KJAE

No, KJAE is not a radio station. Actually, it is a radio station — somewhere — but don’t confuse that KJAE with KJAE, the 20 year-old Austin rapper who made his Austin City Limits Music Festival debut this year. KJAE’s unique voice and lyrical content strays away from the usual sounds of southern rap and places the young star in a league of his own — as proven when he was named one of the three finalists (out of 137 applicants) in the Austin Music Foundation’s 2005-2006 Music Incubator program. KJAE (winner of “Category I,” which encompasses not only rap and hip-hop but jazz, Latin and reggae) and fellow finalists Rachel Loy (singer-songwriter/folk) and Kissinger (rock/pop) will each receive up to $15,000 worth of recording and marketing services. That should come in handy as KJAE finishes up his debut album, slated to be released in the spring of 2006. “Bottom line,” says the busy-as-a-bee KJAE, “I’m here to put ATX on the [hip-hop] map … everything else is just details.”