Khago ready to ‘leave all in God’s hands’
Published:Wednesday | December 20, 2023 | 12:09 AMYasmine Peru/Senior Gleaner Writer
Dancehall deejay Khago is not contemplating walking the dancehall gospel path, but he is talking God – a lot.
After recently “unloading” on TikTok and calling out a few industry people, the entertainer is brushing that aside and declaring with purpose that he is ready to take responsibility for all his past failures and is accepting that sometimes “yuh have to reach rock bottom to discover the Rock of Ages”.
“I’m not talking about any one, please. TikTok a TikTok. I am finished fighting. I’m tired,” Khago said when quizzed about his tirade.
He is simultaneously looking forward to “leaving [his] affairs in God’s hands from now on” as he anticipates a brighter 2024 when he plans to get back on stage. For now, he is doing some farming, taking care of his two sons, while making a career of sorts out of dubplates, but he warned that the latter is “a ting dat can mek yuh turn wutliss”.
Khago, in 2006, capitalised on a life-defining opportunity when he placed third in the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission’s Popular Song Contest that year, and also won the Best Video category. Within the next five years Khago, whose real name Ricardo Gayle, had a slew of chart toppers, including Naah Sell Out, Fresh and Clean, Cyaan Cool Caan Quench, Daddy From Yu Gone, Walk a Mile, Tun Up di Ting and was in high demand for stage shows both locally and overseas.
His monster hit Nah Sell Out topped MTV Africa and BBC charts and went number one in Ghana, England, Canada, USA, Italy, Europe and several Caribbean islands, and locally there was an intense rivalry between him and I-Octane which was great for promotion and record sales.
But things took a downward spiral which Khago has been placing the blame on many factors, but, with a very recent epiphany, is now embracing it as “mainly my own fault”.
Khago, who is an excellent lyricist and deejay, has a history fraught with what artistes have a penchant for terming “di fight from di business”, but in retrospect he believes that it was he who was at fault because he “succumbed to the fights” and noted that at the end of the day “no one nuh control music”.
“Yuh have fight a come your way and yuh shoulda just leave it alone and mek God fight that battle,” he said.
Khago, who has been to court in the United States with a producer over music and won the case, firmly believes that he is “favoured by God”, and injected quite philosophically that that makes him “equally favoured by Satan”.
“Anything that God have Him hand pon, the devil want it. But me get a lot of hidden blessings. I use to want to get new hit songs, but God show mi seh mi have songs that can bring mi money. And from I start promoting myself on my platforms, I get so much dubplates based on my catalogue that I am earning comfortable. Sometimes dubplate money is more than what yuh get when yuh a run up and down a do stage show. Fi real ... but it can mek yuh wutless to. Because yuh so busy a do dubplate and a collect that yuh forget about putting out new tunes. And because of how my platform run smooth, I get a lot of work for other artistes in the dubplate business. Me not rich, but mi can tek care of myself and my sons,” he shared.
With 2023 drawing to a close, Khago is ready to embrace the new year with new music, which he has been busy working on, even though he has an interesting, almost defeatist take on the music business currently.
“If dem lock out all the good artiste and a push obeah and scammers and killers there’s no space for me. Good music a play inna one space. Yuh want to know where? In the studio ... lol... not radio nor TV, not even in the taxi. Good music don’t even make it to the shelf any more ... lol,” he said with a humourless laugh, as he added, “but where there is life there is hope.”