This week’s Personal Spotlight is on local musician Jules Sincere. Sincere was born and raised in Colleton County. He went to Colleton County High School, graduated, and left to see what else the world had to offer. Sincere says, “As a kid, my parents were together, and that was very humbling and lucky for me. I was able to travel, my parents and I went to different states, different places, as a child. So, when I graduated, my father told me, “The world is bigger than just Walterboro, go out there and see what it’s about.””
Sincere, with encouragement of a friend decided to join the US Army, “A good friend of mine, Charles Brown, a former football player said, “Man, I got an idea, let’s join the Army. Either we’re going to get in trouble or we going to end up on the block or something like that. Man, let’s get out of here. It’s a way for us to get some discipline, see what the world has to offer. He said, we can go on the buddy system. We can go together.” At 19 years old, Sincere trained at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri (his first time on an airplane), later served at Fort Irwin in California, and did a tour in Iraq.
Jules has always been into music but his first though was that he wanted to be a veterinarian. He said, “I love animals and, when all the smoke clears with music and everything, I’ll go work at a zoo and have the time of my life. I was about to go to Clemson when my dad passed away, I stayed to take care of my mom, so vet school became on hold. I’ve always had a passion for music. I really did love it, but I wanted to be the guy behind the camera. I used to watch music videos, and documentaries about music. I was drawn to music videos. I would listen to records and automatically get an idea for a video in my head. My mom was like, well, why don’t you go do it? So I went to the Art Institute in Charleston to study I felt that going to the camera side was safer, because people that want to perform music, that’s a one in a million shot. Everybody can’t make it, and I understand that, but it was just something that kept calling me. I did some records. I did my first performance, and my friends were like, that is what you do. Because I have never seen anybody perform music the way that you do. And I said, ‘Wow’,”
That first performance was at Kay’s Place. He explains, “I was working at Pizza Hut at the time, and me and my friend were making music, and our bosses had liked our music. My first performance was at Kay’s place, which used to be called Racers when I performed there. That was the first time, we performed in front of our coworkers and families, and I was done. I was absolutely done, and I said, ‘This is amazing. I could do this for the rest of my life’.”
Sincere describes his music as Afro beats. He says, “I used to do a whole different genre of music, leaning more towards club music. I was younger, and just having fun being engulfed in that club era.” He gets his inspiration from a wide variety of artists, “I, of course, like Michael Jackson that’s somebody that just commanded the stage. I grew up with artists giving you a show, it was an experience to where you felt different. When you were there, you felt all your problems went away, whatever you were feeling for those one hour, two hours, they were gone. I especially like artists like T-Pain, I’ve always been a fan of his music. I also like a lot of pop artists, everybody from Britney Spears to Jay Z, from Rick Ross to Prince. You would also hear Leonard Skynyrd in my car. If I like it, I’m going to listen to it. I’ve been to Ireland, Korea, California, and New York. Just being around different places and listening, you meet people who and you ride with and they have their playlist, you have yours. And eventually you say, I like that.”
Sincere has his current single “Model” celebrating women, while his upcoming tracks “Know Yourself” and “You” focus on love and self-awareness. Sincere talks about “Model”. “I wrote “Model” for women. I wrote that record for people like my daughter. I wrote that record for the love of your life, anybody’s love of their life, and just giving women the spotlight back. Because music definitely has taken turn, has taken a turn for the worse when it comes to the engagement of violence to the disrespect of women. When I started writing, I said, I want to do something different, because I grew up where it was about getting the girl. That’s what it was about. It was about not just getting with her. It was about dating her. It was about a future. I was like, what happened, you know, why don’t we get back to that? Why don’t we lift up the women and let them feel beautiful. You don’t have to be a model on a runway to be considered a model. You’re a model every time you look in the mirror, no matter how big, how small, how tall, how short, whatever ethnicity you are, you’re a model and don’t let nobody else tell you different. What would this world be without women?”
Julesplans an overseas tour and encourages youth to channel their energy positively and engage in their community. He says, “My record is getting a lot of more eyes overseas, in places like Turks and Caicos. I’m getting a lot of engagement overseas, which I was hoping for.. I want the music to feel good. I want it to feel like summertime. I want to feel like you’re at the beach with the one you love. I have another record that I’m releasing well soon, called “Know Yourself”. When you really care about somebody, you watch their mannerisms, you watch what they do, and you become influenced with them. So it’s like, I know you better than you know yourself, and that, to me, is real love right there. That is real love when somebody knows you better than you know yourself. You know they know what you’re going to do, they know what you’re going to say. And it may get troubling at times, but it’s something amazing. And so I’m writing my next record, called “You Know.”
Sincere recently performed at the Rice Festival and has also performed in Florida, California, Savannah, and Atlanta, Georgia.
Sincere’s music can be found on most platforms, at Jules Sincere Online. This includes, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Music.
I ask Jules if he had advice for the youth of Walterboro, he said, “First of all, don’t do anything stupid. You know what’s stupid, and you know what’s not stupid. If I could say something to the youth, put that anger that you have into energy to do good, give it an effort, because it’s not where you are, it’s where you’re going. And if you want to make it here, talk to people, connect because that’s what’s really missing. People don’t talk any more, people don’t have conversations. Everything is kind of just quick, fast, in a hurry. And if you want to make it anywhere, you have to be brave and go talk to people. Go let people know what you have going on, instead of just waiting for word of mouth. If you want it, go get it, that phrase has always stuck with me. I do believe that they need to build this city, because this city has a lot of potential, I know what this city used to be like. Walterboro was a pretty great place to be and now we have such a cloud over us with misconception, everything from jobs, Violence, and crime. The change has to come from somewhere.”
