A shining beacon of consistency and success for women in the contemporary reggae scene since the turn of the 2020s, Jamaican multihyphenate Lila Iké, 31, has, at long last, unveiled her debut full-length studio album.
Titled Treasure Self Love, the new LP — which arrived on Aug. 22 via her own Wurl Ike Records, Protoje’s In.Digg.Nation Collective and Ineffable Records — finds Iké eschewing the poignant sociopolitical commentary of 2020’s breakthrough The ExPerience EP in favor of much more personal ruminations on navigating mental health struggles, in a world that demands a constant balance of militancy and femininity from its women.
Featuring a mélange of cross-genre collaborators (H.E.R., Joey Bada$$ and Masicka) and nods to pillars of Jamaican music (Peter Tosh, Patra and Garnett Silk), Treasure Self Love further solidifies Iké’s knack for bridging generations of music listeners through her piercing lyricism and earthy, grounded tone. Less than a week after sharing Treasure Self Love (Aug. 28), the Manchester Parish-hailing star won her third consecutive Caribbean Music Award for female reggae artist of the year. She’s the only artist to win the category since the ceremony’s inception — a testament to her dominance and allure, with or without a formal LP.
“My first Caribbean Music Award was the first time I’ve ever won an award that’s directly tied to my music,” she gushes. “It’s amazing to be celebrated for what I’m doing alongside a lot of my inspirations, like Buju Banton and Sizzla Kalonji. It felt great seeing other Black Caribbean people go up and collect their awards and be celebrated in our own communities.”
In several ways, Iké’s third Caribbean Music Awards victory is a stamp on her latest career chapter. No longer with RCA Records after a four-year stint with the label — and on the precipice of a Coney Island show with Kabaka Pyramid (Sept. 27) and a few additional North American concerts — Protoje’s protégé stands wiser and more self-assured than ever before. From bouncy dancehall riddims and hip-hop production inflections to tender country and western guitar licks, Treasure Self Love distills Iké’s wide range of childhood music into a succinct 11-track study of achieving wholeness by unflinchingly examining the darkest parts of your past.
Below, Iké speaks with Billboard about her debut album, playing her first solo Reggae Sumfest show, and how her bipolar disorder diagnosis shaped the album’s creation.
When did your working relationship with RCA end? When did you sign with Ineffable?
[I left RCA] late last year and started working with Ineffable immediately after. They came on board when we did the second single, “Fry Plantain,” [which dropped in November 2024]. It was natural. RCA served the purpose for what it was, and it was time to start a new chapter.
How would you compare the creative process for Treasure Self Love to that of The ExPerience EP?
I started working on The ExPerience during COVID. It was a lot of me being in the studio at home working with people I normally work with here in Jamaica: me, Proteje and a couple of our in-house producers. For Treasure Self Love, I was free to travel wherever. I was also signed to RCA at the time, and they put me in rooms with different producers I wasn’t necessarily familiar with. I’d say I was a bit more involved and paid attention to more things as it relates to the production of the music this time around. I spent a lot more time working on the music, which allowed me to do more than just write the songs.
Did you feel any particular pressure around this being your debut full-length album?
[The ExPerience], for my merits, did really well, and people connected with it. Because I toured that one EP for five years, along with other collaborations, it cemented me in the industry as a trusted artist whom people accepted they could be fans of. Personally, I felt that my first album needed to be amazing, especially since it’s been five years. No matter what I’m working on, I always have that pressure on myself to meet the expectation of greatness. But I also understood this didn’t necessarily feel like a debut album to the public; a lot of people were like, “Didn’t she already have an album?”
Looking back, I really shouldn’t have taken this long to put out an album. It wasn’t a deliberate effort; life just happened the way it did. But it’s also not like I disappeared after dropping the EP.
Did you find it challenging to focus on your own experiences on Treasure Self Love instead of prioritizing broader social commentary?
The EP had more social commentary in it because, at the time, those were things that I wanted to speak on. Not that I don’t want to comment on those right now, but I think music is a natural relationship between an artist and their inspiration, which usually has a lot to do with what’s going on with them personally. For [Treasure Self Love], it was more of me going within myself and speaking on emotional experiences I’ve had because, at that time, that’s what was real to me.
I discovered a lot about myself. I learned more about the mental struggles that I have endured my whole life. I got diagnosed with bipolar disorder. While dealing with all of that, I learned to truly treasure self-love.
There are musical nods to Jamaican music icons from Peter Tosh to Patra. Why was it important for you to pay homage to the greats across this album?
I feel like I’m always paying homage to my culture and the people who laid the foundation for what’s going on in Jamaican music right now. Songs like [2020’s] “Second Chance” and “Thy Will” were both sampled from Dennis Brown. I like to use music that inspired me on my journey and put my own twist on it. A lot of things also just happen; it’s never a deliberate effort.
For [“Romantic,” which samples] Patra, I was in a London studio. JulS played the beat, and I wrote three or four different songs to it, but none of them were connecting. On the last attempt, I sang Patra’s “Romantic Call” over the beat and liked how it sounded. I wasn’t thinking I needed it for my album; I was just making music. Since we decided to use it for the album, I invited Patra to the studio to hear the song and see if she liked it. She ended up loving it, so I got her to do the intro along with a few other bits throughout the song.
The Barrington Levy sample [on “All Over the World”] was Protoje’s idea. He was working on that song for himself. I walked into the studio and heard it, loved it, and it kinda became my song. Because of my genuine love for the great history and contributors to Jamaican music, I’m always going to be that person who will pay homage one way or another.
How did you get Joey Bada$$ on “Fry Plantain?”
Protoje also started the idea for this song; the warped, pitched sound in the chorus is actually his voice. He was in the studio one day [back in 2023], and the beat caught my attention because it was so different from my usual sound. I came up with verses, and for a good while, it was just me on the song.
As we got closer to finalizing the album, Protoje kept saying he could hear a rapper on “Fry Plantain.” The original producer of the riddim, D.K. the Punisher, works with SiR a lot. I’m a huge fan of SiR and tried to get him on it, but it didn’t work out. About a year later, when we were finalizing “He Loves Us Both,” and shooting that video, we were trying to find a lead male, and H.E.R. suggested Joey [Bada$$]. I was familiar with his music, but I didn’t know him personally at the time. I asked him to be in the video; he agreed, and I met him on set.
During the shoot, we spoke about music, and the collaboration manifested itself with him reaching out to me a couple of months later, like, “I was serious, let me send something!” Protoje pushed me to send “Fry Plantain” because of the hip-hop vibe, and Joey’s also Jamaican and Lucian, so he connected with it. He sent me back the verse in under a week.
Why do you think you’re one of the few new-generation Caribbean artists who connect with listeners of all ages?
I’d love to know that too, because I need to keep that formula in practice! It’s intention. When I make music, I deliberately make it to connect with people. If I go into a room and nobody knows who I am, at the end of singing any piece of music that I make, someone should be able to at least sing the chorus back to me. I think people connect with the relatability of my songs and the things that I speak about. I pull from my real-life experiences in a way that everyone can understand, whether I’m singing in patois or not.
How has your relationship with Protoje evolved since you first signed with his label in 2017?
It’s like iron sharpening iron. Protoje has become not just a mentor, but also a friend, especially in creating a project like Treasure Self Love, where it’s deeper and more vulnerable. Based on our relationship, it was easy for me to speak to him about certain things or create certain songs that required that vulnerability. I probably wouldn’t have been comfortable sharing that with somebody I wasn’t that close with. It made the music ten times more genuine.
The key change in “Brighter Days” is one of the best moments on the album. How did that track come together?
It was one of those sessions where RCA told me to go to L.A. and meet different producers. Every day, I was in the studio around producers I wasn’t familiar with. I wasn’t in my comfort zone with Protoje. So, I started throwing ideas around and, at the time, I was in a very emotional state, learning about my mental health and everything. The day we made “Brighter Days,” I did not want to go to the studio; I did not feel like making music.
When I went to the studio and I met the producer [Noah Ehler], I was pleased to see that it was just me and him in there. In other sessions, a producer would play a bunch of riddims and I would pick one, but [Ehler] just had his guitar and bass and wanted to make something on the spot. And that’s my favorite way of making music: raw, organic, you pick up an instrument and use the live download of inspiration from the Creator. When he got to the bassline, I was like, “What in the rock is going on here?” But I was excited to try something different, so I just started talking to myself about what I was feeling, and those became the lyrics to the song.
We didn’t have a key change originally; that first session was just us cutting the first and second verses and the hook. The song actually sounds quite unorthodox because the second verse feels like a bridge. We kept it that way for a while, but I knew it was incomplete. I told Protoje the song needed a key change, and it took a while for us to achieve the right modulation because we needed a proper bridge to lead into it. We brought the song back to Jamaica with Protoje’s band, and Monty, one of his guitarists, cracked the key change. It starts a bit melancholy, and then the dramatic sunshine comes out at the end; that’s exactly what I wanted to achieve with that song.
You recently made your solo Reggae Sumfest debut. What are you taking from that experience to your next couple of live shows?
It was always a dream to do Sumfest. It’s a rite of passage for any Jamaican artist. It was a great accomplishment for me because it was the last of the standard, legendary festivals in Jamaica for me to do. It was a bit of a rough weekend because I got into some little things with the police, and one of my band members lost a friend of theirs. For a while, I didn’t watch the performance back because I’m always very critical of myself. On a flight to London, I decided to finally watch it, and I had to message the band members and tell them how amazing they were.
My next big show in Jamaica will be Protoje’s festival next year, which has a crazy lineup. It’ll also be my first live presentation of Treasure Self Love in Jamaica. I’m going to New York in a few weeks for a show with Kabaka Pyramid at Coney Island, and then I start prepping my own headlining tour in North America for the end of October.
