world, and to find the beauty in everyone and everything
    

2. Is „Jhameel“ a one-man-army or are there helping hands behind it all?  
   
   I have a few select individuals helping me at all levels of production.  They choose to remain anonymous at this point, but all I can say is I'm lucky to have such passionate, talented, and detail-oriented people helping me achieve my vision.
    

3. What is your goal as a artist? Why do you want to reach this goal?
   
   My goal is to entertain, to help people attain that moment of forgetting everything around them and just being immersed in the music.  I want to be able to do that better and better, and more and more honestly over time.  I want to be able to consider myself my favorite artist.
    

4. How would you describe your kind of music?
   
   I'd say it's pop music with indie-electronic R&B influence.  The sound has changed a lot over time, but it floats around that area :)
    

5. What inspired you to become a artist?
   
    I've always used music to express myself ever since I can remember, but I only actually started to think about it in terms of a career when I was 19, right after I graduated college.  I was enrolled under the ROTC program at UC Berkeley, had planned on a military career, heard/saw some stuff that bothered me at a core level during training, and then switched paths after I finished my first album to focus on making music.
    

6. What inspired you to write TAYCO?
   
   It's something I had been dabbling with while traveling through Malta.  The island has this endearing crystal urban kind of vibe, and I just wanted to get that flavor recorded in music.
    

7. Do you plan to release another song in the near future?
   
   I'm working on a five song album release by this fall 2017.  The songs are all written and pretty much recorded, but I'm currently traveling Southeast Asia to scout for locations to shoot music videos for all five songs.  I intend for it to feel like a continuous visual narrative, but we'll see what happens, plans always change with these things :)  I'm optimistic
    

8. Would you want to hold concerts in Europe?
   
   Absolutely.
    

9. Is the music you write and perform usually connected to your private life?
   
   It's hard to say.  These days I rarely write lyrics consciously, they sort of spill out.  I've been very good with filling my life with interesting people and events, and I think just the mix of all that, my emotions, and my day-dreaming tendencies, that's what comes out in the music.
    

10. Do you have any role models or idols? If so, who and why?
    
    I tend to have some trust issues with role models and idols, I feel like the more I meet the more it feels like they're never as they seem.  I trust my instincts, my experience, my family, and my friends, these are my guides in life.
     

11. If you must name someone who encouraged you the most to become a musician, who would that be?
    
    I'd say my high school mates.  I was lucky to have very musical friends in college, and us jamming and sharing and competing with each other put me in a very playful mood about creating music.
     

12. Do you have any hobbies beside music? What are those?
    
    I love cooking.  I love minimal cooking, taking the freshest ingredients around me (right now I'm in Thailand so there are some really interesting ingredients to work with) and learning how to enhance its flavor and texture with the least amount of action possible.  I find that slow cooking with a little bit of soy sauce never fails to make a delicious meal.
     

13. Does the black triangle on your cheek has a special meaning?
    
    I've been doing the facepaint thing since the beginning of my career.  I have diagnosed OCD, which means in my case I have a manic obsession with symmetry.  I want everything I see to be symmetrical, and rarely anything is, which causes a lot of anxiety.  I deal with that by trying to paint things on my face that create a sense of assymentrical balance, which for some reason makes it feel like there's a sense of symmetry around me.  Hard to explain, but basically the triangle helps put my mind at ease
     

14. You can already speak five languages but are there any other languages you would want to learn?
    
    Right now I'm trying to get good at Thai and Japanese, but eventually I'd love for someone to help teach me French.
     

15. You can play 14 instruments – how did you learn to play them all? Did you learn it by yourself? Why did you learn them all?
    
    Basically I had a lot of instruments around me growing up.  They were a lot more fun to play with than plastic action figures, so it became my stress relief fun time trying to learn them all.  
     

16. You have Korean, Japanese and Mongolian roots and lived in the U.S. (If I'm not wrong informed) With which ethnicity do you identify the most and why?
    
    I can't help but identify most with the identity of "Asian-American".  I think Asians in America have a very unique and unspoken struggle, and it's hard to communicate it through words. Recently I've been meeting so many bright and talented Asian Americans throughout the country and the world, and it's helped me understand that we are a different kind of community with a unique culture that I think has to be communicated more clearly and artistically in the coming years.
     

17. If you were a animal, which one would you be and could you also tell us why?
    
    I think husky.  I like cold weather, I'm an extroverted introvert and I feel like huskies are mostly like that.  I dunno I look at husky and I'm like, "yeah i know what you mean".
     

18. If you should recommend only one of your songs, which one would you name and why?
    
    "Moment".  I think it's the most useful song, especially when you're feeling overwhelmed in life.
     

19. What was the biggest hardship you faced either in your life or as an artist?
    
    I think my childhood was probably the toughest part of my life so far.  I was overweight, the only Asian in my school in the middle of nowhere relatively racist New Jersey, sickly, severely OCD without knowing it, and bullied constantly.  It's nice to be an adult finally hahah.
     

20. What was the biggest goal you reached up until now?
    
    My songs "Feisty" and "White Lie" are close to 1 million views on Youtube.  I'm pretty happy about that :)
     

21. Anything you want to tell those who also want to become a artist? (Advice, words of encouragement etc.)
    
    I think the most difficult thing about being an artist is staying in touch with your emotions.  Sometimes you can forget how to feel because you're focusing too much on business or musical technicality, sometimes you just forget to have fun, sometimes emotions can get intense so you want to ignore them.  I think I'm finding that it's most important to have a balanced life full of new experiences.  That keeps you inspired and gives you purpose in your art.
     

22. A message for your fans and the Asia Unit readers, please :)
    
    Spread love :)  Just do it!  Hug someone or something