James Roberson

Besides his day job teaching music at UCLA, Professor James Roberson is a music producer — having worked with Kirk Franklin, Howard Hewitt, Vanessa Bell Armstrong, and Beverly Crawford — plus the president and founder of the gospel-based label JDI Records. After earning a Masters Degree in Business Administration, Roberson went to work for the major label Capitol. While he was a rising star on the business side of the label, he says he felt God calling him to launch his own gospel imprint. Roberson started JDI (Just Do It) in 1999 with only seven dollars in his bank account. Fortunately, their debut release, Norman Hutchins' Battlefield, was a hit and from there JDI would release a steady stream of hit gospel albums. They became so successful that Billboard magazine named them the "#1 Fastest Growing Record Company in the World" while both the Wall Street Journal and USA Today ran articles focusing on Roberson the entrepreneur. Calling upon friends like the Winans and Malcolm Speed, he came out from behind the scenes and released Everybody Dance! under his own name in 2009. The album featured the hit title cut, a house music flavored track that received mainstream club play.