Producer Jazzwad Tells Foota Hype To Leave Koffee Alone
Jamaican producer Paul ‘Jazzwad’ Yebuah has had enough of his colleague Foota Hype obsessing over how Koffee adorns herself and has asked him to give the Grammy Award-winning artist a break.
“You must lowe her to dress how she waan dress,” Jazzwad insisted, but the veteran selector stood his ground during their recent Instagram Live discussion.
“If Koffee wasn’t a public figure, an influencer representing Jamaica, Dancehall and Reggae culture, I wouldn’t have nothing to say,” Foota said.
Jazzwad countered that she represents herself, suggesting her right to do as she pleases. This triggered Foota’s recurring argument that had it been a Jamaican male artist dressing like a woman, the reaction would have been different.
“You work with Bounty Killer over the years. Would you not spark speculation if you saw Bounty Killer in a spandex tights and spike heel shoes on stage?… If a male artist was wearing female clothes in a female fashion, would we not have speculation and have a discussion about it?”
Jazzwad said such a scenario is less likely to happen, but later added, “Obviously, we a go mek a big noise about that, but how yuh a fight against a girl weh waan wear weh she waan wear?”
Foota said he has no personal vendetta against the Run Away artist, but questioned, “Why unno a find excuse fi Koffee? What is so great about Koffee that we cya talk seh she a dress shaky?”
The debate intensified as they clashed on what constitutes female dressing, with Foota citing Etana, Spice, Jada Kingdom, Queen Ifrica, and Shenseea as examples.
“Ce’cile wear pants, Shenseea wear pants… When Koffee wear pants, she wear it in a man format,” Foota said.
“How she a go add femininity?” Jazzwad rhetorically asked.
“How yuh mean?” Foot responded. “Tie the front a di blouse. Tek in the man pants; mek it look likkle more feminine, cut it up fi mek it look ladylike.”
Foota’s preoccupation with Koffee’s style and sexuality is long-founded. The artist, whose given name is Mikayla Simpson, was aesthetically introduced as a desexualized teenager with musical talent in 2017.
Foota’s discourse around her sexuality is often tied to her hair which he uses to identify her as Rastafarian – though she has never declared that. Feeding this narrative is her association with reggae revivalists like Chronixx and Protoje, who have embraced her from the onset.
This has led to Foota’s open bashing of those artists for their supposed support of lifestyles that contrast with Rastafarian values.
Foota’s latest dissertation on Koffee started after the January release of her Gimmie collaboration with non-binary popstar Sam Smith and Jesse Reyez.
The dancehall-flavored track received the typical house party visual treatment with batty-riders and bruck-out scenes, except it deviated from the standard representations of dancehall space.
Beyond Koffee performing to the camera in close proximity to gyrating women, there were same-sex couples getting hot and heavy throughout the video. Naturally, the project received mixed views from Jamaicans.
In a recent interview with DancehallMag, Koffee said the collaboration came about very “organically.”
“I was in Jamaica, like, quite a few months before and I received the demo for the track basically with an empty space for me to put my verse, and I felt like I really enjoyed the beat so I put (the) verse down and then few months later, they called for a music video and I had fun right throughout. Me, Jesse and Sam…it was a great opportunity for me, so, very enjoyable…”