Jermaine Edwards Signs Deal With Sony Music UK, Following Viral Video Of Rushawn Ewears Singing ‘Beautiful Day’
In 2017, 10-year-old Rushawn Ewears was recorded by a teacher at the Top Hill Primary School in St. Elizabeth giving his best version of Jermaine Edwards’ Beautiful Day.
Little did he know, six years later both he and the track would go viral.
The pinnacle of this success story is now that Edwards has inked a monumental deal with Sony Music UK and is looking towards a fruitful future together.
DancehallMag was given the exclusive on the deal as all parties gathered in Kingston, Jamaica on Friday morning (January 13) as optimistic as can be. This included Sony Music UK A&Rs Preye Crooks and Milo Saville—who were perhaps the most delighted.
“The main thing is that the licensing (and) mastering are a hundred percent Jermaine’s and Rushawn’s. We’re just licensing off them to work the record in the best way possible, and it’s a case of them being yeah, the centre of it all. It’s all reflecting back onto them. It’s their record,” Saville explained.
“In terms of the specifics of deal, I doubt it’s my place to say. It’s a license agreement so all of the masters are belonging to Jermaine and Rushawn which I think is important.”
Beautiful Day debuted in 2014, and has since seen multiple covers and remixes. A singer who goes by the name The Kiffness added his own Reggae twist to Rushawn’s recording which made it skyrocket even more.
His YouTube video is on its way to six million views in only four weeks.
Saville added that this certainly isn’t a one-time gig and that the international music publishing company will be working closely with Edwards and his newfound protégé.
“We had great discussions over lunch yesterday (Thursday, January 12) about all of the music that he’s been working on and we’re excited to get into it,” he said.
As for Rushawn, who matriculated to B.B Coke High School, this is literally his ticket out of poverty. He told DancehallMag that he had not dreamed of attaining this level of success from a video.
“That day, after school, it’s like I didn’t have nothing to do and I was just walking and singing. One of my teachers bring me in front (of) the whole staff and I sing the song and it just gone viral,” he said noting that he feels “really nice” to have contributed to its success.
In the meantime, Edwards said he combed through his options with a fine tooth comb, regarding the most optimum label to join forces with.
“So many different labels, so many different persons calling all over the world trying to get license to do remixes for the song. After meeting with many different persons, we decided to go with Sony. They were the best persons on the tab, so, that’s how this deal came about,” said the Gospel artist. This is his first major record deal.
Rushawn’s alma mater is also the recipient of infrastructural development through this new partnership.
“Top Hill Primary doesn’t have a playground, so we wanted to build a playground and name it in honour of Rushawn and try to make it a state of the art. Also, there are other elements of computer room that we’ve also been looking into helping the school. It’s in a rural area. It’s not the best that one would really want it to be so we’re trying to see if we can have the future generation coming up to have something to look forward to and they can say Rushawn came from this primary school and him doing a song off someone made this happen,” Edwards further said.
According to Preye Crooks, whose father is Jamaican, players at Sony Music UK are keeping their eyes peeled for any other prospective artists.
“I very much hope so. I think there are quite a few Jamaican artists signed with Sony at the moment. I think we need more. I think we need to strengthen that relationship so, hopefully, we’ll be working with Jermaine and Rushawn in the future and that will open our network to the area. We’re really excited. There’s a huge diaspora of Jamaicans in the UK but also people outside of the diaspora who are massive fans of this sound and the culture, so we wanna be working that more,” he told DancehallMag.