Cambridge rapper JayaHadADream hopes to build on ‘amazing’ 2024

Named as one of the ‘Ones to Watch: 25 for 2025’ by Youth Music, Cambridge rapper JayaHadADream says she enjoyed the “maddest and best year of my life” in 2024.

Jaya, whose real name is Jaya Gordon-Moore, was born in the Rosie and grew up in the city.

She attended Netherhall Sixth Form (“When I was struggling with mental health problems, the teachers there were very supportive”), before relocating to the Midlands to continue her studies at the University of Nottingham.

After finishing her degree, Jaya, who is of Jamaican and Irish descent, worked as a teacher in Cambridge, before leaving to do music full time.

“When I was 22, after my sociology degree, I moved back to Cambridge to teach at Long Road,” explains Jaya, speaking to the Cambridge Independent from London, where she had gone to do some work in the studio.

“I taught criminology A-level, but my music career was really flourishing so I just ended up biting the bullet and quitting my teaching at the end of 2023.

“It was a big turning point – everything kind of started getting bigger from there.”

Reflecting on her ‘crazy’ 2024, Jaya says: “The first thing was the Emerging Talent Competition; I applied for Glastonbury’s Emerging Talent Competition and I won, out of thousands and thousands of artists.

“I got through the longlist and the shortlist and then I went to Somerset in April and performed with my live band and yeah, we won, and we got to do the Woodsies stage at Glastonbury and really experience the life of a musician doing festivals.

“And that kind of opened me up to doing Boomtown and then I did Reading and Leeds [music festivals] with BBC Introducing…

“I’ve had quite a few viral moments as well, released my EP and got support from Youth Music – it’s just been amazing.”

Youth Music wrote that the young rapper’s EP, Redemption Songs, “showcases Jaya’s willingness to be open and vulnerable on the mic, experimenting with a variety of sounds including UK rap, hip hop, jazz drill, Jersey club and UK garage”.

She says: “The main objective of my music is to help me feel seen, and then also help people like me feel seen.

“I feel like a lot of music is very superficial. It [my music] is about storytelling and connecting dots with people around things that I see as positive but also things that I see as negative, and like social issues…

“As a sociologist, I’m really into intersectionality and looking at how class, gender, ethnicity, and even just where you live kind of impacts your experience in life.

“And I’m trying to reflect that, because I don’t know many musicians who are Jamaican-Irish from Cambridge, like a female rapper, quite academic…

“It’s quite a different mix, but I know there are people who are relating and find comfort in what I’m saying.”

Jaya reveals that growing up in Cambridge, she would always attend Strawberry Fair and says she wants to champion rap music and “music of black origin” in the city.

“There’s not many shows in Cambridge that people know about that have rappers,” she notes, “so that’s something that me and a few other rappers have been trying to change over the last couple of years.”

On her plans for 2025, Jaya says she hopes to do “a headline show in London, Nottingham and Cambridge, at the Junction” – the latter with fellow Cambridge rappers Lambchop, Big Flash, and Tyler the Artist.

She adds: “It will likely be straight after festival season, so after the summer I’ll be doing something at the Junction – and I’m going to be doing a bigger body of work, so like an album-type project.

“And just continuing to do the festivals and collaborate with bigger artists. I’ve got some really cool collaborations with artists that I used to listen to, so it’s kind of a full-circle moment.”

Jaya, who feels that music was like “therapy” growing up in a “very working class background” – where some of her peers ended up in prison – reveals that Youth Music has been “really supportive”, especially with funding.

She continues: “They helped me invest money into the Redemption Songs EP, and that enabled me to do music videos and put some money into marketing and upskill myself with social media marketing.

“That was really fruitful; I could definitely see the impact of those music videos – and the music videos were reposted on different platforms, which was really cool.”

For more information on Jaya, visit jayahadadream.com. Follow her on Instagram at @jayahadadream.