Cherubini initially chose "Joe Vanotti" as his stage name, but a promotional poster for a night club incorrectly billed him as "Jovanotti" and the name stuck.

Jovanotti is commonly known to his fans by the diminutive form "Jova", and often refers to himself that way in promotional items and on his Web TV channel Jova.TV, which launched 2 October 2014.

Jovanotti gradually departed from his early mix of hip hop, rap and disco, taking in funk, world music and even classical arrangements and ska influences.

As his musical influences changed, so did his lyrics too, which over time began to increasingly address philosophical, religious and political issues, which are more typical of the Italian cantautore tradition.

Jovanotti appears on several international compilations, most notably Red Hot + Rhapsody, a 1998 tribute to George Gershwin, on which he performed "I Got Rhythm".

[2] Two years later, during the summer of 1987, while he was playing a DJ set in Palinuro, he met the record producer and talent scout Claudio Cecchetto, who proposed they begin working together.

His first studio album, Jovanotti for President, was released in 1988 and became the symbol of the Italian youth of the eighties, without any interest in ideologies and politics.

At the end of 2009, he collaborated with Claudio Baglioni and Fabrizio Bosso, along with 70 other artists, in the song "Con tutto il mio cuore (with All My Heart)."

Jovanotti has a friendship with Bono due to their mutual quest for the cancellation of foreign debt in poor African countries.

[13] In 2020 he released exclusively for RaiPlay the documentary in sixteen episodes "Non voglio cambiare Pianeta" (I don't want to change Planet) which he filmed whilst travelling from Chile to Argentina on his bicycle, between January and February 2020.