Biography

Singer/rapper Kent Jones earned credibility as a multi-instrumentalist and producer before he took his melodic mix of R&B, hip-hop, and pop to the mainstream in 2016 with the Top Ten double-platinum hit "I Don't Mind." An affiliate of Cool & Dre and DJ Khaled -- he has appeared on two of Khaled's number one albums -- Jones started building his solo full-length discography in the late 2010s with a trio of mixtapes. In the 2020s, he has scored another charting single as a featured artist on D-Nice's "No Plans for Love," and has headlined tracks such as the Rick Ross collaboration "Bout That." Born and raised in Tallahassee, Kent Jones (full name Daryl Kent Jones, sometimes credited as Daryl Jones) first became involved in music via his church. His interests then turned to jazz, with the work of Quincy Jones a formative discovery as he continued to broaden his range as an instrumentalist on drums, bass, and keyboards. He later became interested in hip-hop and especially admired the work of Dr. Dre and Timbaland, producers whose use of bass inspired his own booming productions. He relocated to Miami to work extensively with Cool & Dre, a move that in turn placed him in the path of the production duo's close associate DJ Khaled. Jones landed a joint label deal with Cool & Dre's Epidemic and DJ Khaled's Epic-distributed We the Best. Tours, his first mixtape, arrived in July 2015, and three months later, the Game released The Documentary 2, featuring Jones' writing and production on the track "Dollar and a Dream." The following April, the Tours cut "Don't Mind" was issued as a single, and truly made Jones' name known as it became a number eight pop hit on the Hot 100, reaching number nine in the U.K. while also faring well in Canada and across Europe and Scandinavia. Over the next couple years, Jones released two more tapes, Too Much Too Soon and The LUH Tape, and was featured on tracks by DJ Khaled, DNCE, Fat Joe and Remy Ma, and E-40, among others. The singles "Merengue" and "I Like It" were out by the end of the decade. Still with Epic, Jones re-emerged in 2021 with a handful of co-productions and featured appearances, as well as singles as a lead artist. Among these were DJ Khaled's "We Going Crazy," D-Nice's "No Plans for Love" (also featuring Ne-Yo), and Jones' own "Bout That" (on which he was joined by Rick Ross). The D-Nice collaboration, a radio hit, peaked at number four on Billboard's Adult R&B Airplay chart. ~ Andy Kellman & David Jeffries, Rovi