Lila Iké’s New Album Includes Savvy Nods To Garnett Silk, Peter Tosh
Lila Iké’s debut Treasure Self Love will land next Friday (August 22). Of the 11 songs on the album, four lean purposefully on Jamaican classics—an approach that underlines the Jamaican singer’s ear for foundational melody.
On the album’s opening track, Scatter—which she premiered on the COLORSxSTUDIOS platform on Wednesday as a live track—Iké sampled Peter Tosh’s invocations from Igziabeher (Let Jah Be Praised) , which appeared on his 1976 debut Legalize It. She also interpolates the devotional lyrics from Garnett Silk’s 1994 hit Complaint —echoing Buju Banton and Silk’s 1995 ’Til Shiloh version, which itself drew from Tosh’s Let Jah Be Praised.
Love in a Lovely Way, the album’s closer, which is still unreleased, will reportedly offer another nod to Garnett Silk, borrowing from his 1992 hit Place in Your Heart.
Iké has often cited Silk as a core influence, telling Flaunt magazine: “Garnett Silk is my all-time favorite because of what he did for the music I don’t think anybody else did it.”
“I feel like his voice, his style, he had a spiritual thing with his voice,” she continued. “Also, the fact that he didn’t get much time to do what I really think he wanted to do. Very powerful and very spiritual. How he was cut down so early almost makes me take up the responsibility, just make sure my music is on that level.”
Garnett Silk, 28, died on December 9, 1994, when a propane cylinder exploded at his mother’s home in Manchester, Jamaica, sparking a fire. He escaped, then ran back to rescue her; both died.
The sampling continues on All Over The World, Iké’s August 1 release with Protoje, built around a hook that’s traveled across multiple genres and decades. It interpolates Rascalz’s 1999 Top of the World with Barrington Levy and K-Os—a Hip-Hop track that itself reworks the refrain from R. Dean Taylor’s 1970 pop hit Indiana Wants Me . It’s the same motif Levy nodded to on his 1991 hit Dance Hall Rock with Cutty Ranks, linking Iké’s single to a well-worn lineage.
On Romantic, Iké reimagines Patra’s 1994 hit Romantic Call , a crossover that originally featured rapper Yo-Yo and peaked at No. 55 on the Billboard Hot 100. Iké’s version flips the dynamic into a fresh duet with Dancehall star Masicka, while Patra herself appears in the intro and outro—a nod of approval from the original Queen of the Pack.
All Over The World and Romantic join the album’s other three singles: Fry Plantain with Joey Bada$$, He Loves Us Both with H.E.R., and Too Late To Lie , each of which received an official music video.
Treasure Self Love will be released via Wurl Iké Records and In.Digg.Nation Collective, under exclusive license to Ineffable Records.
Here’s the full tracklist:
- Scatter
- Too Late to Lie
- Sweet
- Fry Plantain (ft. Joey Bada$$)
- All Over the World (ft. Protoje)
- Romantic (ft. Masicka)
- All That and More (ft. Maverick Sabre)
- He Loves Us Both (ft. H.E.R.)
- Serious
- Brighter Days
- Love in a Lovely Way