The first time I heard Lila Iké’s music was in 2020 when I streamed a song called “Solitude.” A yearning voice sang over a violin and bass guitar riddim. “Peace of mind / that’s just what I seek to find / I ain’t in the mood / I just need some solitude / Is that too much to ask?”
When I attended the Reggae Sumfest music festival this summer in Montego Bay, Jamaica, Iké performed wearing cornrows and an iridescent blue ensemble that evoked Jamaica’s shimmering Doctor Bird. During her set, she ad-libbed, changing the lyrics for “Solitude” to address her recent arrest by the Montego Bay Police, seemingly for driving in a car with dealer plates. “I’m not in the mood / fi police bribe me / it’s best you just leave me alone.”
Iké is no stranger to controversy. In the fall of 2021, she went on Instagram Live and Twitter to get ahead of what she called a blackmail attempt. In a chaotic tumble of tweets — which have since been scrubbed from the internet — she said that she feared for her life because someone was trying to take her down by claiming she was attracted to women. She challenged the unknown person over photographs that ultimately never surfaced. Shortly after, she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. The Jamaican media published rumors about Iké’s sexuality. One dancehall artist edited her name out of a song, declaring he was no longer attracted to her after the paranoia-induced confession.
At the time, I was on a social media hiatus, prioritizing my own mental health. I didn’t see her Twitter screed or tune into Instagram. When I read that she “came out,” as several articles reported, I was pleasantly surprised. But she soon said it was all a misunderstanding. “I have been struggling with my mental health for sometime which manifested in my recent social posts,” she said in a statement.
Although Jamaican culture is exported around the world under the slogan “One Love,” it is stained with a legacy of homophobia. In truth, it’s a regional aversion to same-sex relationships. In 2018, I went to Notting Hill Carnival in London for the first time. I was on my way to a fête with a group of people who were born and raised in different Caribbean countries; some were friends I had known for years, and others were brand new. One of these acquaintances yelled a slur as we drove by a gay bar. I was indignant. “What the fuck did you say that for? How would you like it if a white person drove by while you were minding your business and called you a n—!” I never spoke to him again.
Soon after Sumfest, I called Iké, who is now 31. We zoomed from our respective corners of Kingston while she was preparing for her first show in São Paulo the next day. When we spoke, she still had blue thread in her hair from her Sumfest performance. “The color blue is the theme of the project. So if you’re into chakras and spirituality, blue is the throat chakra. So I wore that color on a night that I had to express myself.” Iké was gearing up to debut her first full-length album, Treasure Self Love, in August. On the cover, her portrait floats in a cobalt sea, and her hair is decorated with cowrie shells. “I wanted it to reflect water because I’ve renewed and presented myself as transparent,” she said to me.
Lila Iké was born Alecia Grey in Manchester parish. It is what Jamaicans call “the country” or “the hills,” where the climate is cooler, the patois is thick, and the vibrations from sound systems travel forever. She’s from Christiana, a “very small town. They just got a KFC.” She and her three sisters were raised by her conservative single mother, who is a devout Christian but still played secular music in the house. “The music of Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Celine Dion, Lauryn Hill, Michael Jackson, Beenie Man, and Bounty Killer all influenced me from a really young age,” Iké said.
Her protective mother dictated what she and her sisters wore, sent Iké to a Seventh-day Adventist university, and chose her major, too. After a couple of years, tuition money ran dry, and Iké jumped on an opportunity to move to Kingston. Her mom chased down the car she was in and yanked her luggage from it, but Iké made it there anyway. She worked at a call center and honed her voice at local reggae haunts like Jamnesia until her big break came. Her friend Jamila Pinto landed a job as the assistant for a reggae musician named Protoje, who founded the label In.Digg.Nation Collective. “She would always tell him, ‘Yo, I have a friend from the country, she’s such a good artist; you guys need to meet, and you should produce her.” When she was at the movies, she got a text from an unknown number. It was Protoje asking her if she was free to meet at his studio up in Irish Town. He picked her up from the theater. A few years later, she released her first EP, The ExPerience.
There are hints of the controversy on her new album, Treasure Self Love. “All that noise definitely impacted me,” she says. As a first course of action, she took herself out of the spotlight. She reflects that “during that time, I was already working on my album, and so the song ‘Serious’ came up.” Protoje helped keep her going. “Lila, please be wise, don’t be your own demise,” she sings, referencing one of their many conversations. The album’s opening track, “Scatter,” is about Iké’s rise, and the media and bad-mind people who try to take her down. “No interview, not into you, no take interrogation / Me nuh owe no explanation fi me generation.”
Taking cues from other mainstream artists, Iké keeps her personal life private. Even though it’s been four years since her spiral, speculation about her identity remains. When I asked if she wanted to clear things up, she said, “I really don’t want to talk about that … I had no idea what was happening to me. I just remember feeling out of it,” she told me. “I went through a manic episode at the time.”
“These tears won’t even fill the void, I’m scared I need to see the light, oh Jah please keep me through the night.”
It’s not easy to be a woman in reggae. Iké’s mother was among the first to warn her. In “my very first song,” says Iké, “I say, ‘She never want me to get locked in a studio with no producer bwoy.” The face of the genre is a biracial rastaman with a guitar in his hands. In the 1960s and 1970s, Bob Marley & the Wailers’ songs “Slave Driver” and “War” were antidotes to racist imperialism around the world. Marley was later backed by a trio called the I-Threes, which included his wife Rita; they released the legendary album Exodus. Marley’s music, inspired by Marcus Garvey and Rastafarianism, wasn’t inherently homophobic. However, the Rastafarian movement — I’ve heard followers in Jamaica call it a lifestyle, some call it a religion — is rooted in Christianity and frequently patriarchal. Roots reggae is, by design, protest music, but it has its limitations.
There are signs of progress, such as Community Fest, a month-long pride celebration. J-FLAG, a human rights organization and safe haven, has been around since 1998. But Jamaica’s well-earned history as a homophobic state persists. A couple I know chose not to get married in Jamaica because their guest list included a number of queer friends.
Gross homophobic songs by Jamaican reggae and dancehall entertainers still play at parties and even have a role in politics. Prime Minister Andrew Holness, who leads the conservative-leaning Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), said at a press conference in Brussels in 2018, “A person’s sexuality, sexual orientation is not a criteria” for serving in his cabinet. “The truth is that in the past … there was a very conservative view on these matters,” he said. “But the culture is evolving.” Nevertheless, a minister of parliament in the JLP played a well-known anti-gay song called “Chi Chi Man,” which calls for killing gay men by fire, at a political rally this spring. Their constituents reelected both politicians in September.
Despite Prime Minister Holness’ assertions that a few of Jamaica’s religious institutions are coming around, Caribbean respectability is closely tied to the church. The colonial-era buggery laws — which originated in England under the reign of King Henry VIII in 1533, and criminalize male same-sex liaisons — still exist in Jamaica and other Caribbean countries. The highest courts in Dominica and other Eastern Caribbean islands have struck down their anti-sodomy policies — a sign of hope for a more inclusive future.
Artists whose songs have overt anti-gay themes have been banned from performing in the United States, the U.K., Holland, and elsewhere. In response to changing tides, artists such as Beenie Man have issued public apologies. Buju Banton and others have removed songs with violent, homophobic lyrics from some streaming platforms. Vybz Kartel doesn’t perform the opening lyrics of “Romping Shop,” in which he originally professed that “Man to man, gyal to gyal that’s wrong.” The music video for Shenseea’s hit song “Blessed” opens with a scene of her in bed with a woman; she was generally supported for the relatively provocative clip.
Lila Iké, newly established as a leading reggae artist, bears heavy cultural weight. If she spoke publicly and with sound mind about a queer identity, it could make her life as a musician in Jamaica difficult. She’s never spoken openly about the Twitter episode again, but she emerged from it a champion for mental health.
Her new album is a conscious effort to move beyond the past. In the tradition of bell hooks’ beloved book Communion, her priority is self-love before romantic love. “Brighter Days” is the penultimate track on Treasure Self Love. Iké sings over an upbeat roots riddim about how her healing is inextricably linked to her faith. “These tears won’t even fill the void, I’m scared I need to see the light, oh Jah please keep me through the night.” Her new album, although a beautiful attempt to be transparent about her hurt and aspirations, also suggests that some things remain unspeakable as a female reggae artist.
A month after Sumfest, Iké hosted her annual pre-Notting Hill Carnival party at a brewery in north London, where massive vats of beer and hops lined the perimeter. This year, her event coincided with the release of Treasure Self Love. She rocked a more casual look: a powder-blue sweatsuit and her signature evil eye necklace, her natural coils framing her face. With DJ Josh Skints, she formed a sound system called “One Wurl Sound.” Iké introduced a surprise guest, Sevana, from Westmoreland, Jamaica. She looked like a girl straight out of SoCal, wearing a crop top and a checkered flannel shirt around her waist. When the two were on tour together early in their careers, Iké told me what Sevana had told her: “It’s your work, it’s your talent, it is your potential” that’s creating success. “So don’t just serve, serve, and forget who you are in all of that.”
Natalie Meade is a journalist who covers Caribbean affairs, climate, and style. She is an editorial staffer at the New Yorker.
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