Shenseea has a new philosophy, and it sounds a lot braver than the one she started with. “I feel like it’s better to be judged than not experience something at all,” the Jamaican star told the Jamaica Observer’s Splash ahead of her new EP, Catalyst.
The eight-track project is out now across all digital platforms. It finds her looking back at how far she has come while leaving room for the woman she is still becoming, and it arrives after one of the toughest stretches of her life.
Shenseea opened up about going through a period of depression that felt unfamiliar to her and left her questioning herself in ways she never had before.
She credits God and the people around her with helping her come out the other side. “I feel like I’m starting over, but phase two,” she said.
The emotional centre of the EP is a song called Vulnerability, and she is not shy about where it ranks. It’s definitely in my top five of most creative songs ever, because it’s my most vulnerable song,” she said. “Of all the records that I’ve put out, you’ve never heard me sing like that before, or say the stuff that I’m saying.”
Getting there was not simple for an artist known for confident delivery and larger than life performances.
She says keeping her feelings bottled up was blocking her from the music itself. “I was holding it in and mi just couldn’t focus creatively. It was draining the life out of me,” she explained.
Releasing the track changed that. “Honestly, ever since I released that track I feel so liberated and free,” she said.
Fans noticed the shift too, according to Shenseea. “I think people really took from it that, ‘Wow, she really let it all out,’ and that’s what it was made for,” she added.
The title Catalyst comes from a lesson about patience. Shenseea admits that her early ambition pushed her to chase the destination before living through the steps in between. “You cannot change from point A to Z without going through the rest of the alphabet, and I feel like I took that leap,” she said.
In her words, Catalyst is her attempt at “the smoothest transition into a new phase without changing me entirely.” She says she went back for the steps she felt she had skipped.
Sonically, that means reaching back to her roots. She describes the EP as “the Shenyeng Anthem mixed with Lighter Shenseea,” pointing to two sides of her catalogue, the brash dancehall swagger that first broke her and the smoother sung side of her work. “You’ll feel the nostalgia,” she promised.
There is a business side to all this as well. Shenseea recently changed management, and she frames the move as part of the same growth.
Not everyone who started the journey with you, is meant to finish it with you,” she said, calling God’s timing “impeccable.
She also says she is making music for the love of it again, not for submissions or awards. “The music I am doing now is because I literally have fun doing them, I am in love with them, and I want to share them with the world,” she said. “I have the drive in me to keep going and that’s what I’m going to do.”
