Koffee

One Liner:  Young reggae lady with a super catchy sound and a Rihanna co-sign

Wikipedia Genre: Reggae, dancehall
Home: Spanish Town, Jamaica.

Poster Position: 12

Both Weekends

Thoughts: Hell yes.  I'm no reggae aficionado, but this lady's sound is super catchy.  Only six songs available on Spotify, but I've been looping through them for a while now and the groove and singing is all cool.

Her top hit is "Toast," which boasts 10.6 million streams.

Great beat, cool vocal delivery - like I said, very catchy.  According to the comments to that video, Rihanna has been sharing this song on her instagram story so a lot of people found the video through that path.  33 million views for the video, so pretty impressive.

I was thinking what a cool name this is, and how well it matches the reggae dancehall feel of these tracks, but then I found that the Wikipedia entry for Koffee is for a digital radio station in Australia, whose slogan is "Time to Chill," and I'm not here for that.  I hate that radio station now.  Oh, but now I found a Wikipedia entry, just have to specify (singer).  Nice.

Random other aside - the start of "Rapture" has some synth bits that very much remind me of a section of some Linkin Park song - a weird twist when listening to a reggae album.  Here is a live version, but it sounds like the studio.  3.2 million streams.

I have no clue what she is saying.  I know at least part of it is in English - I heard "process" and "rapture" and "capture" in there, but she just flows those syllables right over the beat without any pained pronunciation.  Seems effortless and cool.

I found an interview with Koffee that has a fascinating history of some of what makes reggae its thing - although I've never heard of Nest HQ as a website or thing, this is great stuff:

The Jamaican approach to a typical musical ‘compilation’ is called a ‘riddim.’ First an instrumental is created in the same fashion as any other type of music. Think reggae/dancehall. The riddim is then given a name (i.e. Sleng Teng Riddim, which is considered the first all digital riddim created in 1984). The name of the riddim comes either from the producer who made it or after artists have “voiced” on it and the lyrics or narrative influence the name. What sets this approach apart from most other types of music is that as many as 20+ artists will perform a separate song (or ‘chune’) on the same instrumental. Sleng Teng is among the most “versioned” (rerecorded) of Jamaican riddims, listing around 380 versions to date. When the songs are completed and released, a ‘selector’ (otherwise known as a DJ in most other cultures) will mix the songs together and go between each artists song on the riddim, typically relatively quickly, which is known as ‘juggling’ all the while ‘chatting’ on the microphone to energize the crowd. With that being said, a particular riddim could be played for several minutes depending on how much the crowd and selector are feeling the music and the selector will typically follow this up with other riddims throughout their set.

Koffee (Mikayla "Koffee" Simpson) is a 19 year old deejay/singer, and the article goes on to describe some of the riddims she used to make her music.  Interesting stuff.  They also lay the groundwork for a claim that Jamaica was actually the birthplace of rap.  And when you listen to the vocals over the top of these tracks, it actually sounds very much like the current rap world - half rap/half singing.  Check out this video - purportedly her first time in the studio - she looks like a child and spits like a pro (reading lyrics off her phone!).

Yeah, baby.  That is one of her singles - "Raggamuffin" released in 2018 and with 1.4 million streams.

I think she is cool - her tunes are catchy, her style is nice - I'd go try this out.