The Veishea Entertainment Committee works hard every year to get bands to come to Ames for students to see at a reasonable price. This year, it scored Jay Sean.

Jay Sean is signed with Cash Money Records, which also boasts artists Lil Wayne and Nicki Minaj. The 29-year-old singer from Europe was really happy about his music coming to America. “It’s a dream to be accepted and appreciated” Jay Sean said.

His style of music is a combination of pop and R&B. Jay Sean said he grew up with R&B and wanted to have that style but with a larger fan base. He did not want to be too “pop styled.” Instead, Jay Sean combined the two styles in hopes of being able to sell R&B to the masses — and he succeeded. Jay Sean had two hits in the top 10 list at the same time, “Down” and “Do You Remember,” which is rare for male artists.

After his album “Me Against Myself” came out in 2004, his record company asked him to change his sound. Jay Sean walked away confidently.

“I never wanted to go out with any regrets,” Sean said. “There’s no rules, nothing written to tell you where to go.”

Jay Sean knew what sound he wanted and stuck to it. Despite turning down the company, his new album is coming out in May.

When doing his music, Jay Sean keeps his audiences in mind and does shows accordingly. This mindset is a major reason he agreed to perform at Veishea.

“I like to cover all my demographics,” he said. “I am aware of the fact that I have a large fan base in colleges. So you have to go there.”

When writing songs, Jay Sean said he draws from real-life experiences, “especially the love songs.” He said he likes to keep his music real, and using life experiences is one way to do that. One of Jay Sean’s favorite aspects of his music, however, is performing in front of fans. To him, it its about interacting and giving a personality for people to feel like they know after the show.

“I like to give it my all on stage,” Jay Sean said. “I don’t like to only sing songs from the album; I like to give them more of me, more than they can download from the Internet. … You really have to go to the show to see what it is like.”