

Until 2006 Shwekey's primary studio was "Studio X" (run by Yochi Briskman, engineered by AJ Greenwald) today, some of his recording is done in his private home studio. Many different arrangers have arranged his albums in the past including Moshe Laufer, Mona Rosenblum, Yanky Briskman, Leib Yaakov Rigler, and Yisroel Lamm. Going forward, he has produced his own albums with Yitzy Waldner. Until late 2015, his albums were produced by Yochi Briskman, and distributed in the US by Aderet Music, and in Israel by JMI. Shwekey's songs and lyrics are generally composed by others. After learning for a few years in the Deal kollel and his consequent marriage, Shwekey launched his professional career as a singer. In his young adult years, Shwekey learned in Rabbi Menachem Davidowitz's yeshiva (TIUNY) in Rochester, NY. As a child, he sang in the Ateret Yosef Choir in Mexico City, and he and his brother Yisroel Meir sang with the Miami Boys Choir for a short period of time. He later lived in Lakewood, NJ, and Brooklyn, NY, and attended Yeshiva of Brooklyn before moving to Long Branch, NJ.

In his early years, Shewkey lived in the Bayit VeGan neighborhood of Jerusalem, but he eventually moved to Polanco, Mexico City, and attended Yeshiva Ateret Yosef.

His parents had met and married in New York City. Yaakov Shwekey was born in Jerusalem to an Ashkenazi Jewish mother raised in the United States, and a Sephardi Jewish father born in Cairo to a family from a Syrian background.
