Jquan – Love X3

Love X3 reads as a romantic title with the volume turned up: not simply love, but love multiplied. It also returns Jquan to a phrase he has already made his own with Love X2, a useful marker for an artist whose public image has often been shaped by harder, survival-minded records.

Jquan, born Javien Jordon Smith, came out of Manchester’s newer dancehall current after years of working at music from the ground up. His 2023 breakthrough Choppa Gospel carried the tension of that background; he described it as both lifestyle music and a “ghetto cry, ” rooted in the push from hardship towards something better. That sense of lived ambition has remained central to his name, even as his catalogue has widened through songs such as Chakka, Goliath, Home Town and Love X2.

What makes the Love X3 title interesting is the space it gives Jquan to work beyond pure bravado. He began singing young, and his strongest moments have come when the melody and the message share equal weight rather than competing for attention. The move from X2 to X3 suggests an artist extending a personal thread, not abandoning the gritty modern-dancehall identity that first put him in listeners’ sights.