Korean-American singer Jhameel may not have made it into the final rounds of "American Idol" in February, but he claims that's not a bad thing.

Earlier this week, Jhameel discussed why not making it into the Top 40 contestants on "American Idol" was fine with him, in an exclusive interview with KpopStarz..

"It was more like I was hoping it wouldn't happen because I didn't want to deal with the subsequent contracts that would pop up after," Jhameel said.

"If you sign on [to be on the list of Top 40 contestants], you have to pretty much sign away all your music rights to 'American Idol' as a brand. And then you can't release your own stuff for a few years after the winners are announced."

"It would have been a really confusing decision on the part of me and my team," he added.

The musician said his ambiguity about the looming branding straitjacket fueled his desire to stamp his own identity on TV screens.

"My main thing was to get that initial audition on air. I knew that most of the viewers would be in the first week of the show," Jhameel said."It was very lucky that they put me in Kansas City, too, because I knew that Middle America would be one of the earliest showings."

The singer may have sidestepped larger problems as an indie-pop musician but got as much mileage as he could out of his performances, doing his best to control his expectations.

"I put on very exaggerated face paint," Jhameel said.

"I did the origami and stuff to be very showy. I knew that they would think that I was ethnic, so there would have been a good chance that it would air. After that, me and my team were pretty decidedly 'no' on going forward beyond Hollywood Beach. It was actually very relieving how everything turned out," he stated.

The San Francisco-based artist said the "American Idol" producers did a great job capturing his individual flair.

"I was actually really happy with how they showed me," he said.

"I thought they did a much more interesting job than what I thought they were going to show. I was really going in for the experience and for meeting other artists. I had a great time."

The singer didn't speculate on how far he might have gone had he gotten to the audience voting portion of "American Idol," but he believes his artistic life may have taken a turn he wasn't prepared to make.

"I think it would have been a little scary for me and my team because it's hard to get out of the stamp of a television brand," Jhameel said.

"We're sort of marathoners as far as the music industry. We really want to solidify a brand on our terms. Were we to go on with 'American Idol,' I feel like we would have run the risk of being stamped as an 'American Idol' artist for a long time."

"We have large ambitions to express a lot of things," he added. "I don't want it to be like 'oh he's an artist or musician from 'American Idol.' Does that make sense? It sounds a little disparaging."

Jhameel wanted to be clear that he wasn't putting the hugely popular television show down. But he wonders if he would have been a good fit.

"My audience is a bit different from a lot of American artists," he explained.

"My audience is a strange mix of alternative music consumers but also Asian music consumers. So it's hard to say what route I would go through, had I gotten past a certain point on 'American Idol.' Because I feel like I would have to use that to tap into an audience that is a little bit allergic to that concept."

Jhameel said he didn't get to hang out with "American Idol" judges Jennifer Lopez, Keith Urban Harry Connick, Jr. and Scott Borchetta "outside of the initial audition. But we did have some nice conversations."

Jhameel, who self-released his debut album, "Jhameel," in 2009 described how exciting it was to be a featured performer at the series of "American Idol" movie-theme shows entitled Hollywood Week, earlier this month.

"There were seasoned veterans, incredibly practiced performers," he said.

"I personally was very friendly. I'm a talkative guy, I like to talk. I never thought of [the other contestants] competitively. I still talk to them. It's an interesting community that we built."

But when he hit the stage, Jhameel recalls he was all business, giving everything he had.

"I went up and I talked about my experience with my self-loathing and suicide," he said. "I just opened up with these kids. I had all these things and I figured out that you gotta accept them rather than fight them. That was my message and I wanted people to hear that message. Kids started crying. It was a really big moment for me. That was the first time I put my heart out in front of people who I respect."

The intimacy of his confessions preluded what Jhameel recalls was a stirring performance.

"I started playing 'Big Poppa' by Biggie Smalls, a melodic version of it," he said. "[The audience of judges, producers and other contestants] started going crazy. They were putting their hands up. When I got eliminated, when I walked down, everyone was reaching their hands out to me. People were crying. It was unbelievable. I can't even tell you without sounding like boastful but it was an unbelievable experience. I'm never going to forget that."

Watch Jhameel's "American Idol" season 14 audition RIGHT HERE