Producer Yared ‘BoomDraw’ Lee Thrilled About Jesse Royal’s Grammy Nomination

Twenty-six-year-old Yared “BoomDraw” Lee is living his dream after Jesse Royal’s album Royal was nominated for Best Reggae Album at the upcoming 64th Annual Grammy Awards to be held on January 31, 2022, at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.

BoomDraw produced the eighth track on the 11 song project, titled Black. If Jesse wins, Lee says his ‘non-traditional’ career path will be validated.

“It would further validate the journey I’ve been on this far. It wasn’t easy taking on a non-traditional career path. I decided to put higher education on hold,” he told DancehallMag.

“I’m still pretty young and this song is the first one I’ve really done that got a full release. So, (Jesse) winning would put me over the moon,” he added.

The other nominated albums in the category are 10 by Spice, Pamoja by Etana, Positive Vibration by Gramps Morgan, Live N Livin by Sean Paul, and Beauty in Silence by Virginia-based reggae group SOJA.

Lee was pursuing a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics at the Florida International University (FIU), but realized music was his true passion. In 2014, he decided to take a leap of faith and pursue what he truly wanted to.

“I started to produce a lot of instrumental music that I released myself. I’m going to be launching my own production imprint when I produce with more artists,” he said.

Lee added that collaborating with Jesse was synonymous with completing a family project.

“Everybody that was part of the project made it feel very familiar. It was a very educational process. He’s very easy to work with, so he and I were bouncing off each other and had a very good idea of what he wanted so we went into the project with vision,” he explained.

The project was a long time coming, according to the producer.

“It happened over the course of a few months. We had our first session in the early part of 2020. It was almost just drums and guitars and I sent it to Jason Panton (reggae artist) and he sent it to Jesse and he liked it and they sent back a voice note vibing to the song. When I got that, I was able to pull it into my production program and start to work on it,” he explained.

Royal was released on June 11 as Jesse’s second album. His first album, Lily of da Valley, released by Easy Star Records in 2017, topped the Billboard Reggae Albums chart.

Lee believes Jesse has a good chance of copping the Grammy.

“We have strong chances but we’re going up against people who have won before, so,  familiarity is another factor. Grammy’s changed up their voting system so now the entire voting academy has a chance to cast a vote. I’m remaining optimistic,” he said.