Jamesy P on the up and up!

“James Morgan born and bred in St.Vincent, but I don’t know where I was buttered.” From that introduction, right away you know that Jamesy P has a lively personality that is bound to make you crack up.

The son of Elliot and Valerie Woodley, of Lowmans Windward, Jamesy P attended the St. Martins Secondary School with his friend, Soca artiste Rondy Luta” Mc Intosh. He had a typical childhood where he played marbles, ran up and down and flew kites. {{more}}”The entertainer, now in his early 30s, admits to a having a love for music which was inspired by his father, who had a record player. He recalls singing along to the calypsonian Sparrow’s “Jean and Dinah” but it was not until 1993 that he really entered the music arena.

First taste

Jamesy P moved to Tortola and worked as a barber with two Jamaican colleagues who were also entertainers. As he tells the story, one carnival night in Tortola, his buddies were performing and he didn’t want to look from the sidelines anymore. He mustered enough courage, hit the stage, grabbed the microphone from one of his partners and took off from there.

The whole place went wild and from then he never turned back. The Vincentian started entering competitions in Tortola such as the popular radio station Zrod FM in 1996 and won and in 1997 retained the crown.

In 1998, he had a song called “See Me Trial,” in 2000 he brought the “Shocker” and “Living it Up” which he recorded in Jamaica, at Tuff Gong, Bob Marley’s Studios.

The year 2002 saw the release of “Giving Thanks” and in 2004 the smasher, “Nookie” which is still blasting the airwaves today.

Success is sweet

For carnival 2004 in Trinidad and Tobago Nookie was the biggest song, it also pounded in Barbados, Antigua and St.Lucia. Nookie won the road march in Miami in 2004 and on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn it was a hit, Nookie was the biggest hit for summer festivals in England, Miami, Canada, New York and Washington.

“Last year I did one truck which was the Vincy truck but this year I did six including the Hot 97 truck and if you do a Hot 97 truck you’re up there. And my guys Kevin Lyttle and Luta Mc Intosh were with me.”

Along with interviews on radio stations BBC and Kiss 100 in England, Jamesy P left memorable impressions on most persons with whom he came into contact. He was Number 14 on the UK Pop Chart, and Number 6 on the UK R&B Chart.

His success has helped him to sign a recording contract with the label Ministry of Sound and he has since released a fantastic music video.

His newfound success as an entertainer has made him a frequent flyer; “I have more stamps in my passport than Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves. I am a delegate for the country right now and I am proud to be an ambassador.”

Even in his newly released video proudly sports a flag of St.Vincent and the Grenadines.

Birth of Nookie

Nookie started with the singer/song writer relaxing on a beach in Tortola where he now resides. He explained, “I was lying flat on me back on Beef Island beach naked after some exercise and a good swim, I was listening to some music and also writing some Soca tunes to come home to record. I had like four of them and I just wanted a next one to make five.”

“This was around one in the morning by himself and it just came to me. Call me crazy if you like, but you don’t have to look over your shoulder like that where I live. Then the track just came I just found myself singing, “I want some Nookie tonight.”

Jamesy P expounded, ‘I asked himself things like, where would you look for Nookie? Proberly in the club in the road if you driving, you see someone passing by in the road that looked good.”

After the breakthrough he took the song to producer Mark Cyrus who, after recording the other tracks, became quite tired. The last tune was Nookie. He recalls, “He was sleeping when we did it. His face was in his hand and he was like, “OK Jamesy P sing.” And we were there for the whole night. Mark was so tired he didn’t want to record the track, but we still got it done, one day before I returned to Tortola.”

Confidence radiates from the entertainer. “Well, it is an in born thing you know. According to rap artiste Bone Crusher, I ain’t never scared. When I do my shows, sometimes I do get butterflies, but after I get the microphone, there ain’t no more butterflies, everything just goes away. I just forget about everything else around me and just do what I am supposed to do 110% every time.”

He continued, “Why get scared at this point, you work so hard to reach where you are going and you know you finally reach and you making it. You get a bly as they say in Jamaica and you making. Why get scared now, it ain’t make any sense.”

Definitely Jamesy P is not afraid to take risks; he even has his own line of condoms called “Nookie” produced by Trojan.

He describes himself as a person with a lot of humour who likes to feel free. He is a subscriber to Readers Digest magazine and the first page he turns to is the section called “Laughter the Best Medicine” He is a free spirit who likes to keep himself in check. Doing that gives him some stability because he loves his girlfriend and 6-year-old daughter who reside in Tortola.

Jamesy P would have loved to have the Nookie video Shot in St.Vincent and the Grenadines but the film crew from the UK called Cops and Robbers advised him that it was less costly to do it in Trinidad. So with this advice the record company EMI, along with the Ministry of Sound, did all casting for all the girls and set up the scene.

Jamesy P said when he and producer Mark Cyrus arrived everything was in place. One thing that the entertainer requested was for a big Vincy flag to be visible on the plane as soon as he came out of the aircraft. “I also had my head tied up with the flag, it was representation to the fullest. We would have really liked to do the video in St.Vincent but for budget reasons it couldn’t be done. So the next best thing which was give Vincy props.”

So what’s next for Jamesy P? He is scheduled to release Nookie in the United States in October. From there he would do Nookie in France, through EMI/ Virgin and the rest of Europe. “You can definitely look forward to some more cheeky, well disguised, put-better-than how-Sparrow-used-to-put-it stuff. Nobody really don’t know how to make the next hit, if we did everybody would have get a hit tune everyday. So we just do what we do and hope and be optimistic that everybody love it and embrace it. Yeah that is the bottom line.”