Soft-spoken contemporary R&B singer/songwriter Josh X ably handles wholesome romantic ballads, brash slow jams, and hedonistic club tracks. Active since the late 2000s, when he became known as Josh X-an-tus, he has released well over a dozen singles, such as the charting "First Time" and "Heaven on My Mind," as well as a couple commercial EPs, namely Amour (2017) and Piano Confessions (2019). The latter was distributed by major-label Epic.

Born in Brooklyn and raised in Queens, Joshua Exantus started playing piano at the age of six and wrote his first song, spurred by hearing Brian McKnight's "Anytime," roughly seven years later. He developed his talent at the Juilliard School and Five Towns College. After he contributed to Grafh's Black Hand America mixtape -- on which he was credited as Josh Exantus -- he made his recorded debut as Josh X-an-tus with the 2008 single "Let's Ride," featuring Jadakiss. Additional singles were scattered throughout the next few years, highlighted by "First Time," which spent 12 weeks on Billboard's Adult R&B chart in 2009, and the Ghostface Killah collaboration "I Don't Care," which two years later had a month-long stay on the R&B/hip-hop chart. During the same period, he provided hooks on tracks for Statik Selektah and Termanology.

Around the mid-2010s, Exantus shortened his performing name to Josh X and continued to progress into the next decade. In 2015, he enlisted Jadakiss again for "All for Love" and co-wrote "Ready to Go," sung by Jussie Smollett, for the television series Empire. The next year, his name was on the Adult R&B chart for 20 weeks with the KSR release "Heaven on My Mind," a collaboration with new labelmate Cardi B. This success led to the 2017 arrival of Amour, an EP containing a solo version of the preceding hit. Exantus and KSR then struck a distribution deal with Epic, resulting first in another single with a long stay on the Adult R&B chart, the 2018 Rick Ross collaboration "All on Me." Across 2019 and 2020, Exantus' supply of new music was steady, including the Piano Confessions EP and singles such as "I Don't Care" (with Ghostface Killah), "No Luv," and "I Miss You." ~ Andy Kellman