Mel Cooke, Freelance Writer

Altiyah 'di chic' Hewitt in performance. - Contributed

On her self-titled debut album for VP Records 'di chic' Hewitt moves from the uptempo jam Save Me (including a spot of deejaying) to the Latin swing of Dance For Me, then into the lover's croon of Boom! Boom! Boom! and anguish of Buck up on a Crime Scene with not only ease, but feeling.

It is a self-assurance that has been long in the making, Hewitt once being a member of the Fourth Street Sisters and, before that, as she puts it, "I grew up in the music business".

Hewitt puts the nine months that the album has taken to put together to "it's about how comfortable you feel".

Comfortable with genres

As for comfort among the range of genres which she spans on the 16-track set, Hewitt says "I am comfortable with all of them. I think I have always embraced change and because of that it has honed me in a way that I analyse things, do it and I am good to go. I am not a lover of any one way of putting across reggae music".

Still, there is an affinity for "good old lovers' rock. If I was thinking about swinging to something I would swing there. But there are so many sides. Among the cover versions on the album, the first of three for VP Records, are Unconditional Love, done by Donna Summers, How Could I Live, made popular by Dennis Brown, and the Harold Butler composition Love Me Forever, performed originally by Cynthia Schloss. The Love That a Woman Should Give to a Man was suggested by VP, with the others put forward by the producers Dwight Pinkney and Astley 'Grub' Cooper.

It did not hurt that How Could I Live is Pinkney's composition, but Hewitt says "I made the song my own. I love that song. I love melody a lot and I love lyrics that can touch you and you can relate".

As for Boom! Boom! Boom!, the tale of a dream lover who makes the heart beat that much faster which she wrote, Hewitt says that it is "kinda ironic, why I wrote that song in the first place. I am saying that I am single. All those characteristics I want in a lover. Don't find it yet, but hopefully ...."

With writing credits on seven songs and co-writing credit on Buck up on a Crime Scene, along with John Alexander and Ervin 'Allah' Lloyd, Hewitt enjoyed her pen as well as vocal work. Among the songs she wrote are So I Go, Spread Love, What Can You Do and Long Way Home.

She expects to "take the world by storm" and hopes "to sign a deal like a Sean Paul or a Shaggy, so I can work with other artistes out there in the world, American artistes, Japanese artistes, European artistes".

"There are so many things I want to do, but everything in its own time," Hewitt said.