There’d Be No Jessie Reyez Without Beyoncé & Cumbia Music

Growing up, Reyez’s father, who occasionally sang and played Colombian boleros on his guitar, introduced Reyez to many Latin artists. This included vallenato singer Carlos Vives. Reyez would later collaborate with Vives on their 2020 duet, “Hechicera.”

When speaking about Vives, Reyez’s voice softens to an amazing purr. It’s as though she’s once more working with an artist she grew up admiring.

“He’s a powerhouse and watching him perform, to this day, is just insane,” she says. “The man will go for [an] over an hour set, full voice, just loud and hitting everything on the money. And everything sounds so perfect. And then [he’ll] get off stage like he didn’t do anything, like it was nothing. It was just incredible to see.”

When it came time for Reyez to find her own performance style, she didn’t just look toward Vives. She also studied the holy grail of performers: Beyoncé. “I started breaking down runs like Beyoncé,” she says. Runs are rapidly tracking up or down a vocal scale, and nobody does them like the Houston queen. “Beyoncé’s amazing. And her runs are f*cking anti-gravity,” Reyez says.

The impetus for her School of Bey studies was some much-needed advice from music manager Tyse Saffuri, who spoke to Reyez after a failed audition when she was 17. “Hey, I actually think you have potential,” she recalls him saying.

It was an important encounter as Saffuri would later give Reyez singing lessons and encouragement to work on her vocal tone. Those lessons certainly paid off. On tracks like “ONLY ONE” off YESSIE, Reyez’s voice can seamlessly shift from a raspy, baby-like whisper to a high-pitched ring.

Sure, Vives and Beyoncé influenced Reyez’s performance style, but a childhood crush is a whole different type of icon. For Reyez, there was no one like Nelly. “I had this big poster with his f*cking headband and his bandana,” Reyez says.

Years later, she almost met Nelly while in Los Angeles to work with music producers The Runners. They asked if she wanted to join an upcoming studio session with Nelly.

“I looked at them and I was like, ‘Yo, I can’t.’ I was like, ‘Y’all don’t understand.’ The little girl in me just froze because I love him,” Reyez says. “I don’t want to go into a session and freeze like a dumb*ss. I’m a grown woman. So I said I couldn’t make it, but shout out Nelly.”

Reyez has always had a knack for emotive storytelling. From her unflinching lyrics to her raspy vocal tone, she pours her heart into her music. That gritty delivery traces back to her appreciation for Tupac, whose music she was introduced to through her cousin Andrew.

Reyez admires how Tupac transformed hardcore records into moving spoken word. “The way that his vocals just cuts through for the poetry involved in his sh*t. All that,” she says of her favorite aspects of Tupac’s music.

She also had a soft spot for Dr. Dre, though she wasn’t always aware of what he rapped about. “I was definitely singing sh*t I had no idea. Singing things that you don’t even know the meaning of,” she says. “This is wild that I was 10 screaming this sh*t at top of my lungs.”

Her cousin Andrew also introduced her to Dr. Dre, and she couldn’t be more thankful. “There’s just certain swag and certain pockets that I was lucky enough to be exposed to early,” she says.

Both Dr. Dre and Tupac’s musical influence can be heard throughout Reyez’s catalogue, especially the YESSIE track “MOOD.” Over echoing low piano keys, she slickly raps about everything from her enemies to her personal growth.