Ottawa-based KU-J won’t make musical junk food
It wasn’t easy for reggae artist 2
KU-J to leave behind the whitesand beaches and crystal water of Sint Maarten, his Caribbean island home. The location where he was first given a keyboard by his father and started to build a musical fan base, the 37-square-mile tourist haven was initially a land of opportunity for the budding performer. But after his songs started to reach a wider audience, the artist traded his flip-flops for snow boots and headed to Ottawa—a city that, he hopes, will provide him with more musical prospects.
“The island is full of talent, but we do not get the exposure there, no matter how good you are,” KUJ, born Jawara Joe, tells the Straight on the line from Canada’s capital. “A lot of us tend to branch out and move to different places. I needed to get out of Sint Maarten for a bit. Moving here let me realize how it’s just a drop in the ocean.”
Not trading his signature sound for Ottawa’s indie-rock feel quite yet, however, the performer has made sure his Caribbean culture and rhythms still dominate his music. Beginning his musical education with hip-hop, Joe took a few years to find his niche in reggae before deciding to fuse his riddims with genres like gritty dancehall and smooth R&B.
“I think all those sounds represent me,” he says. “I’m not the kind of person who is very rigid in what I’m listening to. I explore a lot of different styles. It grows your mind, so why not experiment? If you’re a human being, you’re complex. If you really want to express yourself, your music also becomes really complex. But if you have a beautiful mind at the same time, your songs won’t seem busy or cluttered.”
That thoughtfulness is a characteristic of Joe’s output. A fan of socially conscious hip-hop and also well aware of reggae’s history of protest songs, the musician often writes tracks that address political injustices or the social order. Take, for example, his latest single, “No 45”.
“In a lot of modern-day dancehall, gun violence is glorified,” he says. “Everyone wants to be a tough guy, everyone wants to be a badman. If you’re a gangsta, you go everywhere with your gun. But a party is meant to be a place where you have fun, enjoy yourself, and meet people. You’re supposed to bring creative and joyful energy there. When you carry a gun, the weapon brings destructive energy. So you cannot say you intend to have a good time when you’re carrying something damaging with you to the establishment. It was important for me to say that in the song.
“A lot of times people don’t want to talk about what needs to be talked about in their music,” he continues. “They want to write about what’s popular or popping or hot. But often people want to hear something else. Let me put it like this. If you’re someone that eats junk food all the time and then you eat a healthy meal, maybe it doesn’t taste as good because it’s not something you’re used to, but it’s what you need to sustain your body. It’s the same kind of thing with music. The industry is a lot of fat and junk food, and there are very few artists who are healthy. So that’s why I tend to write a lot of songs and lyrics that address the political situation, so I can be the organic musical food.”