A superstar co-sign is always nice to earn, but Trinidadian zess-dancehall artist and poet Lady Lava didn’t need one to score one of the buzziest Caribbean hits of last summer.
Perhaps best known for “Ring Finger,” her waist-wining rebuke of a controlling man, Lady Lava is one of the most exciting new female voices in Caribbean music, infusing her home country’s rising Trinibad genre with the rawness and wordplay of Lady Saw (now Minister Marion Hall).
Born Keisha Harris in Cunupia, Trinidad, Lady Lava has been in a love affair with music since primary school, where she took part in the school choir, chorus speaking and the church choir. When her mother was home, old-school gospel and Kenny Rogers were the only music allowed, but dad used to sneak in bits of classic dancehall and reggae. Like most kids, Lava expanded her horizons by tapping into what her peers were listening to — mainly Lauryn Hill and Lady Saw — and trying her best to bridge the gap between what she heard at home and what she heard at school. “I started taking my mother’s gospel cassette tapes and recording what was playing on the radio over them,” she remembers with a laugh.
Lava recorded her first song, a dancehall track titled “Bring It Back,” in 2008, but shady payola practices (radio programmers wanted payment for each spin) proved the first major hurdle in a career that has continued to defy such obstacles. After taking some time away from the music industry, she made a soft return in 2015 that culminated in 2017’s “If You Beat It Keep It a Secret,” a blistering, name-dropping kiss-off to a profoundly unsupportive ex-lover that became her first local hit.
