After storming his way on to the scene with his top 10 debut single “Get Home,” rising R&B star, JR Castro, links up with the Vegas production team, The Audibles (Justin Bieber, Chris Brown) for his second official single, “Right Away.” The soon to be summer anthem pulls inspiration from Puff and Montell Jordan. On the heels of collaborations with Timbo, Pusha T, Migos, Kid Ink, YG, and Sevyn Streeter, Castro prepares to release his highly anticipated EP, You, executively produced by Timbaland.

As a kid growing up in the rough North Town neighborhood of Las Vegas, Castro fell under the spell of R&B music, thanks to his father. “My dad would play Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Midnight Star, The Commodores, and Prince all day every day,” he says. He first became interested in singing himself when he noticed that it impressed the girls. “I had two friends in junior high who would sing to the girls at lunchtime,” Castro recalls. “It tripped me out. It made me really want to try it. I actually sounded kind of decent and I realized, ‘I can actually do this.’ I started loving it. Next thing you know, there was nothing else I wanted to do.”

When Castro realized he could sing, he gravitated toward artists like Boyz II Men, Brian McKnight, and Usher, and took notes on what they were doing. Aside from singing, he also loved to draw, seeing his artistic endeavors as an escape from the harsh realities of his daily life. “You can’t show any kind of softness, coming from the ‘hood,” he says. “It’s considered weak and is frowned upon. I was fearful of stepping outside the box and being different because people judge you. Where I come from, people are always preying on weakness. The odds are against someone like me in North Town. You either work in the casino or at a fast-food joint. Or you’re a drug dealer or a pimp. Those are the options we got. I’ve always had a creative mindset and have always wanted to express myself in a way that felt fairytale-ish to some people. But to me it wasn’t a fairytale. I always knew that I could make it a reality in some kind of way.”

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