Jeremih is the debut studio album by American R&B recording artist Jeremih. It was released on June 30, 2009, through Def Jam Recordings. The production on the album was handled by Mick Schultz who also co-wrote the album with Jeremih. To promote the release of the album, the album was posted online for an exclusive preview on MySpace.
Jeremih was supported by three singles: "Birthday Sex", "Imma Star (Everywhere We Are)" and "Break Up To Make Up". The album received generally positive reviews from music critics and was a commercial success. It debuted at number six on the US Billboard 200, selling 59,000 copies in its first week.[1]
Background
While attending Columbia College Chicago, Jeremih collaborated with record producer Mick Schultz.[2] Jeremih began writing all of these songs, while Schultz produced the entire album. The duo recorded approximately 20 songs for the album.[3] In February 2009, Jeremih met with the Def Jam Recordings CEO Russell Simmons and its executive vice president of A&R, Karen Kwak. After a vocal performance, Jeremih signed a recording contract with the label that same day.[4][5]
The album's second single, called "Imma Star (Everywhere We Are)" was released on June 9, 2009. The song peaked at number 23 on the US Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs and number 51 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts.[9]
The album's third and final single, "Break Up To Make Up", impacted US rhythmic radio stations on November 17, 2009.[10] The song peaked at 87 on the US Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart.
Upon its release, Jeremih received generally positive reviews from most music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, it received an average score of 70 based on four reviews.[14]
Andy Kellman of AllMusic described Jeremih's vocals as "charmingly sly", expressing a comparison to Slim of 112 and Raphael Saadiq.[15] Giving the album a C−, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune felt that the use of Auto-Tune made Jeremih sound like a "clone" of Kanye West, but showed "little of West's imagination on his debut album".[13] Meanwhile, following the album's August 2009 UK release, noted R&B writer Pete Lewis of 'Blues & Soul' referred to it as "A promisingly-diverse R&B set which combines jiggy, club-flavoured tracks like the sexy 'That Body' and catchy 'My Ride' with classy soulful ballads like the hauntingly mellow 'Starting All Over' and wistful 'My Sunshine'.[16]
Commercial performance
Jeremih debuted at number six on the US Billboard 200 chart, selling 59,000 copies in the first week.[1] This became Jeremih's first US top-ten debut.[1] In its second week, the album dropped to number 15 on the chart, selling an additional 29,000 copies.[17] On October 1, 2021, the album was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for combined sales and album-equivalent units of over one million units in the United States.[18]
