Jacob Didas grew up the middle child of five in Buffalo, New York. Troubled with anxiety from an early age, he sought music as his release, and started being classically trained on piano at the age of ten, but realised that improvisation and jazz were more to his liking.
Jacob studied Nursing, while at the same time enrolling in the Army ROTC, which paid for his education. He returned to music as his solace, listening to rap, rock, reggae, ska, and R&B, which in turn influenced his music.
‘Lucid’, an album of ten tracks, came about while Jacob was stationed at the Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu. He was doing 12 hour shifts as a psychiatric nurse, working closely with soldiers coming back from war, and in the evenings he would write lyrics, while on his days off he built a home studio and honed his craft.
Jacob’s fast-paced vocals remind us a lot of Eminem’s early style, and his obvious musical talent shines through, with the album being an entirely one-man show, Jacob taking the keyboards and piano, as well as the vocals and production.
Track 6, ‘Phantom’, is our favourite. It’s here where Jacob’s love of jazz comes to the fore, with gorgeous piano melodies the perfect accompaniment to his rapid fire vocals. It’s clear he’s let free his emotions into the music, and the result is a perfect synthesis of many different genres.
Find Jacob Didas online on Facebook and Soundcloud.
