Noshing on a veggie patty on a warm September afternoon, Gyptian relaxes outside D’Ital Shak, a Rasta health food eatery in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. In a few hours he’ll throw on a crisp black suit and head to Manhattan’s Canal Room to celebrate the release of his debut album, My Name Is Gyptian (VP Records). But for now, the 23-year-old is content greeting well-wishers who steadily approach him...and studiously partaking of the local herbs and spices. “No hacklings” is the catchphrase of this humble man whose grand name evokes pyramids and mystical ankh vibrations. Translation: No hype.
Born Windel Beneto Edwards, Gyptian was virtually unknown before winning 2004’s nationally (in Jamaica) televised Portmore Star Search Talent Contest. It was six months before friends persuaded him to take time off from installing windows and head for Mr. Wong’s rudimentary studio in Portmore to lay down some cuts. “These are some serious times,” he sang in a voice like liquid gold. “All I can see around us is just violence and crime.”
That mournful first release, “Serious Times,” which shot to the top of the Jamaican charts in the summer of 2005, was just the first in a series of gentle yet powerful songs—including the yearning “Is There a Place” and the poignant “Ma Ma,” a tribute to mothers raising children amid crushing poverty—that established the young vocalist as one of reggae’s brightest hopes. “When I sing,” says Gyptian, “I cry in a different way.”
And no wonder. In the year leading up to his album’s release, the singer endured a series of tribulations that would test even Job. First, he was robbed at gunpoint while working in Mr. Wong’s studio. He then saw his beloved aunt suffer a stroke and lost a close friend to heart failure. Worst of all, his twin sons died after a premature birth. “After all these things happened, I did ask myself, Why me?” he admits. “But true me’s a singer, so the more I sing, the better I feel. When me write these songs, I never know them woulda help me so much.”
References:
Archives