Whether you know him by “Charley James” or just by Caleb, students often associate senior Caleb James with his musical talent and lyrical knack. James is a student who has been creating beats and writing songs since middle school. His work is uploaded to the popular music streaming platform SoundCloud, where some of his songs have received thousands of plays.“I wrote my first song when I was 12,” James said. “I’ve been writing music pretty much since then.”
James said his inspiration to create music came directly from his love of music of all types.
“I listen to everything,” James said. “I take inspiration from the rap music I listen to, the samples I create and everything else I listen to.”
James also attributes his inspiration to visual arts. Cassie Navarro, James’ girlfriend and cover artist, creates the pieces that compliment James’ work. The artistic pairing began after she created the art for his song “Baby We’re Optimists Remember?”
“You don’t want a super loud piece of cover art with a minimalistic album,” Navarro said. “I really think cover art is so important, because it’s usually what I picture in my head when I think of a song, so it stands as sort of a symbol or visualization.”
Navarro also notes the development she has seen in James’ music.
“I feel like he’s experimenting a lot with different styles and sounds,” Navarro said. “When I compare his [work] from the beginning of the year to now, I can really see a large amount of growth. I really like how he’s fearless with his music and creates things that have a lot of variety, which is important when trying to make a strong body of work. He’s one of the hardest working people I know.”
James also collaborates with other artists, such as childhood friend Sam Kofi. Kofi and James met at their middle school in Georgia, where they began creating music together. Their song “Tony” has received over 34,000 plays on SoundCloud.
“I think the most inspiring thing about his growth as an artist is that he’s found his niche or specific sound that he loves and tailors to,” Kofi said. “His production skills have definitely gotten better—it’s wild. I come up with the ideas and lyrics for it, then record them and run demos by him. All of the songs I have released right now have been produced by him.”
Kofi also notes the determination and drive James possesses.
“In seventh or eighth grade, we used to sit around and mess with MixCraft 7 just making horrible beats,” Kofi said. “When he moved to [North Carolina], he started saving money like crazy and bought all this music equipment and just started off making beats.”
“I was in a journalism class my freshman year,” James said. “I told the teacher I wanted to write under a pen name and they said, ‘Okay, what name do you want to use?’ Off the top of my head, I said ‘Charley Longhorn.’ I also had a math teacher who could never remember my name…. He told me I ‘looked like a Charley.’ So half of my friends knew me as Charley, half as Caleb, and that’s where Charley James came from.”
Although currently music is a passion of James’, he plans to one day make it a career and further build his future with music. James will attend the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia this fall to study sound design.
“I hope to be doing shows in the future [and making] new songs,” James said. “I definitely want my career to be in music.”
James’ EP will be released early 2018.
– By Zoe Willard
