Jay Sean Beats BEP to Billboard #1

Just six months after AR Rahman became the first Indian artist to  score a US Top 20 hit, Jay Sean becomes the first British-Asian artist to score a No.1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Of course, the man who was born in Southall and named Kamaljit Singh Jhooti by his parents may be cited as just British in most interviews he does with American press (and he probably would not have got so far if he wasn’t on Cash  Money Records, also home to Lil’ Wayne) but at least he has never denied his roots in the way a certain Farrokh Bulsara (in theory the most successful Indian on the American pop charts ever) did. Besides, if Jay should ever choose to deny his desi background, he will always have this to haunt him.

On the bright side, Sean will also go down in chart history as the chap who ended the Black Eyed Peas’s six-month-long stranglehold at the top. There is a God! He should enjoy the glory while it last though because in all likelihood, he will be displaced by Britney Spears’s new single ’3′, the current best-selling download on iTunes.

Watch ‘Down’.