Tyna Jay

Biography of Tyna Jay

Born in Barbados, Tyna Jay was introduced to different genres of music as both her parents were musicians. Classical, sacred, reggae, R&B, and calypso are just a few out of many genres that were influential in her young life.
Taking an interest in singing, she tagged along with her father at many of his choir practices, and learned how to harmonize and build chords. Many nights she could be found humming popular songs sang by gospel artist as well as soul and R&B, artist like Alicia Keys, Kirk Franklin, Lauyrn Hill, Tina Turner and Luther Vandross. In her primary school years, she took an interest in the school’s recorder group and choir which enhanced her abilities greatly.
Starting out secondary school, she took a major interest in music class. It opened up new doors to Tyna as she was now learning to read, write, sing and play sheet music. In her third year of school, she decided to join the school’s choir as an alto singer which encouraged her eager self to be more involved. This brought new horizons as she took an interest in Poetry and Rap. Several trips to Brooklyn New York helped to improve her style in writing and her rapping.
Tyna finished school and left for New Jersey to start a new life with new family; there she befriended three people who were intrigued by her ideas and writing style. As her Poetry began to flourish, Tyna’s family arranged for her to take a trip to Philadelphia, the birth place of Soul Music. This is where her poetic self undertook full bloom. Returning to New Jersey, Tyna now had a book full of life, meaning, purpose, love, anger and happiness; her book of poetry.
Times were tough and her return to New Jersey meant her return to Barbados. Settling back down, she began to take more interest in rap music; listening to Ice Cube, Jay Z, Snoop Dogg and many other’s; she decided to turn her poetry into rap. She began to gain ideas from her everyday life and turned it into songs. Her long time friend Damien “Acoustic” Neblett; a rapper and producer, received Tyna’s first recording and was impressed by her smooth unique voice and incredible flow. She then began calling herself Tyna May; the name May was influenced by the month she wrote her first song which was in May of 2009 called “Rock Dat”. Tyna May later found out that the name she chose was already being used by a European Jazz artist, so she decided to change her name to Tyna Jay.
Damien “Acoustic” Neblett passed “Rock Dat” onto Marvin “Infamous Chase”, a now 18 year old independent rapper, who got hold of Tyna and asked her to join his small music group V.O.D.M. (Vybz of Da Music); she agreed and re-recorded the song. Marvin created a Myspace Music page for Tyna and encouraged her to put her song on the page so others could hear her. That was successful; many began giving Tyna very positive feed back for her work. He then gave her an idea for a song. This idea was greatly appreciated because Tyna then wrote a verse and chorus on it, she pursued it and took it upon herself to record this track and named it “Down Fuh You”. Just like “Rock Dat”, “Down Fuh You” was popular with Tyna’s developing group of fans. Currently Tyna Jay has written a few unrecorded songs which are still developing today.