In record time she went from the classroom to the studio to being on tour. In less than three years, the girl with the shy smile, tin grin and locks has captivated hearts and audiences worldwide to the point that in 2019, her hit, Toast, was the number one graduation song all across Jamaica. Everywhere from kindergarten to college had a processional dancing to the feel-good song about counting one’s blessings and staying positive despite the many obstacles in life.

Hers was a meteoric rise from school talent show to sharing space with megastars like Nick Cannon on ‘Wildin Out’ and performances on prime-time television in the United States. Her newfound fame is the stuff that many artistes dream of, and when she won the Grammy and created history as the youngest winner in the reggae category, it was just the cherry on the Baileys cheesecake as it validated that here was a unique, fresh talent with a killer flow who was going places.

Unfortunately,

her rise seems to irritate the demons of some people, particularly those who

either have no career or whose careers have stalled. Since they cannot

discredit her talent, they have to find other means of ‘tearing down’ the

youngster, so the easy target is her appearance and her sexuality.

Now, this is where it gets dicey. Some fans love the fact that here is a female that unlike the other female artiste out there, is not into revealing flesh or singing about her vagina to get a hype but actually can compose good, clean lyrics that make sense. Here is a girl that stays away from clashing and making a name by feuding with others. She just puts her music out there, and if you like it, great and if you do not, then she is simply not your cup of tea. Yes, she prefers shorts, jumpers and pants to dresses and heels, but it is just her unique style, and she looks good in her own tomboyish way. Right?

Wrong! They say she dressed not like a tomboy but a ‘butch’, so she must be into women romantically. Whether she is or she is not, she is of age and her sexual orientation is not my business or anyone else’s. Quite a few people have a problem with Koffee, but underneath it, the issue is not about how she looks and who she dates. At the core of their problem, they believe that at her age she blew up too big while many are still struggling to ‘buss’.

The fact is many cannot buss because they are some serious ‘iron balloons’ with little talent and lots of issues, chief among them pettiness and jealousy. How dare this young girl just come on the scene and become the darling of reggae, rubbing shoulders with people who are movers and shakers in the industry when some of them have been beating the pavement or years to only get the door closed in their faces. How dare she have actual talent! She does not know her place and she has not paid her dues. She is an upstart and should be struggling alongside them.

This is the

current mindset and is the mentality of people who in Jamaican vernacular we

call ‘bad mind’. If Koffee likes women, how does it change the price of oil on

the market? Has it affected Jamaica’s rising COVID numbers? Has it made the

dollar slide any faster? What these so-called music critics need to do is take

Koffee’s advice and go put their smartphones, their mess and drama on lockdown

and sit down with a book and a sharp pencil and pray for some divine

inspiration to pen an actual hit song.