Meet Koffee, Reggae’s hottest star

There are only a few clouds in London’s January sky, but the wind is bitter enough to make commuters speed walk to Tube stations.

Yet in the north London studio where Jamaica’s reggae wunderkind Koffee is being photographed for her ES Magazine cover shoot, it feels like summer. Sun is beaming through a skylight, the sounds of Stormzy and Burna Boy are floating through the air and, believe it or not, it’s so hot a door is propped open to let a draught in. It would be poetic to say Koffee has brought the Jamaican sun with her, or that her smile is so bright it warms the room, but as sunny as her brace-laced grin is, that’s not the truth. The source of the studio’s premature summer is actually a giant fan heater, next to which Koffee is huddled up in a dressing gown. If those commuters thought they were cold, it’s nothing compared to how she’s feeling.

‘Since the pandemic, I’ve been at home in Jamaica. It’s a pretty quiet place in comparison [to the UK]. Not much really goes on, so I’ve just been working on music,’ she says, reflecting on the past few years. It’s been a swift change of pace for Koffee. Almost exactly two years ago, in January 2020, she became the youngest person and first woman to win a Grammy Award for Best Reggae Album at 19 years old. To Koffee’s surprise, her five-track 2019 EP Rapture beat artists with decades of experience, including Bob Marley’s son, Julian. ‘I didn’t really see myself in that light,’ she explains. ‘I didn’t know the world would show me so much love so quickly.’

Had the world not come to a halt, Koffee’s Grammy win would have been a belter kick-off goal for a year that was supposed to see her make her Coachella debut and go on tour with Harry Styles (who personally requested her as a support act, no less). Was she disappointed when her skyrocketing trajectory was put on hold? ‘It was a little bit of a relief for me,’ she says with a sheepish smile. ‘Stuff happened so suddenly [with my career], but then I got a break and now I’m feeling refreshed.’

Suddenly is one way to put it. Others might say Koffee’s life changed overnight in 2017, when eight-time Olympic gold medallist Usain Bolt shared a video of her singing an acoustic tribute to him, ‘Legend’, on Instagram within 24 hours of it being uploaded. In Jamaica, when the country’s national hero ran in the Olympics, you didn’t need to watch the race to know he’d won. The sound of people clanging cooking pot lids together in celebration served as a make-shift news bulletin. ‘When he posted that video, me and my mum grabbed the pot lids,’ Koffee laughs. ‘I swear we woke everyone up.’

Almost instantly, producers came running. ‘One follower of Usain Bolt had a riddim he was working on that he decided he was going to put me on,’ she remembers. It was a ‘juggling riddim’, meaning several artists were invited to showcase their talents on the instrumental, each one creating their own version of the track as part of one project. ‘The guy was like, “Yo, I have Lutan Fyah on it, Jah Vinci on it…” And those are prominent artists. I was like, “These are artists I grew up hearing. What do you mean?!”’ she says, seemingly still in disbelief five years on. Her version became her first single, ‘Burning’, a fiery assertion of self-belief written after she didn’t get into sixth form. It’s since been streamed almost nine million times on Spotify.

Born Mikayla Simpson in Spanish Town, where she was raised by her single mother, Koffee had a quiet upbringing. ‘My mum was a little bit protective of me, so I didn’t have much of a social life in that sense,’ she shrugs. ‘I just pretty much went to school, went to church and stayed at home with my mum.’ She studied hard to pursue her plan A of a career in pharmacology, but all her free time was soundtracked by music, whether she was teaching herself new songs on the guitar or studying the lyrics of her favourite artists.

At the time, her peers were into the mainstream music in the charts — dancehall and pop imported from the US — and although Koffee liked it on occasion, it didn’t feel ‘soul feeding’. People such as Chronixx and Protoje, who, like Koffee, are part of a new wave of artists modernising roots reggae, opened her eyes to the meditative power of the genre. ‘When I discovered reggae music, I found I could learn more and get more from it,’ she explains. ‘It change your perspective, it helps you feel more calm, it sends a message. I wanted that to be a part of what I was going to do.’

And with her debut studio album, Gifted, Koffee’s mission statement is realised. Although she has released singles throughout the pandemic and was even tapped to sing the title track of last year’s blockbuster Western The Harder They Fall, the album is her most substantial project to date. Opening with a sample of Bob Marley’s ‘Redemption Song’ and closing with 2020’s single ‘Lockdown’ — a hopeful love song that wonders ‘Where will we go, When di quarantine ting done and everybody touch road?’ — the album honours reggae’s roots while pushing the genre forward, working with producers including Grammy-winning Jae5 to weave Afrobeats and dancehall influences through her signature sound.

‘I can refer to Burna Boy’s tracks and take inspiration from [dancehall artist] Popcaan’s songs. I think now [reggae artists] are the ones pulling from them, where in the past they have learnt from us,’ says Koffee of her broadening influences. ‘We’ve been listening to the rest of the world and tapping into where sound has been going. Music has a way where it moves, regardless of the genre, to progress.’

But with roots reggae still at Koffee’s core, it’s Gifted’s message that’s most important. The album deliberately veers away from the more political lyricism on Rapture — for the most part, at least.