Aba A Luke

Caribbean en­ter­tain­ers are re­al­ly be­com­ing wor­thy of in­ter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion with each pass­ing day. And Ja­maican artistes, pro­duc­ers, pub­lic re­la­tions ex­perts, and man­age­ment must be giv­en props for their in­dus­tri­ous work and their eth­ic in en­sur­ing the artistes, and es­sen­tial­ly the is­land, re­ceive the at­ten­tion re­quired. Kavelle Christie of Blue­print Pub­lic­i­ty and Pro­mo­tions ap­proached the T&T Guardian on be­half of the 27- year-old son of Fred­die Mc­Greg­gor, Daniel "Chi­no" Mc­Greg­gor, who re­vealed some of the amaz­ing things that have been hap­pen­ing in his ca­reer.

Unique and ca­pa­ble

"I've been do­ing this for­ev­er," said Chi­no when asked about his mu­si­cal back­ground. He start­ed record­ing pro­fes­sion­al­ly in 1998 and has been ex­celling ever since. As the son of one of reg­gae's greats, Chi­no un­der­stands that ex­pec­ta­tions of him are high, but ex­plains that he sets him­self apart from oth­er artistes by be­ing unique. "My mu­sic is very lyri­cal. I use a lot of unique con­cepts and a lot of melodies. Peo­ple sing along to my stuff be­cause the mu­sic is re­al­ly catchy," he said dur­ing a quick tele­phone chat from his home in Ja­maica. Men­tors for the striv­ing song­writer and vo­cal­ist in­clude his fa­ther and oth­er mu­si­cal el­ders of that era, but ac­cord­ing to Chi­no, his mu­si­cal fam­i­ly–The Big Ship Fam­i­ly–is al­so an im­por­tant el­e­ment of his growth and de­vel­op­ment as a per­son and an artiste.

Daniel "Chi­no" Mc Greg­gor says the key to pub­lic em­brace is leav­ing the crowd with some­thing they'll al­ways re­mem­ber.

"The Big Ship Fam­i­ly is a fam­i­ly unit–a fam­i­ly en­ter­prise," he said, and that it is. Steered by his fa­ther, Chi­no and his sib­lings have made a name for them­selves un­der the well-known brand. On his own, though, the fa­ther of a five-month old ba­by girl has amassed a tremen­dous amount of sup­port from fans world­wide. "My new sin­gle, Must Come Back, is one for the ladies," said Chi­no. He ex­plained that the track holds strong to the old school vibe, adding that he thinks it's great that many of to­day's artistes are hold­ing on to the old school rhythms and build­ing on the mu­sic of that time. Chi­no high­light­ed that thus far he has been able to main­tain his rep­u­ta­tion by rep­re­sent­ing well each time he hits the stage, and the key, ac­cord­ing to the up­com­ing su­per­star, was to al­ways leave the crowd with some­thing to talk about.

Fam­i­ly, mu­sic and am­bi­tion

In ear­ly Ju­ly, his mu­sic took him to At­lanta and Cana­da for per­for­mances. He's al­so been do­ing a num­ber of shows at home in Ja­maica, dur­ing what he re­ferred to as "the sum­mer sea­son." But, when he's not on stage, Chi­no, who con­sid­ers him­self a fam­i­ly-ori­ent­ed man, says he still en­joys be­ing around mu­sic. "The stu­dio is home, lit­er­al­ly. Whether I'm record­ing or not, I'm around the mu­sic." Most re­cent­ly Chi­no re­leased his sopho­more Japan al­bum, Nev­er Change, and like mu­sic to his team's ears, the al­bum de­buted at num­ber sev­en on the iTunes Japan Reg­gae Al­bum Chart. The US re­lease of the al­bum is sched­uled for Sep­tem­ber, but be­fore that, Chi­no will em­bark on a two-month pro­mo­tion­al tour for the al­bum.

"We re­al­ly put in the work and we try to tap in to oth­er mar­kets–mar­kets that wouldn't or­di­nar­i­ly lis­ten to the mu­sic," he said, adding, "The Caribbean is on­ly so big." On that note, ques­tions arose as to Chi­no's thoughts on the so­ca genre. "I like so­ca mu­sic. I'd like to do some col­lab­o­ra­tions," he said, adding that he be­lieved so­ca artistes had been do­ing much more over­seas than Ja­maicans, al­though dance­hall and reg­gae mu­sic have un­doubt­ed­ly pen­e­trat­ed in a much more no­tice­able way. With big plans for the fu­ture, the Kingston na­tive main­tained, "I want to con­tin­ue mak­ing great mu­sic but on a wide scale, on an in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el. I want to join Shag­gy, Sean Paul and Bob Mar­ley. They've paved a way for peo­ple like me, to fol­low."