You can immediately tell if you're listening to a Jason Derülo song, and not just because of his catchy mixes of R’n’B and pop. It’s because he opens every song with a rendition of his own name. “Jason Deruuulooo,” he’ll croon in autotune over the track’s opening bars. It’s a good strategy for awareness.
Jason "Jason Deruuuulooo" Joel Desrouleaux was born September 21st, 1989, in Miami, Florida, to Haitian parents (which is why his real surname sounds so French). He swapped the Frenchness for a Germanic ‘ü’ to make it easier to pronounce and sing at the start of all his songs. He’s been performing since age five and wrote his first song, Crush On You, at age eight.
He’s a learned man, having studied opera, theatre and ballet in his youth, eventually graduating from the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York. It had always been Derülo’s dream to become a solo performer, and he put in the graft to get there. He was writing songs for Diddy, Sean Kingston and Lil Wayne to name but a few. After slogging away, he won the grand prize on the 2006 season finale of Showtime at the Apollo, a musical performance television show.
Derülo released
his debut single, Whatcha Say, in August 2009 and it had reached number one on
the Billboard Hot 100 chart by November that same year. His success began to
snowball as he released his second single, In My Head, shortly thereafter and
was one of the opening acts for Lady Gaga’s 2009-2010 The Monster Ball Tour. This
climaxed in the release of his debut album in March 2010. But what to call it?
The self-titled Jason Derülo, of course.
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