Ini Kamoze Biography: reggae cult artist beyond the Hotstepper

Born Cecil Campbell in a seaside shack in Jamaica on 9 October 1957, Ini Kamoze was the son of an authoritarian police superintendent dubbed “The Scorpion” and a factory worker mother. In a fit of anger over not hearing from his father, his mother placed the baby in a cardboard box and left him at the gate of another female acquaintance of his dad in Jones Town, a Kingston ghetto. The woman, Miss Ette, still claims him as her little son – according to inikamoze.com.

As a young boy, Kamoze went to live with his grandfather, where he showed great promise to become the doctor of the family. However, he dropped out of high school and hitchhiked to Kingston, where he hustled in the Bond Street area and took to the Rastafarian way of life. Years later, he would point to this as what saved him after asking an acquaintance from his old neighbourhood for seven youths he ran with and learned that six had met violent deaths.

Kamoze would visit the home of reggae icon Jimmy Cliff to eat ital food and talk about music. On one of these occasions, Kamoze told his friend Newton Merritt (Cliff’s nephew) that he was giving up this music thing because “it nah work fi I“.

Kamoze, by this time, had done three moderately successful singles on the Mogho Naba label. Only one radio personality would give him any air-play, Dermott Hussey. Merritt said: “He had six of the toughest tracks I ever heard on this demo tape, so I called Sly (of Sly and Robbie) and gave him the tape. Sly forgot about the tape for some time but stumbled on it one day and popped it in his deck. According to inikamoze.com, Sly said: “I couldn’t believe it; it was the wickedest thing since Bob Marley. I called Robbie and said we have to record this now, right now!“.

With Sly And Robbie as producers, in the early 1980s Kamoze released a 12-inch single called “Trouble You Trouble Me” on their label, and fans well received the cut. Although Kamoze was described at the time as six feet tall and slim, with untangled hair and a very frail appearance, he burned up the stage with a ferocious presence, wowing fans and critics alike during his live performances. He toured as part of the Taxi Connection International Tour with Yellowman and Half Pint.

Kamoze’s successes were intermittent, and his career erratic until the early 1990s, when he suddenly disappeared from the music scene amid rumours of incarceration (he declined to comment on this period when asked on several occasions). He stormed back on the scene in 1994 with the historic “Here Comes The Hotstepper”.

Ini Kamoze remains the dark horse of music, the mystic man that Peter Tosh sang about, still a mystery even after selling millions of records and topping the Billboard charts. This perhaps is what has kept him fresh over the years, with a near cult following worldwide. According to inikamoze.com, a fan waiting for an autograph at New York’s Madison Square Garden said:

“His songs are way ahead of the times, and every time you listen, the songs sound as if he just recorded them. None of his songs are old.”

Sources:
inikamoze.com
Bio by Sandra Brennan on allmusic.com
encyclopedia.com