LargeUp Interview: Protoje On Reggae Revivals + Eight-Year Affairs

Words by Jesse Serwer, Photos by Martei Korley—

We’ve been hearing more and more lately about the community of young artists in Jamaica bringing live musicianship and roots consciousness back to reggae’s forefront. At the center of this movement, which includes bands like No-maddz and Raging Fyah and singers and deejays such as Chronixx, Kabaka Pyramid, Jesse Royal and Jah 9, is Oje Ken Olliviere, better known as Protoje. But, while “new roots” is a tag being used to describe this new energy, Protoje’s style is trickier to pin down.

Inspired by raggamuffin deejays like Ini Kamoze and the early ’80s production style of Sly and Robbie and Henry “Junjo” Lawes, his sophomore album, The Eight Year Affair (which was produced by his cousin, Donovan “Don Corleon” Bennett and released last month) sounds like nothing else coming out of Jamaica currently, yet its vintage energy feels right on time for the moment.

Musical diversity is in Protoje’s DNA. His mother is Jamaican singer Lorna Bennett, known for her ‘70s Lovers Rock hit “Breakfast In Bed”; his father, now a renowned track and field coach in Jamaica, was a calypsonian in his native St. Vincent known as Lord Have Mercy. We caught up with Protoje to find out about his inspirations for The Eight Year Affair, how his musical upbringing shaped him, and what his plans are to continue spreading the gospel of live music in Jamaica.

LargeUp: Tell me about the sound on this record…

Protoje: I wanted to do an update of that early ‘80s Sly and Robbie sound, with my flavor and influence from hip-hop on top of that. That’s what we really came up with. In those songs, you can really hear the influence of Ini Kamoze and Sly and Robbie…

LU: Was it a sound that [producer] Don Corleon was working with already or something you pushed him to create for you?

Protoje: Definitely a sound I was talking to him to do. Don is more one-drop and contemporary reggae, and I’m really into that Junjo Lawes, Channel One type of sound. That’s where I’m at. When we were in Europe together, we saw Barrington Levy performing—and he’s predominantly Junjo Lawes stuff— and I was like Don, this is the exact sound I want to dive into full time. I gave him the Black Uhuru Red album, and the Ini Kamoze Statement album. When we came back to Jamaica, he’d figured it out. I give him a lot of props. That shows how versatile he is, because he’s never really dived into that sound, he just did it basically to deliver on my wish, and he’s done a masterful job at it.

LU: What is it about that era that you identify with?

Protoje: Just the grittiness of it. I don’t know if it’s cause I was born close to that time. To see Sly and Robbie and Black Uhuru on stage just makes me feel alive, and I just always wanted to be on stage like that. That era to me is just my era. A lot of people are into the late 70s, Bob Marley and the Wailers era, which is also a Golden Era….

LU: Sometimes things are lionized because they are the greatest, but there’s other things that are good, too, and everybody forgets about. That seems to have happened with reggae…

Protoje: Exactly, you hit the nail on the head. That’s what I mean. A lot of people turn a blind eye to that era. For me now to keep it going I had to bring the influence that had on me and not just do what everybody is doing. It would be easy for me to jump into that Wailers era right now but for me it was important to bring forth this different type of sound. The type of energy the music has right now, I think it fits perfectly.

LU: The track that really stands out on this album is “Who Dem a Program,” that has a late ’80s dancehall sound with a synthesized melodica sound…

Protoje: Don had that riddim from about 2006, and he just happened to play it for me. When I heard it I was like yo, this is so fresh. It reminded me of that early ‘90s “Girl You Make My Day” Buju Banton type of sound. I live there. I write on all those riddims all day because that’s what I grew up on. And that was the first song that started this album. I drove down to the country to write that song. It really energized me to go forward with the second album because the sound was so different and so fresh. I’m all about trying to bring a different sound, not to be in any set pattern, but to experiment and go along up from the ‘80s to now, even to future sounds. It’s about experimenting and that gave the album a different flavor.

LU: Don Corleon is your first cousin, right? Tell me about coming up with and working together with him….

Protoje: We started a sound system together called Vendetta. I went away for about two years to Canada to do some schooling, and he kind of blew up in that two years when I was away, with the Mad Ants riddim… When I came back, I wanted to work with him but I guess he didn’t think I was ready. I went off on my own mission for a couple years and, in about 2008, I did “Arguments,” produced by DJ Karim, and that song kind of got my name out there. I invited Don to one of my shows at this time, and he heard me song do a song called “Dread,” and asked have I recorded it. I told him I was working on an album, and asked if he wanted to produce it. He said yeah, so I gave him song ideas I had, and he had a bunch of ideas he wanted me to try. And that’s how we started to work.

Read on for Part 2, as Protoje discusses growing up with musician parents, life in “country,” and making live music and bands cool again.

LU: Tell us who your parents are…

Protoje: My mom is Lorna Bennett. She is best known for “Breakfast In Bed,” which was a massive hit in the ‘70s. My dad was Calypso King down in St. Vincent. His name was Lord Have Mercy. He’s a mad performer. That’s who I take after on stage. I just grew up in a house of music and that led me to gravitate towards being on stage. It wasn’t as much about recording. My love was always to be in front of people.

LU: Did they continue making music as you grew up?

Protoje: My mom stopped recording after she went to law school but she would always do shows, more for fun that for pursuing a career. But it resonated with me, going to the shows. My father went on into coaching, that was his other passion. He trained a number of athletes that went to the Olympics. A couple have won medals. His love was always track and field. That’s what I thought I would do when I was young. I had them with me growing me up as opposed to being on the road but I still got a chance to see them perform so it was the best of both worlds.

LU: Now, you grew up in St Elizabeth in the country, right?

Protoje: And I still live there now. I spend most of my time in the country. It’s so much more peaceful. It’s where mi belong, I am a country youth at heart. I just come to Kingston to get into the studio and into shows and to promote. Sometimes I also need the feel of the city and I’ll come in for the weekend and get the inspiration from the people. The people are really feeling the struggle in Kingston so I have to come up there and feel it, too. It resonates more because it’s real.

In the country I get to do my running, my fitness, I get to do my songwriting, eating properly. It is a lifestyle to keep balanced. I don’t have to go to Kingston to do music, I just like to record in Kingston. I have a band also and a lot of times my band will be at my house in the country so music can still be made. We are very independent as artists and as a unit, me and the Indiggnation band. We are never hostage.

LU: How long have you had a band?

Protoje: The Indiggnation is three, going up to four years old. The core group has been together for about two years. This is the unit that is going to be on the road this summer. This band is the vehicle with which I carry the sound. It’s a very important part of my music. I took a stand to not travel without my band at all. It’s live music, that’s the way reggae music is being spread right now. The way we play the music onstage is so different than how it sounds on record. It has much more dub influence and rock influence. That’s when I’m at my best and strongest as an artist.

LU: Tell me about the live music revival happening in Jamaica right now …

Protoje: Right now, people are starting to log on to the music and give it some strength. Now in Jamaica there’s a lot of artists coming out bringing a conscious energy, a conscious vibration and people are really seeming to appreciate it. We have seen crowds expanding little by little. I give thanks to all the support we’re getting and all of the artists helping to spread this movement and bring reggae—Jamaican reggae—back to the forefront.

LU: If you look at the reggae charts, the bands that are doing well aren’t Jamaican. Younger artists from Jamaica are not selling here in the States. A lot of it has to do with being able to tour and bring the message live. These other bands from California, etc. hit the road hard, and that’s why they’re successful. So tell me about what you’re doing outside of being an artist. I know you keep live events with your company, I&I. Why, as you’re gaining as an artist, do these other things to support other artists?

Protoje: If we don’t do it for ourselves, who is going to do it for us? I have studied these bands in California and I’ve seen what they’re doing. It is a lot of time on the road and me now, I intend to spend a lot of time on the road this summer. Live from Kingston is an event that we keep, really, to bring people out. A lot of times when we do events in Jamaica it is not promoted properly or not catered to the musicians, so we as musicians are saying, ‘Listen, let us keep our own event and do our own promotions so that artists coming up 10, 15 years from now will have an infrastructure that we never had.’ It’s not just about me now in the present, it’s about the people that are going to come after. We have set it up now in a way they can really aspire to a career in music. A lot of other people [are doing this], too. Raging Fyah has their own event. It is very important to teach di youths dem about this aspect of the business, instead of just “do music.”

LU: Are you noticing more interest in live music and being a musician among young people in Jamaica?

Protoje: Yeah, for sure. It’s so much more than it was two or three years ago. We as artists are making it cool again to have musicians. My band is a lot of young musicians, Chronixx is the same. A lot of people are putting together their bands—Raging Fyah, C-Sharp, No-maddz. When we’re onstage now these musicians have an identity now. Younger people in the crowd know they want to have their own band and they want to give their band a name. Jamaica’s always produced a lot of young musicians but the era right before us kind of pushed musicians to the background, and we are now bringing them back to the forefront. It’s going to take some time but a lot of people want to play guitar now. It’s cool now. When we go on tour with our bands, we can even give the musicians the chance to be touring and be on the road and actually do this as a career now.

Read on for Part 3, as Protoje talks Don Corleon’s chef skills and how hip-hop influences his style.

LU: I heard Don is a great chef. Does it make recording more pleasurable working with someone who can cook you tasty food?

Protoje: He’s a master chef. He’s as good a chef as he is a producer. He should open a restaurant, he’d do very good. It does make it more pleasurable when you’re in studio and you know the food is turned all the way up.

LU: What’s his top dish?

Protoje: It’s impossible to name one. I’m not joking. Anything. If I had to say it would be curry tofu with breadfruit salad.

LU: You said you were influenced by hip-hop. Do you still watch hip-hop?

Protoje: Not as much as I used to. I just bought that Kendrick Lamar record and I kinda like that whole Top Dawg movement, Ab-Soul. My messages and what I’m thinking about now—the spirit of Rastafari has taken over my life, so a lot of the stuff that I hear in hip-hop it doesn’t really resonate to me anymore. I don’t want to hear guns and drugs, I want to hear upliftment. If there’s hip-hop out there that has that, I’ll be into it but I don’t search as much for that music.

LU: What was the hip-hop that impacted you?

Protoje: Nas and Jay-Z were big for me, Tupac was huge, Bone Thugs N Harmony, Slick Rick. I really studied those artists—their flow, their patterning, the way they put their words together. That’s the thing I learned most from hip-hop-the flow, the patterning, the metaphors and wittiness.

LU: I noticed you mention some of your peers in the songs, like No-Maddz for one. That is very hip-hop, to name names, especially current ones.

Protoje: I’m just trying to keep the unity. If it comes to me, I’m saying it. Everything around me is material. I always tell my friends listen, if you don’t want to be in a song or something happening, don’t do it around me because I take inspiration anywhere I get it. If I do a song and somebody’s name comes in my head, it’s going on record.

I’m really just a simple youth, a country youth, I’m not really into all of this music industry stuff. I just like to make music and perform. A lot of people think when you’re in music you really love attention. I really don’t love attention, that’s why I made sure to form a band so other musicians can take the spotlight from me and we can share this journey together. I just always wanted to do music and tour the world and have fun being onstage with my brothers, and share that. When the time has passed, I want to know that I enjoyed myself doing it.