INTERVIEW: Jay Sean On 'Make My Love Go,' Sean Paul & More | My First Time

After almost three years, Jay Sean is back with a brand new summertime-fresh single, just as the season of sunshine and beach time is under way. "Make My Love Go" features Jamaican-born recording artist Sean Paul, who Jay collaborated with on his 2010 "Do You Remember," and is an amazing addition to your summer playlist with its tropical, dance vibe. Jay Sean recently stopped by iHeartRadio HQ in New York City where he told us all about his new single was created during an exclusive interview.

Jay Sean On Collaborating With Sean Paul On "Make My Love Go"

"My brand new single is called 'Make My Love Go.' It features Sean [Paul], and now I can call him Sean because this is my second song I've done with him. We had a huge song called 'Do You Remember' a couple years back, and so when I was writing this one, because it has that kind of dance hall island-y feel, I just knew straight away that his voice would lend to this and bring the song some more life. So I called him up and I was like, 'Sean, I think it's time to do it again, bro.' Ao that's how the song came about."

[Buy "Make My Love Go" on iTunes]

Jay Sean Reveals His First Time Experiences

Over the last 13 years of releasing music, Jay Sean has had quite a few hits over the course of his career (we still can't get "Down" out of our heads), so we decided to take a trip down memory lane and ask him about all of his first music milestones from the first song he ever wrote, to the first time he ever heard one of his own tracks on the radio. Check it out below!

FIRST TIME MEETING SEAN PAUL:

"He's super, super chill, like me. Sometimes you can get an artist to come to the set and their energy's kind of weird and it's off, and people have weird things that they don't like. He was super, super chill about everything. I guess because he's been doing it for so many years, you feel like the people who have been in the game for like, ten plus years, they've kind of seen everything, done everything. There's no airs and graces about him, so we clicked straight away."

FIRST TIME YOU HEARD SEAN PAUL'S VERSE ON 'MAKE MY LOVE GO':

"I don't know how to explain it. That feeling doesn't go away or that excitement of like, 'What's this going to sound like?' It's like opening up a present at Christmas. It's like you're forever a kid with that stuff. So I sent it off to him, and I remember where I was. I was in the lounge coming back from Dubai, actually, and he sent me over the verse and I listened to it, and I was like, 'Yes!' That's when I knew, 'Yes, this is going to be out of here.'

FIRST ALBUM YOU EVER BOUGHT:

"It was Lionel Richie Back to Front, and I was eight. Why was I buying Lionel Richie when I was an eight-year-old? I don't get it, but hey, I guess it gave me a mature taste in music, so I liked it."

FIRST SONG YOU EVER WROTE:

"It was a song about my girlfriend at the time, and it was a very, very bittersweet song. Actually, it was very mean. It was called 'One Minute,' and I didn't know that I was writing a song. I didn't know I could write songs. It was, we had a breakup and we were falling apart, and it was a way of me being able to spill my emotions through a pen, I guess. Actually, it even ended up on my first album. I don't know if she knows it's about her. I must have been 18 I think at the time."

FIRST TIME PERFORMING IN FRONT OF AN AUDIENCE:

"The first time I did in front of an audience was actually -- apart from when my mom used to make me sing in front of the family. For example, they'd come over from Canada and she'd be like, 'My son, sing,' and I was like a performing monkey and it's like ... I'm like, seven/eight. Every mom I'm sure does this if they have a child who dances or does anything. I was that guy, so not including that, I think it would have been school band night. I was actually part of a hip hop group first. I used to rap before I used to sing. So that was 14-years-old, and it was front of the school, and it's always kind of nerve racking because you know how they can tease you. It was like, 'Oh, you think you're a rapper,' but I actually, ended up being really, really good. We had our own material. At the age of 14. I don't know what we were rapping about. Probably like, geography or our teachers or something. [Our group name] was called Compulsive Disorder. That was the name of it, because me and my cousin, it was both of us in it, and we were kind of geeky, but at the same time we had the hip hop thing going on. So we were like, OCD about everything. So OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder, and it became Compulsive Disorder. I don't know, but yes."

FIRST PAYING JOB:

"I used to work for Marks and Spencer, which they don't have here in America. It's like a very high end grocery store, it's like Whole Foods, and I got fired because I didn't take it very seriously, and I used to take breaks and stay up in the canteen for too long. I only had two jobs in my whole life. There was that, and then there was the airport, and that was it. [At the airport] waiting tables and cleaning crap off the floor and that was it. And I was like, 'Yeah, I don't know if this work thing is for me,' so I guess it was never meant to be."

FIRST THING YOU SPENT YOUR FIRST PAYCHECK ON:

"A car, of course. It's stupid, but we all do that. It was a BMW convertible, silver, beautiful, and nobody told me at the time, like, 'Maybe try to buy a house or do something like that,' but no, I just, straight on [bought] the car. But, you have to kind of go through this. You have to kind of go through it, and it was a big deal for me. I was young and I had this beautiful, fancy car, and yes, I'll never forget that."

FIRST CONCERT YOU EVER WENT TO AS A FAN:

"I used to go to a lot of hip hop concerts, because like I said, I was really into hip hop, so I think one of the, one of the first that I remember was actually Biggie. It was Biggie and R. Kelley together, which was a really big one to go to. It was great, it was it Wembley. I was probably like 13/14 at the time, but it was a big deal. And then from there, I used to go to hip hop concerts all the time. Wu Tang, Roots, anyone you can imagine, I saw them all in concert. One of the best ones I went to was to see Eminem before he was Eminem -- before he was the Eminem he is. I had a friend who was a DJ, on a pirate radio station, and Eminem at the time was just trying to make a name, and he had 'My Name Is' out in America, kind of bubbling, but in England, nobody knew who he was. There were only a hundred people at this show. I'm not even lying. Literally I was right at the front. Nobody really knew who he was, and my guy was like, 'Yo, I've got some tickets to this guy's concert. He's meant to be really dope. Do you want to come?' And I was like, 'Sure.' And of course, then two months later, he came back to England and he was performing at the arena, so it was pretty mad. That was one of the best ones. The energy was crazy, though, because I remember, it was like Eight Mile. It was just the mosh pit and it was just a hundred hip hop heads going crazy. It was just him, and a microphone, and a DJ. There was nothing fancy about it, but the energy was so crazy, and I remember thinking, 'This guy is going to be a star.'"

FIRST TIME EVER FEELING STARSTRUCK:

"When I met Natalie Imbruglia. In England, she used to be on this show called 'Neighbors,' and it was like a soap opera, and I used to watch it religiously. I had the biggest crush on her. And then I became an artist and I went to this awards show in England, and she was there, because she's also a singer. I kind of sat next to her, and I lost all my cool and I thought I was slick with it, and I was mumbling nonsense to her, and I kept calling her Beth, which was her name in 'Neighbors.' I was like, 'What am I doing?' It was terrible."

FIRST TIME WATCHING YOUR FIRST MUSIC VIDEO:

"I thought it was awesome. It was actually a really good music video, too, because it was the first song that I got signed, so they put a lot of money into it and a lot of effort. One thing I've always done -- a little fun fact -- every single music video that I've done ever in my life, and I must have done over 30/40 music videos now, is have my friends in it or my family. Pretty much every single one, at one point, there will be a cameo from someone because I just think when this is all over and we're all old, and we can look back at this and be like, 'Oh, look. That's when you were in this,' and it's documented there forever. So the first one had all my best friends in it. We shot it in England, and it came out amazing, and I was just like, 'Wow, I have my own music video. This is like, pretty insane.' It was a song called 'Dance With You.' This is going back 15 years now. I even put my granddad in [one], my grandma. My granddad came into one of the music videos. He had a girl on this arm, a girl on that [arm], and he's walking into the party. It was so fun, though, and rest in peace, he's passed away now, but we'll always have that memory of him and like ... Pimp status. It was amazing. It was fun."

FIRST TIME HEARING YOUR SONG ON THE RADIO:

"[I'll] never forget that. I was pulling into my driveway in England, and I heard the song, and I was like, 'No, no. This is just my CD.' Because obviously I was making my album at the time, and so I'm listening to the songs on the album, seeing if I like it, seeing if I need to add anything else. So I pressed the eject button, and of course it's still playing. I was like, 'Oh my gosh, I'm actually on the radio right now!' And you do that cliché thing. You scream in the car, because you're on the radio, and you'll never, never forget that. I put the window down, I was screaming to all my neighbors, like, 'Look, I'm on the radio right now!' It was 'Dance With You.' It was the first single. But, I still get just as happy and excited when I hear my song on the radio. That feeling will never get boring or tired or old to me, because especially now when you have so much talent, and so many people out there who are writing songs, and there's Vine stars and YouTubers, and everything, yours is still one of the only 40 or 50 that will ever get played at this moment in time. That's a really big deal."

Photos: Wendy George for iHeartRadio