Hiplife artistes earned more money from my ‘jama’ fusion – Jay Q

Music producer Jeff Tennyson Quaye, popularly known as Jay Q, has detailed how doing ‘jama hiplife’ increased the financial fortunes of Buk Bak and other hiplife artistes.

He revealed in an interview that a lot of the hiplife musicians did not make gains from their music until the release of Buk Bak’s ‘Sika Kokoo’ album.

“We were lost as hiplifers because Bukbak had released two songs but they were still struggling, VIP, everybody. You know around the time it was a hustle. Whether rap or hiplife would survive at the time, nobody knew. But the highlife artistes were making it.

So when we did the ‘I am going to come’ album, with that particular song ‘Kluu Blofo’ and Bright sang “sebe oo sebe”, I could hear exactly what I had in mind,” he said.

He added that at that time, Bright who was a hard core hiphop artiste didn’t really buy into the idea.

“Ronnie of blessed memory said they should listen to my idea. So when you listen to Kluu Blofo, the drum is hip hop but the strings and the gome were what I introduced because of course I am a Ga so I wanted to project where I come from. I fused a little bit of our traditional cultural Wulomei rhythm that people knew into ‘Kluu Blofo’,” Jay Q told Kwame Dadzie.

He added that Agiecoat with his experience in music business bought the album and marketed it.

“Agiecoat being an older man, listened to the album and he saw my vision. He selected the ‘Kluu Blofo’ song. Any DJ then who had the promo CD would attest to the fact that, that song was the last on the CD. Usually, DJs would play the first song but it was the last song on the promo. It was like an afterthought. And we all saw what happened to it; it became so big.

That was the first time Buk Bak bought their cars. Ronnie bought Benz, Bright bought a Toyota open-top. That was the time I also made so much money in production,” Jay Q further noted.

He, however, added that he faced serious criticism from the media for departing from the usual hiplife style to fusing local rhythms.

Jay Q, widely known by the “bottle breaker” signature, has produced for artistes including Buk Bak, VIP, 4×4, Castro, Mzbel, Daddy Lumba, Nana Acheampong, Obrafour, Obour, Nkasei, among others.