Shenseea, Spice, Koffee, And Jada Kingdom Poised To Lead Dancehall Internationally
The Dancehall throne may be up for grabs as the top women in the genre take on the international scene.
Songstress Jada Kingdom recently announced her signing to Republic Records and her new management team lead by Marc Jordan and Wide Eye Entertainment. Following that announcement, Shenseea revealed her new manager Wassim ‘Sal’ Slaiby, who is also manager to several top-flight pop acts such as The Weeknd and Doja Cat. Spice has said that after ten years, she and Shaggy were able to iron out differences with her record label. She revealed that she is now being managed by the mother of rapper Polo G, Stacia Mac, and her ODA Management company, ahead of the release of her debut album, TEN.
While none of the ladies of Dancehall mentioned above currently have international hits, they have placed themselves in positions to win, because the music industry relies heavily on leveraging relationships behind the scenes. Like any other business, the more leverage you have as an artist the greater your demand will be, and the greater support you will get for your career on an international level.
Although these artists enjoy a rich Jamaican cultural heritage chartered by their predecessors like Lady Saw, Patra, Diana King, Shabba Ranks, and Super Cat, their uphill struggle will be to leverage their home base fame and expand to achieve market dominance outside of Jamaica.
Obstacles
Jamaican artists who sing purely Reggae and Dancehall music struggle to gain appeal internationally due to the low streaming numbers in the USA. Capturing the imagination of audiences and saturating the US market is the dream of many artists, because Reggae-Dancehall makes up only one percent of the music album consumption in that market, according to the 2018 Statista report and in the latest 2020 report the genres were not high enough to be counted.
Except for Shaggy and Sean Paul, it has been quite difficult for Jamaican artists who enjoy fame and notoriety in Jamaica and the diaspora communities to gather the same level of large-scale excitement abroad — because internationally the music business uses streaming numbers to measure success.
In times gone by BET and MTV were sure media houses if an artist wanted international recognition and music sales. It has become much more complex to break an artist internationally since the advent of streaming. Even with streaming platforms that are playlist-based like Spotify, Amazon, and Pandora, Caribbean territories have not made significant impression on the global streams.
Fifty thousand people turned out for the Buju Banton concert at the National Stadium in 2019, but only 2995 units of his return album Upside Down 2020 were sold in the first week, according to MRC Data. The difference in sales data and demography along with the speed of fame abroad present a great artistic risk for new Jamaican artists and a financial risk for record labels.
YouTube and Apple’s expansion into the market with limited services offer a narrative for local artists’ international data projections. Although labels usually look for chart success, radio play, and concert numbers to sign artists, when it comes to Jamaican artists they have been more flexible in rationalizing future success.
Record labels have been measuring the potential impact of an artist by considering an intangible cultural capital abroad to rationalize the investment in Jamaican artist. Shani Fuller-Tillman, VP of Urban Marketing at RCA Records in the Rolling Stone Magazine explains, “Although it is challenging for Jamaican artists to reach a wide audience they (RCA records) are a label that loves to step out on things that may not be so cookie-cutter or easy to break in the market. Although reggae music isn’t widely accepted on that mainstream level…there are huge reggae fans…and it’s big in New York, Connecticut, and Florida”.
How do labels break Jamaican artists internationally?
Whenever artists get label deals or if they choose to pursue careers independently, it starts with the A&R process which is to ideate the creative insight, find the financial support, and choose the right songs for a larger audience.
Artists need marketing teams and a budget to grow a presence online and offline. This can be costly as it represents fifty percent of the overall cost required for musical success globally.
The creative team from a record label supervises the process to ensure the music’s appeal is beyond the niche sonically. When the time is right for releases artists will need professional publicity and press support for their messages, so that their interviews, viral moments, photos, music videos, etc. are shared with their targeted demographic. Nowadays social media, blogs, and YouTube channels are factored in alongside mainstream media.
Global distribution can be found easily as an independent artist but global reach and presence requires leveraging important relationships and only well-connected record labels and managers can provide that.
In the case of Koffee, for example, her signing to a record label and then signing to CAA talent agency was key to her global appeal and success. She is a modern example, other artists from Jamaica could follow to find saturation in other music markets. By signing with CAA she joins a roster of other international artists and personalities that can be leveraged to support her projects. Her song Toast is catchy, unique, and relevant to the times, but when it was announced that former United States President Barack Obama, his wife Michelle, Kylie Jenner and Rihanna all had her song as part of their playlists, it gave Koffee the competitive edge in the reggae-dancehall genre. Although she is yet to sell any significant amount of records, her 2019 Grammy win was inevitable in a year when there were other viable contenders in the category because she was the talk of the town.
Reggae Record Sales
Even with the extraordinary international validation and the historic Grammy win the biggest reggae-dancehall record of the year in 2019 Toast did not make an impact on the US-based Billboard Hot 100 Chart. Along with her other singles W and Rapture, the song only managed to peak at No. 1 on the R&B — Hip Hop airplay charts.
According to Rolling Stones Magazine in a February 7, 2020 article titled: Koffee Makes History With Grammy Win, Signs To RCA, “Reggae-Dancehall only gets played on the Urban stations in the United States during the summertime.”
After global fame and recognition are accomplished by new artists, the challenge is to get fans to buy and stream the music inside and outside of the USA. With or without international record label support, management or endorsements, it is the Jamaicans at home and in the diaspora, who represent the core audience for Koffee, Shenseea, Jada Kingdom, and Spice. Those fans mostly make purchases with their eyeballs, due to economic and other cultural reasons.
UK-based Stefflon Don code-switches between genres and has over one billion streams across platforms. All the other artists in the genre must find a way to turn cultural capital and fame into sales and financial capital and one way to do that is by code-switching and make music tempered for radio stations that cater to the paying demographic.
The Streaming Demographic
IFPI’s 2020 global music report stated that MENA, Latin America, and South Korea are among the fastest-growing music streaming markets. Stefflon Don, Producer Rvssian, Damian Marley, Snow, Charly Black, Shaggy, and Sean Paul have all collaborated with artists from those markets, which resulted in millions of streams. A hit requires at-least 100 million streams and it is the consistent and progressive sales of music along with the cultural impact that gives an artist sustained international career success, that is the math and magic of the deal.
John Fleckenstein, Co-President of RCA records enthusiastically shared in Rolling Stones magazine recently that, “Koffee’s success is not gonna end in Jamaica, it’s gonna end on a global level”.
He then says, “how can we help?”
Fleckenstein’s statement and his subsequent investment in “the end of Koffee’s success” may be viewed as excitement or a threat depending on the results of the deal. Based on dancehall’s history an international label or management company support should not be considered the saving grace of an artist career. If there are unrealistic expectations, when the term of the record deal ends their careers will also end if they did not find a massive hit.
Steve Stoute, CEO of United Masters distribution commented that artists who sign record deals, “It is the beginning of the end”.
These ladies for the most part already know how to record songs and perform their works on stage, any added support should help them to create, market, promote, sync, distribute and generate the highest revenue available for their teams.
An international record deal or management deal for Jamaican reggae and dancehall artists, male of female, should be considered a means to an end, but the relationship should never be viewed as a fix-it-all. It is their creativity and adaptability to each market that will cause them to stand firm through the tests of time and make hit songs. If they don’t collaborate and grow market by market or their musical careers will end internationally.
“Artists are either busy living or busy dying”- Lyor Cohen, Head Of YouTube Music.
Koffee, Shenseea, Spice, and Jada Kingdom represent new life, new creativity, new possibility and youthful feminine energy for reggae and dancehall music. If they make timeless songs, build their brands, and leverage their celebrity into new territories, their legacies will never end.
The example of Bob Marley still stands, his music continues to sell, his brand value increases year by year and his message lives in the hearts of eager fans all over the world.