Jeremih vs. Jeremiah: Ladies, Sex or Soul on Your Birthday?

This past week I sat in on a concert at Triad, an intimate performance spot on 72nd and Columbus. A Rochester, N.Y., native, singer/songwriter Jeremiah was trying out new material, and to fete his impending born day he'd baked red velvet cupcakes, which he shared with concertgoers.

As tasty Birthday pastry went around the room, a few blocks south at Def Jam Recordings, another singer by the name of Jeremih was celebrating a birthday of another kind: With 16,000 digital copies and counting sold of his single "Birthday Sex" in just the first few weeks of its release, the 21-year-old Chicagoan had a (soon-to-be) certifiable hit on his hands.

After opening with a cut called "Promises," a warm-up that ran perhaps too long and too slowly, Jeremiah laid out a handful of new songs. During a short set with the unstoppable Jay Fenix on keys, my thoughts kept circling back to the unpredictable nature of the music industry. I wanna share with you something like the coldest story ever told...

The classically-trained Jeremiah boasts a multi-octave range, has performed at landmark spots like the Blue Note and Joe's Pub, and released the 2006 album Chasing Forever (Siri), from which the video for the Shanice-duet "Love for a While," still plays on VH1 Soul. And he projects star quality: Onstage, he was charming, trading talk and banter with the crowd and was funny as all get-out.

"Out of Tune With Love," an unintended commentary on the pervasive use of Auto-Tune, found Jeremiah hamming it up and bravely singing so off-key that it was actually hot! He outsang Beyonce during his version of "Halo," even as he flubbed the lyrics. Then he spliced a rendition of Kanye's "Heartless" into his own mid-tempo "Foolish Heart," a much-needed nod to The Billboard 200 that this balladeer, who counts among his influences Nina Simone and Anita Baker, has previously avoided during his live concerts. But after grinding in NYC for a couple years now and seeming to be close to a breakthrough, that closing-on-Jay Leno-type success remains out of reach for now.

Who knows the vagaries of show business? Then there's Jeremih, who also writes and plays, and who has said he feels like he's "cheating" by dropping a single so coarsely radio-ready, describing what he does on "Birthday Sex" not as singing, but "melodically speaking." The Def Jam rookie is the cousin of Day 26's Will and he stretches a bit more on "My Ride"; and on album in stores June 30). But I would argue that Jeremiah packs more gift in his musical box than does his urban-pop namesake.

With lyrically-driven ballads like the tear-jerking "Go" and "Turn the Light On," Jeremiah makes gentlemanly music that often defies easy categorization, heavy at times on jazz, dabbling in folk, AC, and pop. Thing is, many (female) consumers want to make love in this club. They crave the pain, the make-up sex (yes, even the birthday sex), the Confessions, the blues. A soundtrack long on chivalry but short on pounding sensuality can suffer in the mainstream marketplace for "black music," in particular. Again, who knows for certain the equation for making it in the age of the $1.29 MP3? But I think there's room for that dude who brings something other than the business on your birthday. Do you?