The ReggaeMania.com 2019 Tops Awards
Our 1st ever ReggaeMania.com 2019 Tops Awards spotlights the Artists, Songs, Sounds and Events that ran things in Jamaica + Canada in 2019.
Top International Female Artists of 2019
#3: TOP (3) INTERNATIONAL FEMALE 2019 – SHENSEEA
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There is a very small and discreet bottleneck for ‘Top Female International Artist of 2019‘ – and ranking third is the beautiful Shenseea. Formerly signed to Rockstar, Shenseea, now signed to Interscope Records, has enjoyed the success of two staple singles, ‘Blessed’ and ‘Shen YengAnthem’ – both are established anthems in a scene where anthems are far and few.
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Part of what’s fascinating about Shenseea is her mixing of traditional dancehall lyrical styles with Hip-hop and rap freestyles. Combine this with the fact that her beauty is attributed to her being Jamaican mixed with Korean, and it’s easy to see why fans find her so captivating and intriguing, and why when it comes to live performance, she often has the crowd eating out of her hands.
Shenseea is not only youthful and stylish, she is also a serious and astute business woman, and somewhat representative of the the current changing of the old guards to the new. She is guided by a good marketing, management and image-consulting team who also are very good publicists. Right now, Shenseea is happy to wait her turn, content with the ‘Princess‘ crown, knowing that Spice will not be letting go of her ‘Queen‘ title anytime soon.
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Congratulations to Shenseea, placing 3rd in our ReggaeMania.com Awards ‘Top Female International Artist of 2019′ category.
#2: TOP (3) UPCOMING INTERNATIONAL FEMALE 2019 – KOFFEE
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Capturing second place in our ReggaeMania.com ‘Tops’ Awards for ‘Top International Female of 2019‘ –Jamaica’s 37-year old Queen of Dancehall, the sensual singer, songwriter, and lyrically versatile diva with many talents, Spice. Today, she reigns as not only one of the most popular female dancehall artists in the world, but also one of dancehall’s best performing artists.
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Spice, born Grace Latoya Hamilton, first bus after appearing on the 2009 Vybz Kartel release of ‘Romping Shop’, and one of her most recent accolades is her transition to TV after joining the cast of VH1’s reality television series ‘Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta’ in 2018. That same year, her ‘Captured’ mix-tape debuted at number one on the Billboard Reggae Albums chart.
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A dynamic and captivating songstress, Spice also gets credit for the best marketing stunt of the year. She claims it was not a stunt, but the morning after a show in Toronto where she performed alongside Shenseea, and in an effort to promote her upcoming ‘Black Hypocrisy’ single and her ‘Captured’ mix-tape, Spice caused waves in the dancehall world with a release of a shocking yet convincing pic of herself where she appeared to look ‘white’ or ‘Caucasian’, or as if she had, for some unknown reason, bleached her usually dark skin.
It was the talk of the town for weeks afterwards, and Spice’s ‘before and after’ pics, people’s reactions, and the possible reasons for her pulling off such a gimmick and doing it without warning, would be debated and discussed not just by the reggae-dancehall media, but even a handful of popular North American TV news and talk shows also took interest in the story.
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As for why Spice did what she did – claims Spice; ‘I wanted to create awareness to “Colorism” and it was more so done intentionally to create shock value so that I could have the worlds undivided attention to deliver the message in my music. There are dark skin women across the world complaining every day that they are being downplayed and degraded, but the raw truth is it is us “black women” and “black men” that are fighting against each other and tearing down our own race’.
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Congratulations to Spice, voted 2nd place in our ReggaeMania.com ‘Tops’ Award for ‘Top Female International Artist 2019′.
#1: TOP (3) INTERNATIONAL FEMALE 2019 – KOFFEE
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The ReggaeMania.com Award for ‘Top International Female of 2019‘ is undisputed–it goes to 19-year old Jamaican artist Mikayla Simpson AKA Koffee. Arguably, if our ‘Tops’ poll did not separate the sexes, Koffeewould also get credit for not only scoring the number one song for 2019, but also for getting the trophy for number one artist of 2019 – male or female.
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Raised in Spanish Town, Koffee’s bragging rights include her Grammy nomination for ‘Rapture’ (EP), released March 2019, in the ‘Best Reggae Album‘ category. She was initially spotlighted in Jamaica after releasing ‘Legend’, a song about Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt. She has since signed to Columbia Records, and while working on the completion of her first full-length album, has released several singles including ‘Raggamuffin‘, ‘Burning‘, ‘Throne‘ and her classic mega-hit, ‘Toast‘, produced by Izybeats and Walshy Fire of Major Lazer. The ‘Toast’ video, featuring appearances by Chronixx and Protoje, currently sits at 94 Million views on YouTube. She also appears on the Ed Sheeran, Justin Bieber, and Chronixx remix of ‘I Don’t Care’, sitting at over a million views on YouTube, and in hi-rotation on many of the top-40 radio stations around the world.
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Congratulations to Koffee, winner of our ReggaeMania.com ‘Tops’ Award for ‘Top International Female of 2019’.