Music always had a strong presence in the family household: Jordan’s father is a musician, and her brother Junior, who has autism, was “the one who was very obsessed with music,” Jordan says, her eyes getting wide with emphasis. “That [fixation] turned into such a beautiful manifestation of growing up with music that’s out of this world – like, the deepest cuts.” Junior’s taste, and penchant for replaying his favorite tracks on a loop, exposed Jordan to a sonically rich and diverse mix of genres, including gospel, house, drum and bass, and jungle. He would play music so loudly Jordan had no choice but to pay the sounds she was hearing through the wall (a lovely example of foreshadowing) a significant amount of attention. Her immigrant story of moving to Toronto, and adapting to different customs and locales also shaped her ear. “I’m such a melting pot because of all these different experiences, these different sounds, foods, and cultures,” Jordan says. “It creates so much dimension in a person.”
Jordan first determined that she was going to start making music at 16; she wanted to find a producer in Toronto who was experimental enough for her style, and “understood the musical language that I wanted to convey to the listener and to myself.” This was around the time Drake and the OVO camp was putting a particular Toronto sound on the map, and all of the producers in her area were trying to emulate it to strike gold. “I knew that was not for me. I wanted something that was jarring and shape shifting, and I wanted a fearless producer.”
That’s when KLSH stepped into her life after discovering Jordan on YouTube. She’d uploaded covers of her singing popular R&B songs by artists like Kelis, inspired by fellow Canadian Justin Bieber who’d gotten discovered this way. One day, she received 10 consecutive DMs from the Virginia Beach-born, Los Angeles-based producer, saying, “I don’t know if you’re signed but I think we would make really great music together,” she remembers. She went to his page, clicked on a beat affectionately called “The Neptunes,” and was instantly sold. “It was experimental and so much fun, dipped in so much sauce. It was the perfect mixture to create the world that we wanted to create,” she says.
Over a Zoom call, KLSH, who has served as executive producer and creative director for all of her projects, says he saw her potential immediately when they met in 2009. “She came with [British house music] already built in,” he said. “What people see now, I saw that, even when she didn’t necessarily see it herself. I consider myself a futurist kind of a person. I like to think about things ahead…Rochelle is always a person who’s open to new ideas.”
