Nigel Teles­ford

Reg­gae artiste Yak­s­ta is po­si­tion­ing his lat­est sin­gle, Roar, as more than a mu­sic al re­lease, us­ing it as a plat­form to con­front what he views as grow­ing in­au­then­tic­i­ty, so­cial im­bal­ance and cul­tur­al drift across the Caribbean and be­yond.

In a re­cent in­ter­view, the Ja­maican singer said the track emerged from frus­tra­tion with what he de­scribed as “mad­ness” in mod­ern so­ci­ety.

“We’re tired of the fool­ish­ness… tired of the agen­das… tired of the de­grad­ing of women… tired of the racial war,” he said, adding that many peo­ple are “not liv­ing their truth” de­spite out­ward ap­pear­ances of suc­cess.

Yak­s­ta ar­gued that much of to­day’s be­hav­iour is shaped by ex­ter­nal pres­sures, with es­capism be­com­ing a com­mon cop­ing mech­a­nism.

“If you have to turn to a sub­stance to feel alive, then you’re not liv­ing,” he said.

Born Ke­maul Mar­tin and hail­ing from St Mary, Ja­maica, Yak­s­ta has built a rep­u­ta­tion as one of reg­gae’s more in­tro­spec­tive voic­es. His break­out sin­gle Am­bi­tion amassed more than 20 mil­lion views on YouTube and earned recog­ni­tion from Rolling Stone, while tracks such as Hu­mans, Walk In­side My Shoes and Pon di Is­land have re­in­forced his fo­cus on so­cial com­men­tary and per­son­al re­flec­tion. Known as the “Bush Lawd,” he al­so main­tains close ties to farm­ing, a lifestyle he says shapes both his mind­set and his mu­sic.

The artiste al­so ques­tioned the sys­tems that shape so­ci­ety, ar­gu­ing that they of­ten pri­ori­tise pow­er over peo­ple.

“We’re liv­ing in a sys­tem of pira­cy… it’s all who can thief bet­ter,” he said, con­tend­ing that in­di­vid­u­als fre­quent­ly un­der­es­ti­mate their own in­flu­ence.

“The peo­ple are more pow­er­ful than the peo­ple in pow­er… but we blind our­selves to it.”

Turn­ing to the mu­sic in­dus­try, Yak­s­ta ex­pressed con­cern that au­then­tic­i­ty is in­creas­ing­ly be­ing sac­ri­ficed in the pur­suit of suc­cess.

“Peo­ple don’t think for them­selves… Even I was fol­low­ing what I was taught at one point,” he said, sug­gest­ing that many artistes feel pres­sured to con­form rather than ex­press their true iden­ti­ties.

From a Caribbean per­spec­tive, he al­so raised con­cerns about cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty, warn­ing that glob­al trends are re­shap­ing how re­gion­al mu­sic and lifestyles are ex­pressed.

“If you look at the Caribbean now, we’re all Amer­i­can­ised or west­ern­ised,” he said.

“Trinidad videos mim­ic Ja­maica, Ja­maica mim­ic Trinidad, and we both mim­ic the States.”

De­spite this, Yak­s­ta ac­knowl­edged the pos­i­tive role of so­cial me­dia in con­nect­ing Caribbean au­di­ences and show­cas­ing tal­ent across the re­gion.

“Be­cause of so­cial me­dia, we now get to see the vast tal­ents in the Caribbean that were over­looked over the years,” he said, not­ing that his own per­cep­tion of so­ca mu­sic shift­ed af­ter ex­pe­ri­enc­ing it first­hand.

“I nev­er gave so­ca a chance be­fore,” he ad­mit­ted, “but when I ex­pe­ri­enced it, I re­alised the cul­ture and the en­er­gy be­hind it. Now mi love it and want to ex­pe­ri­ence it first­hand in T&T.”

He de­scribed the ex­pe­ri­ence as re­fresh­ing, high­light­ing the sense of uni­ty and en­joy­ment he ob­served.

“It was all fun… no fight, no quar­rel… just peo­ple en­joy­ing them­selves,” he said.

Yak­s­ta al­so em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of self-aware­ness and in­de­pen­dent think­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly among younger gen­er­a­tions.

“A lot of peo­ple don’t think for them­selves… and that is where the prob­lem starts,” he said, adding that so­ci­etal and gen­er­a­tional is­sues of­ten per­sist due to a lack of re­flec­tion.

He fur­ther high­light­ed the role of fam­i­ly struc­ture in shap­ing in­di­vid­u­als, not­ing that guid­ance and bal­ance are crit­i­cal in help­ing young peo­ple de­vel­op their own per­spec­tives.

At its core, Yak­s­ta said his mis­sion is to com­mu­ni­cate truth through mu­sic and en­cour­age lis­ten­ers to look in­ward rather than re­ly sole­ly on ex­ter­nal sys­tems.

“I want them to see truth and not fear it… the pow­er is with­in,” he said.

De­spite his crit­i­cisms, the artiste end­ed on a mes­sage of uni­ty and per­son­al choice, em­pha­sis­ing that dif­fer­ent ex­pres­sions of mu­sic, cul­ture and lifestyle can co­ex­ist.

“It’s time to in­te­grate, uni­fy, and make every­thing about peo­ple’s choic­es and re­spect­ing those choic­es,” he said. “The world is big enough for all of that… but don’t tell me this is how I’m sup­posed to live.”

Yak­s­ta al­so ex­tend­ed re­spect to Trinidad and To­ba­go and its so­ca cul­ture, un­der­scor­ing the im­por­tance of cross-Caribbean ap­pre­ci­a­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion.

As Roar con­tin­ues to cir­cu­late, the artiste is po­si­tion­ing him­self not just as a per­former, but as a voice in a wider cul­tur­al con­ver­sa­tion—one cen­tred on au­then­tic­i­ty, iden­ti­ty and self-aware­ness.