Get to Know the Kits AI Community Voices: J Rice

Kits AI recently launched our new Kits Earn program, an opportunity for vocalists and artists to make passive income by adding an AI model of their voice to our “Community Voices” library. In our series of interviews to get to know the artists behind the models, we caught up with J Rice to learn about his project and what excites him as an artist.

If you haven’t already checked his music out, give it a listen here.

An Interview with J Rice

What kind of music do you make?

I like to make music that makes people feel something. The genre isn't as important, as the overall impact on someone it resonates with. Sonically, I've always chased a pure/clean/emotional tone that has complexity, but stays tasteful. 

What are your musical inspirations, and how have you crafted your style over the years?

I grew up listening to a mix of R&B, Jazz, Gospel, and Pop/Rock—artists like Take 6, Boyz II Men, Brian Mcknight, Usher, Justin Timberlake, Josh Groban, Kenny G, Wynton Marsalis, and Chicago. My first album in 2005 was heavy on the R&B side, and as I continued, more genres entered the mix like Country, Rock, FutureBass, EDM, so I ended up mashing all of that together, depending on the song or album. 

Have you noticed that your voice works really well in certain contexts? Are there areas that you haven’t explored yourself that you’d be excited to see music-makers explore with your voice?

I've noticed my voice model works really well in the pop/soulful realm, but surprisingly it works well in other languages like Spanish and Italian (haven't tried others yet). It handles women's voices pretty well, also especially artists like Brandy, Madison Ryann Ward, Arianna Grande, etc.

Do you have any tips for other artists, both for improving your skills and navigating music as a career?

I think new singers should make a voice model of themselves and start converting songs into their voice. It will actually help develop their ability faster, because instead of trying to sing along to something and learn it, they can hear it in their own voice, which will resonate faster. As far as career, these days I'd strongly suggest learning as many AI tools as possible, because the ones who do will be able to adapt to all the extremely fast changes that are happening right now. If you're not using AI in some way by now as an indie or mainstream artist, you WILL get left behind.

What’s exciting to you about getting involved in Kits Earn?

I'm excited about what people are going to do with my voice model, and hope to show other artists that it's ok to test out these new emerging AI tools and be involved. As someone who spent over 20 years in the studio crafting and refining my voice/songwriting/production, this ability to swap a voice to get a new texture, or add deep background vocals is a new superpower.

The new jobs that will come from this will be people with zero music background making AI songs on one platform, then finding the best voice on Kits, or making songs and albums that feature multiple voices on the same song. Music will change from one song being the thing people remember to the “variety pack” of songs and voices with the words and stories that resonated in the beginning.