JWords - Sound Therapy (2026)

Jennifer Hernandez has entered an era of peace. The Brooklyn-based producer, educator, and synth builder known as JWords recently turned 30 on Valentine’s Day, leaving her rocky 20s and her turbulent Saturn return in the past. Sound Therapy, the follow-up to her 2022 debut solo LP, Self-Connection, deals with the troubles and triumphs she’s experienced over the last few years. It gets heavy at times, but rather than linger on the past, the music she’s making now reflects her present circumstances. Instead of building a rollercoaster record based on the traumas of yesteryear, she opted for a confidently Zen approach. “It’s a new era,” she says. “A calmer, chiller, ‘Yeah, I got my shit together’ kind of era.”

Growing up Dominican-American in Union City, New Jersey, JWords was a sonic omnivore, devouring the hip-hop and R&B she heard on BET’s Rap City, the Jersey Club that took over the neighborhood, and the Latin music she heard at home. The only genre she couldn’t stand was rock, but in her senior year of high school she somehow found herself playing keys in an all-male psych rock band. While the experience opened her mind to new sounds and was the start of her love affair with synthesizers, it also showed her she never wanted to be in that situation again. When she started making beats, her goal was to build the foundations on which fellow femme artists could express themselves away from men, free to explore their “whimsical, magical energy.” She’s been living that dream for the past decade.

“We all move around, tryna fill some void / I don’t even know what the void is,” JWords raps on “void 222,” sticking loosely to her bare-bones, percussionless beat. It’s one of five times she picks up the mic on the nine-track record. Despite the fact that she began as an MC (hence the name JWords), this is the first time in her professional career she’s been a lead vocalist. On some songs, her words are more meditative than narrative. On lead single “Lush,”she repeats the phrases “I see me in you” and “I see you in me” over pillowy synths and a crinkly techno backbeat until her words become a mantra. On “Clarity,” she raps alongside Nappy Nina with authority over a tricky rhythm somewhere between footwork and Jersey Club.

It’s JWords’ production, of course, that shines brightest on Sound Therapy. Opener “Lotus” contains the type of sparkling synthplay one might expect to find stowed away on a lost Dilla hard drive. “FELT” pummels you with a techno drum line but slowly morphs into a much chiller arrangement of synths. And “LoveCrime” presents an entrancing, oddly shaped structure that JWords somehow finds a way to rap over. The song deals with romantic loss, but it’s mostly about self-love. “This a letter to myself,” she raps. “When I fall in love, don’t fall in too deep.”

In the end, JWords is grateful for all of the experiences that have brought her to the present moment. She’s seen rock bottom now and never wants to return, but she learned some of life’s most essential lessons there. These days, she’s enjoying her hard-won serenity. She’s got a job teaching kids how to DJ and make electronic music. She’s learned to solder and has plans to create her own style of synth. She’s making her best music, transcending nominal genre boundaries in pursuit of brilliance. She’s calmer. She’s chiller. She’s got her shit together. “Life kicked my butt, but I got back up, and it turned out to be okay,” she says now. “‘What doesn't kill you makes you stronger,’ like the song says. She was right.”