Jhariah

Since 2017, 22-year old Brooklyn-based musician and polymath Jhariah Clare (he/they), who records and releases music as Jhariah, has been building a thrilling, fiercely original musical universe. People have caught on quickly. His track “Flight Of The Crows,” from his 2021 EP A BEGINNER’S GUIDE TO FAKING YOUR DEATH, has racked up 10.5 million plays on Spotify. And Jhariah’s upcoming second LP is a manifesto of sorts for a new music culture—and it is his most daring, important work yet.

This forthcoming release is a brain-expanding, borderless record that fuses dance-punk, emo, prog rock, and hardcore with pop, hip-hop, Latin dance, and more. This bold, brilliant blend of influences soundtracks a Gen-Z odyssey through self-doubt, family conflict, Catholic upbringing, and through it all, a desperate, iron drive to succeed, and to share art with the world.

“The more I got into writing this album and the more I got to conceptualizing it, it kept getting bigger and grander, and I had all these wild ideas for what I wanted to do,” says Jhariah. “I wanted it to be the most monumental thing in the world.”

Jhariah was impatient to release this record, but as they watched their contemporaries like Billie Eilish, Poppy, and 100 gecs mutate what pop could be, they saw the boundaries of genre being chipped away. We had entered an era where threads from Panic! At The Disco, My Chemical Romance, and System of a Down could coexist with tastes from Tech N9ne, Amine, Dua Lipa, and Lil Nas X. “I feel like everything is sort of shifting into place for this album,” they grin.

Jhariah wrote and recorded the majority of the record in his childhood bedroom in his parents’ home, and when he moved out for college, he continued the process in the studio he set up in his first apartment. He still prefers to start his songs alone—he can take his time and make sure everything is just right—but to properly execute his vision, he worked with some trusted and loved collaborators.

The record’s ambition and energy are bottled in the breakneck sprint of lead single “RISK!,” an electric, impassioned cry for success: “I can’t take another day, I need some change/I need more to put behind my name,” Jhariah belts on the chorus, soaring into falsetto and back. The second verse dips into throttling hardcore before swerving back to its Latin-punk beat, and there are several other movements and genre plays before it seems like the track is done—but then it hums back to life with a dizzying boss battle music cue, and the groove slows down to a keys-led reggaetón slink.

It’s Jhariah’s time. This album is the start of something new. It comes out in February.