While touring the Bob Marley Museum in Kingston, Jamaica, on a Saturday in late September, Shenseea, the dancehall pop singer, paused at a glass case. Inside was the Grammy lifetime achievement award that Mr. Marley received posthumously in 2001.
“Haffi get one,” she said in Jamaican Patois of her desire to win a Grammy of her own.
Shenseea, 28, who was wearing a cropped turquoise halter top, a matching flowy skirt and Louis Vuitton slides, has already come closer than many. In 2022, she was up for album of the year for her work as a collaborator on Ye’s album “Donda.”
The museum occupies Mr. Marley’s former home in the Jamaican capital, where Shenseea also has a residence. Though she was raised mostly in Kingston and grew up listening to Mr. Marley’s reggae music, she had never been to the museum before.
“He made it so cool to be a rasta,” Shenseea said, referring to Mr. Marley’s association with the Jamaican spiritual movement Rastafarianism. She had left the museum and was sitting in the back seat of a white Mercedes-Benz, playing a string of breezy new songs she has yet to release. Mr. Marley, Shenseea continued, “showed the people that it’s OK to live your life the way you want to, even though it’s different.”
The same could be said for Shenseea. Dancehall, a musical genre known for its suggestive lyrics and provocative visual style, was not a feature of her upbringing in a Christian household. “I wasn’t allowed to listen to dancehall music when I was young,” Shenseea said. “When I was in high school, that’s when I fell in love with it.”
She is now among the brightest young stars of the genre, which blossomed in the 1970s in Kingston and is named for the dance halls that held parties in the city.
Her music is sexy and playful, and she sings assertively in smooth Patois and English about the pursuit of female pleasure on songs like “Foreplay,” “Lick,” “Work Me Out,” “Good Comfort” and “Hit & Run.”
As an artist, Shenseea has a goal of “empowering women, getting them confident,” she said, adding that “the focus should be bettering yourself,” not on seeking external validation. “If it’s not there, don’t rush it,” she said. “Wait. Work on other things, like yourself. It’s OK. Go party, go do something, go outside, touch grass.”
After gaining recognition for her fiery delivery on the 2017 single “Loodi,” Shenseea, who uses a stage name (she was born Chinsea Lee), signed with Interscope Records in 2019. She has since made two albums; the second, “Never Gets Late Here,” was released in May. Later this month, she is planning to begin a North American tour with the R&B singer Jhené Aiko.
Her visit to the Bob Marley Museum came just after she had finished headlining another North American tour promoting her sophomore album. Shenseea, who lives mostly in Miami with her 9-year-old son when she is not traveling, was in Jamaica for a festival held in celebration of her birthday.
Over the years, the sound of her music has evolved from what she described as strictly dancehall to a version that incorporates elements of other genres like R&B, pop, hip-hop and Afrobeats. “Putting music and genres together — it creates so much magic,” she said.
Her appearance has also changed. Shenseea, whose mother is Jamaican and whose father is Korean, said her early looks involved a lot of colorful wigs, a common element of dancehall style. “I was changing wigs like crazy,” she said. “Pink, blue, green, yellow.”
These days, she often wears her hair in long locs that fall below her waist. She said her wardrobe — which includes mesh bodysuits, form-fitting dresses and other garments with cutouts or crystal embellishments — blended dancehall dress codes with her personal style, which she described as “very feminine” and “Black.”
Lately, she has been wearing a mix of brands: Theophilio, by the Jamaican designer Edvin Thompson, along with Marine Serre, Jean Paul Gaultier and Pucci. Many of her outfits are heavily accessorized with bracelets, bangles, rings and earrings. Damaris Flores, a stylist in Los Angeles who works with Shenseea, said her preference for colorful, sleek attire with “island vibes” reflected the “very fun, electric” sound of her music.
Shenseea’s look also nods to the tradition of pioneering female dancehall artists like Lady Saw, Sister Nancy and Patra using their image and music to challenge cultural norms in the 1980s and ’90s. “It’s OK to be raunchy in dancehall because it is the culture,” Shenseea said. “But as I’m growing, I’m more subtle with it.”
For many female dancehall artists, “dress is ultimately about sexiness,” said Carolyn Cooper, the author of “Sound Clash: Jamaican Dancehall Culture at Large,” because “the capacity to attract the gaze is empowering.”
“That person who attracts the gaze is the one who has the power, not the person who is gazing,” added Dr. Cooper, an emerita professor of literary and cultural studies at the University of the West Indies.
When Shenseea took the stage at the Shenseea Birthday Festival, held the day before she visited the Bob Marley Museum, she wore a strapless red Norma Kamali minidress with ruching on the sides. In front of about 5,000 people, she performed a late-night set that had many in the crowd singing along — even to her newest single, “Dating Szn,” which she had released only a week before the event.
In “Dating Szn,” she sings about seeing two men at once as a way of weighing her options. After the festival, Shenseea described the song as reflective of her approach to dating. “I’m not going to rush into a situation without knowing what it is or who it is,” she said.
The event was organized by Romeich Major, a manager who discovered Shenseea. It took place at Plantation Cove, a sprawling outdoor venue in St. Ann Parish where dancehall stars like Sean Paul, Beenie Man and Buju Banton have played concerts of their own.
“They say when you learn how to perform in Jamaica, you can perform anywhere,” said Shenseea, who tends to bring fans onstage to dance with her. “You have to engage with the audience.”
As partygoers entered the venue, they walked through a giant cutout of a dragon, a creature featured in Shenseea’s album art and in a tattoo on her forearm. In the hours leading up to her performance, a lineup of D.J.s played dancehall classics to pump up the crowd as Shenseea watched from a cordoned-off area, occasionally taking puffs from a hookah pipe.
Although it was organized as a one-off event, the festival had a high turnout and Shenseea hoped that it could happen again. “I feel like now, especially since I went overseas, more eyes are looking down on Jamaica,” she said. “They’re flying down. They want to get to know the culture again — they’re getting excited.”
Shannon Shaw, a 26-year-old nurse who attended the festival in a pleated miniskirt, said Shenseea encouraged her female fans “to believe in themselves, always be themselves.”
“Nuh depend pon nuh man, be an independent gyal,” Ms. Shaw continued in Patois.
Marie Seaton, a 51-year-old sales consultant who attended the festival in a sparkly black mesh bodysuit, also characterized Shenseea as a girl’s girl.
“She’s stylish, she’s sexy, she’s vibrant,” Ms. Seaton said. “She makes me feel free.”
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