Akiela Hope

If you want a pic­ture per­fect look at De­von "Lyrikal" Mar­tin, then pic­ture this sin­gle man who can clean house as well as cook–in fact, he ad­mits that he can "throw down" (pre­pare) any type of food: "I make a mean soup as well." In ad­di­tion to cook­ing, his hid­den tal­ents in­clude paint­ing and tiling. And to top it off, he al­so knows how to per­form. Per­form he will, with his 2017 of­fer­ings of Pic­ture Per­fect and Jam­ming Sake.

Even though he has an equal love for his two hits–just as any par­ent would have equal love for their chil­dren–Jam­ming Sake has been the one to cap­ti­vate fans and has tipped Pic­ture Per­fect just a bit.

Jam­ming Sake was writ­ten by 2016 So­ca Monarch win­ner Voice, while Pic­ture Per­fect, which is part of the Break­ing Dawn Rid­dim, was writ­ten by Lyrikal.

"I was told that when Voice wrote Jam­ming Sake, he wrote it with me in mind and be­cause he did not have a con­tact for me at the time, he sent it to Green. When I heard the de­mo I in­stant­ly loved it and the on­ly thing I changed was the in­tro­duc­tion," Lyrikal ex­plained.

Lyrikal al­so re­vealed that this song was sup­posed to be a 2016 re­lease–but "the vibes weren't right at the time.... The pro­mo video for Jam­ming Sake, which was shot in St Lu­cia, is ac­tu­al footage of us on the road," he said.

As for Pic­ture Per­fect, he says: "When I heard it, I felt a vibes. Against my be­liefs on jump­ing on rid­dims that are al­ready re­leased, I took the plunge, wrote my song, and Pic­ture Per­fect came to life," he said, adding: "The ladies are def­i­nite­ly cling­ing to this one."

Lyrikal writes most of his songs– none of which are writ­ten on pa­per but straight from the heart. He writes to please the mass­es, whether young, ma­ture, male or fe­male. He said he saw proof of this on a tour to Ger­many for their Car­ni­val: "The ex­pe­ri­ence was so sur­re­al be­cause this was Ger­many and the peo­ple there were singing so­ca songs word for word. It was the same for my songs when I per­formed," he said.

Lyrikal said he nev­er tries to top his songs or per­for­mances from the year be­fore; in­stead his strat­e­gy is to do re­search. For him, that means go­ing to par­ties to check out what's new, or call­ing up friends and ask­ing for the newest trends, slangs or what the ladies are feel­ing at the time.

His ul­ti­mate goal in life is to in­spire peo­ple through his mu­sic, he said, whether it is to car­ry them through the day or to mo­ti­vate a young artiste to al­so sing. "And when it's all said and done, they re­mem­ber me for be­ing a great artiste and a pos­i­tive per­son who helped the youths."

Lyrikal al­so en­joys his alone time, whether it's at home cook­ing, at the stu­dio "vibesing", or in his ho­tel room dur­ing tours. "To re­lieve stress I tend to lis­ten to mu­sic...Ac­cord­ing to the time of the year, I will choose a par­tic­u­lar genre, but I re­al­ly al­so love hip hop and reg­gae." Even though he has been around for some 12 years, he has been in the fore­front con­sis­tent­ly for the past six.

Just like his coun­ter­part, Voice, Lyrikal is far from fin­ished; his fans can look for­ward to a re­lease of his new al­bum ti­tled Ded­i­cat­ed, on Ash Wednes­day. This al­bum com­pris­es 12 songs, all so­ca, 95 per cent of which he wrote.

IN­FO

?Jam­ming Sake

Sin­gle. Pro­duced by Kyle "No­vahh" Joseph and Nikho­lai Greene

Writ­ten by Aaron "Voice" St Louis, Nikho­lai Greene and De­von "Lyrikal" Mar­tin

Mixed and mas­tered by Mega Mick and Nikho­lai Greene

Pic­ture Per­fect

On Break­ing Dawn Rid­dim.

Writ­ten by De­von "Lyrikal" Mar­tin

Pro­duced by WiLD­FiRE Mu­sic/ We­BIG Ent and CL Pro­duc­tions

Mixed and mas­tered by CL Pro­duc­tions

Ded­i­cat­ed (main song on the Ded­i­cat­ed al­bum)

Writ­ten by De­von Lyrikal Mar­tin and Nkosi Black­burn for LFS En­ter­tain­ment

Pro­duced by Alex "Ku­biyashi" Barn­well

Mixed & Mas­tered by Keron "Scratch­mas­ter" Hec­tor