Shenseea talks rise from promo girl to top artiste: “I just felt the calling”
Shenseea is one of the biggest acts in dancehall music now, but not many have heard the full story of how she made it to the genre’s peak.
In November 2015, the artiste gave birth to her son Rajeiro, and went on to join Romeich Entertainment in February of the following year, but not as part of his artiste roster; she was a bottle girl working parties and serving musical acts who she would soon perform alongside.
“I told myself that I want to take on my music career now. In school you will see all these upcoming artistes do music, beat desk and all a dat and everything ina school but I told myself that school for me, I’m not gonna do this over,” Shenseea said in a sit-down interview with Yendi Phillipps on Odyssey with Yendi. “I’m just gonna focus on academics, get the job done, get my CXCs and that’s what I did.”
“I used to sing every day in class but not to the point where it distracted me from my schoolwork, and remember, I’m in love with music.”
“I focused, got my CXCs and then after the birth of my son I felt that it was time. I just felt the calling like ‘Start!’. At that time I had never written a song before in my life; we’re talking about November, December 2015. Never written a song. I was on Facebook and all of that doing covers of other people’s songs.”
She said early mornings while trying to put her son back to sleep became the time she would begin to write her first words that became sentences and later verses for her songs. “I used to sit with my friends and be like ‘tell me if this sound good’, ’cause remember, it’s my first time,” she told Phillipps.
After joining Romeich, two months later in April 2016, she would record Jiggle Jiggle that put her on the music radar. “That’s my first song I had ever written and recorded. While Jiggle Iiggle song out, I was still a promo girl,” she said of her decision to continue the ‘hustle’, with her boss’ support.
The 24-year-old said it wasn’t until her next big hit, Loodi – which featured Vybz Kartel – was released that she stopped doing promotional work at parties when other producers pulled her manager aside and said it was time for her to stop.
Jiggle Jiggle, which has more than three million YouTube views, would go on to launch her meteoric career as Loodi followed up months later, garnering almost 31 million views on the streaming service.
