User:JohnyReggae

Jonathan Findlater (born 1980 in Croydon, London), better known by his stage name J-Silver "Da Soul Lyricist", is a British rapper, songwriter and producer of Jamaican and Liberian descent. He was aways called 'J' or Johny by his friends and he picked the word 'silver' randomly from a page in the bible. His music is rap with a blend of dancehall and pop.

Early Life
Findlater was born in Croydon, South East London. He was raised in a family of seven including both parents although his father passed away suddenly when J-Silver reached the age of twenty one.

He attended primary and secondary school and also college within the Croydon borough. He described his time at school as very much an outcast as there were very few pupils of ethnic minority at that time. Many times he experienced feelings of alienation and vulnerability although he was still known for being.

J-Silver was always known and joked for having headphones on or earphones even during school times and in lessons. He grew up with a love for rap music from watching Yo MTV Raps and Rap City and his cousin was DJing for Tim Westwood. His musical influences are varied from his mum's motown collection to his father's reggae to his older sister's 70's and 80's pop and dancehall music.

J-Silver formed a rap group at college called 'The Wolfpack' so called because of their strong family-like friendship and growling voices. They performed at HMV store in Croydon where an A&R and club promoter heard them and wanted them to start emceeing in clubs. Arrangements and rehearsals became difficult as a group and shortly after they split up and went in different directions.

Music and style
J-Silver will always tell you his first love is for Jesus Christ so his music conveys this with positive, encouraging and inspirational content. His music is an electric mixture of hip-hop beats, hard hitting kicks and snares with pleasant sounding synth lines. The lyrics are thought provoking and very honest but not preachy and condeming. His vocal performance is usually an aggressive, fiery  but passionate tone and has no specific style or rhyme pattern. His ability to rhyme with a hardcore and gritty style without profanity and obscenity is what makes him stand out from generally most rappers. Some of his friends have described his style similar to Busta Rhymes and others have said Rakim which J-silver considers to be the biggest compliment for a rapper.

His music automatically seems to get catergorized as Christian or Gospel rap but J-Silver tends to stay away from what he calls 'man made sub genres'. His music is appealing to everyone including non believers and he is famously known for his inspirational status comments on the social networking site Facebook.

Career
It was only in 2006 when he became serious about rapping and started performing at charity events, youth groups and churches. In 2006, J-Silver released his debut EP, Who I Be. It received some radio airplay and a video was released called 'From The Bottom To The Top'.

Despite the warm reception Who I Be received J-Silver was unhappy about the project on a whole. He enrolled on a diploma course in Music Production and sound engineering to better his production skills and ear for music. J-silver’s first major assignment after earning his diploma was to re-visit his debut EP where he literally started from scratch producing a more professional product. The new reworked EP kept the same title as before but was marketed more thoroughly and was released at the end of the year 2008. Simultaneously J-Silver released a mixtape entitled 'The War Is On' which can be found on the video sharing site 'You Tube' and is enjoyed by his friends.

He is currently promoting his EP and starting work on his eagerly anticipated debut album expected for summer 2010