Jay-A Banking On ‘Pain’ With Mavado, Dexta Daps

Gangster tunes are a dime a dozen, but songs that add socio-economic context to why some men opt to stay strapped? Not so much. This is one reason why Pain, a collaboration among Jay-A, Mavado and Dexta Daps, is turning heads and racking up views on YouTube since it premiered on Friday. 

Produced by Sponge Music and Mansions Records, the track opens with Mobay native Jay-A sketching the distrusting and vicious realities endured by inner-city youth, expanded by Mavado’s “dog-eat-dog world” perspective having come from Cassava Piece, St. Andrew. The singer declares that the streets turned him into a “monster” at age 13, a chilling journal note signed off by Dexta Daps’ wails of the implications of being desensitised to violence. 

“The three a we come from rough life, garrison life, so, weh we a sing bout a weh we see growing up as youth,” Jay-A told DancehallMag.

“Things weh we involve inna, know bout, see we friends and family go through, it’s just a real life song. It’s nothing to brag and boast ‘bout… A just three ghetto youth a talk real life things that everybody can relate to. Even if you don’t grow up in the ghetto, you know people that grow up in the ghetto and you see stuff so you can relate to it.”

Pain initially Jay-A’s solo until he played it for Jahshii while in Barbados with Mavado in December.

“’Gully Gad’ heard it and seh, ‘This bad-bad. I’m gonna send you a road with this one’,” Jay-A recalled. “After we went back to Florida, we went in the studio and he did the verse.”

It was Mavado’s suggestion that Daps be part of the project, which Jay-A welcomed as he described the Seaview Gardens son as a brother. 

“He didn’t hesitate, not even for a sec. He was like, ‘this is your big break and I want this for you bro’, and the rest is God.”

Given name Tarik Morris, Jay-A is no newcomer to the music business. He grew up watching his father Peter St. Patrick pursue a music career, and said it was inevitable for him to follow that path. After migrating to the United States more than a decade ago, he toured with singer Sean Kingston and connected with Mavado in 2012. Hailing the heavyweight act for “giving him a strength” on an earlier collaboration Hundred Dollar Bill Friend, he admitted to somewhat fumbling the bag legally, which restricted his travels for sometime. Yet, he continued to put in the work and met Daps in 2014 whom he said has been equally supportive.

“The two a dem a two youth weh teach me whole heap a tings bout music, life, politics, everything. A mi real, real brother dem inna real life.”

Jay-A has had different moments where colleagues and friends have made predictions about a particular song being his breakout number, and the same is being said for Pain. Sharing that experience has taught him to wait and see, he can’t shake the feeling that this song “is it for real”.

Still, he is more preoccupied with people positively receiving the record.

“Mi just hope seh everybody get fi hear it and receive it the right way and get the message from it. Mi hope it inspire the world and mi hope it go to the highest level it can go… Number one pon all charts worldwide.”

Jay-A’s catalogue includes songs like Nuttin At All and Pray for Me. He’ll be adding other big collabs with Sponge Music in the near future.