Jamaican reggae star Koffee was featured in a new short Honda documentary this week by Billboard.
The Honda docu-series called “Honda Backstage” was directed by Alfred Marroquin and featured the young sensation as one of this year’s “most exciting rising stars.” In the short episode that premiered on Monday on Billboard’s YouTube, Koffee is filmed in her hometown of Spanish Town, Jamaica, where she takes viewers back to where it all started. The Young reggae singer talks about growing up in Saint Catherine and what made her fall in love with reggae music.
“I was raised in Spanish Town, Jamaica. My mom was and still is a Christian, so I was always inside, not going out much and hanging out with friends,” the young star narrates in the feature. According to Koffee, whose real name is Mikayla Simpson, her outings were primarily church and school. “It was very quiet for me,” the 19-year-old Grammy nominee said.
The “Toast” singer says church and school became instrumental in nurturing her musical talent. “Growing up in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, I think we are a very musical people; we take pride in singing hymns, embracing, learning different instruments, and learning music,” she said. Elsewhere in the interview, Koffee discloses that it was after a well-received high school performance that she thought seriously about pursuing music professionally.
In the short video, Koffee attributes a lot of her musical influence and noble upbringing to her mother, Jo-Anne Williams. Jo-Anne says that she was a single parent and so it wasn’t always easy. Koffee, however, did not hesitate to give more praises to her mother, who she seems to absolutely adore. “She wanted to get it perfectly right so she did her best,” Koffee said.
The reggae star recalls that a Richie Steven’s CD that her mother used to play incessantly when she was growing up, was her earliest memory with reggae music. The singer says she fell in love with it then and there. She also explained that her first experience writing music was actually from a tender age where she would write simpler rhymes. “As a child, I would write. Every now and then. I would try to rhyme words, write little poems and songs,” Koffee said. “Simple stuff but that’s definitely where I started,” she added.
Check out Koffee’s full feature on Honda Back Stage on Billboard’s YouTube.
