Jae Stephens has a quirk: she loves cramming her name into unrelated words. Mid-interview, she casually drops "a-jae-nda" and cracks herself up before she's even finished saying it. That unfiltered, loose energy she brings on camera isn't far off from how she was as a teenager, deep in internet forums—"My Sweet Sixteen was on Habbo," she says, "any JaeBae knows this." JaeBae is what her fanbase calls itself.
Rewind to the mid-2010s, when Jae Stephens wasn't yet a singer but the person behind Beyoncebeytwice, a well-known Beyoncé stan Tumblr account, active during peak Beyhive fandom years—spending birthday nights in chat rooms trading messages with other anonymous accounts. "I was just that weird kid," she says. Going from being on the fan side to now having a fandom of her own that floods her comments is the most striking contrast worth pausing on in this interview.
From LACHSA to Professional Songwriter
Stephens was born in Dallas and moved to LA with her family at age six. She and her brother started landing commercials and Disney Channel cameos early on, tapping into LA's entertainment industry resources, with their parents fully supporting their acting and music training. She attended Los Angeles County High School for the Arts (LACHSA), whose alumni list also includes Phoebe Bridgers, the Haim sisters, and Jordan Patterson. During the day she rehearsed at school; at night she kept running her Tumblr, where she also started posting her earliest original songs, slowly building up the JaeBae community.
After graduating, she briefly lived in London—the reason was simple: to fulfill her dream as a One Direction fan. Back in LA, she dove headfirst into a career as a professional songwriter, landing co-writing credits on tracks for artists like Chxrry, Ne-Yo, and Jennifer Lopez, while also continuing to release her own singles, like "24K" and "Someone Else," with a sound leaning into that smooth, sultry late-2010s R&B/pop lane.
