The growing body of work by up-and-coming 21-year old singer-songwriter and ex-IM5 boy band member Will Jay has mostly revolved around the interrogation of American ideals of performative masculinity through a poppy and light-hearted vocal style, inflections of classic jazz and Motown, and a throwback wardrobe and dance moves that bring Fred Astaire to mind. His full name is Will Jay Behlendorf (he is half German and half Chinese), and he recently obtained MANAA (Media Action Network for Asian Americans) president Guy Aoki's seal of approval as "the man who should be the next Asian American pop star". With the exception of the line ‘The only thing I would change about you is your last name’, songs like “Gentleman” appear to be tailor-made for a playlist intended for budding feminists with a romantic streak - while "Leading Man" addressed the dearth of Asian representation in American pop culture as a whole.
With “Gangsta”, his latest single, Jay crystallizes his oppositional stance to those who buy into “outdated definitions of how a man should act”: ‘I don’t need to be a gangsta/ To be a man/ Acting like a baller/ That ain’t who I am”. Jay’s ditty encourages gender fluidity and attempts to deflate traditionally masculine stereotypes, but he does not take himself too seriously in the song and its accompanying pastel-lit music video. The effect is to delegate its cathartic message of self-acceptance to the song’s subtext; the song comes across as being more of an apology than a path to self-affirmation. (In an interview with TigerBeat, he revealed that “I’ve never felt traditionally masculine all my life. It bothered me for a long time, but writing this song helped me realize that nothing makes me feel like a man than just being myself”).
Perhaps “Gangsta” would have worked more effectively as social commentary if there was more irony in the mix, and if its title addressed real-life frat-bro behavior rather than a hip hop cliche of masculinity (since the song's pop production does not subvert or interrogate hip hop on a sonic level). The song might please and surprise those who are converts to the cause of gender egalitarianism, but it is not going to do much to subvert America’s longstanding love affair with oversized and overblown male egos since the end of the Vietnam War. Post Malone's "Rockstar" - the immediate antithesis to Jay's message - is currently in its eighth week of the Billboard Top 40. It is nice to have a counter-cultural song on the table, however. In the end, any single song (e.g. Lorde's Diamond-certified "Royals"; Alanis Morissette's parody of "My Humps") is unlikely to be subversive enough to make a dent in the world's ongoing fascination with hip hop's messages and images of materialism, violence, hyper-aggression, and misogyny.
