jstnwng Is Creating His Own Lane
From his bedroom in Pittsburgh, PA, jstnwng has created alt-pop music that’s gaining traction on streaming. But his next move is a calculated risk.
“I’m actually really excited,” Justin Wong, the twenty-two year old singer-songwriter who records under the name jstnwng, told me one Saturday from his bedroom in Pittsburg. “Most of my music until now has been more sad, chill, vulnerable music. I think I’m ready to show a more toxic side.” Then he let out a laugh.
Since he debuted in 2020, jstnwng has recorded warm alternative pop music that has begun to pick up steam: “worth it”, a collaboration with chiabiee, just recently hit over 100,000 streams. His most popular track, “pull”, has brought in over 240,000 listernes. “I could see us forever my darling,” he sings on “worth it”, his voice sounding rich with soul. “Didn’t think that hard/ Girl you know I loved you from the start.” This kind of music often casts jstnwng as the ideal boyfriend or, like on some tracks, the heartbroken boy.
But jstnwng is conscious that to set himself apart, to pave his own lane, he has to do something striking. So, when we met in late February, he was in the beginning stages of a shift towards a dark R&B soundscape. The new music, he said, is some of the best he's ever made.
“It’s hard to explain,” he told me as he considered the change, “because I think I want to shift my energy into something more upbeat in a way. I want to do the music that I enjoy or spend my time listening to.” Part of the change, jstnwng explains, is because of his own listening habits. jstnwng cites singers like PartyNextDoor, Chris Brown, and Jimmy Brown as the kind of music he listens to the most.
The lyrics are more confident and, he said with another laugh, more explicit. They show a new side to the singer, one that allows him to be sexy, seductive, and assert himself. “In the Asian American lane right now, I don’t really know anybody that’s making this type of music,” he told me. Most of the R&B music being made by Asian musicians these days is occupied by artists like Jimmy Brown or Jeremy Passion. But jstnwng is eager to challenge that.
“I feel like people are definitely gonna like it because I think it’s some of the best that I’ve written and I think it personally suits my voice very well. But yeah,” he admitted, “I am pretty nervous about it.”
Though jstnwng is based in Pittsburgh, his earliest memories come from the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan where he grew up in a family of Chinese/ Tawainese immigrants. “Growing up as a typical Chinese American/ Taiwanese American, my parents owned a Chinese restaurant,” he told me. “So I spent a lot of time there growing up after school because they were so busy running the restaurant.”
When he was in first grade, jstnwng’s mother signed him up for piano lessons, although learning the instrument was never something that interested the singer. “I did that for about five years but I never got hooked on it because of being forced to practice,” he remembered. “I wasn’t big on classical music at that point in my life.”
When he was twelve years old, his family moved to Pittsburgh and by high school, jstnwng found lo-fi music, something that felt immitable to him. “I think it was my sister actually who brought up the idea to make music.” jstnwng’s sister had noticed his love for lo-fi music and thought that he could use his keyboard to produce music in his bedroom. “I’ve seen people produce stuff with their mini-keyboards, but after that I started to look into it.”
The plan wasn’t to be a singer. Originally, jstnwng just began producing the kind of music he listened to on Spotify, using artists like sad boy with a laptop as inspiration. “That was my first introduction to music and music production,” he explained.
Jstnwng didn’t begin singing until two years later, when he was a freshman in college. It was a weird year; the pandemic had shut down campus, but jstnwng had still selected to live in the dorms. But then, the dorms were closed due to social distancing and jstnwng’s college rented out several hotels. So, for nearly a year, jstnwng and a roommate lived out of a hotel. It wasn’t all bad: “ We literally had our own whole kitchen,” he laughed.
Sometimes, while at the hotel and at home, jstnwng would lay down vocals on songs. “When I picked music up initially as a producer, it was just a hobby. But as I started dong it, I was thinking that I wanted to do this as my job,” he said. “So I didn’t initially plan on becoming an artist, I just wanted to be a producer.”
As his passion for music grew, though, school shifted to the backburner. It wasn’t that jstnwng wasn’t a good student, he just didn’t know what his purpose was there. “In college, I didn’t really have an idea of what I wanted to do school-wise. Even now if I were to go back to school, I don’t have any idea what I would do,” he said. So, he chose to follow his passion and his heart. He dropped out of college. “It’s just kind of like, this is what I really enjoy doing. This is what I wanna do and I feel like I’m pretty good at this,” he told me about why he chose to leave school.
When I asked jstnwng how his parents reacted, he thought about it for a minute. “They were supportive up until I had talks about dropping school and pursuing music,” he said carefully. “It was a rough conversation, or really a series of conversations, but ultimately they just let me pursue my dreams. I’m really grateful for that.”
The truth was, now that he had decided to forego an education and with that the possibility of comfort, jstnwng had to make music work. After dropping out, jstnwng said, “it was just pedal to the metal.”
But his music began to make traction, and jstnwng noticed, too, that others who looked like him were beginning to break into the mainstream. Keshi, the Vietnamese American singer from Houston, was a huge inspiration for jstnwng. “I think it’s the fact that he’s a fellow Asian American and he has his lo-fi roots as well. We have similar backgrounds,” jstnwng told me. “I think his music at that point and time was really special to me. It still is but something about it back then just hit me differently.”
Keshi’s music, which is often introspective, felt liberating to listen to. He could relate to Keshi’s life and his lyrics. Eventually, Keshi’s influence found it’s way into jstnwng’s own work. “Pull”, a song released in 2021, is the track that clearly defined the brand jstnwng wanted to build: one that referenced keshi, his lo-fi roots, and vulnerability.
The new music is less about vulnerability. Instead, jstnwng wants to show a darker side of himself. “Growing up I’ve always been super introverted but I’ve become much more open and extroverted,” he said. In its own way, the upcoming music represents this change.
When I asked him to play one of the new tracks for me, jstnwng chose a song titled “LET ME”. “I kinda wanna see the live reaction,” he said as he pulled up the song. What he said about the lyrics being explicit? He’s not wrong. My eyes definitely widened when I heard, for example, the line, “When I’m up inside it feels like heaven’s gate.” While it is explicit, it’s ultimately sexy – and confident. The self-assurance, I felt, is most exciting to hear in jstnwng’s musical output.
“I’m kind of curious how people will react to it because I feel like it is a pretty drastic change,” he said after we listened to the track. He let out a nervous laugh. “Actually I sent a demo to a couple of my friends and I think they were all very surprised.”
Until then, jstnwng is considering releasing one more song under what will soon be his old sound. It could be considered a farewell or a “send-off”. An EP that had been in the works for a few months is being scrapped. “It’s not really what I want to do anymore,” he said with a shrug. “I think I’ve outgrown the Keshi-esque style.”
jstnwng knows that his new music marks the growth he’s experienced as a producer and songwriter. The new music will be some of the boldest swings of his career, and he’s wondered how listeners might react to hearing the first era. “When I listen to my old stuff, I kinda cringe. My first two songs that I put out, I took them off streaming platforms just because I feel like they were really bad,” he said. “Even some of my current discography, I’m debating, Should I delete this or leave it up as a memoir?”
It’s hard, he said, to even define himself as an artist. “As an artist I feel like I have a lot of room to grow,” he said. “I’m always changing and I’m not really satisfied with what I put out.” Then he paused. “I feel like it can always be better.” But it’s that challenge to grow and to try something new that jstnwng is eager to meet head on.
