Jamaican-born artiste Shantoi Douglas is all about love and women empowerment as she embarks on her music career.

The up-and-coming artiste, whose stage name is Shantoi, shared with OBSERVER ONLINE that she started to view music as a career in 2015, though music has been an integral part of her life since around age seven when she was a member of her elementary school chorus.

She added, however, that she does not want to be boxed into one genre of music.

“I started off doing R&B and Pop and as I grew within my culture, I decided that I don’t want to be labelled. I want to be versatile. If I have to learn Spanish to sing a Spanish song then I will do it. If I have to twang to do a dancehall song, I am going to do it. I consider myself to be a versatile artiste. I don’t really stand under one genre because I feel like I am multi-talented,” Douglas said.

The artiste, who now resides in New York, shared that in addition to singing, she has been dancing since she was 14. This led to her placing second at a popular New York competition called Amateur Night at The Apollo.

“I was in a dance group called Vintage Quality where we danced in Amateur Night Apollo in Harlem. I did hip-hop and dancehall choreography and I came in second for singing while my dance group danced around me as I performed Donna Summer’s Last dance,” she disclosed.

This opened Shantoi’s eyes to her love for performing, which ultimately helped her to turn something she loves into a career 

Shantoi holds a degree in Psychology which she said touches on another passion of hers; to help people heal. In combining both loves, Shantoi hopes to create music that listeners won’t only enjoy but heal from.

“I want to make music to help and heal people, as well as focus on women empowerment; I am big on that. So in a lot of my music, I think of writing about love, heartbreak – things that are realistic,” the young artiste said.

“I feel like women should not settle. Some songs, like the single that I actually just wrote called Wasteman, are not to degrade men but to encourage women to know their worth. That’s the type of music that I will be making; music that is from a woman’s point of view [along the lines of] don’t settle, and love yourself.”

Shantoi added that her fans can also expect some Jamaican-flavour in her music, which she says will be coming as soon as her new single Wasteman is released.

“The single that I just recorded is actually dancehall. It has an afro-dancehall beat going on but I am also doing a little bit of R&B with dancehall in it. That is the first official dancehall song that I have ever written so I am really excited to put that one out,” Shantoi said.

The artiste revealed that while she grows her musical repertoire and following, she is also working with children with mental illness which hasWAT

“My goal is to be mainstream, performing on the big stages. I actually love to perform, so that is where I expect to be – on the bigger stages performing with bigger artistes that made a way for someone like me,” she said.