He Turned PAIN Into BARS | She Turned HERITAGE Into VIBES

What does a rising Armenian rapper with a story of redemption have in common with a Belgian-Armenian artist bringing a fresh global sound to Armenian music? One artist turned pain into purpose. Another is blending Armenian heritage with a modern international sound. In this episode of Between the Notes, Paisan Kapitan welcomes two rising artists from opposite sides of the world. Jake Balmain opens up about overcoming a troubled past, 2nd chances, and channeling life's challenges into music. Meanwhile, Monika Ani joins us from Belgium to discuss her unique blend of deep house, pop, R&B, and Armenian influences, along with her mission to introduce Armenian culture to a new generation of listeners around the globe. From faith and second chances to creativity, identity, and the future of Armenian music, this episode delivers two inspiring stories from artists determined to leave their mark. 🎤 Jake Balmain discusses: • Turning pain into music • Leaving a difficult past behind • Finding purpose, peace, and a second chance • Working with Kolo and producers Jay Specs & MGO • Upcoming collaborations and what's next in his career 🌍 Monika Ani joins via webcast from Brussels to discuss: • Blending Armenian roots with modern global sounds • Deep house, R&B, synthwave, and Armenian influences • Representing Armenian culture on an international stage • Being a female independent artist in today's music industry • Why authenticity matters more than chasing trends This episode is about more than music. It's about resilience, identity, and the next generation of Armenian artists creating their own path. 🔥 Featuring music, behind-the-scenes stories, artist insights, faith, redemption, and plenty of laughs along the way. 👇 Tell us in the comments: Which artist's story resonated with you most? ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎙️ SUPPORT OUR GUESTS ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎤 JAKE BALMAIN Instagram: @jakebalmain YouTube: @jakebalmain 🌍 MONIKA ANI Instagram: @monika.anii YouTube: @monika-ani 🎙️ PAISAN KAPITAN Instagram: @paisankapitan www.PaisanKapitan.com 📻 HYE JAMS RADIO Instagram: @hyejams www.HyeJams.com 📱 Download the Hye Jams App in the App Store 🎵 Listen 24/7 to your favorite Armenian hits on the Hye Jams iHeartRadio channel ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎬 PRODUCTION NOTES ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Featured music videos used in this production were provided by, approved by, and used with permission from the writers, producers, and performers of the featured songs, who also appeared as guests in this episode. Background Music: Morning Light Music License #: 2510-71789 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎥 PRODUCED BY ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Wayne Lewis Chummy Inc. © 2026 All Rights Reserved.