For Jordan Ward, nothing is impossible.
Growing up in St. Louis, the 26-year-old singer — who aspired to ultimately be a mix of The Game and Chris Brown — says that every day he was “waking up thinking about being a professional dancer on tour.” By age 20, he made his dream into a reality, traveling across the globe on Justin Bieber’s 2016 world tour.
It was during his two-year stint rehearsing and performing on Bieber’s Purpose tour that Ward says he rediscovered his own purpose. In his free time between shows, the genre-mixing artist began making music for fun with a producer who also doubled as a dancer. “I realized how much I actually cared about [making music] — it was like, I only can do this,” he explains. With his background dancing dreams officially accomplished, Ward shifted gears onto center stage.
Today, the LA-based artist has moved into the spotlight. Coming off of his debut EP with ARTium/Interscope Records, titled Remain Calm, and a nationwide tour alongside Duckwrth, Ward has honed in on his lifelong skills as a dancer and singer to morph into an untiring stage performer, capturing the attention of half a million listeners on Spotify alone through his genre-transcending music. His project, Remain Calm, is all-encompassing, yet cohesive. Consisting of one part cheerful alt-pop, one part old-school R&B, and a sprinkle of ethereal synth and Detroit rap, the project proves to have something for anyone.
While Ward knows there’s a long way to go when it comes to his journey as an artist, he is already thinking far into the future. The musical savant says he doesn’t aspire to be superstar, but rather a “Jedi,” transcending culture and making an impact on the world around him through not only his music, but design and ergonomics. If Ward’s past is any indication of the future, it’s only a matter of time before he ticks this career expansion off of his list.
The Interscope signee spoke with Billboard about overcoming self-doubt, touring with Bieber, coming into his sound for Remain Calm and his “Jedi” goals, both within and outside of music.
When did you decide to pursue music full time?
I started making music full time five years ago — [but] ever since I was a kid, I wanted to be like The Game and Chris Brown at the same time. [laughs] I was running around with my mom in St. Louis, she’s a singer in the church, to this day. So I was always around the music ministry, always around choirs and stuff like that. When I got to eight or nine, my mom just noticed I was already singing, dancing, rapping on my own. I had a rhyme book, I’d be freestyling with people.
Then I did musical theater from [age] nine through the end of high school. By that time, I wasn’t really worried about music. I just wanted to move to L.A. and be a dancer. [When] I was dancing on tour with Bieber, and had a lot of free time, I was with my friend Rudy. He’s a producer, but he was performing on the tour as well. And just being around him, I started [making music] for fun again. Then, when I realized how much I actually cared about what I was doing, it was like: “I only can do this. I don’t want to half-ass it.”
How did growing up in St. Louis shape your mindset?
Coming from a place like St. Louis, we get first-world privileges — but [it] is one of those places where if you’re a young Black kid, you most likely are born on the side where your opportunities and your experiences are limited. The constraints of society make it harder for you to expand your horizons. I started realizing that the world you wake up in is by design and is designed to protect the interests of a few people. I like to think of the future as a world that’s designed for everyone to thrive from the resources that are unlimited.
What’s your music making process like?
I work with a lot of the same producers. Once I meet a producer that I f–k with, that’s just who I’m rocking with all the time. I don’t touch the beats, I don’t program anything but I am there for a lot of the production process. It’s rare that someone pulls up a beat and I just get on the beat. It happens and I’m down for that, but a lot of times we spend the session building the beats and building on the intention of what the sound [will be].
I don’t want to be a producer. There are people who already did years of producing that are already super fly. I just don’t have the energy. I don’t like computers. I want to just get up and talk my s–t. I also don’t produce because it gives me [time] to just write everything because I don’t work with writers on my songs. I write all my lyrics. So it’s like, I’ll do that and y’all make the beat.
If you have all these talents and interests, why choose music for your career?
It’s not even me choosing a route, it’s just doing what feels most urgent. I love making music. I love performing. I love writing. Making music is a design process, you know what I mean? I feel like I’m looking at these next 10 years — like I’m trying to master music, because that’s going to help me master the next level of my canvas. I’m going to make music to the day I die. I used to dance professionally, too… I’ma still dance for the rest of my life. If I’m passionate about something, it’s just a matter of how I’m doing it at the moment.
What was it like touring with Justin Bieber?
I danced for Bieber from like 2015 to 2017. We did the Purpose tour, the award shows. It was dope. Up until that point, that was my life’s dream. Every day I was waking up thinking about being a professional dancer on tour. There were several artists I wanted to dance for, but Bieber was at the top. Everything feels surreal because even though I’m determined, I still have a lot of self-doubt. So when it was going on, it was just crazy. I met some of my best friends and got to go to all six continents for shows. I got to work with people I always admired, and I feel like I learned a lot.
You mentioned self-doubt, do you still experience that?
100 percent. I deal with a lot of self-doubt. I don’t think I’m going to stop dealing with it because I care about what I’m doing. Maybe there are some people who care, but they just got ultimate confidence. But I doubt there’s somebody who goes hard in what they do, and don’t doubt themselves sometimes. It’s always about pushing yourself past that point of comfortability. I hate being comfortable. So what comes with that is self-doubt.
How do you overcome it?
Lately, I just been praying to God. I’m not a religious person, I don’t go to church at all. I don’t even have a name for God. I just believe in the higher order: good, orderly direction. That’s how The Artist’s Way describes it. G-O-D, good, orderly direction. I believe there’s a force to sustain the good and flow of everything, and I just try to follow that. I have faith that whatever I do, if my heart is in the right place and I stay close to that direction, I’m doing the right thing.
But I’m definitely not always pushing through. Sometimes I do get paralyzed. I definitely have mental battles, and that’s why the project is called Remain Calm. That was a personal mantra for myself to just step outside of what’s going on in my head and allow life to move me where I need to go.
Speaking of Remain Calm, what’s your favorite song on the project?
I’d probably say “Couscous.” I’m interested in music from a design standpoint. I’m just like, “Wow, this is an interesting song — it’s an interesting arrangement of elements and emotions and experiences.”
The outro track on the project, “Steph,” feels totally out of place — but it seems like that was intentional. Where did that song come from?
We were at a retreat in Malibu just working on shit, micro-dosing on shrooms and had made eight songs earlier that day. For the first time in my life, I cried in the booth. I feel like I reached a point making music where I’m just saying what I need to say. So then, Javi, who produced [“Steph”], came up to me like, “Yo, I’m about to make this Flint beat on all live instruments, definitely just Michigan, period.”
That was my cousin Tony from St. Louis on [the intro of the song]. The general consensus was “yo, this song in the right context is great — but right after all these songs on the EP, people might not understand what’s going on.” Lido produced a lot of the EP. He’s like, “You need to acknowledge that [out of place-ness] on the song. Like, have somebody say that.” So I played the EP for my cousin Tony, while he was in L.A. and he started talking and I was like, “Oh s–t, I need to record this.”
What are your thoughts on the direction of rap?
I love where rap is moving — like, people may think that’s just like a funny trend and a funny style, but I see what Michigan is doing. I see what Oakland has been doing, what L.A. is doing, what Chicago’s been doing with the flow. It’s advancing rap. It’s cool to hear people just talk they shit.
Where do you ideally see yourself going in the future?
Some people want to be a superstar. I want to be a Jedi. I want to help transform the world. When I think of a Jedi, I think of people like Pharrell, Andre 3000, No I.D., Freddie Mercury, Young Thug, Phonte of Little Brother. Just people who transcend their time because of what they contributed to culture. I want to have a classic discography. I want to go down as one of the greats. As I get older and I evolve [beyond] just doing music full time, I want to get into helping reshape the world around us for the better and for my community. Whether it be through ergonomics, urban design [or] permaculture design.
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