Jamaican Producer Di Genius Celebrates John Legend’s Grammy Win For ‘Best R&B Album’ Which Featured Koffee
Toots and the Maytals’ copping of the 2021 Best Reggae Grammy award, for Got To Be Tough is really one of two Recording Academy album wins that Jamaicans can, and should celebrate.
John Legend’s Bigger Love, which copped the Best R&B Album award, featured a stellar contribution from Reggae princess, Koffee, on the album’s 12th track Don’t Walk Away , an impact which was hailed by Legend himself as “incredible’ in a gleeful yet humbled tribute to Koffee last June. Koffee’s verse appeared to have provided the icing on the cake for the R&B artiste’s 16-track album, which was released in June 2020.
In addition Jamaica’s own Stephen “Di Genius” McGregor produced, not only Don’t Walk Away but also the title track Bigger Love.
An elated McGregor took to Instagram to celebrate.
“Another Won🙏🏽 Super grateful to be a part of this amazing, now Grammy award winning album! Big congrats to the Legend @johnlegend and to everyone involved! To more wins! 🥂🥂,” the Ardenne High School old boy noted.
McGregor has previously worked with a slew of international stars as a producer and writer, including Drake ( Controlla ), Shakira ( Amarillo ), Nelly Furtado ( Don’t Leave Me ), French Montana ( Writing On The Wall featuring Post Malone & Cardi B), and Burna Boy ( Destiny ).
In 2017, he contributed to two Grammy-winning albums: Damian ‘Jr Gong’ Marley’s Stony Hill which won Best Reggae Album, and Shakira’s El Dorado which won Best Latin Pop Album. Di Genius had also contributed to Burna Boy’s African Giant (2019), Chronixx’s Chronology (2017), Drake’s Views (2016), Lianne La Havas’s Blood (2015) and Mali Music’s Mali Is… (2014), which were all nominated for a Grammy Award.
Di Genius and his singer-brother Chino McGregor are sons of Reggae veteran Freddie McGregor.
Legend’s Bigger Love album was one of two non-Reggae albums to which Jamaicans contributed heavily, which copped Grammy nominations, as Chronixx had also collaborated on the track Eternal Light which was featured on the album Free Nationals by the band Free Nationals, and which was nominated in the Best Progressive R&B Album category. This award was copped by Thundercat for his album It Is What It Is.
Skip Marley’s collaborative effort Slow Down with multi-platinum, Grammy Award-winning R&B singer H.E.R., which he also co-wrote, had also been nominated in the Best R&B song category but lost out to Robert Glasper featuring, interestingly, H.E.R. & Meshell Ndegeocello for the track Better Than I Imagine.
Following the announcement of his win today, Legend expressed gratitude to his collaborators on Twitter.
I’m so grateful for this! Thank you to all of my fellow artists in the @RecordingAcad! Thank you to all of my collaborators, especially my big brother and exec producer @RaphaelSaadiq! Thank you to everyone who listened! Love you all! https://t.co/RtaNUzJ901
— John Legend (@johnlegend) March 14, 2021
On Instagram, he added “So grateful to win my 12th Grammy today, my 3rd for Best R&B Album!…We all worked hard to make this album and then promote it during a global pandemic. It wasn’t an ideal situation but we made the best of it and hopefully gave the world some music that helped make their days and nights a little better. Love you all!”
In June last year, when Legend officially announced on social media that Koffee would be featured on the 12th track titled Don’t Walk Away, Koffee had responded on Twitter, expressing her gratitude to the All of Me singer for giving her the opportunity to be a part of what she described as an “amazing project”.
However, Legend’s humbled and gracious response pointed to the fact that he believed Koffee was the one who was even more deserving of the expressions of gratitude, for adding her golden touch to the album. “Thank YOU!” he had emphasized in the upper-case. “You’re incredible!”
Koffee was one of five artists featured on Bigger Love which also had collabs with Gary Clark JR, Jhene Aiko, Rapsody, and Camper.
The Toast singer has developed a striking reputation for distinguishing herself in collabs, evident in her ultra-successful features on Repeat , with British rapper J Hus, and W with American rapper Gunna. The hugely successful W, which was released in November 2019, was listed on Billboard’s First Stream and rose to number one on the Billboard Reggae Digital songs sales chart, while, Repeat which was released in February 2020, stormed to the top of the UK charts, two weeks after its official release.
Koffee has also collaborated with Reggae star Protoje on the fan-favorite Switch It Up track off his In Search Of Lost Time album, and with Dancehall legend Buju Banton on a remix of Pressure . She appears set to collaborate next with Nigerian Rapper Cruel Santino.