Kashief Lindo generating buzz
US-based reggae crooner Kashief Lindo is generating a great buzz overseas with his latest single, ‘Baby I’m A Want You’, produced by his father Willie for their Heavybeat Records in Fort Lauderdale.
The single was released three months ago, while a video for the project was released two months ago.
The single is in the top 10 of the South Florida Reggae +harts, and is reportedly doing well in European online platforms.
“The success of this song shows that lover’s rock still has an audience out there,” the elder Lindo said.
At one time, Lindo was touted as an artiste to watch. Hit songs like First Cut and Hard Times, in 1993, built up a loyal following for him.
In 2012, he released a critically well-received album,
A Reggae
Tribute To
Michael
Jackson, featuring 18 reggae cover versions of Jackson’s songs.
In recent years, the diminutive Lindo has become a senior member of his father’s Heavybeat Records, working on albums and songs by rocksteady greats The Melodians, among others.
Heavybeat Records is a independent label that has carved out a reputation for punching above its weight, producing solid gems such as Beres Hammond’s What One Dance Can Do’ and Dennis Brown’s Inseparable.
Now, Kashief Lindo is feeling the urge to release new vocal material, especially as rising social tensions in the US have inflamed his passions. He is now in the studios applying the finishing touches to a new EP with several conscious reggae songs, including Till Dem Bun Down the House, a song criticising the spate of controversial police shootings involving blacks.
“Tension between the police and the black community is nothing new, but there is an ugly feel to this new wave of killing. We must unite against the scourge of racism, and the murder and victimisation of black people in the US society,” Kashief said.
Outrage over racial profiling and the killing of African Americans by police officers and vigilantes in recent years helped give rise to the Black Lives Matter movement.
Earlier this month, a white police officer who shot and killed an African American woman in her Fort Worth, Texas home, in the presence of her eight-yearold nephew, was charged with murder after resigning from the force.