Louie Culture has opened up about his bond with Dexta Daps, the road to their Gangalee collaboration and its remix with Tory Lanez, and what he describes as an industry full of “gatekeepers.”
Among them, he said, were the people who squeezed him out of the Dave Kelly Mad House tribute at Sumfest.
The veteran deejay said his first meeting with Dexta came through a mutual friend, who called to say the singer wanted to talk.
Louie had already heard about Dexta, and he recalled that Buju had mentioned the younger artist to him before.
When Dexta played him Gangalee and asked him to voice a verse, Louie was not convinced the record needed him at all.
He told Dexta the song was already complete. “This is a hit,” he said, adding that he urged him to release it as it was. Dexta insisted on having him on the track, and the two came out with the original before any remix was in the picture.
The song took off, and Louie said the calls started coming once people everywhere began talking about it. Later, Dexta reached out again, this time about a remix.
They flew to Miami, shot the video and recorded the song with Tory Lanez, with all three artists appearing on screen together.
Louie kept his verse in his own style, even though the record’s subject matter differs from what he usually performs.
The relationship carried onto the stage. After a show in New York, Louie said, keyboard player Greg, who had played in his Portland band Rhythm 2000, told him Dexta wanted him on tour.
Louie had planned to do just one show, but Dexta pushed back. You have to come on the road,” Louie recalled Dexta telling him. “That was history,” he said. That tour ran “right through COVID,” he added, a period when few artists were performing.
The conversation turned sharper when it came to Sumfest. At the same festival where Louie performed, organisers staged a tribute to Dave Kelly’s Mad House camp, of which he was a founding member alongside artists including Nitty Kutchie.
Louie was not part of it, and he put the blame on the music industry’s “gatekeepers,” describing people who smile in an artist’s face while working against them.
He also revealed that Spragga Benz, who did appear in the tribute, initially did not want to go because the original members were not all involved. Louie said he encouraged Spragga to take part anyway. “Just represent,” he said he told him.
Instead, Dexta Daps brought Louie on stage during his own Sumfest set, which came right before the Mad House segment.
Louie suggested he perform before Dexta, but the singer refused and called him up during the show. For Louie, it meant delivering his own tribute ahead of the official one.
He said he holds no grudges against any artist and considers everyone in the business a co-worker. Still, he described a pattern of being undermined.
A man from Germany, he said, came to Jamaica to find him personally after big agencies claimed Louie had quit music to go farming in the country.
Louie explained that he had left town at the peak of his career and moved to Portland to “take care of my mother and my father,” who had cared for him growing up.
Since then, he said, rumours have spread among promoters that he was finished with music. He also described losing a recent show booking after another promoter, with whom he has never done business, told the organiser he was a hard artist to deal with.
He said he believes the music business is more corrupt than any other. Even so, he insisted that every attempt to stop him only gives him more time to write songs and grow stronger. “I will let the gatekeepers know this,” he said. “We just leave it to time.”
