J Rice grew up listening to artists like Take 6, Boyz II Men, Brian Mcknight, Wynton Marsalis, Kenny G and many other R&B/Jazz greats. He lived in a simple house where his parents taught him to work for everything he wanted. At about age 11 he was running a paper route to pay for his first trumpet. It was obvious early on that J was blessed with a gift as he would move up through the ranks of his jr high, passing up people who?d been playing for 5 years. A few years later a friend heard him humming in the hall and quickly stopped him to ask him to sing something. She was blown away and told him he needed to join choir, and he eventually did in High school. It was there that he started taking his singing seriously and built his own studio in his bedroom. Equipment was expensive so he had to improvise with dental floss stapled to the ceiling holding up the mic and a cool whip lid with a hole in it and nylons stretched across for the spit guard. He started recording and learning how to engineer and produce songs. After a long time saving up he bought a Motif ES keyboard where he would produce and write or co/write all 10 songs on his first independent album ?The Intro?? which got rave reviews from all over the world, from Australia to Japan. People were constantly making the comment that they could play the whole CD from beginning to end without skipping a single song (go to http://www.cdbaby.com/jrice to see some of the reviews). J ran into some friends, Tri-Quad, from high school who had also been working hard on music, so they both quickly got to work on new material. The new songs excited major producers/execs in New York and so J felt it was time to make the move out there. He packed everything he could, sold what he couldn?t, and started his drive across the country from his home in Tacoma, Washington. The trip was filled with surprises, from a tire almost blowing out in Utah to an ac compressor going out in Iowa forcing him to be stuck for two days. He finally made it to NY where he started making his rounds to different producers and labels with his management, Brand-on and Ken Joseph (City High, Kevin Michael). Currently he is working on his album and putting everything together to enter the mainstream world. On the underground level he is sitting on the tops of the charts on www.soundclick.com/jrice and on (www.download.com/jrice) with over 500,000 plays and 30,000 hits a month.