Discovering infidelity in a marriage that lasted almost 20 years with a person you’ve known since you were 11 and share a child with can be devastating. What makes it even more painful is when everything those two people built from friendship, love, and ministry comes to an end and results in a divorce.
This is Jai’s story, a gospel singer, songwriter and recent divorcee. She discovered during her healing journey there aren’t many people who are honest and transparent about divorce.
“I found there were very few people I could reference that could help me in how I was feeling,” she said. “I asked the question ‘Why aren’t there more people being honest about this stuff?’ People often tell their story after they’ve been through it.”
Jai is doing the opposite. Instead of keeping her story private, she’s chosen to share it publicly both in her music (she released her single “Ghost,” in October) and on Joyce Meyer’s “Talk It Out,” podcast, where she co-hosts with Meyer, Ginger Stache, and Erin Culey.
“I want music, podcasts and tv shows I’m part of to be as transparent as possible because I have the opportunity to reach more people and help more people consistently,” Jai said.
Outside of her strong stance about gospel music needing to be real and authentic, Jai also believes the genre is nonlinear and should have a space amongst other categories including rock, pop, hip-hop and R&B.
“Gospel artists can represent every genre and shouldn’t have to have a certain style just because of the content we’re talking about,” she said.
Jai comes from a long line of clergymen (her father is a pastor) and singers. Her aunts and uncles The Searights founded the Grammy-winning chorus God’s Property, and have collaborated on multiple occasions with Kirk Franklin. One of their most popular hits is “Stomp,” which changed the trajectory of gospel music, intersecting hip-hop culture into the track and video.
Naturally being a preacher’s kid she developed an interest in involvement at her family church through singing, playing the piano, and worship leading. Shewould also sing around the city at other churches.
However, music wasn’t something she sought out as a career. Hearing The Searights’ industry stories drew her away from going into the business. Plus, she viewed singing only as a side gig since her career aspirations were to do marketing and publicity for nonprofit organizations (she has her undergraduate and masters degrees in media communications).
“I was really trying to do more things for nonprofit organizations cause my dad’s church is a small church,” she said. “I wanted to focus a lot of my energy on raising funds for small ministries and nonprofit organizations. But then I was like I gotta make some money so I started venturing off into marketing.”
While she wasn’t initially interested in pursuing music professionally, she found therapy in songwriting after having her daughter. She spiraled into postpartum depression and music was a coping mechanism that help her during that time.
She soon joined a group called Soul Company with Christ Community Temple Church members. That is how she met Courtney Orlando (formerly J.R.), who she closely collaborated with throughout the years including on her debut album 2011’s “Culture Shock, which he mostly produced.”
“I thought he (Orlando) was so cool, he reminded me of if Lenny Kravitz sang Christian music,” she said. “I was like this exists? Cause I’ve always been a person that wanted gospel music and Christian music to stretch beyond the genre.”
Her friendship with Orlando led to her first official footing in the industry from singing on his “Life by Stereo,” album. She sang on other songs and developed a working relationship with gospel rappers Lecrae, Trip Lee, and This’l who were also associated with Orlando. In return, Orlando helped Jai with her “Focus EP.”
Jai said she has either sang or written over 40 songs in Christian hip-hop including “God Is Enough,” which was one of Lecrae’s first songs played on Christian radio. He performed it at The Dove Awards.
Her big break came after singing one of the songs she and Orlando created at a St. Louis church. While there she met Asaph Ward, an award-winning gospel producer who was in the audience that day. Ward, from Kansas City, has worked with The Clark Sisters, Kim Burrell, and more.
“He connected with me that night and was like ‘have you ever thought about doing background vocals,” she said. “I gave him my number and that same week he called me asking if I could sing behind Mary Mary at Gospel Fest because one of their background singers was unavailable.”
Jai agreed and sang background for the sisters for many years. It opened the door for her to sing for Donnie McClurkin, on a campaign trail and in Madison Square Garden. In
2009-2013 Jai was in her prime, touring across the country with various gospel greats, networking with non-gospel artists, worship leading, pastoring, and consulting at different churches.
She also had various record deals coming her way left and right during that time, but she turned them down instead to focus on her family and ministry. Eventually the family relocated to Chicago to start a church there then they moved back to St. Louis and Jai began working at Meyer’s St. Louis Dream Center (a church and outreach organization) as a worship pastor. Outside of pastoring Jai helped the ministry with planning conferences and oversaw the music department’s creative direction.
She did that for several years before becoming Faith Church’s global worship pastor, where she oversaw all things worship at the campus and helped with the church’s firing and hiring processes, set design, and more.
Then she became co-host of “Talk It Out,” in 2020, during the time when she learned about her ex-husband’s extramarital affairs.
“When I started the show with Joyce I thought I was happily married,” Jai said. “When I got on the podcast I thought I was going to be talking about struggles of being married young, ministry, church hurt, being a pastor’s kid. I didn’t know I was going to be defending and representing people who have gone through a divorce.”
Jai is now in a better mental space since her divorce and has done a lot of intentional healing and self work. She’s open to writing for others and has also released “It’s You,” a song she wrote and is featured on for Shekinah Glory’s compilation EP “The Artist Project, Vol. 2.” She released the Christmas song “By Myself,” on Dec. 18.
She said she classifies herself as a follower of Jesus rather than calling herself a Christian.
“Christian has such a negative connotation now so many things connected to negative experiences with Christianity,” she said. “We miss out on a lot of people because we refuse to show our humanity. We don’t talk about our issues, it’s perceived as a sign of weakness.”
Jai’s full name is Jai Williams, but she prefers to go by the latter mononymous.
Jai’s music is available on all streaming platforms. Learn more about Jai, here: https://linktr.ee/justjai1.
