The Final of Finland’s UMK (Uuden Musiikin Kilpailu) is now less than one week away. Before our Sebi packs his bags for the big show Tampere, it was time to chat with another artist who will make his UMK début at Nokia Arena on Saturday, 10th February!

This time, Sebi and Dave had the pleasure of chatting with Jesse Markin, who will perform Glow at UMK 2024. Jesse is a is a Finnish-Liberian rapper and singer who has released two studio albums since releasing his first singles (Blood and Will Shoot) in 2018.

Jesse made headlines shortly after being announced as a finalist of UMK, for stating he will not compete in Eurovision if Israel is part of the competition in Malmö. Since his initial statement, the EBU have clarified that Israel will compete. We asked Jesse about his comments:

“I feel like the situation was I was condemning Hamas but I was at the same time condemning the strategies and actions with this excessive use of force, and I just said because people were asking me, ‘How do you feel about the situation?’ and I replied to that specific question – that no, I’m not going to partake if Israel is gonna take part in this competition. I feel like at the same time, they have a crisis going on in their own country, why you want to go to a party instead of focus on that situation? […] I’m not really looking at it like Israel is evil or anything like that, I’m not criticizing even the people of Israel. I’m just criticizing the military strategies around this thing.”

– Jesse Markin

Interestingly, Jesse is the second artist trying to get to Eurovision this year who was born in Liberia. We also recently spoke with Annprincess in Norway who, like Jesse, left Liberia as a child.

Based on Jesse’s comments in our interview, the staging of Glow sounds incredible – we look forward to seeing it and wish him the best of luck on Saturday!