Artists such as Tory Lanez have been keeping the tradition of releasing music while locked up, and Vybz says he had to guerilla his resources on the inside ... he used foam from the mattress as a pop filter for his microphone and kept in close contact with his engineers who were the real MVP.
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00:00How long did you wait when you got out of jail to hit the studio?
00:07That's the thing.
00:08I haven't hit the studio.
00:09I'm just, I beat the Kim, which is what we call the gym in Jamaica.
00:14You know what I mean?
00:16It's a personal joke between entertainers.
00:18We don't go to the gym.
00:19We go to Kim, blah, blah, blah.
00:21Yeah.
00:22What's it?
00:23White knee, baby.
00:24Yeah.
00:26Yeah.
00:27So I've only been to the gym and I've been to, um, just eating better.
00:34I don't eat a lot of red meat that I used to.
00:37I'm drinking, um, roots in Jamaica.
00:39I'm sure you know what roots is.
00:41So even right now I have a glass of roots drinking.
00:45I mean, it looks awful and it tastes awful, trust me, but it's good for me.
00:50So yeah, that's what I'm feeding on right now.
00:53What was, what was your prison diet like?
00:55I mean, I can't imagine that you guys, uh, had a lot of healthy options.
01:01I mean, no, but we could get anything.
01:02Well, I could get anything I wanted because I'm exactly, but, but, but, but no, and I
01:11was, trust me, I'm in terrible shape right now because actually I was over indulging
01:16in food in prison.
01:17It was my way.
01:18That was my escapism.
01:19And I mean, to just eat, eat, eat.
01:22When I came out, my belly was this big, like my lawyer's belly and, um, yeah, so now I'm
01:31working to get it off.
01:33So yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:35What do you think of today's music?
01:37Doesn't seem like, you know, dancehall is, is, is really on the forefront.
01:42It seems like Afrobeats maybe have taken over.
01:47I mean, from time to time, I mean, dancehall music is shining.
01:51Then it has a time when it kind of dims a little, then it goes back on high beam.
01:56So we understand that.
01:57And for me personally, I mean, Bujo Banton made a statement the other day, big up Bujo
02:02Banton.
02:03He's my favorite DJ by the way.
02:05And he's right about what he said about Afrobeats not being that, um, that deep, that kind of
02:14revolutionary music, but then I think DJ Ms, I can't remember her name or Thames.
02:20She explained that it was all escapism music.
02:23It's fun music, dancing music.
02:25So the point I'm trying to make is every genre has its space.
02:30Every genre has its space.
02:32So we can all coexist together and dancehall music now is being run by the kids.
02:38So, I mean, I would give them some time to find themselves, to come into themselves and
02:43then understand the difference between the local market and the international market.
02:47So I would definitely give them a few years.
02:50But there are a lot of promising stars in Jamaica.
02:52So I mean, I don't have anything bad to say because they're, they're still growing.
02:57But you were, you were still managing to release some music from prison, were you not?
03:02That's all I could do.
03:04I didn't have any, that, that gave me my motivation.
03:07You know, I figured out how to record.
03:09I did it on my phone with my, my mattress because they give you an old mattress.
03:14So I had to cut the covering off the mattress to make it flexible.
03:18It's crazy, wrap it around my head and record and send it out, get the studio engineers.
03:24So big up to Dunwell, big up to Red Boom.
03:27I even went gold actually from prison and silver in the UK.
03:31Yeah.
03:32So big up my engineers, Red Boom and Dunwell.
03:35I'm an artist, fundamentally, I have to do art.
03:38I have to record.
03:39I have to record.
03:40I figured out how to do it because a lot of, at one point, all the songs, because I used
03:45to record a lot of songs before I got arrested, all those songs were released.
03:50So we didn't have anything in our archives.
03:53So I have to figure out a way to record and trust me, I did thank God.
03:58And it was amazing at first, it was very tedious.
04:01It was very hard because I didn't figure out how to use the mattress.
04:05So a lot of the early songs, they sounded metallic and they didn't sound, they sounded
04:10that you could hear the echo.
04:12You could hear the officers outside.
04:14So it was crazy.
04:15So we figured it out and yeah, the rest is history, as I said.
04:20So that's lit.
04:21That's lit.
04:22How long do you think until you get back to performing and, you know, getting back to
04:28your regular self or is it just a day to day situation?
04:31OK, I have a concert December 31st in Jamaica.
04:37That's the first concert is called Freedom Street.
04:41That's what I'm working towards now, like getting fit, getting healthy.
04:45I'm not even focused on the studio as yet, because like you said earlier, the songs are
04:50having a resurgence.
04:51They're all over TikTok.
04:53So I'm good on the social media space.
04:55I'm good in the dance hall.
04:57So I have time to work out and build that that that fitness, get my lungs back open
05:02like a giant.
05:04When I'm hitting the studio, hopefully before the concert, I can hit the studio and then
05:08start putting in the work.
05:09But I have a studio set up in my house anyway.
05:11My kids did it.