I pulled the Johnny character from the Jamaican Johnny Too Bad thing.
Jamaican music can be aggressive, soulful, smooth and exciting all at once - just like hip-hop. At the same time, there's nothing like Jamaica in the United States. Jamaica is its own thing.
Jamaica is just one of those places that has so many stimulating factors in everyday existence. It definitely feeds me, my creativity and my soul in so many ways.
Jamaica has the best coffee, the best sugar, the best ginger and some of the best cocoa in the world.
I love running in nature. I don't like running on the streets, I don't like running in the city, I don't like running on the concrete. I love running in nature, so Jamaica provides a lot of that for me.
I've been in Africa, America, moving around a lot. It's helped me to open up my mind. I was born in Jamaica; I've lived all my life there and got all I could from Jamaica. But I needed to be somewhere else to grow.
At Harvard, I got to meet and have dinner with Jamaica Kincaid. Just to have conversations with professors was absolutely amazing.
Politics is tricky, especially in Jamaica. There are two parties, Jamaica Labour Party and People's National Party, and if I went for one, I would upset supporters of the other. I stay as far from politics as I can.
I went back to Jamaica after living in New York and started to work on experimental stuff and basically I grew as a filmmaker. I went to film school; I was a PA on a lot of projects and I worked so hard, you know, you're young and I learned from different mentors. And luck put me in the position to work with amazing people. One of my mentors by the name of Little X, who took me under his wing after I came out of film school and moved to New York. I worked in videos for Jay-Z, Pharrell to Busta Rhymes and Wyclef. I quickly realized how much I wanted to make films instead of music videos.
In Jamaica, you're never very far away from people who don't have very much, and in Wilmette, pretty much everybody had a lot.
The mantra of the National Commercial Bank is 'building a better Jamaica.' If this bank is going to be everlastingly successful, it has to take on the ailments of this society.
Doing business in Jamaica is not easy, but it is rewarding.
The 70's was a great time for artistic expression in Jamaica and I was in the heart of it, unconsciously soaking it up and paving my future.
When you're in Jamaica, unless you're in a tourist spot, you don't hear Bob Marley; you mostly hear dance hall music.
I wanted a fake wedding in Jamaica.
I mean, Manhattan is cool. But weird parts, I like that. Jamaica, Queens, that's great.
I went to Jamaica for six months, and in Jamaica there was a lot of stillness.
I slept in the bedroom used by Sabine Baring-Goulds wife when I was researching The Moor, and later the Jamaica Inn on Bodmin Moor.
I believe that many lives around us now can reflect this strange pattern of migration and movement. The question is: are we aware of it, and do we embrace it as a kind of birthright? I do. And yet, I feel deeply connected to at least two homespaces - Jamaica and Ghana, and more recently, South Carolina.
Jamaica is an island that is filled with so much culture.
Jamaica is so musical, diverse and so extreme, from people singing in the streets to dancing.
I would be lying if I didn't say that the most inspirational place for me is Jamaica.
I'm a Canadian Jamaican. For me, I carry my Jamaican element into my music in my more recent releases.
Yesterday President Obama traveled to Jamaica, where he will meet with students and Caribbean leaders. Jamaica's such a beautiful place, Obama says he can't wait to just take it all in, hold it for several seconds, and then exhale.
I'm an artist. And I'm happy that I was there at the commencement of this music, this Jamaican music, to put my contribution and help to establish it.
