Singer Jay Sean back on music charts with first single in three years

By Alicia Powell

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Singer Jay Sean wants fans to know he is back in the music scene after a three year hiatus, and ready to make them party again.

“I do understand that in this day and age if you disappear for too long, people think you actually died,” the British singer and songwriter told Reuters during an exclusive interview in New York City on Monday.

“People will think, ‘I haven’t heard his song on radio for a few years, he must be dead.”

After a five-year relationship with Cash Money Records, where his label mates included Lil Wayne and Drake, Sean parted with the company in 2014.

The split, which was prompted by a lengthy legal dispute, left Sean, 37, silent in more ways than one.

“I could not talk about it. There’s a lot of things we can’t talk about, legally,” Sean said.

“I couldn’t say to my fans, in interviews, what’s going on. All I could keep saying was, ‘it’s coming, it’s coming,’ and hope that my fans understand.”

Now signed to Sony, the British native called the split “civil” and said there was no bad blood between him and label co-founder Bryan ‘Birdman’ Williams.

“I don’t like to hold grudges, I don’t like to talk ill of people, Sean said.

The summer release of Sean’s single, “Make My Love Go,” brought him back to what he loves and grew up with: pop, R&B, dancehall.

It also brought him back to creating music with rapper Sean Paul, 43.

“What I think I wanted to achieve with this song was to make people feel good, which is, I think, what I’m really known for with my music,” said Sean.

“People always tell me, when I want to get in the mood of a party or when I’m at a party and they put a Jay Sean song on I feel happy. And so I thought, let’s hit them up with something like that.”

Sean’s new single has reached the top 10 on German music charts, reached platinum status in the Netherlands and had more than 38 million plays worldwide on Spotify.

(Reporting by Alicia Powell in New York; Editing by David Gregorio)