Grammy Award winning singer Tyla will be dropping her self-titled debut album on March 22 and the 14 track set will feature MOBO Award winning dancehall artist Skillibeng according to Tyla’s manager Colin Gayle.
“Skillibeng will be on the album,” Gayle told WMV in an exclusive Spotify Podcast interview on Monday.
The yet to be named track was recorded while Tyla visited Jamaica three months ago to record the album at Geejam Studios in Portland.
“She came to Jamaica to record, we shot the Truth Or Dare visualizer in Jamaica, in Port Antonio, we recorded about six songs in Jamaica at Geejam,” Colin said, Adding, “It was a great opportunity for me to show her where I was from and the vibe and all of that and she really loved it.”
Gayle, a native of Manchester, said the reason he took Tyla to Jamaica was so she could see where he is from and be in the right environment to make music.
“She is going on tour for about eight months and I am sure we will definitely touch the Caribbean at different spaces and times, Jamaica being one of those stops,”the CEO of Africa Creative Agency said.
Skillibeng also set to release his sophomore album Mr. Universe. “It’s just me showing the world that you know, I’m just a Jamaican kid who is very relatable through music internationally,” he told Office Magazine.
Ahead of the album, the “Whap Whap” deejay is set to drop a single produced by P2J who he said he met while in the U.K. at the Wireless Festival
Skillibeng said his approach to collaboration is organic, guided not by preconceived notions or commercial interests, but by a genuine affinity for fellow artists’ sounds and flows. “The thing is, as music goes by, I don’t really choose who I collaborate with,” Skillibeng shares. “It’s a natural thing, you know, if I like a person’s sound or flow or something, and the label comes across to me and say, ‘hey, you could actually get a feature with this person,’ I say okay. So it’s really a natural thing.”
For the St. Thomas native, collaboration is not merely a strategic maneuver but a reflection of shared passion and mutual respect for the craft. “I don’t really differentiate between artists,” Skillibeng explains, “as long as they’re actually good artists that take music seriously and sound really good.”
With one Hot 100 single under his belt, Skillibeng said he would like to collaborate with Lil Wayne and Future but as a child the only person he wanted to collaborate with was Vybz Kartel. “The only person that I really wanted to collaborate with was Vybz Kartel, and now I already have two Vybz Kartel collaborations. And I’ve already collaborated with the queen of rap Nicki Minaj. Twice.”
Colin Gayle will be in attendance at the Island Music Conference in Kingston happening February 21-25. He will be on a panel about artist management.
