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Two Apple devices, some headphones, a mattress, and pauses to check if correctional officers were close to his cell. That’s essentially how Vybz Kartel pulled off recording music behind bars for 12 years – but he tells the story better.
The provocative Dancehall deejay was constantly under the radar for having current lyrics while locked up from 2011 to July 2024, and previously alluded to a limitless library of unreleased material despite raids that revealed contraband in his cell.
Speaking on Juan EP is Life podcast on Wednesday, Kartel revealed that he started recording in prison a year into his lock-up.
“In the first year, yeah, we had songs unreleased, but then, you naah mean, the songs ran out and we had to do what we had to do, so that’s when I started recording behind bars…” the Any Weather deejay shared. “It wasn’t really that hard because, you know, technology made it easier. You know, I used to record on the iPhone 6, yeah, because it has an amazing – not the 6, the 5-plus or the 5-s, something like that – but it has an amazing sound quality. So Fever, all those songs, we recorded on that little iPhone.”
The 2016 hit recently surpassed 100 million plays on Spotify, adding to its accolades which include Gold certification in the United States (2020) and Silver certification in the United Kingdom (2023). Its recording process, however, wasn’t as glittery.
“I had to deejay directly into the iPhone…” he recalled. “They gave you a mattress, right, so I used the mattress to imitate the padding in the studio… I had the phone, like, three feet away from my face and I wrapped the mattress around my head and recorded. Yeah, it was crazy man, on my knees too… It was crazy.”
He added that he had headphones plugged into an iPad where he listened to the instrumental.
“It went into the iPhone as a cappella, and then we had to send it to the studio and the engineer.”
Fever was produced by Linton ‘TJ’ White, but Kartel revealed that Mario ‘Dunw3ll’ Dunwell and RedBoom Supamix were often the recipients of his raw recordings.
“Big up Dunw3ll and big up RedBoom… Dunw3ll would piece it together, but after I recorded, then I would make a demo. So, I would play the rhythm loud and then deejay, so like a demo, so they knew how to follow.”
And where were the correctional officers, you may ask?
“Most of the time we had to record, like, at night, but sometimes it had to be, like, at 12 p.m. when most of the officers would be, like, on lunch break… I would still have to be watching. So, I’d be like ‘fee-veeeerrrr’ and then I had to get up and look, naah mean, so it was crazy. It was line by line.”
He described it as a pressuring time, filled with cell searches and endless replacements of Apple devices.
“I didn’t say anything but when I started talking about current stuff, I mean, a lot of people were like, nah, he’s either Nostradamus that he could predict the future – Vybztradamus – or he’s actually recording. So, it was crazy… I couldn’t snitch on myself; we were in prison at the time.”
The Bail For Me artist was released through an overturned murder conviction on the eve of Emancipation Day.
His freedom has coincided with increased press about ridding contraband from Jamaica’s prison system, with Commissioner of Corrections Brigadier Radgh Mason stating his mission to weed out corrupt officers.
English (US) ·