Making music while in prison is nothing new. Mac Dre, TI, ex-Dipset member, Hell Rell and a few others have managed to get behind bars. Vybz Kartel, the dancehall legend who was recently released after serving 13 years of a 35-to-life sentence, revealed in a recent interview that he continued his career by finding new ways to record music while locked up.
For an episode of the Juan Ep Is Life podcast, Vybz Kartel went on a video call with hosts Cipha Sounds and Peter Rosenberg to talk about the first thing he did when he got out of prison (I had sex with his fiancee), how he spends his time (eating healthy, working out, managing Graves' disease and making music) and what he has planned for the immediate future (a series of shows around the world, including a huge one in Jamaica on December 31st). But the most surprising part of the interview came about 25 minutes into the episode, when they started talking about the sheer volume of music Kartel released while locked up.
“We're not trying to pick on you, we're just so curious, we're fans,” Cipha Sounds said after Rosenberg mentioned that some of his most successful releases came during his absence. Kartel said when he first went to prison that he was able to keep up his usual rate of releases because of the amount of music he had pre-recorded. “The first year, we had unreleased songs,” Kartel said. “But then the songs ended and we had to do what we had to do. That's when I started recording behind bars.” He said he used to record his vocals on an Apple iPhone because the handset had “an amazing sound quality”.
To try to get the best possible sound quality while recording, Kartel said he would use the mattress from his bed to mimic the padding found in a studio recording booth. “I would have the phone, 3 feet from my face and wrap the mattress around my head and record. It was crazy.” He then demoed using the vocals from the iPhone and a beat playing on an iPad. He would then send both to an engineer who would take all the parts and turn them into a complete song.
It's all very impressive. But what's most surprising about this process is that Kartel says it's the same one he used to create what many consider his greatest song: “Fever.” It was released in 2016 as the lead single for Kartel's King of Dancehall The album “Fever” became an instant hit and is now his most streamed song, notching over 100 million streams on Spotify. Kartel said he would mostly record at night or wait until the guards were on their lunch break to record his vocals, always keeping an eye out for whatever was on patrol. “I would still have to watch,” he recalls. “That's what I would do [sing]'fever!' and then I would have to get up and look. It was crazy. It was line by line!”
