For Quite Perry, timing is everything.

The 30-year-old content creator earlier this month took home a 2021 Prime Minister Youth Award for new media in his final year of eligibility for the prestigious honour – a groundbreaking moment that arguably would not have happened had the popular Youtuber not made the bold decision to reject a previous PM Youth Award nomination.

According to the entertainer, whose birth name is Rohan Perry, he “politely declined” a previous nomination in the category of Journalism.

“I just didn’t feel like what I was doing aligned with the very essence of what journalists do in Jamaica and it just didn’t feel right. So, when I got the second email last year that I was being considered in a new category, the category of New Media, I was elated,” Perry told OBSERVER ONLINE.

Perry said he felt unspeakable joy at being considered a second time and that organisers of the PM Youth Awards thought his work so inspiring that it influenced them to create a new category. He said the latter was testimony that people were paying attention to content creators and that was not just validation for him, but for all social media influencers.

“The fact that they saw the need to highlight persons like myself in new media and digital media meant the world to me. It was not just acknowledgement, but them saying ‘we see you as important’,” he shared. “From inception I have always wanted Jamaica as a whole to see us as viable people. We are just as important as athletes or artistes because we contribute so much to cultural development as well.

“I have always wanted us to be seen as important and not just as somebody who tell likkle joke pan IG,” he continued. “For the Government of Jamaica to be moving in that direction and highlighting persons like myself in this huge way, it’s a blessing.”

Perry, who revealed that he’s very keen on inspiration, says he hopes his latest achievement will motivate the next generation of social media influencers to go after their dreams unashamedly and without reservations.

“I didn’t have a hard time taking the path that I did but I did have push backs. Getting my parents to see this as a career path was challenging. But I have been doing this now for five/six years and I’m still thriving, still consistent, still relevant and successful and this is my only livelihood,” he shared. “I want when kids go to school, it’s a situation where they say, ‘I want to be like Quite Perry or I want to be a comedian or YouTuber or social media influencer and it’s not frowned upon. I want it to be embraced as the viable career path it is.”

Now focused on using his exposure and social media successes to catapult him further into the entertainment realm, Quite Perry says he is looking forward to fermenting his legacy as an all-round entertainer.

“A lot of what it took to become Quite Perry was unintentional but now I am completely focused on taking my brand further and will definitely be more intentional with my goals. I feel like in being Quite Perry and doing what I do, I broke a lot of molds and I feel like I am ready to take the next step into my future.”

And what exactly does that future look like? Well, Quite Perry revealed that it involves bigger and world class productions.

“I want to explore other avenues in terms of putting myself out there and I think my next step is doing bigger productions or being a part of bigger productions, even if I am not the one who’s heading it,” he said. “What that looks like for me is movies, whether internationally or locally. I just want to expand the whole talent side of me to see what else is there.”

Still holding on to the saying ‘time is the master of all good things’, Perry shared that he’s just putting in the work and allowing the chips to fall where they may.

“Timing is a hell of a thing. I just think everything was very serendipitous because had I gone forth and accepted the award when I was first nominated, this would not have been. I don’t think it would have nudged them (at the PM Youth Awards) to say ‘oh wait, hold on, I think we need a different category for persons like Quite Perry, the influencers who are a part of the media world but aren’t journalists,” he said.

“So now, I’m just doing the work and waiting for the rewards to come.”