Over 400 songs recorded for ‘Yaksta 22’

In the course of composing his upcoming album, Yaksta wrote and recorded 444 songs. The recording artiste told The Gleaner he knew it would take a lot of time to narrow down the tracklist.

“It’s a total of 18 tracks,” he said of the songs that made the final cut for Yaksta 22. “The process is really just me writing continuously, making considerations of which could be potential collabs. And during the process of recording and finalising, me realise say me have 444 songs; that means more than one project can drop…me can drop an EP, and an album, and still have more songs in the clear, so there may be another album later on in the year.”

But that number barely makes a dent in the number of songs recorded prior to the artiste and songwriter hitting the mark with his Ambition in 2021.

Yaksta recalled losing the music he created more than once, and how he often had to return to the drawing board.

“Before Ambition, I must have recorded double the amount of songs…a hard drive with approximately 1,000 songs, [and] all of a sudden, [it] was unreadable or showed up blank. Same morning, [the] computer crashed. Everything I had created was lost, and I had to recreate it. Recently, a phone where I had recorded some of my ideas was actually stolen while I was in another Caribbean island, but you never stop create. Choosing the songs was hard, but [I’ve dealt] with harder and when sifting through the recordings, is like you just feel it,” Yaksta said of the challenges faced in choosing the content to make public.

January 15 will make it two years since Ambition was officially released. Its success boiled over in 2022 when Rolling Stone named it as one of 60 songs that tell of the island’s musical evolution to celebrate Jamaica’s diamond jubilee.

“Me buss in a time where everybody couldn’t move, [so] it was about exploiting that moment as best as I could. Then to see Yaksta out of so many others featured by a giant like Rolling Stone, and looking back at where it started and the actual success of the song, it sort of shows me [to] continue on this path no matter how hard it is. Honestly, to this day it’s something I still have to fathom, but it is being craved because people want impactful messages, and artistes like me have a whole part to play and an arena to supply good quality music to,” he said.

Yaksta 22 is slated for release on February 24, but the artiste will treat the public to a free concert that will double as the official launch event on February 21. Today, the artiste revealed the final album cover and other artworks. He has a dynamic list of collaborators, including Rygin King, Demarco, and Chronic Law. He said that a track which features Shaneil Muir will “potentially” be part of the tracklist, but that will not be revealed until one day next week.

stephanie.lyew@gleanerjm.com