SAINt JHN on ‘Festival Season,’ Pushing Limits & Theatrical Live Shows

Music festivals are more than just concerts — they’re entire worlds where fans lose themselves in the sound, the energy, and the moment. But what happens when an artist doesn’t just play festivals, but makes music that feels like one? With his latest album Festival Season, SAINt JHN delivers an electrifying experience that blurs the line between live spectacle and studio magic.

Led by high-energy singles like “Glitching” and the genre-bending “Poppin,” Festival Season arrived on Friday (Feb. 21) as JHN’s most ambitious project yet. The album fuses elements of house, hip-hop, punk and electronic music, capturing the thrill of a headlining set and the intimacy of a late-night afterparty. Inspired by the euphoric highs and unpredictable chaos of real-life festivals, SAINt set out to craft a project that feels just as immersive as the events that shaped it.

“Festivals are like a different universe,” he tells Billboard just a day before the album’s release. “I wanted to make something that sounds like you’re in the middle of one – something that makes you want to move, scream, and lose yourself in the moment.”

After making waves with While The World Was Burning, SAINt JHN has spent the last few years pushing his sound to new heights. Whether performing on massive stages or collaborating with some of the most forward-thinking artists in music, he’s built a reputation for tearing down genre boundaries and delivering electrifying music. Now, with Festival Season, he’s bringing that same energy straight to the speakers.

Billboard caught up with SAINt JHN to discuss Festival Season, his genre-blurring sound, the electrifying energy of live performances, and how he’s elevating the festival experience on his own terms.

Festival Season is your first full project in four years. What inspired the album’s title, and what’s the overarching theme you want listeners to take away?

The reason why it’s called Festival Season is because it sounds like you’re at a live SAINt JHN concert.

And if you’ve ever heard any of my music – and even if you haven’t – I’m genre divergent. I’m a bit disrespectful when it comes to genres. I don’t really play to any one particular sport. I just like what I like. I like the sounds of music. So when you hear this collection from top to bottom, from tip to toe, it sounds like you’re in the middle of a festival, and you’re running from stage to stage to hear your favorite artist.

It’s all just me. But the songs change, and the theme changes, and the mood changes. But if you’ve never been to a performance, this sounds like a pocket performance. You can hear crowd interaction, chants. You’re hearing yelling. You’re hearing fans screaming my name.

Because that’s what it’s like to be at a SAINt JHN show. It’s an enormous concert. The mood changes, the theme changes, the sound changes, but the energy never dies. So Festival Season was born from that. I wanted the people who might have been on the other side of the planet, in a place that I’d never been and never visited, to be able to take home a pocket performance from me.

It’s a world where I perform on a stage in front of you. But you get to see some of the things I go through—the emotions, pains, the curiosities, the uncertainties, the doubts—but everything is at a maximum level. Nothing is low. The decibel is on 10-plus the entire time.

With so many different sounds on this project — Afro-fusion, alternative pop, introspective moments — what song do you think will be the breakout hit, and why?

I feel like it’d be a stupid response of mine to tell you what I think would be the breakout hit. I don’t know. I’ve never known what people want. I don’t know what people want from me. I don’t know what people want for themselves. I know the way art works in the best format and the best possible thing is you make the thing that you love, and then people decide from that what they love.

It’s like – I was going to say something stupid, like the guy who probably invented the cheeseburger was probably just trying to make a milkshake, and the cheeseburger came out of it, and they were like, “We like that.” So I think maybe some of that will happen. I do have a creeping suspicion. I got a song I think is gonna go crazy.

I think a bunch of them are gonna go crazy. Well, I think for “The Gangsters,” it’s gonna be sort of undeniable, especially when you hear it live—like, when you really see it presented, I think it’d be hard to deny that. But I don’t got no predictions. I don’t want to be the guy at the Super Bowl going, “Yo, this is the team.”

When fans press play on this album, how do you want them to feel? What emotions or experiences do you hope to evoke?

I hope when people listen to this collection, I hope they feel bolder than they’ve ever felt. There’s a feeling that you get when you leave a concert, when you leave a festival.

There’s a certain type of energy that you get to take home with you that doesn’t last a long time. For some people, it lasts a couple of days, for some people maybe a couple of weeks, and for some people, it just lasts moments after it. There’s a heightened endorphin, a certain surge of energy, and I want people to get that.

But I want you to be able to press play again and do it again. Usually, you have to venture back to the performance, into a field where you wore an outfit, where you brought a date, where you spent the money on the tickets. Usually, you have to go hunt the thing that you’re looking for. I wanted you to be able to take it home with you so you could restart it every time you felt something that you needed.

Every album has an ideal setting for full immersion. Where do you think Festival Season is best experienced? Is it a car ride, a morning commute, a late-night listen?

I think the best place for you to immerse yourself, to hear this, to experience this, is at a tiny rave. That tiny rave could happen in so many different places, right? But your mindset needs to be a “tiny rave.”

It could happen in your bedroom, but you gotta be ready to ruffle up the bedsheets. It could happen in your living room, but you’re gonna have to be ready to spill some coffee, spill some champagne. It could happen in a car ride, but maybe it’d be hard to focus on driving.

It’s an immersive experience, and in order for you to take it in, you gotta be willing to submit to it. This isn’t like a vending machine where you say, “I want Coca-Cola and Sprite.” This isn’t that.

This is — show up. I’m gonna make you something really special. This is omakase. This is when you show up, and the chef says, “I’m going to make you something. It’s going to be exceptional. Don’t make any requests. Just be hungry when you get here and be appreciative when you leave here.”

This album also marks a big moment for you—your signing with Roc Nation Distribution. How does this partnership elevate your vision for the next phase of your career?

I think it’s just more freedom. My entire career, my entire purpose in life — the only things I’m looking forward to and the things that I’m hunting, the thing that drives me in the morning and keeps me up at night – is this type of unbridled freedom that only creatives who reach their maximum peak get to feel.

That’s what I look to feel every day. So to be in partnership with people who share a similar vision, who’ve been disruptive from the beginning of their historic run, it just means I’m in league with the right people. I’m just on the right team.

You’ve always pushed boundaries sonically, but Festival Season feels like an expansion of your artistry. How do you think this album reflects your growth since While the World Was Burning?

I always tell a tale from where I’m at at the time. While the World Was Burning, the world was on fire.

Collection one was my first collection. So you get to hear the presentation. You get to see exactly where I’m at. I’m centered in the middle of my universe, but I’m telling a story from the seat of the couch, wherever the couch is positioned. Festival Season – you can tell I’m going back on the road. I’m living in my purpose.I’m in my path. My garden has become the stage, and I just want to introduce you to what I’ve been harvesting. 

You can hear the maturation in my language. You can hear the maturation in my tone. You can tell I’m not in the same place you left me at, and I think that’s the purpose. That’s an artist’s purpose—to continue growing and evolving.To find new paths. To find new places to venture. To find scarier formats. To find things that are unexplored. It doesn’t seem like I’m tracing myself.

What tends to happen is, when an artist becomes successful, people want them to run the same route—like, “Keep this. Do it again. Do that same lap again. Do it again so I can see it. I didn’t get to see it the way you started the race. Alright, run it again. Alright, cool, cool. We saw it twice. Now do it three times.” But that’s not what artistry is. That’s not what creativity is. Creativity is complex. Creativity wants to continue creating. Creativity designs itself to continue finding new places.

So to be an ultimate, consummate creative, you have to be willing to break through your own glass box that you’ve built. You have to be willing to run the lap backwards, sideways, on your hands. That’s what I’m doing. It might look like the same race, but I’m definitely not sprinting at the same pace.