Last spring, Koffee was looking forward to a pivotal year in her career. At 19 years old, sheād just won the Best Reggae Album Grammy for her 2019 EP, Rapture, making history as the first woman and the youngest artist ever to take home that award. Next up, she was slated to play Coachella in April 2020, finish recording her debut album, and perform for huge pop audiences in Mexico and South America as one of Harry Stylesā opening acts in the fall.
A year later, Koffee isnāt too disappointed about the way things turned out after stay-at-home directives kept her grounded in Jamaica instead. Thankfully, the island hasnāt been hit as hard by Covid-19 as many other countries have been, and her family and friends have been safe and protected. She got to spend time with them while finding other ways to stay creative, like learning how to play piano and sharpening her music-reading skills. Even though her timeline for recording an album was pushed back, that didnāt stop Koffee from sharing new music with the world āĀ including the irrepressibly upbeat jam āLockdown,ā on which she looks forward to the joys awaiting us after the pandemic ends (āWhere will we go/When the quarantine ting done and everybody touch road?ā). āItās been a spiritual kind of year,ā she says over Zoom. āIāve learned a lot.ā
Born Mikayla Simpson in Spanish Town, Jamaica, Koffee describes her childhood as āsheltered.ā Her mother is a Seventh-day Adventist, so Koffee grew up attending church weekly. āShe always tried to keep me safe,ā she says. As a kid, Koffee wasnāt very social, but knew she wanted to be a singer. Her love for music was born in the church choir, where she learned to sing. When she entered high school in Kingston, she considered pharmacology as her career. But her musical taste was beginning to change, shifting from gospel to a soulful, conscious brand of reggae that was beginning to gain popularity. Artists like Protoje, Chronixx, and Lila IkĆ© inspired Koffee to teach herself how to play the guitar; the first song she learned was Protojeās āThis Is Not a Marijuana Song.ā
At the time, Koffeeās connection to reggae felt different from her peersā listening habits; their tastes were more mainstream, but the teenager felt deeply connected to the history and roots of the genre. āI took to reggae and just made my own path,ā she says.
Soon Koffee was writing her own songs, inspired by courses in poetry and literature that she was taking in school. The first one she ever wrote, āLegend,ā ended up changing her life. Inspired by Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, it became a viral hit once Bolt himself heard and then shared the song on his Instagram.
With āLegendā gaining traction, the singer took on an old childhood nickname as her stage name. Friends had been calling her āCoffeeā since the time she brought a cup of coffee to school on an unusually hot September day, at age 12. (The āCā turned to a āKā to mirror the spelling of her given name, Mikayla.) She followed her first hit with the single āBurning,ā in 2017, swiftly becoming an international success; her 2018 follow-up, āRaggamuffin,ā earned her a deal with Columbia Records.
For her upcoming debut LP, Koffee wants to focus on the idea of unity. āI want to speak of a solution and of a way that we can come together and get along, even when things are going wrong,ā she says. āPositivity is definitely a theme. It will be a very interesting twist for people who knew my music before, and also for people who will discover me. I think it will be really awesome.ā
From Rolling Stone US