Sean Paul keeps it real with young musicians
Renowned international recording artiste Sean Paul has taken on a significant role in mentoring emerging musicians as part of an initiative focused on harnessing music as a catalyst for driving social change.
The Grammy Award winner was one of the mentors in this year’s groundbreaking Versions Youth Fellowship Project. The initiative is aimed at helping social justiceminded songwriters and musicians worldwide to collaborate with entertainers, educators, and brands for the creation of music that can drive change in their communities.
“To be selected to be a part of this project means I’m partaking in history by giving back,” the Temperature artiste told THE WEEKEND STAR.
Kareece Lawrence, engagement manager of the Versions Project, said reggae superstars Sean Paul, Lila Ike, Chronixx, Aza Lineage, and Grammy Award-winning producer JLL were specifically hand-picked as mentors because “they connected to the cause of the project. and their contributions and mindset were aligned with the goals of the project”.
The Versions Project aims to support emerging youth artistes age 16-24 through a one-year fellowship programme designed to build their skills, amplify their voices and transform their vision for a better world into direct community action.
According to co-founder of Darksparks charity foundation, which birthed the Versions Project, D’Ari Lisle, “As with all of our projects, Darkspark uses the tools of pop culture to tackle challenging social issues and works with youth to inspire selfdiscovery and promote intercultural understanding”.
Sean Paul said the Versions Project served as yet another platform for him to empower upand-coming entertainers.
“It’s very important to me to be a mentor to younger artistes, producers, musicians. I’ve done that throughout a lot of my career, generally,” the Tempreture hitmaker said.
The internationally acclaimed entertainer has encouraging more artistes to engage in similar programmes, stating that it is important to prepare up-andcoming entertainers for the hard work that is required for them to succeed.
“Knowledge is power [and] we [established artistes] have experienced certain things, [so] if we can give younger artistes, musicians and producers knowledge and power as to how things really are, not just glitz and glamour, [but] the other side of things — like the hard work, hours put in, the amount of back and forth, blood sweat and tears, disappointments faced, etc. It’s important [to] younger upcoming musicians and artistes for us to keep it real, so they understand it is not an easy job,” the Dutty Rock artiste said.
He further stated, “It is very rewarding. If you love art and want to get your art out there, and want to be heard and be important, and eventually take part in the history of what has happened, it’s better to be knowledgeable from the beginning. So to take advice from your elders is definitely the way to go, and this is why it’s important for more established artistes to take part in projects like these,” he said.
Organisers of the Versions Project received more that 50 applicants after it opened the door to “all youth leaders who believe song is their superpower” to “amplify the voices” for social change. Twentyseven youths participated in the programme, which lasted three months and saw the Versions team visiting 27 countries, including Jamaica, Zimbabwe, and Trinidad.
Lawrence said the youngsters who participated in the programme were challenged to conceptualise, write, record and produce an album. The project is set to be released in April.