Shenseea didn’t exactly say she’s the new Queen of Dancehall. She didn’t say she isn’t, either, and that careful dodge is now splitting fans right down the middle.
The moment came during an interview at an All Access private event hosted by The Beat Miami at Lume Lounge in Pembroke Pines, Florida, on Tuesday night.
The gathering was held to celebrate the release of her latest EP, Catalyst, but the clip doing the rounds online has nothing to do with the new music.
When the conversation turned to Spice and her standing in the genre, Shenseea opened with respect. “I respect Spice a lot. I mean, I respect all the people who are performing in the business,” she said.
Then came the pivot. “I’m not taking anything away from Spice, right? But I just believe that you were what we needed at that time,” she added, pointing to Spice’s run with So Mi Like It as a period when nobody could touch her.
Asked who holds the crown right now, Shenseea leaned on her numbers. “Based on statistics and what I’m doing now, I don’t think I have any opinion on that,” she said, a line that sounds humble on paper but lands a lot more pointed in context.
The Beat Miami framed it generously when it posted the footage to Instagram. Its caption read: “Shenseea responds with grace and respect to claims that she’s the new Queen of Dancehall.”
Not everyone online saw it that way. Some social media users backed her reading of the situation, while others pushed back hard on any suggestion that she has overtaken Spice.
It’s easy to see where both camps are coming from. Spice has spent well over a decade as one of dancehall’s most recognisable voices, and So Mi Like It became a calling card that carried her far beyond Jamaica.
Her 2021 album 10 went on to earn a Grammy nomination for Best Reggae Album, which gave her title a kind of mainstream stamp few dancehall women have had.
Shenseea’s case rests on a different kind of reach. Her debut album Alpha arrived in 2022, she appeared on Kanye West’s Donda, and her Megan Thee Stallion collaboration Lick pushed her into rap and pop spaces where streaming numbers tell their own story.
That’s really the heart of the argument. One side sees the crown as something earned over years in the dancehall trenches, and the other sees it as belonging to whoever is moving the most units and pulling the most attention today.
Catalyst now gives her supporters fresh material to point to, and her critics a new yardstick to measure her against. Spice hasn’t publicly responded to the clip so far, and plenty of fans are waiting to see if she will.
