Photos / Gabby Manson
Story / Luna Bacce
Assist / Nargiza Azamatova
Trying to put Jessi Jae Joplin into a single category misses the point.
The Los Angeles artist has moved through rock bands, festival stages, DJ booths, nightlife, and event production, carrying pieces of each experience into the music she creates today. Her world is loud, glamorous, theatrical, sensual, and unapologetically expressive. House rhythms collide with rock vocals, fashion becomes part of the storytelling, and performance extends far beyond the stage.
Joplin can be outrageous and deeply spiritual, spontaneous and organized, the center of the party and the person producing it. None of those identities cancel the others out.
“My confidence comes from showing up for myself over and over again,” she says. “It’s not about feeling fearless or having everything figured out. It’s something I’ve built by continuing to create even when no one was watching.”
She began as the lead singer of a rock band before discovering dance music and the culture surrounding it. Festivals and nightlife in the early 2010s introduced her to a community that changed how she understood music.
“Nightlife has represented community, belonging, and self-expression,” she says. “It was one of the first places where I truly felt like I had found my people.”
At festivals including Coachella, EDC, and Lightning in a Bottle, Joplin witnessed thousands of strangers connecting through music. She began to understand that a great night wasn’t simply about the songs being played—it was about the feeling created between people.
“That experience showed me music wasn’t just entertainment,” she says. “It had the power to create unforgettable moments between strangers.”
Eventually, she moved behind the decks and into event production, creating those experiences herself.
Her understanding of belonging also comes from a more personal place. Growing up, Joplin was often the only Black person at her school. Later, embracing her queer identity and finding creative communities where individuality was celebrated helped her understand that she didn’t need to change herself to belong.
“The things that once made me feel different became my greatest strengths,” she says. “Sometimes the thing that makes you different is actually your superpower.”
That freedom is now embedded in her creative identity.
“I like to think of the Jessi Jae Joplin project as one big rock musical,” she says, “where every song, outfit, performance, and event is part of the same story.”
Fashion, especially, has become part of that language. Joplin has spent much of her life being told she was “too much.” Now, she sees excess as an advantage.
“They’re what allow me to create worlds, take risks, and fully express myself as an artist,” she says.
Her response to being told she’s too much?
“If anything, hearing those things just made me louder.”
That attitude extends to her creative process. Joplin is increasingly less interested in waiting for permission and more interested in building whatever she wants to exist.
“If I wanted something, I could build it myself.”
Her latest single, “Divine,” reflects that growing sense of self-trust. The song is rooted in the idea that the power and worth we search for externally may already exist within us.
“I’m becoming someone who fully trusts herself,” Joplin says. “I’m learning to trust the path, trust the timing, and trust that what’s meant for me will find me.”
That confidence allows her to embrace every side of her work, including fashion, sexuality, nightlife, and visual excess. But Joplin is clear that provocation isn’t the point.
“My work isn’t about being provocative for the sake of it,” she says. “It’s about celebrating self-expression in all of its forms, even when it challenges people’s expectations.”
Ultimately, she wants the world she’s creating to feel like a place where people can let themselves go.
“Life can be heavy enough,” she says. “I want my world to feel like a place where people can dance, laugh, celebrate who they are, and leave with a little more joy than they came in with.”
Now finishing her debut album, creating new music videos, and producing more events, Joplin isn’t narrowing her vision. She’s expanding it.
For an artist who learned early that she never had to choose between music, performance, fashion, or community, the freedom to be everything at once may be her greatest creative act.
