Jay Versace is an American record producer and former internet personality who had earned viral fame for his funny meme content on Vine. Presently, he has a huge following on Instagram. In 2018, he shifted focus from comedy to music and collaborated with rapper Westside Gunn on the song Versace from his album Pray for Paris. He worked with artists like Boldy James, Lil Yachty and Tyler, the Creator, and earned critical acclaim and commercial success producing songs from SZA's album, SOS.
Career
Jay Versace had started making short comedic videos on Vine in 2014. He quickly gained a large following by impersonating Kylie Jenner to sharing a melodramatic re-enacting of his family life. He was dubbed “America’s favorite kid” and the “meme king”, and was nominated for Viner of the Year at the 8th Shorty Awards. After Vine was shut down in January 2017, he moved to other social media platforms like Instagram and YouTube and continued his successful journey. Along with actors Danielle Campbell and Nathan Kress, he starred in his own Fullscreen web series, Jay Versace is Stuck in the 90s (2017), which was nominated for Best Web Series at the 10th Shorty Awards. He was also slated to appear in an eight-part web series by Portal A Interactive titled My Wizard & Me alongside fellow internet personality Miles McKenna, but it never materialized.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Versace revealed that although he earned fame making comedy videos, he felt miserable doing so, and at one point, began to question if he was living his dream. He stopped making comedic videos and, with help from his musician friends Knxwledge and Pink Siifu, started experimenting with music production in May 2018. He initially posted atmospheric, lo-fi music instrumentals to his SoundCloud account. When he approached rapper Westside Gunn and asked to work together, Gunn was as surprised as everyone else to learn that Versace made beats. Gunn ended up using one of Versace's first-ever songs on his own album, Pray for Paris (2020), with the title Versace. Versace was disappointed to learn that a lot of people were unhappy about the collaboration and expressed their sentiment on Twitter. However, he was confident about his talent and went on to produce all tracks on the mixtape, The Versace Tape (2020), by rapper Boldy James.
Versace contributed to a remix version of the song Lay_Up.m4a by Denzel Curry and Kenny Beats in March 2021. He produced the song Safari from rapper Tyler, the Creator's sixth studio album Call Me If You Get Lost (2021), which was named the Best Rap Album at the 65th Annual Grammy Awards. In 2022, he co-produced On God by rappers Meechy Darko, Freddie Gibbs and A-Trak, and produced SOS and Smoking on My Ex Pack from singer SZA's second studio album, SOS.
Family Life
Jay Versace came up with the moniker “Versace” from a Vine video of rapper Riff Raff. He came out as queer via a Snapchat post in 2016. His mother, Nikesha Dolly Gunter, died in May 2022.
