Who is Jufu, the TikTok sensation who successfully transitioned from creating parody videos to a rap artist?
Jufu is a young emerging Brooklyn hip hop artist and viral TikTok star. His latest musical endeavors have shown early success and the young breakout star has quickly adjusted to being a new and rapidly growing artist under quarantine. At 20, Jufu is already one of the most interesting and versatile artists to hit the scene. Not only does his background in social media give him the leverage to master the art of viral hits, but it also makes interactions with his fan base incredibly unique. His album offers listeners a look into Jufu’s lyrical side and clever wordplay, in addition to his infectious charm. With over 3.1+ million followers on TikTok, 205k+ followers on Instagram and over 13+ million music streams on all platforms, Jufu is an artist growing exponentially every day. And yet, he's only just beginning.
The young rapper is now back from a bit of downtime ready to step back in the studio to work on his next project. But his return comes with a renewed sense of purpose and self-growth, all of which Jufu says informs his various creative pursuits. And his message is simple: Jufu wants you to abandon your fears and reach your full potential. "I'm a very versatile artist,” the rapper says. “My music is all over the place with different messages, but the main thing I’m trying to get across is I just want people to be happy and when you're feeling down, I can be someone that you can count on.”
Born Julian Jeanmarie, the 20-year old Brooklyn native was unsure of what his future would look like, but he wasn’t afraid to try his hand at whatever caught his attention. Growing up, the Haitian-American upstart initially held a strong interest in becoming a meteorologist because of his curiosity about extreme weather. He later found a passion for music after taking guitar lessons when he was nine years old and developed a fascination with the ability to create sounds from scratch. “All the songs I was learning was classical guitar music and some older songs and covers. Then from that, I learned to branch out from covers and creating my own music,” he explained.
Jeanmarie attended Edward R Murrow High School — home to Joey BadA$$ and the Pro Era rap collective — and joined the school’s “Music x Technology” program when it was launched in September 2015. It played a huge impact in his artistry, fostering his interests in music, teaching him the fundamentals of filmmaking, and harvesting the idea of how his social media hobby can supplement his musical aspirations. Being a part of a generation born into the age of social media technology, Jufu joined Vine when he was 13 to make comedy videos because he was in a competition with his friends on who can get the most followers on the platform. He states, "I started Vine because I wanted to have lots of followers, impress my friends, and make comedy videos that would make people laugh." But despite his friends quitting the platform after the first year, Jufu stayed on. "I never imagined myself ever being where I am today. But I got sucked into that world and started to find new ways to keep on growing. After my first years on Vine, I managed to reach about 216,000 followers.
What seemed like a sure path to success, however, ran into a few troubles when Vine was discontinued in 2017. "The app died and I lost everything," laments Jufu. "I had to find a new starting point and that was a new challenge for me." And so, he hopped onto YouTube and began a short-lived career as a vlogger. "I felt like my life was too boring at the time. Instead of trying to find cool ways to make my content more fun, I just stopped vlogging - I don't recommend that to people! If you want to do something, keep doing it."
Thankfully, Musical.ly came out not long after, and he found himself a new platform to experiment with. "They were already familiar with my sounds," shares the rapper, "because they were taking the audio from my Vine videos and posting it on their comedy section for people to make comedy lipsyncing skits to." And that's where his high school's music technology program came in handy. "It taught me how to properly record myself," states Jufu, adding, "and I applied that to social media with my parodies." By 2017, Jufu already had one massive viral hit under his belt, a parody of Lil Yachty's 'Broccoli'. And after he recorded a verse for a song sampling XXXTENTACION’s 'Dead Inside' on a loop, he realized he wanted to take music more seriously. "I had a new-found desire to create a certain type of music. I wanted to make really hard rap, and I had a vision in my mind for the type of audience that I wanted, but I felt like my audience on Musical.ly was too young for that." Despite his mother's protests, Jufu stepped away from Musical.ly to pursue his musical dreams, but in hindsight, he may regret that choice just a little bit. "I was really close-minded to it. I guess I was just being a teenager who didn't want to listen to what his mom was saying."
But things changed when XXXTENTACION, one of his biggest inspirations, passed away. "That was a major turning point in my life," shares the young rapper. "I started to see life a little differently, and started to find a purpose within myself and opened up to what my mom had been telling me for a year. I realized any audience is an audience, and I should be thankful and grateful to have people that look up to me and that I can spread a message to." When that realization dawned on him, Jufu finally decided to return to Musical.ly, now rebranded as TikTok. "I dropped the song 'Woahh' which went viral across social media. But I wasn't getting any credit for it, people didn't know who the artist behind it was. I wasn't discouraged by it, but I started thinking about how to make another song that could be better." And from that creative space came the massive viral his, 'Who R U', which would turn out to be the song that would formally launch Jufu's career outside of social media as a musical artist. "It helped me accomplish a lot of cool things, like getting to speak with Will Smith's team and getting signed to Island Records after going to fifteen different label meetings," he shares. "'Who R U' definitely opened a lot of doors for me."
On May 8, Jufu finally dropped his debut mixtape, 'Get Used To Me', to critical acclaim. Already a hit among his audience, the album helped establish Jufu as more than just a passing craze. He is an artist in his own right, one who is dedicated to his craft. But there's more to this young rapper than just a good beat: he has a clear vision and a message he hopes reaches his listeners. "Everything has been going well in my reality, but as that is happening, I'm also acknowledging things that are not going well in the world, and I just want to use my platform to make a change and make the world a better place," he states.