Shenseea says meeting Vybz Kartel for the first time was like meeting her “long-lost Godfather.”
Shenseea and Vybz Kartel are two of the biggest dancehall artists in the game currently, and they both share a history by collaborating on the 2016 hit song, “Loodi.” However, they never met each other face-to-face until this year. The Jamaican beauty described the surreal moment in a new interview with Vibe, sharing what it was like meeting the Worl’Boss at his historic show in Brooklyn earlier this year.
“I was like, ‘I’m ready to meet the GOAT,’ you know,” ShenYeng said. “Because it was so surreal that he’s the one that gave me my first hit song and I have not seen his face in real life because as soon as I stepped on the scene, I think a year before, he was incarcerated. So, it’s almost like I got to meet my long-lost Godfather who was watching over me from a distance.”
Despite Vybz Kartel being released from prison in July last year, it took some months before Shenseea got to see his face in person for the first time. The “Shake It To The Max (FLY)” singer shared that she wanted to give the dancehall legend space and time to reintegrate into life outside the confines of prison walls.
“I wanted to give him that freedom and that space to roam,” she said. “So, us meeting at his event, that I didn’t even plan to go to, you know, just came up and we all decided that we should definitely do it for the culture.”
Shenseea was one of the guest performers at Vybz Kartel’s sold-out shows at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn in April of this year. The show marks the first time that two were performing their collab “Loodi” together live.
The “Fever” artist will go down in history as the first dancehall artist to sell out the Barclays Center for two nights straight. Shenseea didn’t share if she had met him again since that first meeting. However, her longtime producer, Rvssian, and Kartel are close friends, so that will likely not be their first meeting.
Elsewhere in her interview, Shenseea also spoke about meeting another Caribbean artist she looked up to, Rihanna, although it was very brief.