At first, it looked like the rise of Mikayla “Koffee” Simpson was going to happen at the pace of Usain Bolt, thanks in part to the world’s greatest sprinter. In 2017, still a schoolgirl, she posted a video online of her singing a song she had written as a tribute to Bolt. “From the dark comes the light/Lightning Bolt never less than strike,” she sang, prompting him to share the clip to his legions of fans and earning her a place singing it on stage at a ceremony for the unveiling of a Bolt statue at Jamaica’s National Stadium in Kingston.
A major label record deal followed and by 2020, she was the unlikely winner of the Best Reggae Album category at the Grammy Awards – unlikely not just because she was both the youngest person and the first woman ever to be given the prize, but because she had outshone veterans such as Sly & Robbie and Steel Pulse with a five-track EP that was just 15 minutes long.
All of which generated great anticipation for a debut album, before you-know-what arrived to slow her down. Her Covid-inspired song Lockdown closes this collection, feeling a bit out of date now we can just about go where we please, but at least the optimism of her sound was not misplaced. “Where will we go? When di quarantine ting done and everybody touch road?” she wonders in the song. Now she knows: festivals including Coachella and All Points East, and around South America supporting Harry Styles.
However, this international appeal doesn’t mean she’s forgotten her roots. The opening track, X10, begins and ends with a snippet of Bob Marley’s Redemption Song. She revives the smooth, smoochy sound of lovers rock on Lonely, while Shine features little more than a skittering beat and an acoustic guitar playing the most rudimentary reggae rhythm.
The latter has political lyrics, denouncing gun crime by urging young people to “find a way to put the 9 away”, but her overall tone feels infectiously positive. Both Where I’m From and West Indies pay tribute to her homeland. She sounds like she’s happiest in a fast car, filling up her Mercedes in a verse in West Indies, and graduating to a Ferrari, an Audi and a Lexus on the rubbery Afrobeats song, Pull Up. That one is the best example of her exuberant, sunny style, and though she clearly knows her reggae history, it sounds perfect for a 2022 summer.
