SAINt JHN: A Conversation Ahead of 'FESTIVAL SEASON' The Album Before The Resolve

We sat down with SAINt JHN to talk about the new single ‘Poppin’ and the upcoming album, FESTIVAL SEASON.

The album itself? It’s messy in the best way—dark, playful, daring, and a little twisted. The music reveals, pulling pieces of SAINt apart to stitch them back together.

The album, or "collection" as SAINt refers to it, feels expansive—designed to be played loud, in front of a crowd, capturing the chaos and energy that comes with it. 

How did you find your way into music?

My brother. My parents didn’t play music at home, so I didn’t grow up on it. Most people talk about their moms or grandmothers playing Anita Baker or Tina Turner. Not me. My mom was too busy working and hustling. I didn’t notice the quiet. But one day, I saw my brother on the street corner in a cypher, and I fell in love with it.

Festival Season is always an important time of the year for artists, was this album made with performances in mind or just encapsulating that time of year?

It’s both. I have my greatest revelations, my greatest moments of enlightenment musically after I get off of tour. After I’ve touched a world of people who have consumed and lived in the art.

Then new things hit me, or dots connected that didn’t connect prior to. They reveal themselves.The intention for FESTIVAL SEASON is that I remembered all of those moments after I left tour and I wanted to take them back with me on tour. So I created a live experience for the live experience and for the people who never got a chance to see the live experience. It’s called FESTIVAL SEASON, Set List. It plays like you were just at a show - starts dramatic and it ends emotional - there's a lot of crowd interaction and all of those were pulled from real shows, my real experiences.

Your single Body on me has a heavy rock influence to it, tell us about your intentions behind that record?

I want people to hear it and say, ‘What the f*ck is that? Who is that?'.

I want them to feel something aggressive. All music has its own frequency of aggression. I wanted the frequency you tend to only get from rock adjacent songs where there’s a sound wall that blows you away. I picture that old Maxwell ad—the guy in front of the speakers, hair blown back. That’s what Body on Me sonically creates.

I’ve always been simplistic in my previous collections. It’s been beautiful, it’s been harmonious, it’s been simplistic - I would always tell whoever I was working with to stop so everything is almost a little bit undone in the best possible way. A little naked, you just hear my voice at the core. In this collection I wanted to highlight instrumentation, I wanted it to be socially deviant, I wanted to layer things, I wanted it to become compact.

I want you to think this doesn’t sound right but it feels right, extreme distortion, things that probably aren’t in the best interest of you getting clarity but the greatest interest in you feeling emotion.

The flow of this project feels cinematic—what was your process for sequencing the songs?

I rearrange every project thousands of times. I know it’s not always the outfit, it’s not always the construction of the outfit, but the arrangement of the outfit that allows you to understand it. So I’m really cautious because I want to be precise, accurate on what I'm conveying and what you're receiving. 

I used performance as the outline, the theatre of seeing me live on stage, that is the backbone. The core of this entire collection is ‘come see it, leave your house’. You can listen to anything anywhere, I’m not telling you what to do, I'm making a suggestion. If I created a sculpture, I think you should visit it. You can look at the photograph of it in the magazine if you want but don’t you think it might be more impactful to walk around it? Maybe there's something I wrote somewhere that you can’t see on the flat end. So FESTIVAL SEASON means you have to come visit.

You worked with Tay Keith on Poppin what role did you want this song to play within the collection?

I wanted it to capture the energy of different stages at my festival. This whole project is my festival—you’re listening to it unfold. That’s why the soundscape shifts from track to track, just like the atmosphere changes from stage to stage. Poppin brings that high-energy, in-your-face moment, like stepping into the most electrifying part of the crowd.

That brings me to your interlude, track 13. Why did you choose to put that in there? It touches on quite a serious topic if you dig under the layers it’s quite a dark space and in the same breath it’s light and humorous. 

The magic of it is my mum is heavily religious, I grew up heavily religious. My name is SAINt JHN, that’s my real name.

By design I am who I am. It wasn’t even my design. When you see the religious inclinations, the iconography and the cross it’s because I’ve learnt to embrace the thing that I ran from. When I was younger I rejected it because i hated the way it was impressed upon me but full circle is growing up and coming back to the cross.

You see a body of work that has the cross on the lead art work but I'm talking about strippers because I'm wrestling with my faith and my frustrations and my future and frivolous nature so I'm being all the way human so my mum praying for me on track 13 about strippers taking it lightly because she knows my heart and knows the SAINt JHN she gave birth to. So there is a marvellous humour to it and a hopeful prayer - so it’s serious, candid and satirical at the same time.

What does your mother think of this collection?

I picked her up in my Ferrari and played her the entire project in the car.  Me taking the Ferrari to pick her up was for me to tell her the nights she slept on the landfill and the days she worked a triple shift as a nurse wasn’t in vain, to tell her we are going to be ok. The physical representation of that is ‘look at this Italian sports car that doesn't mean anything. But it means that we aren’t where we were and we are not who we were'.

And then I played it for her, the whole collection on the 95. 

Some of it is vulgar, some of it is profane , some of it is honest, some of it is funny, some of it is cathartic, some of it is emotional. The musical soundbite is loud. I didn’t know how she would respond and she was blown away. I’m playing all this wild shit for her and all she kept saying was ‘wow’ your musicality has gone to another place , this is it.

What’s another component to the festival season?

It’s about being honest on stage. When I perform, it’s just me. So if I fail you see it, if I flourish you see it, so I don't hide.

When the music is off i gotta tell you the truth.

An interesting song title on the project is Guyanese Moshpit, what would you describe as a Guyanese Moshpit as opposed to a regular moshpit? 

You gotta let me create it. I won’t even describe it because I think you need to see it. Guyanese Moshpit is just the introduction to me showing the rest of the world what home is for me. What it looks like in rebellious forms, it’s most turnt up form, it’s most simplistic and honest form. But I gotta show it to you. I wont describe it to you let me make it, just like how I made this song.

What collection was created first ‘FESTIVAL SEASON’ or , ‘Fake Tears From a Pop Star’?

You feel the rebellion in FESTIVAL SEASON and Fake Tears From a Pop Star gives you the resolve. You’ll feel a dissonance here and the harmony comes after.  I made Fake Tears From a Pop Star.

There were some great collaborations on the last project, was it intentional to scale back on that this time around?

Yes, I want to play one in a hundred thousand. 

Like you mentioned earlier on?

Let’s leave what we came here for , let’s leave the way we started. It was just me in the beginning and it’ll be just me in the end. I’ll collaborate when I feel like it's exactly what I wanna do. There’s some musical collaborations that I still want. That I’m still interested in doing but I'm more interested in physical collaborations and spaces that you’ve never seen me venture from for example clothing collaborations related to FESTIVAL SEASON. The things that bring us to life. I want to collaborate on tangibles.

Any words on the brand and your Christian Sex Club Spring' 25 drop?

No hype...we just make the sh*t WE wanna wear!

Spring '25

Talk to us about your relationship towards fashion? Any brands your excited about?

"Most of my art is inspired by fashion, film and visual artists. It’s the reason I make collections instead of albums (4th July 23)."

I didn’t know much about fashion at first, but I’ve always had my own taste. I just like the colours or I don’t , I don’t give a f*ck who made it. And now I’ve got a little more in depth and now I know the who's, whats and whys and that adds a value to it.

So I'm a little bit more of an informed consumer. It’s not just the house of the brand, it’s the person creating the brand and interpreting for it. I love Willy Chavarria, Jerry Lorenzo Fear of God. John Gallion, Margiela. I think I'm gonna love the next creative directors on Margiela too.

Online, or in person - what is your shopping style?

I need a physical experience because online limits your imagination. When you only experience something from a distance, you’re more likely to repeat what you’ve already done. But when you’re up close, a different truth reveals itself. Your eyes, fingers, nose, and ears take in the full experience—something that can only happen in real life. I think going digital cuts off at least two of those senses, and that changes everything.

You’ve mentioned that festival season is extroverted, would you describe yourself as that? Or is this project allowing you to explore that about yourself.

I’m not sure yet. I have introverted tendencies—I remove myself from situations I don’t belong in. Maybe extroverts thrive in those situations. I’m still figuring out what I am.

Is there a track you can’t wait to perform just to see how the crowd reacts?

I wanna see Body On Me go crazy and I wanna see Loneliness.

Any songs that felt like therapy?

Loneliness, and Never Met Superman felt like therapy.

If someone plays this collection 10 years from now, what do you want them to take from It?

This is progressive, he is progressive. I’ve always made the music and I've stood back.I stand behind the music rather than in front. So in ten years from now I want people to think ‘this was art’ he really made sure he made art in his time. Hopefully I'm still alive and I'm still up and it's still going. It was just the beginning of his career.

Now that it’s out, are you onto the next thing, or just letting this one breathe?

I’m in November in my head I already know what's coming out next which is Fake Tears from A Pop Star and that's gonna come out before June but I'm in November because I'm designing the next collection. I‘m excited to keep discovering things about myself - music is so important and profound for me because I keep finding parts of myself I either lost or haven't got to yet.

So I'm f*cking thrilled when I find new places. I'm already in November.

Official Release Date - 21st February 2025.

FESTIVAL SEASON Setlist:

1. Never Met Superman

2. Body On Me

3. Hunting Nirvana (ATL Jacob)

4. Poppin (Tay Keith)

5. Guyanese Moshpit

6. Who’s Ex Wife Is This

7. Glitching (Tommy Brown)

8. Stones!!!

9. U Need Jesus

10. Hide My Shame

11. 4 The Gangsters

12. Pay For Pucci

13. St. Barbara’s Prayer (Interlude)

14. Fvck Being SAD

15. High Integrity

16. Loneliness

17. Undecided

18. Real Hustler (ATL Jacob)