Standing Firm On Lava Ground

By Ashanti © 2005

It appears a culture revolution is underway in Reggae Dancehall and that I-Wayne is quickly becoming one of its most illuminating new points of light. Making his West Coast debut as a solo artist on August 4, 2005, I-Wayne appeared for the first time at Jamaica Live inside Hollywood’s Dragonfly club on Santa Monica Blvd. before a crowd of fans that circled several blocks and waited several long hours to get inside. Their efforts were finally rewarded when the object of their anticipation graced the stage with his trademark falsettos nearly 3 hours later at 1:31 a.m. But to the crowd’s delight, he ran straight though one after another of his widely rotated current hits including the title track from his debut CD release Lava Ground on the VP Records label, "Living in Love", and "One Man Can’t Satisfy Her. He went on to appear two days later at Northern California’s Reggae on the River where he reportedly spit even more fire.

Hearing I-Wayne’s cool-as-a-breeze, harmonic, clarion tones for the first time, one might be inclined, or more likely compelled, to float along with this enchanting sound. But don’t let the smooth taste fool you. This same voice is as multifaceted as they come and erupts like thunderclaps at sporadic intervals with "lightening", "earthquake", and most notoriously "Lava", before launching into acapella entreaties to the black woman in particular to "irie up and live", "stop bleach", and "dash way", or give up, her inclinations toward suggestive clothing and promiscuity. And while he quickly returns to singing as sweetly as a black angel on high, suddenly he erupts again with an unexpected "Hotta", or "Fire Red", or some other emphatic admonition to "burn out dirty living" in all its forms.

It is with this unique harmonic sound, characterized by hard then soft, falsetto and tenor vocal circumnavigations over the revived one-drop riddims that he peppers with angelic odes to the black woman that I-Wayne is being propelled to the top of his game. His passion is infectious as he routinely captivates large crowds with an uncanny ability to miraculously quiet them to silence with only a gentle "shhhhhhhhhh" while touching a single index finger to his lips and admonishing them to listen keenly and learn from the wisdom carried on the winds of his voice.

At the tender age of 25, I-Wayne says he is inspired by the wind to which he says it is important to quiet and listen. By such inspiration, he delivers some of the most lucid and powerful, provocative and compelling lyrical content in the genre with the pace and wisdom of a wise old sage skillfully articulating his message with candid flair, "burning out" immorality, bad parenting, politricking, criminal behavior, and all manner of "bad mind".

For the longest time Dancehall has been saturated by hard-hitting, electronically digitized, hypnotic syncopations encouraging intense winding machinations against a barrage of some of the most extreme and explicit lyrics conceivable. Nowadays, I-Wayne and his crew, Loyal Soldiers, are single-handedly changing up the scene by popularizing culture and one-drop riddims in the Dancehall again, enticing audiences away from the empty pursuit of illicit liaisons and towards listening and learning the ancient wisdom and cleaning up their lives to live uprightly within the tenets of Rastafari. Their message is simply, "burn fire red on all nastiness", as I-Wayne routinely warns in his invectives before, during, or even after his songs. And the fans are responding, as if to ask, "What took you so long to bring this much needed relief from the now mundane, overtly sex-centric focus that has ruled in Dancehall for as long as we can remember?"

It remains to be seen whether this current return to culture and one-drop will make further inroads into the consciousness of the nowadays massive and cause the demise of the currently dominant, highly sexual, bad man mentality, or whether one camp will ever win out over the other, or if elements of both will just coexist indefinitely. All that can be said for certain is that I-Wayne is not only a budding, up-and-coming new form of Dancehall artist, but he, along with Loyal Soldiers, Jah Cure, Fanton Mojah, and Bascom X are quickly becoming the next "Big Thing" to watch for in the new culture Dancehall.