Charismatic, sexy and lyrically lethal are words that could be used to describe the fast rising lady DJ Spice, who from her first major appearance at Sting 2000 made it clear that she was in the business to stay. Unfazed by the huge crowd that faced her Spice delivered an awesome performance earning four encores in the process. There was no doubt about it, she made dancehall world stood up and took notice.
Hailing from the Old Braeton community in St. Catherine Grace Hamilton aka Spice was an avid lover of music. While attending St. Catherine High School she, year after year entered the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission’s (JCDC) festival contest in music, singing her way through the judges hearts and winning a gold medal each time for her school. Although she was good at it, Spice never really thought she would end up working full time in the music industry.
She was too busy focusing on her school work – so much so that she graduated fifth form with all of eight subjects. With a career in chartered accounting in mind and plans to go on to sixth form somewhere along those lines Spice decided she would much rather focus on a music career. With that decision made she enrolled at the Edna Manley School for the Visual and Performing Arts to do voice and drama.
Spice got the break she was looking for in 1999 when she appeared on a show Nuffy had at the time on JACS cable called Many Moods of Nuffy. After her exposure she started getting a lot of positive feedbacks from friends and those who had seen her – all encouraging her to take it up as a career.
Soon Spice went from straight singing into dabbling into dejaying and found out she really had the crowd going when she did…it didn’t take her long to focus on where her strength was – as a DJ. In 2000 Heavy D from Supreme Promotions saw her dejaying and wasted no time in giving her the chance to perform at Sting 2000…needless to say his confidence was well merited. Early 2002 Spice went on a tour in England with Ward 21 and Baby Cham. With no hit to her credit, Spice totally devastated the audience and in the process earned the respect of Baby Cham.
He wanted to know why she didn’t have songs flooding the airwaves. She confessed to not having the links to establish herself. He assured her he would introduce her to Dave Kelly when he went back home…a promised he kept and saw her releasing her first single for Mad House, ‘Mi Gone’ on the Pretty Pretty rhythm did well both locally and overseas.
That same year she returned to Sting stage with a performance that left Elephant Man in her shadows! Spice went on to later record ‘Hype’ and ‘Right There’ (with TOI) on Dave Kelly’s Bad Gal rhythm and the videos for them created even more inroads for her.
When she released ‘Fight Over Man’ it created a rave in the dancehall. A lot of female artistes find that pregnancy slowed them down, but not Spice she took it in strides making her probably the only artiste who worked through her pregnancy, giving birth to her son and six weeks later was back on stage! Being a mother has now changed her career perspective and that includes being more professional about the business.
Spice is now working with team of professionals which includes publicity firm Khool International headed by Ray Alexander, booking agent, stylist, road manager, street team and of course she already has Mad House dealing with most of her productions although she voices for other top ranked producers.
Another improvement with the talent lady DJ is the fact that she will be doing more radio friendly songs in a bid to be more “corporate friendly”. Spice has just wrapped up recording three singles ‘I’m Back’ on the North Coast rhythm for House of Vibes, ‘Done Out’ on Dem rhythm for Ward 21 and ‘Inna Di Light’ on the Gear Box rhythm for Truck Back. There is no doubt – Spice is back and she intends to keep a commanding presence on the scene.
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