Tennesia Malcolm, Gleaner Writer

Assassin -Contributed Photos

It is an exhausted-looking Assassin who sits down for an interview. And with good reason.

He's been on two tours in as many years, first with Buju Banton, last year, and then headlining his own. He has also been busy reading for a bachelor's in business management and starting a production company, Board House Records. Add to the mix intensive work on a sophomore album and you have the life of Jeffery Campbell, dancehall deejay and scholar.

As he delves into the matterof his new album, Gully Sit'n, which hits stores on August 28, exhaustion gives way to enthusiasm. With carefully crafted dialogue, Assassin explains what he hopes this album, which he describes as "authentic dancehall", will do for his burgeoning career.

"I want to be part of the movement bringing dancehall to the wider market, as opposed to doing whatever it is that they already accept and call it dancehall," he says. "Whenever dancehall artistes go to the drawing board saying they want to do a song for the overseas market then it's not dancehall anymore; they start to water it down and then it starts to sound more like a hip hop-dancehall hybrid than anything else. And who says that's what the people want?"

Defining force

Assassin hopes that the the contents of Gully Sit'n will be what the people want. The 24-year-old toaster says this album is a defining force, an introduction somewhat, which he readily admits his debut album, Infiltration, failed to achieve. In fact, he claims that Gully Sit'n is more of a prequel to the former, which was perhaps undertaken before its time - a big step before the crawl.

"The direction that we took with the first album, a lot of fans said they didn't get the real Assassin from 2000/2001. With this album, we fixed that. We went back and did the more grassroots, core project and, hopefully, that will help to define what Assassin is all about from early," he explains.

Gully Sit'n is a "celebration of ghetto life". Assassin claims it permeates with a dancehall vibe which focuses on the music and the fun. And where it deviates from that vibe, it moves into what he says is uncharted territory for him.

"The Pain is the first time I have ever gone on record with anything I consider to be personal, like more Jeffery Campbell; addressing losing my mother, things like that," he says. "The song is just talking about losing people close to you and I've had my share of that."

But Assassin, who spent his childhood in the inner-city community of Kintyre, St. Andrew, has also had his share of success, and some of the songs on the 17-track album are readily recognisable. These include the local hits Don't Mek Wi Hold Yuh, Boring Gal, Anywhere We Go, Nah Mad Over None and Beep Out.

The production aspect also reads like a who's who, with work from Stephen McGregor, Don Corleone, Dave and Tony Kelly, with the artiste taking sole lyrical credit.

Clashes

It was Jeffery Campbell's ability to spew an arsenal of fierce lyrical batterings, which gained him the nickname, Assassin, in high school, even before he had set his sights on a career in music. Perhaps, also, it served as fuel to a potentially dangerous fire when, barely into his career, he was pitted against another youthful lyrical firebrand, in Vybz Kartel.

But the clean-cut deejay quickly diffuses any lingering hopes of future clashes.

"Clashing (in high school) was about who was the better man on the day, bringing the better lyrics; you know, who was better at music. But when you talk about clashing in the present dancehall arena, it's about who is the biggest gangsta and who have the most tough-up face friend," he says. "And I wasn't about to get caught up in that because mi nuh come inna music fi dat."

He says he is determined to create "catalogue songs", which he hopes will land him on the Heineken Startimes of tomorrow.

Dressed in jeans and polo shirt and devoid of bling, Assassin is a poster child for what dancehall can become.

"I never feel like I have anything to prove because I know what I am about and what my music represents," says a self-assured 'Agent 00', a moniker he coined for himself representing infinity. That's how long he hopes his music will go on.

So forget clash music, which the deejay says is limited as "people don't know what you have to say about the man and his mother 10 years down the line".

At a time when Jamaicans are considering staying or changing the course, Assassin hopes that his new album will fulfil its promise. "The challenge itself in trying to find the next one is what keeps you going ... But my approach is doing music that I like and hopefully there are enough people in the world who will like it like me, and we take it from there," he says.