Lila Ike | The Resilient Songstress
Lila Ike sets herself apart from her musical peers not only with the aid of her peculiar melodic and commanding voice but also her surprisingly mature content. Her debut single “Biggest Fan”
Lila Ike sets herself apart from her musical peers not only with the aid of her peculiar melodic and commanding voice but also her surprisingly mature content. Her debut single “Biggest Fan” tackles the issue of generational conflict and contrasts it with the incredible nuanced life of an artiste. The song starts out highlighting the apparent discord between herself and her mother in terms of her career path, but ages rather gracefully into an ode.
Lila uses the music as a meeting ground for their souls, where despite her ambitions of becoming a singer, she is able to understand her mother’s concern as a product of love. It’s a ballad of sorts, showing love to the one person who is often the most supportive member of our respective systems, mothers. So naturally, a sit down was in order with the young songstress.
I’ve been following your sound for a while, from your very early days on Soundcloud when you were doing demos and covers of popular songs.
Fast forward to now, you have your first official single out, you’ve been on tour with Protoje, and I’m sure there is a lot more brewing behind the scenes that we can’t see.
So, my question is, what are some of the things you think has changed since then, for example, your following, how you’ve grown as a person or artiste?
Well, definitely vocally, I feel like I’ve developed, and it’s really just through singing and singing and singing. So vocally for sure, as you brought it up, it was just the other day I went back on Soundcloud because they’re still there I just private them, and I listened to some stuff. To me it was bad, but I was enjoying it, and the continual enjoyment of it has really brought growth. As it relates to the music, I’d say what I’ve improved on is the purpose, because at that time
I was just doing music because I enjoyed it. It was purely for fun and my pleasure. So now that I’m making music for a broader scale, with the hope that it can actually have an effect on people. I pay a lot of attention to the content and then as far as the feeling and the drive it has just increased. Because it has left from being a likkle dream I did have inna my room to, becoming real. So it’s wonderful.
If you’re a person that has any kind of craft or skill that you work at, which improves over time, then you know what it’s like to build it from the ground up.
Some of the times that experience you imagined while you were in your room dreaming, when it actually starts to occur, it can be a very bizarre feeling. So, talk about that.
Yes, it is a very bizarre experience. It’s overwhelming in the sense where, as you said, it’s literally like watching something grow. I think it’s probably how mothers would feel as it relates to their children. Because I don’t feel like the fathers really have that connection, no disrespect. But just to know that you created this thing and it is literally growing and you can see it growing right before your eyes. Especially over a not so long period of time, because I wasn’t working on music seriously until about two years ago and that is when I moved to Kingston. I remember when I was living in country, dem time deh we used to chat nuff (laughs). So is like everything I really visualized [come to fruition].
Because while in that state, just fooling around with music and singing, I wasn’t just in my room. To me, I was anywhere I felt like, on any stage, just having fun. I’d perform in front of my mirror an’ ting. So just seeing all of that come to life, it just gives me a greater appreciation for life itself. Because that just showed me how powerful we are as beings.
You wouldn’t even imagine because, a lot of the people that I’ve met in the music business, have even been serious influences on me coming up. Like Protoje, Jah9, Kabaka, all of those people are persons I remember just being able to watch dem a do dem ting and be like damn yo, I really want to meet these people. And now I know them.
Yea and I mean the thing about it is that when they came out at the time, they refreshed the idea that we can use older schools of thought to kind of redefine the way we live right now. It had to be done. It’s just progression, if this could have been done back in the day it would have. One of my favourite eras of reggae music was in the 90s with Garnett Silk and Buju. I even really feel connected to those people.
That era seems to have really made a mark on your sound.
Yea man, my favourite artiste right now and forever, is Garnett Silk. How I came across Garnett, is like my mother had this poster of him. I remember asking her who it was and she was like Garnett Silk. My mother is a music fanatic, this woman plays music from morning straight back till night.
Loudly. I’m from a community where that is acceptable, it wasn’t quiet and peaceful. You have somebody over there playing music and somebody on the next side doing the same, just bere noise. But my mom is a big fan of Garnett and she would always play his music, him and Buju. The area I was from, there were street dances all the time, so most times I’d literally be up just listening to the party.
So, you also get your dancehall influence from that then?
Definitely. Just by listening to which songs got the most raves and as a kid you automatically just feel like that’s the hot song. Until yuh actually able to start feel it for yourself. Garnett has always been that artist, from I hear him the first time, there was just something compelling about his sound. It just really made me excited about music, and I thought to myself, if listening to somebody can give me this feeling, what if I could do that for someone. That became my approach. That speaks to a kind of timeless quality that good music tends to have. That’s how it should be. Bob Marley is also a major influence in my life. I don’t even know how to describe what he did with music.
The man had the ting on a global level. Word sound and power. Just that alone is a splendid ability to break barriers. This man has conquered it all, you cannot hear his music and not know him. Not to mention his message. So that’s what I’m going for, that’s what I want to do with music. Is not even a case where I feel I need to have music like his, is just me trying to connect and share feelings through music on a really wide scope. Yea and the thing about Bob too, the music he made was so beatific that even though people were feeling it, some people missed the ideas behind the music.
Because he made a lot of beautiful reggae music, but it was also reminiscent of the other sounds that were happening at the time, like Jazz, Blues, South African music, he was just drawing inspiration from a variety of influences. His main idea was innovating those sounds into his own. So he could reach out to everybody. That’s what it should be. Like I am definitely heavily influenced by Reggae, but not limited to just that. I used to rap, and deejay.
I was just about to ask you that. Does Lila have bars?
Mi have a one rap song still (laughs). For me, I get the era that we’re in, bars is a case where you have to be on beat at a particular pace and you have to be speaking on whatever topics, consistently and inclusive of rhymes and different puns or whatever. But how I make music now, is freestyle. I will freestyle, and it’s all based on a divine intervention. I will hol’ a vibe still, and I won’t toot my own horn and say bung bang, but I don’t even think it’s me, especially when it gets down to the bars.
I have stunned myself on many occasions and mi just haffi give thanks. I remember I was performing out by Jamnesia, and it was for like a good half an hour straight. Nothing was written and I don’t know where it came from it was just natural. It was like a switch turned on when I got into the vibes, and that is what I’m trying to master. To constantly be in that pure creative state. So I’m not really concerned about bars. I take my inspiration from wherever it comes, and if we’re in a set where it calls for that then I just might.
So, you were probably one of those loudmouthed kids that would just be singing all the time, right?
Bro. Can I tell you? The song “Biggest Fan” is a not a joke, it’s not a made up story. I have a video right now where my mother was explaining the song to Protoje when she met him, and she hadn’t heard the song up until the other day. She was telling him how I was around the house as a child, and that’s exactly what that song was about. (Laughs) As I said my mother loves music, so she listened to a lot of those old souls and R&B songs on repeat for weeks at a time, if she liked them.
So, it was just a case where the music was conditioned into me and it was worse because I loved music too, so I had no choice but to sing along. That’s how I learned a couple songs, and now, I’ve manifested it and made my own.
Photos by Jik Reuben
Illustration by Kokab
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